Russia is ready to cooperate in connection with the sick former spy in Britain

The Kremlin said today that Russia is ready to cooperate in the investigation into how and why a former Russian spy was found in a critical condition in a shopping center in southern England, and that so far the British authorities have not asked for help.

A former Russian spy is in critical condition after coming into contact with an "unknown substance" in the city of Salisbury, British media reported yesterday.

His name has not been officially announced, but British media say that he is 66-year-old Sergei Skripal, who was convicted in 2006 of espionage for the British intelligence agency MI6.

He was sentenced in Moscow to 13 years in prison and was released in 2013 in a US-Russian spy swap.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, said today at a regular press conference that no request for help has been sent from Britain, but that "Moscow is always ready to cooperate".

At the same time as the former Russian spy, on Sunday afternoon, a woman was found unconscious in Salisbury, a place about 140 kilometers west of London.

Salisbury Regional Police said the man and woman appeared to know each other and had no visible injuries.

"They are currently being treated for suspected exposure to an unknown substance. Both are in critical condition and in intensive care," the police said.

After finding two unconscious people, the British authorities carried out a decontamination operation in that place. Mobile crews dressed in yellow overalls worked through the night spraying the street where people were found unconscious and Salisbury Hospital's emergency department was closed.

Public Health England said it had only limited information about the patients but that there did not appear to be any further risk to public health, and that the two people who were exposed to the substance were thought to have been decontaminated.

Skripal worked for the Russian military intelligence service GRU and retired in 1999. He then worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 2003 and later started to deal with business.

After his arrest in Moscow in 2004, Skripal admitted that he was recruited by the British intelligence service in 1995, and that he gave them information about Russian agents in Europe, and that he received a fee of 100.000 US dollars in return.

The circumstances of Sunday's incident are unclear and police have urged the public not to speculate. Still, it's hard not to think of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian agent who died after drinking tea poisoned with polonium-210 in a London hotel in 2006.