The niece of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, Viktoria, who lives in Russia’s Yaroslavl region and plans to run in the regional parliamentary election, has received her election candidate’s certificate, as she herself told TASS on Tuesday.

"I received my election candidate’s certificate at the A Just Russia party’s office today," Viktoria Skripal said.

On July 20, the regional election commission registered her as a candidate to run in the election.

The A Just Russia party nominated Viktoria at the July 3 primaries, though she is not a party member.

The regional parliamentary election is set to take place on September 9.

The world came to know Viktoria Skripal when she applied for a British visa, seeking to visit her uncle Sergei and cousin Yulia after they had allegedly been poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury, but was denied.

Skripal saga

According to London, former Russian military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Sergei Skripal, 66, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia, 33, suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury on March 4. Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London rushed to accuse Russia of being involved in the incident. Moscow rejected all of the United Kingdom’s accusations, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia ever had any program aimed at developing such a substance.