The Russian Foreign
Ministry even had to publish its requests addressed to the British side, Maria
Zakharova said
MOSCOW, September 7.
/TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has dismissed as
absurd the recent calls upon Russia coming from a number of Western countries
for cooperation with Britain over the Skripal affair.
"Yesterday’s
statement by a number of countries at the UN Security Council’s meeting in
which they urge Russia to start interaction with the British investigation
looked totally absurd. Absolutely, it’s a looking glass world. It begins to
look like sheer nonsense. We even had to publish our requests addressed to the
British side. True, this does not quite match the diplomatic rules, but the
things that London has been doing do not agree with any practice at all,"
Zakharova told a news briefing on Friday.
On September 6,
Germany, Canada, the United States and France issued a joint statement to
demand that Russia should begin to cooperate in the investigation of the
Salisbury incident. In the meantime, Moscow declared its readiness to interact
with London over the Skripal affair from the outset.
British Prime
Minister Theresa May on Wednesday briefed the British parliament on some
conclusions of the probe into the Salisbury incident to declare that two
Russians whom the British special services regarded as GRU agents were
suspected of an attempt on the Skripals’ lives. According to the investigators,
the two men were moving about the country with passports issued in the names of
Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
If the British
version of the incident is to be believed, former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal,
convicted in Russia of spying for Britain, and his daughter Yulia were affected
by a Novichok class nerve agent in Salisbury. London argued that Moscow was
highly likely involved in the incident. Russia strongly dismissed all
speculations on that score, adding that programs for making such a substance
had never existed in the Soviet Union or Russia.
Source: ITAR-TASS 08-09-2018
