People with suitcases leave the Russian Embassy in London, March 20, 2018. (Frank Augstein/AP)
MOSCOW, Russia — The Kremlin has demanded an apology from British Prime Minister Theresa May and her government for implicating President Vladimir Putin in the nerve agent attack on a former double agent, saying this “idiocy has gone too far.”
“Their theory will not be confirmed in any case because it is not possible to confirm it,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on a visit to Ankara Tuesday evening.
“And the British foreign minister who has made accusations against President Putin, (and) the British prime minister will have to somehow look their EU colleagues… in the eye,” Peskov added in televised remarks.
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May speaks in the House of Commons in London, Monday, March 12, 2018. May said her government has concluded it is “highly likely” Russia is responsible for the poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter. (PA via AP)
“And somehow they will have to apologize before the Russian side,” he added. “It will certainly be a long story, the idiocy has gone too far.”
The March 4 attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury has triggered a wave of tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats between the West and Russia and sent relations plunging to new post-Cold War lows.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Editionby email and never miss our top stories
Former Russian military intelligence colonel Sergei Skripal attends a hearing at the Moscow District Military Court in Moscow on August 9, 2006. (AFP PHOTO / Kommersant Photo / Yuri SENATOROV)
Britain has said it is “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the attack using the Soviet-designed Novichok nerve agent, but Moscow has angrily denied any involvement.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has pointed the finger at Putin himself, saying it was “overwhelmingly likely” that the Kremlin leader ordered the attack.
The British military facility analyzing the nerve agent said on Tuesday it could not prove the substance was made in Russia.
Advertisement
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
We can't do this work alone.
The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.
There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.
As a Times of Israel reporter, I’m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit’s. But my colleagues and I can't do this alone. If you value work like this,please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
