Skripal suspects tell Russian media they visited Britain as tourists

The two Russian men charged in Britain with poisoning a former Russian spy with a deadly nerve agent appeared on Kremlin-funded television, denying their involvement in the attack and saying that their appearance in the English city of Salisbury was merely an “incredible, fatal coincidence.”

Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov make their first public appearance in an interview with the Kremlin-funded RT channel this afternoon, saying that they visited Salisbury to see its famous cathedral.

“Our friends have been suggesting for a long time that we visit this wonderful town,” Petrov said, while Boshirov added that they specifically wanted to see the Cathedral’s famous spire and clock.

Britain last week charged Boshirov and Petrov in absentia, alleging they were agents of Russia’s military intelligence agency known as the GRU who were dispatched to Salisbury to poison former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the nerve agent Novichok.

'Our lives turned into a nightmare!' – UK’s suspects in Skripal case (EXCLUSIVE TEASER)

READ MORE: https://t.co/k8NA6RPsxD pic.twitter.com/ak5rSjz0Ys

— RT (@RT_com) September 13, 2018

British police released CCTV footage and photographs showing the two men walking in Skripal’s neighborhood on March 4, the day of the attack. They were also pictured visiting the city a day earlier. Britain said the attack was almost certainly approved “at a senior level of the Russian state,” an allegation that Moscow has vehemently denied.

In the interview, both men deny that they are GRU agents or that they were in possession of the Soviet-made Novichok nerve agent.

“The whole situation is an incredible, fatal coincidence, and that’s that,” Petrov says. “What is our fault?”

They claimed they did not know who Skripal was and they did not know where he lived.

— AP