Russian Federation will 'of course' expel British diplomats after United Kingdom move: Lavrov
- by Andrea Singleton
- in Global
- — Mar 17, 2018
According to British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, the order to use chemical weapons on the territory of the kingdom, Russian special services were supposed to receive a personal order from the Russian president himself.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that Johnson's statement was "shocking and inexcusable breach of diplomatic propriety".
Soon after Johnson's comments were reported, the Kremlin said accusations that President Putin was involved in the nerve agent attack were shocking, TASS news agency reported.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that it's "overwhelmingly likely" that Putin ordered the use of a nerve agent against former spy Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury.
"That does not mean we should resign ourselves to a "new Cold War" of escalating arms spending, proxy conflicts across the globe and a McCarthyite intolerance of dissent", he said.
Britain has accused Russian Federation of staging the attack with the Soviet-designed Novichok nerve agent, accusations Moscow has denied.
On Friday, Russia's Investigative Committee said it had launched its own criminal proceedings in connection with the "attempted murder of a Russian citizen, Yulia Skripal" in Salisbury and what it called the "murder" of Nikolai Glushkov in London.
Russia's envoy at the global chemical weapons watchdog says the nerve agent used could have come from USA or British stockpiles.
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An 83-year-old Russian whistleblower who helped develop Novichok told the AP on Friday that no other country could have used that particular nerve agent to poison a former spy. Alexander Shulgin, Russia's envoy at the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said in televised remarks that Britain and the United States both had the nerve agent used.
Vil Mirzayanov, who now lives in New Jersey, said that if the substance is Novichok, as Britain claims, it's "100 percent" clear it came from Russian Federation. "There is to be no Russophobia as a result of what is happening", he said.
Russia's Defence Ministry said he was an "intellectual impotent" and Lavrov said he probably lacked education. Downing Street called the attack "an unlawful use of force' by the Russians against the U.K".
"Well he's a nice man, I'm told, maybe he wants to claim a place in history by making some bold statements", Lavrov said.
Former military intelligence agent Sergei Skripal had been pardoned and was "no longer a threat to Russia", Nebenzia argued, but at the same time, he could clearly serve as "the flawless victim who could justify any unthinkable lie, any kind of untruth tarnishing Russia".
The war of words between Moscow and London continued Friday, with Lavrov lashing back at British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson for saying Russian Federation "should go away and shut up".
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn says in a newspaper column that politicians must not "rush way ahead of the evidence being gathered by the police".
