So predictable... rattled Russia is blaming Britain
‘Hell of a mix for a perfume’
RUSSIA brazenly brushed aside evidence of its global cyber attacks yesterday as ‘Western spy mania’.
The foreign ministry said the scandal was a ‘rich fantasy of our colleagues from Britain’.
With a tasteless dig at the Salisbury poisonings in which Briton Dawn Sturgess, 44, died, spokesman Maria Zakharova said claims involving Russian spy agencies had been mixed together to create a ‘diabolical perfume’.
She added: ‘It’s all been mixed together in one perfume bottle. Maybe a Nina Ricci bottle.’
The nerve agent novichok, used in the Kremlin assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal in March, had been found inside a fake Nina Ricci perfume bottle. She added that the allegations had been mixed together ‘indiscriminately’, adding: ‘That’s a hell of a mix for a perfume.’
The Russian embassy in London described the international cyber attack accusations as ‘reckless’ and – despite the reams of pictures and documents produced by the Dutch authorities – incredibly said the claims ‘lacked evidence’.
A spokesman said: ‘It has become a tradition for such claims to lack any evidence. It is yet another element of the anti-Russian campaign by the UK Government.’
The spokesman said that in Decemsubstantive ber 2017 during then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s visit to Moscow, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov proposed to launch consultations on cyber security in order ‘to address UK’s concerns’.
They added: ‘The offer was turned down. The only reasonable explanation is that the UK has no facts for a discussion. Thus, such statements by the Foreign Office are nothing but crude disinformation, aimed at confusing the British and world public opinion.
‘By the way, it is hardly a coincidence that these accusations appear exactly at the time of Nato defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels and announcements of creating special cyber attack military units in several Western countries.’
Yesterday Russia also accused the US of secretly producing and testing biological weapons, including anthrax and plague, in ex-Soviet Georgia in violation of international legislation.
Igor Kirillov, commander of Russia’s radiation, chemical and biological protection troops, said the lab was based at the Lugar Centre near Tbilisi. he said: ‘It is highly likely that the US is conducting its activities in contravention of international agreements and continuing to ramp up its biological warfare potential.’
The Georgian health ministry denied the claims as ‘absurd’.