UK a dangerous place to live, says state’s TV

THE presenter of a flagship state-controlled news programme in Russia last night issued an apparent threat to “traitors” while reporting on the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, and warned that Britain appeared to be a dangerous place to live.

Kirill Kleimenov told his viewers that traitors often met a bad end and suffered “professional illnesses” resulting in heart attacks and suicide.

His comments came as another state news agency rejected the British Government’s declaration that the former spy had been attacked with a nerve agent in Salisbury, instead suggesting he had taken a drug overdose.

On Channel One’s Vremya (Time), Mr Kleimenov said: “I don’t wish death on anyone, but for purely educational purposes, I have a warning for anyone who dreams of such a career.

“The profession of a traitor is one of the most dangerous in the world.” The anchorman said alcoholism, drug use, stress, nervous breakdowns and depression were all “inevitable illnesses of a traitor” that, as a consequence, led to “heart attacks, strokes, traffic accidents, suicides ultimately.”

He then gave his own advice to “traitors, or those who simply hate their country in their free time – don’t choose Britain as a place to live”.

He went on: “Something is wrong there. Maybe it’s the climate, but in recent years there have been too many strange incidents with grave outcomes.”

Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted a Moscow narcotics doctor arguing that Mr Skripal probably overdosed on fentanyl, a powerful opioid painkiller.

“The gas attack version looks even more fantastic, so I think the accusations by the British side have no basis at all,” the expert said. “Our security services act more elegantly.”

Later, an EX-FSB general said Russia would have killed him in prison if the state no longer had an interest in him.