The Daily Telegraph

Relations ‘worse than during the Cold War’

- By Roland Oliphant SENIOR FOREIGN CORRESPOND­ENT

BRITISH and Russian relations are now worse than during the Cold War, one of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy point men has said.

Evgenny Primakov Jr, who is designated a “trusted representa­tive” of Mr Putin, authorised to speak on behalf of his campaign on foreign policy during the Russian presidenti­al election, called the British allegation­s that Russia was involved in the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal “nonsense”.

In an exclusive interview, he said he believed the Mr Skripal had been attacked by US or British secret services in an attempt to discredit this Sunday’s Russian presidenti­al election.

“Frankly, in Moscow we are in shock. The whole thing looks insane. No one here believes this was a Russian attack,” he said from Moscow. “We are absolutely sure, 100 per cent sure, that the whole thing is aimed at our elections. In my personal opinion, I’m absolutely sure Sergei Skripal was poisoned by the British or American secret services,” he said.

“The idea is to make our election look illegitima­te. [For Russia] to commit such a thing a week before the presidenti­al election is insane. And when we try

‘I’m absolutely sure Sergei Skripal was poisoned by the British or American secret services’

to explain our position to we are told: ‘Russia is an evil empire and you do it deliberate­ly because you do it’.

“There is no erosion of trust because there is no trust to be eroded. We are now very deep in a situation that is very much worse in my opinion than the Cold War [when] we had some kind of rules, however informal. We had a degree of ritualised ideologica­l confrontat­ion.”

Vasily Nebenzya, the Russian permanent representa­tive to the UN, also hinted at a conspiracy plot against Russia by comparing the British Government to Inspector Lestrade from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.

He told the Security Council: “Inspector Lestrade latches on to something that is on the surface of a crime only to be overturned by Sherlock Holmes who finds what is really responsibl­e for it.

“I’m not saying Scotland Yard today is not profession­al – God guard me from that – but I’m saying we could all benefit from a Sherlock Holmes today.

“The Inspector Lestrades are the leaders of the government making claims that are egregious.”

He added: “A hysterical atmosphere is being created by London and they are being completely non-transparen­t in this. They are trying to influence the public which is very easy to influence and not well educated.”

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom