Russia claims Britain faked chemical attack
RUSSIA has accused Britain of faking the chemical weapons attack that killed more than 40 people in the Syrian town of Douma last Saturday.
The UK staged this “planned provocation” to “provoke the United States to launch missile strikes in Syria,” Igor Konashenkov, the Russian defence spokesman, said yesterday.
Britain’s envoy to the UN called the accusations a “grotesque, blatant lie” and the Foreign Office said they were “just the latest in a number of ludicrous allegations” from Moscow.
According to Mr Konashenkov, London “pressured” the White Helmets volunteer medics to claim that rebels would shell Damascus, drawing a retaliation by regime forces. Then “unknown people” supposedly ran into the hospital with cameras, pouring water on patients, “yelling that everyone had been stricken with poisonous substances”.
Alexander Yakovenko, Russia’s ambassador to the UK, also accused London of destroying evidence related to the March nerve agent attack in Salisbury and “abducting” the victims Sergei and Yulia Skripal to stage the poisoning incident. He suggested that Theresa May’s government had staged the Skripal poisoning for “narrow domestic political interests”.
Russia ramped up its threats to the West over possible military action, earlier in the day threatening sanctions on the West in retaliation for US sanctions imposed in the wake of the Salisbury attack and any action in Syria.
The threat could include exports of Scotch whisky and American cigarettes and embargoes on agricultural produce and Western-produced medicines.