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Putin names two in poison case
Russian leader calls pair ‘civilians,’ asks them to speak up
Russia’s leader says the men accused by Britain of a nerve agent attack are civilians, not criminals.
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russian authorities know the identities of the two men accused by Britain of carrying out a nerve agent attack on a former spy, but he added that they are civilians and there is “nothing criminal” about them.
The statement by Putin marked a shift from Russia’s earlier position on the poisoning case that has damaged relations between Moscow and the West. Initially, Russian officials said they had no idea who the men were and questioned the authenticity of some of security-camera photos and video released by Scotland Yard showing them in London and Salisbury, where the poisoning took place.
Britain last week charged two men in absentia, identifying them as Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov. Authorities alleged they were agents of Russia’s military intelligence agency known as the GRU and accused them of poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, on March 4 in Salisbury.
Britain blamed the Russian government for the attack, an allegation that Moscow has denied.
Putin on Wednesday did not try to dispute the British evidence, but he insisted the men were innocent. “We know who these people are, we have found them,” Putin said in response to question at panel for an economic conference in Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East. “There is nothing special or criminal about it, I can assure you.”
Putin said the men are “civilians” and called on the men to come forward and speak to the media.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later told reporters that Putin never met the suspects in the poisoning and that Russia did not investigate them but merely “checked the reports.”
The Skripals’ poisoning by the deadly nerve agent Novichok triggered a tense diplomatic showdown. Britain and more than two dozen other countries expelled a total of 150 Russian diplomats, and Russia kicked out a similar number of those countries’ envoys.
The attack left the Skripals hospitalized for weeks, and two other area residents became seriously ill months later. One of them, a 44-yearold woman, later died.
British Prime Minister Theresa May said the attack was carried out by officers of the GRU and almost certainly approved “at a senior level of the Russian state.”
Her spokesman, James Slack, rejected the claim the men were civilians, saying they were GRU officers “who used a devastatingly toxic illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.”
“We have repeatedly asked Russia to account for what happened in Salisbury in March and they have replied with obfuscation and lies,” Slack said. “I have seen nothing to suggest that has changed.”
Putin’s shift from earlier official statements on the case fits a pattern by the Russian leader.
When troops in uniforms without insignia first appeared on the streets of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 prior to its annexation, Putin insisted that they were not members of the Russian military, but local volunteers. Weeks later, Putin said there were Russian troops present there under a treaty with Ukraine that allowed Russia to leave a naval base in Crimea.
Similarly, Putin initially dismissed accusations of Russian state-sponsored hacking in the U.S. election system, but he later admitted the possibility that it was the work of some “patriotic minded” Russians, although he denied that any of them had been directed by the Kremlin.
The case echoes the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent who died after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 at a London hotel.