RUSSIA: IT’S ALL FAKE
Brazen Kremlin says photos are false then mocks the PM’s dancing
MOSCOW said yesterday it was ‘absolute nonsense’ to charge two of its military spies with the novichok poisonings and accused Britain of tampering with CCTV evidence.
Senior Kremlin officials suggested the names and photographs of suspects Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov could have been invented and they ‘mean nothing’.
A string of Russian government officials said the accusations made by Theresa May were meaningless because only the aliases of the attackers had been made public.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs even poked fun at the Prime Minister by posting videos of her ‘robotic’ dancing from a recent trip to Africa on its social media channels.
Seemingly timed to deliberately undermine her authority, the posts compared Mrs May’s dance moves unfavourably to those of Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Maria Zakharova.
Russia also accused Britain of tampering with CCTV images of the two GRU agents. Pictures released by police appear to show them separately walking along the same section of Gatwick Airport but the time stamp for the images is exactly the same: 16.22:43.
Miss Zakharova said: ‘Either the date and the exact time were overlaid on the image or the staff of the Russian GRU learned to walk simultaneously – but their images are captured in two different photographs.’
Leonid Slutsky, head of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs, said there was ‘no evidence’ of Russia’s involvement and accused Britain of peddling ‘unsubstantiated allegations’.
He claimed: ‘Britain continues a large-scale anti-Russian provocation. In the case of the Skripals, official charges are brought against people whose names don’t mean anything yet. It is announced that they are allegedly officers of the GRU. This is absolute nonsense.
‘It is possible to invent any surnames and submit any photographs. There is again no real evidence of Russia’s involvement.
‘As well, there are no answers to numerous Russian requests for information on the progress of the investigation. But this does not bother the British prime minister.’
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the names of Petrov and Boshirov ‘mean nothing to me personally’.
He added that it was ‘difficult to understand’ why Scotland Yard had not released the real names.
Russian media reports cited intelligence sources saying CCTV images of Petrov and Boshirov showed them looking like ‘members of an organised crime community’ rather than spies.
Last night the Russian Embassy in London called on the British government to ‘give up politicised public accusations’.
‘No real evidence of involvement’