Minister says Russia spread false information

Russia used “weapons of disinformation” to spread the Kremlin’s version of events about the Salisbury nerve agent attack last year, Jeremy Hunt has said.

The Foreign Secretary used a speech in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to take aim at the likes of RT – formerly Russia Today – over its broadcasting of the Russian state’s “official narrative” of the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Mr Hunt championed the benefits of media freedom andwarnedtheauthoritarian model of development was “ultimately flawed”.

He said stopping journalists from reporting a problem “does not make it go away” and declared closing newspapers and suppressing the media was likely to store up trouble for the future.

Mr Hunt, who recently launched a global campaign to protect journalists with human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, said he wanted to “shine a spotlight” on abuses.

“After the Russian state carried out a chemical attack in the British city of Salisbury last year, the Kremlin came up with over 40 separate narratives to explain that incident,” he said.