LONDON, September 5. /TASS/. Russia’s charge d’affairs in London Ivan Volodin was summoned to the Foreign Office on Wednesday over the Salisbury incident, the Russian embassy told TASS.
"The charge d’affairs was summoned to the Foreign Office where he received a message similar to Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement," the embassy said.
May told parliament on Wednesday the Crown Prosecution Service was ready to charge two Russian citizens - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov - with an attempt on the lives of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Also it was stated that the British police would go ahead with inquiries into the Salisbury and Amesbury poisonings as parts of one case.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday the suspects’ names said nothing to Russia.
If the British version is to be believed, on March 4 former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal, convicted in Russia of spying for Britain, and his daughter Yulia, were affected by a nerve gas of the Novichok class in Salisbury. The British government claimed that Russia was highly likely involved in the incident. Moscow strongly dismissed all speculations on that score, adding that programs for developing this substance had never existed in the Soviet Union or Russia.
Britain’s military chemical laboratory at Porton down has failed to identify the origin of the substance that poisoned the Skripals.