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UK government waging aggressive anti-Russia campaign, says ambassador

According to the Russian diplomat, the British authorities are refusing to cooperate with Moscow

© Sergey Bobylev/TASS

LONDON, October 12. /TASS/. The UK government is conducting an aggressive anti-Russian campaign which is supported by the British mass media, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko said on Friday.

"Currently the relations between Russia and the UK are at a very low level. The reason for that lies in an aggressive anti-Russian campaign launched by the current Tory government and supported by the British media," he told a news conference. "Throughout recent months the Conservative government has been acting in a completely unconstructive way by breaching multiple bilateral and international agreements."

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According to the Russian diplomat, the British authorities are refusing to cooperate with Moscow on the probe to both the Salisbury incident and the murder of Russia businessman Nikolai Glushkov.

"Bilateral high-level political dialogue is currently frozen," he stressed, adding that it was done by the British government.

If the British version of the affair is to be believed former Russian military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Sergei Skripal, 66, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia, 33, suffered the effects of a nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury on March 4. Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London rushed to accuse Russia of being involved in the incident. Moscow rejected all of the United Kingdom’s accusations, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia ever had any program aimed at developing such an agent.

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