MOSCOW, September 6. /TASS/. The photos of two alleged suspects in the Skripal poisoning case made public by Scotland Yard on Wednesday might be those of British actors, not of real Russian citizens, or the two men would have been identified already from the circulated images, the chief of foreign policy committee in the upper house of Russian parliament, Konstantin Kosachev said on Thursday.
"The evening stops being dull for the British followers of Sherlock Holmes," he wrote in Facebook. "A whole day has passed since the sensational revelations but there’s not a single word that someone has recognized the two villains."
Kosachev also wrote he could imagine a situation where someone might try to commit a crime of this kind but it looks highly improbably that the two men "would exist in a vacuum to the degree that no could recognize them from the photos, given they should have tens or hundreds or thousand of schoolmates, college-mates, fellow-workers, or simply neighbors and passers-by."
"And where’s all of that?" he asked. "Maybe, these are really two British actors? I looks like something went the wrong way over there in London."
'Uncatchable Joes'
Meanwhile, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, on Thursday made a reference to a Russian joke on a person whom everybody called ‘an uncatchable Joe’ because no one actually had any need in catching him.
He applied to the two alleged operatives of the Russian military intelligence service GRU, who according to the claims, which Prime Minister Theresa May made on Wednesday, poisoned the former Russian military intelligence officer and British spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury on March 4.
"The Russians have a popular joke about someone called the Uncatchable Joe," Nebenzya said. "He is uncatchable because no one needs him or, actually, going to search for him, and not at all because they can’t catch him really."
"I have the impression we have been offered the two uncatchable Joes who supposedly acted upon orders from Moscow," he said. "I don’t rule out this show looks convincing to some of you but I personally find it to be a yet another contrived action, which is as far-fetched as all the previous actions, some of which were staged here in this hall."
Skripal affair
Prime Minister Theresa May told British parliament on Wednesday about the secret services’ conclusions regarding investigation of the March 4, 2018, alleged poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury. The conclusion is they had became targets of a special operation by agents of the Russian military intelligence service GRU.
May claimed the operation "was almost certainly also approved outside […] at a senior level of the Russian state".
Scotland Yard released a package of photos supposedly showing the two Russians who had poisoned the Skripals. The official story made public by the British authorities suggests the two men entered the country 48 hours before the poisoning. They held official Russian passports issued in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokesperson said in the wake of the British government allegations the names of the two men did not ring a bell to the Russian authorities.
The UK government claims Sergei and Yulia Skripal survived exposure to a nerve agent from the class of agents tentatively codenamed Novichok [a novice or a new arrival, depending on the context]. The incident occurred in Salisbury on March 4, 2018.
The British authorities immediate came up with the allegations that Russia ‘highly likely’ stood behind the poisoning.
Moscow strongly denies any assertions regarding the development and production of Novichok class agents in the former USSR or in the Russian Federation.
Experts from the UK defense science and technology laboratory at Porton Down have been unable to identify the origins of the substance Sergei and Yulia Skripal were exposed to.