UN, September 6. /TASS/. It was no accident that UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement on Salisbury took place in the run-up to the upcoming chemical provocation in Syria’s Idlib, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya stated during the UN Security Council session concerning new findings of the UK investigation into the Skripal attack.
"The March 4 incident became a convenient pretext for fuelling anti-Russian hysteria before the staged chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma," he said during the UN Security Council session on new findings of the UK investigation into the Skripal affair. "We could say that Theresa May’s September 5 statement took place in the run-up to a new political season and against the background of the heavily discussed situation in Idlib and the upcoming chemical attack, which is being prepared there, as we have warned several times."
"London’s statement says that the information revealed yesterday was known as early as in May," he continued. "Therefore, we can draw only one conclusion: Downing Street is guided not by the interests of justice, but by other motives."
New findings in Skripal affair
On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May briefed the parliament 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 become 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 photos supposedly showing the two Russians who had allegedly 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. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said commenting on the issue on Wednesday that these names meant nothing to Russia.
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 immediately 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.