MOSCOW, April 4. /TASS/. The Skripal incident is a grotesque provocation by British and US intelligence agencies, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergei Naryshkin said at the Seventh Moscow Conference on Global Security.

"Even as far as the Skripal case goes, which is a grotesque provocation rudely staged by the British and US intelligence agencies, some European countries are in no hurry to follow London and Washington, preferring to sort the situation out," Naryshkin said.

Skripal case

On March 4, former Russian military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Sergei Skripal, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury. 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 a program aimed at developing such a substance had existed neither in the Soviet Union nor in Russia.