Russia is citing the poisoning of a former spy and double agent as the latest example of the United Kingdom’s “inability to ensure the safety of Russian citizens,” even as British authorities blame Russia for the assassination attempt.
“The British authorities have demonstrated their inability to ensure the safety of Russian citizens more than once,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a Wednesday bulletin. “Unless we receive convincing proof of the opposite, we will regard this incident as an attempt on the life of Russian citizens as part of a large-scale political provocation.”
That charge inverts British Prime Minister Theresa May’s denunciation of Russia, when she told the House of Commons that British citizen Sergei Skripal — a former Russian intelligence officer who was convicted of treason and then released to the United Kingdom in 2010 — had been poisoned by “a military-grade nerve agent.” British officials regard it as a fulfillment of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vow to punish traitors.
“[T]his action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian State against the United Kingdom,” May told Parliament.
Russia condemned the UK’s track record for protecting Russian citizens by citing a list of “glaring examples,” including “the poisoning of former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko” — who notoriously blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for his murder as he died of radiation poisoning. British diplomats have cited the Litvinenko case as an analogy for the Skripal poisoning.
“This is classic Russian whataboutism,” a British official told the Washington Examiner. “The Kremlin has a long history of using disinformation to attack perceived enemies and deflect from its own destabilizing activity. This is not new. Look at how they responded to the illegal annexation of Crimea, the shooting down of MH17 and their support for Assad’s use of chemical weapons against innocent women and children in Syria.”
The Skripal case has led to a wave of diplomatic expulsions, as American and European allies are booting Russian intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover in a show of solidarity with the United Kingdom.
“It is a mark of how seriously we take the threat that Russia poses, and an indication of our readiness to impose further costs to respond to this and other reckless and destabilizing actions,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Tuesday.
Russian officials have suggested repeatedly that the United Kingdom staged the attack in order to impede the improvement of Russian and European relations, which have been on the rocks since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine.
“[T]he UK authorities are not interested in identifying the real causes and the real perpetrators of the crime in Salisbury, which suggests a possible involvement of the UK intelligence services,” the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
