Kremlin furious as Britain blames Putin for ex-spy attack

– ‘We don’t care about traitors’ –
Putin has barely weighed in on the row, telling a BBC reporter this week: “Sort things out from your side and then we will discuss this with you.”

Russia insists it had no motive to target Skripal with what Britain says was a highly potent Soviet-designed nerve agent called Novichok, in the first such attack in Europe since World War II.

Many Russians remain sceptical that the state was involved in the attack and some analysts didn’t rule out the involvement of ordinary criminals or rogue agents.

The official military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda quoted the former head of Russia’s GRU military intelligence, Fyodor Ladygin, as denying his officers had been involved.

“We don’t care about the fate of a traitor,” said Ladygin.

The attack on the Skripals revived memories of the fate of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident who died of Polonium poisoning in a 2006 attack in the UK that London blamed on Moscow.

The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and the United States said Thursday there was “no plausible alternative explanation” for the use of the Soviet-designed nerve agent.

EU president Donald Tusk said Friday that the bloc would discuss the attack at a Brussels summit next week, adding it would send a “clear message”.

Skripal had taken his daughter, who was on a visit from Moscow, out for lunch before they both collapsed on a bench on March 4.

– ‘We don’t want Cold War’ –
Vil Mirzayanov, a Soviet-era chemist who helped create Novichok but later revealed the existence of Moscow’s classified programme, said terrorists could not produce it.

“To create its components one needs powerful labs and very experienced personnel which only exist in several countries,” the now US-based whistleblower told opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

Britain on Friday said that it had invited the chemical weapons watchdog OPCW to come and take a sample of the poison for analysis, under Article 8 of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

May warned more measures could follow against Russia, noting that the US-led NATO alliance and the UN Security Council had discussed the attack.

In Brussels, a European source told AFP on condition of anonymity that “Skripal will be discussed Thursday evening next week. At this stage, I expect summit conclusions on it.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday the alliance did not want a return to Cold War hostilities with Russia while expressing support for Britain’s stance.

“We don’t want a new Cold War,” he told BBC radio.