Russian president denounces ‘ungrounded accusations’ after UK nerve agent incidents

Russian President Vladimir Putin has once again strongly rejected “ungrounded accusations” leveled by the British government against Russia that Moscow could have been behind two separate cases of poisoning incidents in which, according to the UK authorities, a woman has so far lost her life and three others have been injured by a nerve agent in southern England.

“We just see the ungrounded accusations – why is it done this way? Why should our relationship be made worse by this?” asked the Russian leader in an interview with Fox News on Monday, adding, “We would like to get documentary evidence but nobody gives it to us.”

On July 4, the UK counter-terrorism police said that they had found two British citizens, a couple identified as Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, in Amesbury, claiming that they had been affected by Novichok, a chemical weapon purportedly developed under a secret Soviet program, three days earlier.

Four days later, British police announced that Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three, died in hospital following an unexplained exposure to the chemical agent.

What happened in Amesbury is considered as the second such incident having occurred in southern England. Back on March 4, British authorities announced that former double agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia had been hospitalized since they were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in the city of Salisbury, near Amesbury.

Days later, they also announced that both victims had been exposed to Novichok, accusing Moscow of conducting the attack, yet declining the Kremlin’s request for a sample of the chemical agent.

PressTV-Russia denies any role in fresh case of poisoning in UK

Russia has denied any involvement in the second case of nerve agent incident in the UK, calling the claims as absurd.

The UK hypothesis is that Moscow was either directly responsible for the poisoning, or had lost possession of the chemical weapon that was used.

The Kremlin has so far vehemently rejected any involvement, saying the substance could have originated from the countries studying Novichok, including the UK itself, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Sweden. Moscow has already described the whole bunch of claims as a “circus show” hosted by British authorities.

“We've recently heard that two more people suffered from the same nerve agent that is called Novichok, but I've never even heard the last names of these persons. Who are they?” Putin said, asking, “What kind of package? What kind of bottle? What's the chemical formula? Who got it?”

The counterterrorism police have already said they were looking for possible links between the alleged attack in Amesbury with the one in the Skripal case in Salisbury four months earlier, which sent ties between Russia and the UK to their lowest in years. London fired several Russian diplomats over claims that Moscow was behind the attack.

Meanwhile, Greg Simons, author and researcher, said in an exclusive interview with Press TV that what the British government was doing regarding the poisoning cases was “quite unreasonable given the situation, because of all the risk that would involve.”

He also described these two cases as “very bizarre” types of anti-Russia propaganda.

Earlier this month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia regretted the death of Sturgess. He also noted that Moscow was “deeply worried by the continuing presence of these poisonous substances on British territory.” This posed “a danger not only for the British, but for other Europeans,” he added.

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