MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the RT broadcaster and Sputnik news agency, said on Thursday that Russian citizens Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, suspected by London in the Salisbury poisoning incident, had set preconditions before giving her an interview.
“Instead of ‘We are on our way,’ it was ‘Hello, these are Boshirov and Petrov, we would like to give you an interview, but we have a number of conditions.’ Then, we talked about the conditions under which they were ready for this interview … They said that they did not want to go to a place where there are studios and there are many people,” Simonyan told the Rossiya 1 TV channel’s 60 Minutes, when asked to comment on how the two men had reached out to her.
Earlier on Thursday, the interview with Petrov and Boshirov was released, in which they said that they had visited the United Kingdom as tourists, and refuted any involvement in the Skripal case, saying that they had no relation to the Russian military intelligence service (GRU). The UK Foreign Office called the interview of the Russian nationals “obfuscation and lies.”
She noted that the interview had taken place in her office on Wednesday evening, since the men insisted that they did not want to talk with other people.
Simonyan clarified that the men had never given interviews and wanted to talk specifically with her.
Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with what London claimed was the A234 nerve agent in Salisbury, the United Kingdom, in early March. The UK authorities have accused Russia of orchestrating the attack, but Moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement in it.
Last week, London said it had identified Russian nationals Petrov and Boshirov as the suspects in the Salisbury attack. Moreover, UK Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russian military intelligence of orchestrating the poisoning under the order of the central authorities.
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Russian authorities, in turn, said that the photos and names of the suspects released by London did not prove Moscow’s involvement in the attack. On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin said that Russian authorities had identified the two men, who he said were civilians and had nothing to do with criminality, and urged them to show up and talk to the media.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
