'A traitor to his motherland': Putin lashes out, calls poisoned spy Sergei Skripal a ‘scumbag’
The Russian president repeated denials that his country was responsible for the Salisbury Novichok attack, saying that there was no reason to eliminate Skripal
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(Bloomberg) — President Vladimir Putin lashed out at ex-spy Sergei Skripal as a “scumbag” and a “traitor” in his harshest public response yet to accusations that Russia targeted the double agent in the first chemical-weapons attack in Europe since the Second World War.
Skripal, who survived a nerve-agent poisoning in March in the English city of Salisbury together with his daughter Yulia, is “just a spy, a traitor to his motherland,” Putin told an energy forum in Moscow on Wednesday. “He’s just a scumbag.”
The Russian president repeated denials that his country was responsible for the attack, saying that there was no reason to eliminate Skripal, who was freed in a spy swap in 2010. “We released him and that was it, he left. He still continued to cooperate, consult with some special services there. So what?” Putin said.
An “information campaign” around the Skripal case has been “artificially blown up,” Putin said.
He belittled allegations that two Russian agents had also inadvertently poisoned a British woman in the attack. “I sometimes look at what’s happening around this case and I’m just surprised: Some guys showed up and started poisoning homeless people there in Great Britain. What kind of nonsense is that?”
The Skripal case plunged ties between Russia and the U.K., already frosty, into crisis. Britain secured support of its allies for the coordinated expulsion of more than 150 Russian diplomats, provoking a tit-for-tat response. The U.S. has also imposed sanctions over the attack and is threatening further punitive measures.
The U.K, has accused two Russian military intelligence agents of carrying out the poisoning using a nerve-agent called Novichok smuggled in a fake Nina Ricci perfume bottle.
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