London will eventually have to apologize for its baseless accusations against Moscow in the Skripal poisoning case, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, after a UK military lab admitted it could not link the attack to Moscow.
“For us, the situation was appalling from the very beginning, and now, confirmation is gradually starting to come in that the insane accusations, made by the British side a few hours after the assassination attempt [on double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter], are baseless and groundless,” Peskov told journalists Tuesday. He was speaking shortly after the Sky News interview in which the head of the Porton Down chemical lab admitted his scientists had found no confirmation the A-234 (“Novichok”) chemical agent used in the poisoning came from Russia.
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Peskov said he believes the allegations against Moscow will never be confirmed: “The British foreign minister [Boris Johnson], who accused President Putin, and the British Prime Minister [Theresa May], will have to somehow look in their European Union colleagues’ eye, after what they had told them,” Peskov said.
“Somehow, they will have to make apologies to the Russian side,” he said. “But of course, it’s still a long way off, and this idiocy has gone too far.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, said he was looking forward to the upcoming emergency session of the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), hoping it will put the Skripal case to rest.
“We have prepared at least 20 questions for discussion. We hope that this discussion will put an end to this issue,” Putin told journalists in Ankara, where he was holding a joint press conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
