I am writing with regard to the recent allegations in the press about Russia’s involvement in the chemical poisoning incident in Salisbury, UK.

I believe that any reasonable person can see that this is total nonsense. It seems that what we are dealing with here is a stream of slander, that is hard to explain and difficult to understand the motivation for, from the British side towards Russia.

Not a single piece of evidence of the “Russian trace” has been provided. Instead, so far, we have only heard claims that our country’s involvement in the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, a Russian citizen, was “highly likely”. What sort of legal language is it? Can it be accepted in any court as evidence? The principle of the presumption of innocence was forgotten by London altogether.

Besides, as President Vladimir Putin has stated, Russia does not have chemical agents such as the one which, according to the UK, was used. We destroyed all our chemical weapons and international observers monitored the destruction process. Moreover, we were the first to do this, unlike some of our partners that promised to destroy their chemical weapons but have not done so to this day.

In any case, Russia is ready for cooperation on the Salisbury incident, as we said immediately. We are ready to take part in any investigations necessary, provided the other side wants this too. We do not see such interest so far but we have not removed the possibility of cooperation on this matter from the agenda.