Russia calls 'insinuations' on Skripal poisoning a 'total fake on a global level'

Russia has thrown cold water on what it called "insinuations" which were “totally fake on a global level” regarding Russian’s involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, which were presented at a briefing at the British embassy in Moscow, which it said had been closed-off to Russian representatives.

In a statement forwarded to the Maltese press by the Russian Embassy in Malta, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, said “I am even afraid to assume what this indisputable evidence of Russia’s guilt is if our British colleagues were afraid to quote it in the presence of a Russian representative, who, of course, was not admitted or invited to the briefing. Naturally, what we are witnessing now is absolute and total fake on a global level,” 

Zakharova referred to the “propaganda machine, anonymous sources, experts and fake accounts in social media” which had begun distributing the information which the British ambassador to Russia had presented as “indisputable evidence” at the briefing.

The statement comes as Moscow expelled a number of Western diplomats on Thursday, in a tit-for-tat response to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the United States, a number of European Union member states and Ukraine, following the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, United Kingdom.

On Friday, a number of foreign embassy officials were summoned to the foreign ministry in Moscow. The ministry said that it had requested that the representatives from a “raft of countries that have taken unfriendly action against Russia in solidarity with Britain because of the Skripal affair" come over so it could detail which retaliatory measures it would be taking.

Malta recalled it’s ambassador to Russia ‘for political consultations’ last Wednesday, hour after Luxembourg and Slovakia recalled theirs.