Russia warns Theresa May: ‘One should not threaten a nuclear power’
A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson has strongly hit back at the United Kingdom in response to their accusations regarding a poisoned former spy.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May gave Russia until midnight on Tuesday (11am AEDT) to explain why a Russian-made nerve agent was used against Sergei Skripai and his daughter.
But spokeswoman Maria Zakharova fired back with an ominous warning on Russian television.
"One should not threaten a nuclear power," she said.
"No one can come to parliament and say: 'I give Russia 24 hours'."
Her response follows a series of tweets from the country’s embassy in the UK which took potshots at Britain's police and parliament.
Skripal is a former double-agent traded to the UK in a spy swap after he identified dozens of Russian spies to British authorities.
He was hospitalised last week after being exposed to a deadly nerve agent originally created in the Soviet Union.
His daughter Yulia and an English policeman are also fighting for their lives.
Putin's smirk
A BBC reporter earlier directly asked Vladimir Putin whether his government was involved in the attempted murder of Skripal.
The BBC's Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg asked Putin a question in English during an election campaign event.
"Is Russia behind the poisoning of Sergei Skripal?" Rosenberg asked the president.
Putin looked at Rosenberg with a smirk before replying in Russian.
"We’re dealing with agriculture here, as you see, to create great conditions for people’s lives, and you talk to me about some tragedies," Putin said.
"First, get to the bottom of it there, then we’ll discuss this."
Rosenberg's video has been retweeted nearly 3000 times since it was posted on Twitter yesterday.
Putin's dodge comes as the British Home Secretary Amber Rudd confirmed police and spy agency MI5 would investigate the deaths of 14 people linked to Russia.
All the deaths were deemed non-suspicious, but have since been connected with Russia.
"I will want to satisfy myself that the allegations are nothing more than that," Rudd said.
"The police and MI5 agree and will assist in that endeavour."
Mystery deaths
Counter-terror police are currently investigating the "unexplained death" of a Russian businessman in London.
Nikolai Glushkov, 68, was granted political asylum in the UK after being convicted of fraud.
He was found dead in his home in New Maldon on Monday night.
Glushkov testified against Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich during a civil trial in 2011.
The case was brought by Glushkov's friend Boris Berezovsky, another Russian oligarch found dead in his English home in 2013.
"I'm definite Boris was killed," Glushkov told The Guardian in 2013.
"I have quite different information from what is being published in the media."
Berezovsky's death was officially ruled a suicide.
Hours before his sacking by President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the US had tried without success to ease tensions with the Kremlin.
"What we’ve seen is a pivot on (Russia's) part to be more aggressive," Tillerson said.
"And this is very, very concerning to me and others that there seems to be a certain unleashing of activity that we don’t fully understand what the objective behind that is."
If the poisoning of Skripal was proven to be an action by Russia, it "would certainly trigger a response", Tillerson said.
Read more:
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