Vladimir Putin calls poisoned ex-spy Skripal a scumbag and traitor

President Vladimir Putin says that Sergei Skripal, the Russian former double agent who was poisoned in Britain, was a scumbag who betrayed Russia.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a public bench in the English city of Salisbury in March. Britain says they were poisoned with a nerve agent administered by Russian intelligence officers.

A woman later died from what British police say was contact with the poison which her partner found in a discarded perfume bottle.

Russia denies any involvement in the affair, which has deepened its international isolation.

"I see that some of your colleagues are pushing the theory that Mr Skripal was almost some kind of human rights activist," Putin said at an energy forum in Moscow.

"He was simply a spy. A traitor to the motherland. There is such a concept - a traitor to the motherland. He was one of those."

"He's simply a scumbag, that's all."

Britain last month charged two Russian men with the poisoning.

Putin said the men were civilians who did nothing criminal, and urged them to speak to news outlets.

The pair then appeared on Russia's state-funded RT channel, saying they had visited Salisbury as tourists and denying any involvement in the attack.

Last week international investigative group Bellingcat reported that one of the suspects, identified by authorities as Ruslan Boshirov, is in fact Col. Anatoly Chepiga of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, who was awarded Russia's highest medal in 2014.

Several Russian media outlets interviewed residents in a village where Chepiga's family once lived, who identified the colonel as the man caught in CCTV footage in Salisbury.