MOSCOW, October 18. /TASS/. London’s claims that Russia was behind what the UK describes as an attempt to poison former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia are false and may stem from the ‘domestic political climate,’ Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told the Euronews channel in an interview on the eve of his visit to Brussels.
“First, the assessments put forward by a number of countries do not reflect the actual situation, and second, they definitely are not leading us to a brighter tomorrow,” Medvedev said. “In the majority of cases, similar assessments and similar sanctions are not meant to punish anyone, or do anyone harm, or demonstrate an international position. No! They have other reasons why they do it; so as to pander to the domestic political environment.”
He expressed regret “any evaluation like this definitely does not promote international cooperation.” He recalled that similar practices that existed “in the Soviet era, when the Soviet Union would use labels …, but this did not lead to anything good.”
“That is why we believe that everyone has to be careful when furnishing assessments,” Medvedev noted

Anti-Russian rhetoric powerless

Prime Minister Medvedev said that anti-Russian rhetoric was coming from the United States, too, but it was unable to affect Moscow’s policies whatsoever.
“Nine times out of ten, this anti-Russia crusade is being pursued entirely for domestic political purposes, to hold on to power, form a government or achieve some other goal. But, certainly not to sway Russia’s position. It cannot be influenced, something that everyone realizes very well,” he stated.
“We are perfectly aware of the fact that all that everything connected with Russia in the United States now is after various objectives. For all intents and purposes, its internal political squabbling. Feuds between the Republicans and the Democrats and discord inside the Republican Party,” Medvedev said adding that the current events looked like “anti-Russian hysteria.” The same can be said about the European countries,” Medvedev emphasized.

Not acquainted with Downing Street’s ‘suspects’

When asked by the interviewer about the two Russians, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, whom London alleges of being involved in the poisoning of the Skripals, Medvedev refrained from commenting.
“I do not know. I will not comment, just because I am not acquainted with those people, neither am I acquainted with the comments to a sufficient degree,” he said when asked if he believed the two men’s story about the reasons for their visit to Salisbury, where the alleged poisoning took place. “I do not know. How can I know?”
If the British version of the incident is to be believed, former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal, convicted in Russia of spying for Britain and his daughter Yulia on March 4 were infected by a Novichok class nerve agent in Salisbury. London rushed to claim that Moscow was highly likely involved in this incident. However, Russia strongly dismissed all speculations on this matter.
British Prime Minister Theresa May on September 5 briefed parliament on the investigators’ findings to declare that London suspected two Russians of committing the alleged assassination attempt. The men, she said, carried passports issued in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. British secret services claimed that both individual were agents of the Main Directorate (the former GRU) of Russia’s General Staff. Petrov and Boshirov appeared on Russia’s RT television channel to dismiss Britain’s charges, including the claims they were Russian secret service officers.

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It must go down as one of the most embarrassing months ever for Russia’s military intelligence.
In the 30 days since Theresa May revealed the cover identities of the Salisbury poison suspects, the secretive GRU (now GU) has been publicly exposed by rival intelligence agencies and online sleuths, with an assist from Russia’s own president.
Despite attempts to stonewall public inquiry, the GRU’s dissection has been clinical. The agency has always had a reputation for daring, bolstered by its affiliation with special forces commando units and agents who have seen live combat.
But in dispatching agents to the Netherlands who could, just using Google, be easily exposed as graduates of an elite GRU academy, the agency appears reckless and absurdly sloppy.
One of the suspected agents, tipped as a “human intelligence source” by Dutch investigators, had registered five vehicles at a north-western Moscow address better known as the Aquarium, the GRU finishing school for military attaches and elite spies. According to online listings, which are not official but are publicly available to anyone on Google, he drove a Honda Civic, then moved on to an Alfa Romeo. In case the address did not tip investigators off, he also listed the base number of the Military-Diplomatic Academy.
That was the same school where Anatoliy Chepiga, the alleged true identity of the Russian suspect in the Salisbury poisoning, finished his education. Viktor Suvorov, a GRU agent who later defected to the west, described the academy as so secret that Soviet citizens could be jailed just for revealing its existence.
The internet has now made it far harder to hide that evidence. But the GRU apparently thought that would not matter.
Meanwhile, most of the alleged agents could be found online.
One of the men, Aleksei Morenets, an alleged hacker, appeared to have set up a dating profile.
Another played for an amateur Moscow football team “known as the security services team” a current player told the Moscow Times. “Almost everyone works for an intelligence agency.” The team rosters are publicly available.
Russia has claimed that the investigations are fake and that researchers are in league with western intelligence. But most of the evidence to uncover the spies was already out there, and conveniently timestamped on social media.
The saga began after May’s announcement last month, when Vladimir Putin ordered the two Salisbury suspects to appear on television. There, the two men fumbled through an awkward story about visiting Salisbury twice to see the cathedral, while an editor for state television suggested that they were gay. Homosexuality is largely treated as taboo in Russia and the government passed a law banning “gay propaganda” in 2013.
It didn’t help. One of the two men was outed as a likely GRU colonel anyway, after online investigators dug up photographs from his military service and leaked passport records.
Along the way, the researchers from Bellingcat and the Insider also recognised that the men were issued sequentially numbered passports by a special division, making it easier for anyone with access to a leaked database to identify them.
And then came Thursday’s bombshell: four men outed by Dutch investigators for attempting to hack into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (as well as Malaysia’s investigation into a downed jetliner).
The alleged spies were caught carrying enough telephones to fill an electronics store. Moreover, like all meticulous Russians on a business trip, they held on to their taxi receipts from GRU headquarters.
Russia will publicly deny the latest reports and revelations about the alleged GRU agents. It has no other alternative. But the exposure of several consecutive European operations should raise questions about whether Russian military intelligence is being intentionally provocative or has simply gone off the rails.