The Kremlin Says Britain Must Prove Russia’s Involvement in Spy Poisoning or Apologise

Britain must prove Russia’s involvement in the poisoning of the former double agent Sergei Skripal in the UK or apologise, the Kremlin has said.

“Sooner or later these unsubstantiated allegations will have to be answered for: either backed up with the appropriate evidence or apologised for,” the presidential spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Monday.

Peskov’s comments came as the European Union condemned the poisoning in Salisbury of the former Russian spy and his daughter, and the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, described Moscow’s denial of responsibility for the attack as absurd.

“The lives of many citizens were threatened by this reckless and illegal act,” EU foreign ministers said in a statement in Brussels, where they were briefed by Johnson on the latest developments surrounding the 4 March poisoning that left Skripal and his daughter in critical condition.

Without explicitly blaming Russia or threatening any repercussions, the ministers called on Russia to “address urgently” British questions over its novichok nerve agent programme, and they expressed “unqualified solidarity” with Theresa May’s government.

Johnson told reporters that “Russian denials grow increasingly absurd” with contradictory claims about whether Russia produced novichok used in the attack.

“What people can see is that this is a classic Russian strategy of trying to conceal the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation,” he said.

Johnson said many EU countries had been victims of “malign Russian behaviour” and that Moscow was “not fooling anybody anymore”.

May and EU leaders are set to discuss the attack at a summit in Brussels on Thursday night.

The foreign ministers’ statement came as international chemical weapons experts visited the UK to take samples of the nerve agent for independent testing.

Peskov made his comments about the UK in response to a question about whether the exacerbation of tensions with the west had boosted Putin’s performance in Russia’s presidential elections on Sunday, which the president won by a landslide.