Britain blames Putin for attack

London also expels Russian diplomats over ex-spy’s poisoning

British Prime Minister Theresa May is briefed by police officials earlier this week as she views the  area in Salisbury where former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found after they were poisoned.
British Prime Minister Theresa May is briefed by police officials earlier this week as she views the area in Salisbury where former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found after they were poisoned.

MOSCOW -- The gulf between Russia and Britain widened Friday as the two nations cranked up pressure over a nerve agent attack and a suspected murder in Britain that has deepened Western worries about alleged Russian meddling abroad.

Britain's foreign secretary accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of personally ordering the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, describing it as the most brazen such move since World War II.

Putin's spokesman denounced the claim as "shocking and inexcusable."

As relations between the two nations sank to a new post-Cold War low, nearly two dozen Russian diplomats in London were packing their bags to leave Tuesday after an expulsion order from Britain. British diplomats in Moscow were bracing for a retaliatory order from the Kremlin and were just waiting to be told who had to leave and when.

Geopolitical tensions have been mounting since the poisoning of the Skripals in the English city of Salisbury on March 4, in what Western powers see as the latest sign of increasingly aggressive Russian interference in foreign countries. The tensions threaten to overshadow Putin's expected re-election Sunday for another six-year presidential term.

Meanwhile, new concerns surfaced Friday about the death this week of a London-based Russian businessman, Nikolai Glushkov, found dead at his south London home on Monday. British police said Friday that he died from compression to the neck and opened a murder investigation.

Counterterrorism detectives are leading the case "because of the associations Mr. Glushkov is believed to have had," the Metropolitan Police force said.

Glushkov, 68, was an associate of Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch and strong Kremlin critic who died under disputed circumstances in 2013.

Russia also suspects foul play in Glushkov's death and opened its own inquiry Friday. Russia's top agency for major crimes was also investigating the attack on Yulia Skripal, who is a Russian citizen. Her father has British citizenship. Both are in critical condition.

British police said there is no apparent link to the attack on Glushkov and the poisoning of the Skripals.

But to the West, they are raising similar concerns.

While Britain has accused the Russian state of ordering the poisoning of the Skripals, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson took it a step further Friday and said it's "overwhelmingly likely" that Putin himself ordered the attack.

Top EU diplomats were expected to discuss next steps at a meeting Monday, with some calling for a boycott of the upcoming World Cup in Russia. British Prime Minister Theresa May is seeking a global coalition of countries to punish Moscow, and the U.S., France and Germany have already lined up against Russia over the Skripal attack.

Britain is expelling 23 Russian diplomats and taking other steps against Russian interests as the two nations' relations plummet.

"Our quarrel is with Putin's Kremlin, and with his decision -- and we think it overwhelmingly likely that it was his decision -- to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the U.K., on the streets of Europe, for the first time since the Second World War," Johnson said.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russian news agencies as calling Johnson's statement a "shocking and inexcusable breach of diplomatic propriety." Peskov reiterated Russian denials of involvement in the attack on the Skripals.

"We have never encountered this level of discussion on the global stage," Peskov told reporters.

Russia ordered a halt to high-level meetings with the U.K. and prepared Friday to expel British diplomats.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said the Salisbury attack was a direct challenge to Europe. He said Russia's recent provocations need a tough response, including action against Russian oligarchs with questionable ties who have used London as a haven.

The source of the nerve agent -- which Britain says is Soviet-made Novichok -- is unclear, as is the way it was administered.

Russia has demanded that Britain share samples collected by investigators.

Russia's envoy to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said in an interview that his country has no stocks of the Novichok group of nerve agents, insisting that Soviet-era research into the agents was totally dismantled before Russia joined the organization.

Ambassador Alexander Shulgin also sought to shift possible blame, saying Western special agents spirited Russian chemical weapons experts out of the country in the 1990s and work continued on their research.

He said even the name Novichok was a "Western invention" and that Russia never gave it a name.

While many British politicians have backed the government in blaming Moscow for the nerve agent attack, the U.K.'s main opposition leader has cautioned against a rush to judgment.

Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn wrote in The Guardian that it's possible that "Russian mafia-like groups," rather than the Russian state, were responsible.

"In my years in Parliament I have seen clear thinking in an international crisis overwhelmed by emotion and hasty judgments too many times," Corbyn said, citing British claims before the Iraq War that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were ever found.

Information for this article was contributed by Mike Corder, Michael Catalini, Danica Kirka, Greg Katz, Vladimir Isachenkov and Nataliya Vasilyeva of The Associated Press.

A Section on 03/17/2018

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