Britain is foolish if it believes Russia staged a new nerve agent attack in England in the middle of the soccer World Cup, Russia’s embassy to the Netherlands wrote on social media on Thursday.
The British authorities have not accused Russia of involvement in the new incident, saying their working assumption is that the Britons were poisoned by traces of nerve agent left over from the original attack.
“How dumb (do) they think (Russia) is to use ‘again’ so-called ‘Novichok’ in the middle of the FIFA World Cup…The show must go on?,” Russia’s embassy to the Netherlands wrote on Twitter on Thursday.
Russia denies any involvement in the original attack.
Separately, Sergei Zheleznyak, deputy speaker of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, told state TV that the new poisoning incident in Britain looked like an attempt to spoil England soccer fans’ positive perception of Russia.
Russia is hosting the tournament, which ends on July 15, for the first time.
Zheleznyak said Britain needed to whip up an hysteria to distract attention from what its intelligence services were doing.
Health officials have urged local people who recently visited any of five sites cordoned off by police in Salisbury and Amesbury since on Tuesday to take precautions, including washing clothing and cleaning other items that could be contaminated.
Mike Wade, a regional health protection director for Public Health England, said late on Wednesday that there was “no significant health risk to the wider public’’ but officials planned to keep their advice under review as the police investigation continued. (Reuters/NAN)
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