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Relations between London and Moscow have been effectively frozen since then. Russia has denied carrying out the assassination of Litvinenko or the March attack. (Reuters)Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Thursday during "difficult" talks that Moscow would no longer use chemical weapons. Hunt and the Russian Foreign Minister had a "frank exchange of views" on the sidelines of a UN summit in New York this week.
The interview was broadcast a day after British investigative group Bellingcat reported that one of the suspects in the poisoning in England of former double agent Sergei Skripal was a highly decorated colonel of Russian military intelligence services.
"It was quite difficult because it is not acceptable for Russia to instruct two GRU agents to use chemical weapons on British soil," Hunt said. The discussions marked the first British ministerial contacts with Lavrov since the March incident. Hunt said that the 2006 assassination with a radioactive isotope of Kremlin spokesman Alexander Litvinenko, according to which Britain also blames Russia, made Moscow think that it could be the same. to shoot with other similar crimes.
"They have the impression of getting out (the murder of Litvinenko). That's why the reaction of Theresa May (British Prime Minister) this time was very different, "said Hunt. Skripal and his daughter Yulia both recovered from the March attack with what Britain said was a neurotoxic agent of Soviet design called Novichok. But the incident caused the biggest wave of diplomatic expulsions between Russia and Western allies.
Relations between London and Moscow have been effectively frozen since then. Russia has denied carrying out the assassination of Litvinenko or the March attack. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to Hunt's comments or to his own account of what the two diplomats discussed in New York.
Russian news agencies quoted an anonymous member of the Moscow delegation separately as saying that Hunt and Lavrov had "exchanged opinions" during a working breakfast of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council on Thursday.
