More proof that London isn't ready to hold an international investigation in a civilized manner was in today's statement by the Head of the UK MFA. He announced that the UK doesn't plan to send Russia samples of the substance used to poison Skripal, for examination. Aleksandr Khabarov reports from the UK about what game London is trying to play.
Theresa May has arrived in Salisbury today. Near the bench, where the poisoned victims were discovered She repeated what she said in Parliament yesterday. As always, there's no proof. There's no new information about the investigation, either. However, there's a joint statement from the UK, the US, France, and Germany. They demand Russia to fully disclose to the OPCW the alleged gas manufacturing program, that they call Novichok. In the UK, things continue to heat up. Russian diplomats in London started to receive physical threats.
Aleksandr Yakovenko, RF ambassador in the UK: "There's a lot of negativity from the people, who threaten violence to the diplomats. We go to the police for every single threat. We try to maximize our interaction with them, we take every threat very seriously. There are a lot of mentally unstable people here, people with criminal history. We can expect anything from them".
But, the UK politicians heat things up even more. The Defence Minister, Gavin Williamson, made a very rude statement today.
Gavin Williamson, UK Minister of Defence: "It is absolutely atrocious and outrageous What Russia did in Salisbury. We have responded to that. Frankly, Russia should go away, it should shut up".
Aleksandr Yakovenko, RF ambassador in the UK: This is the new reality that we have to live and work with, all these uncouth statements and articles. However, we try to be calm about these things, simply because we think it's below us, to be talked to in the form of ultimatums.
The most talked about thing in Parliament is the behavior of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labor Party. He demanded an explanation from the PM about what was done to prove Moscow's guilt. The thing is that he clearly remembers, how 15 years ago, his Party colleague, the Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair told fables of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in this very room, prominently citing false intelligence reports His lies didn't just undermine the faith in statements by British authorities, they led to a tragedy, which still affects the entire world — 500,000 dead Iraqis, the region destabilized, and terrorism. In 2016, a Committee that investigated UK's involvement in the Iraqi bloodbath showed how easily the UK government places blame, under false pretenses.
John Chilcot, Head of the Investigational Committee for Iraq's invasion: "We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq, before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not the last resort. the circumstances which decided the legal basis for UK military action were far from satisfactory. The government's actions were based on incorrect Intel data and evaluations".
Due to the changed circumstances in London, it's now easy to blame Tony Blair for the outbreak of the war. Today, while pressing charges against Russia, without any proof Theresa May refuses to consider Tony Blair's shortcomings. Nobody knows what facts might surface later, like how it's previously happened in the UK.
Aleksandr Khabarov, Ilya Mordyukov, Vesti, London.
