Suspects in the poisoning of the Skripals gave an interview: "We are not agents, we are tourists"

Margarita Simonyan, editor -in -chief of MIA today and RT channel, interviewed Russian citizens Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, whom the British authoritiessuspect Salisbury's poisoning by Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia. Men who in London are considered to be officers of the GRU, who, on the instructions of the leadership, attempted to kill Skripal using the nerve substance "Novice" said that they were not agents of special services.

Men told Simonyan what they do and how they earn a living. Petrov and Boshirov assured the editor -in -chief of the Republic of Tatarstan that they had nothing to do with the Skripals incident. According to the suspects, they are afraid to go out after the UK called them Russian intelligence agents, who were entrusted with the murder of the traitor.

Simonyan, announcing the interview, said that she had no doubt that she spoke "with the very people." “They showed me passports, and purely visually they look like people published in the photographs,” said RT editor -in -chief.

- Why did the Kremlin need a whole week to find Skripals suspects in the case
- Video full interview
- The British Minister of Security admitted: the Novice was able to drag the smuggling through the airport
- The British Foreign Ministry called the interview with Skripals poisoning suspects
- The physiognomist did not find the similarities of Petrov and Boshirov with the faces of the Skripals poisoners

Later, Simonyan said in her telegram channel: "Who are they, what they did in England, whether they are issued for whom they are given themselves, I do not know and cannot know." “Their answers are their responsibility. And the choice of each viewer is to believe them or not. I will deliberately do not comment on my impressions. Except, perhaps, that they were very nervous and sweating,” she added.

"Beautiful City" Salisbury

According to men, in Salisbury they arrived exclusively with introductory goals. “Friends have long been advised to visit this beautiful city,” Petrov said. Boshirov noted that Salisbury is a tourist city with a famous cathedral.

“From the very beginning, we planned to come to London and tear ourselves, roughly speaking. It was not a business trip. We planned that we would visit London and go to Salisbury,” Petrov explained.

Petrov and Boshirov, answering the corresponding question of Simonyan, also stated that they did not have the spirits of Nina Ricci with them, which the British police reported. "Normal men to carry female perfume - is it not stupid? When you go through customs, they check all the things. If we had something, they would have questions, why did the man have female perfume in luggage," Boshirov said .

Recently, the British police published a photo of the Nina Ricci perfume bottle, in which the poisoners allegedly endured a neuro-parapaletic substance, from which, according to the British authorities, the creaks were injured, and later a resident of Aimsbury Charles Rowli and his girlfriend Don Srydes, who died in the hospital.

Petrov and Boshirov are afraid for their lives

To the question of Simonyan, why they turned to the media, Petrov and Boshirov replied that they wanted to ask for protection, as they feared for their lives. “After our life turned into a nightmare, we did not even understand what to do, where to go to the police, SK, the British embassy ...” said Petrov.

Boshirov confirmed that their life has completely rolled over. “We cannot go out into the street, we are afraid, we are afraid for life, for loved ones, for those people who know us,” he added .

Men reported that they were engaged in business. “If in short, this is a fitness industry, everything related to sports nutrition, vitamins, trace elements, protein and so on,” Petrov said. According to Boshirov, they would not want to delve into these questions, since they are afraid that their customers will suffer.

Answering the question of whether they recently were in any other European country, the men admitted that they visited Switzerland a couple of times, in particular, they spent the New Year in this country. They traveled on vacation, but did not forget about their business in parallel - they studied the sports nutrition market.

Suspects in poisoning did not hear about the Skripals

According to the suspects of poisoning in Salisbury, they had not known anything about the Skripals before. “I don’t know, I didn’t hear at all ... Until this situation, until this nightmare began with us, I did not hear this surname, I did not know anything about them,” Boshirov said in an interview.

The Russians argue that they also have no idea where the house of Sergei Skripal is located in Salisbury, where, according to the investigation, they put a neuro-paralytic on the handle of the front door. “Maybe we approached him. If we knew where he was,” Petrov said. Boshirov added that "maybe they passed by, maybe they did not pass."

According to men, they arrived in Salisbury on March 3 to see the famous Gothic cathedral of the Mary of the 13th century and other monuments, including Stonehenge, which you can get from there in 35 minutes by tourist bus. As Petrov explained, they lasted there for about half an hour, since the streets were covered with snow, there were dirt and slush around. The Russians got wet, returned to the station and left for London on the nearest train.

The next day, the friends returned there again, in order, according to them, to examine the city attractions. According to the men, they decided to take a second sortie, since everything melted in London, there was warm and sunny weather. This time they spent about an hour in Salisbury.

Recall that in early September in London they called the names of two suspects in the poisoning of the Skripals. The Prosecutor's Office of Great Britain, which brought Petrov and Boshirov on four articles, suspects them of attempted murder of Sergei and Julia Skripaley, as well as British policeman Nika Bailey. Prime Minister Teresa May said that the suspects were GRU employees who had left for Salisbury on the instructions of the leadership.

According to the investigation, Petrov and Boshirov arrived in London for two days of Skripal poisoning. It was reported that these are not the real names of Russians. It was established that men flew from Sheremetyevo from Sheremetyevo to the Gatwik London airport, purchasing tickets for Aeroflot flight SU2588 according to the foreign passports of the 65 series, the numbers of which were distinguished only by the last figure - 1297 and 1294. When receiving a visa, both men told the British authorities that they work in the field of international trade.

In London, Petrov and Boshirov settled in the room of the City Stay Hotel hotel. The next day, they went to Salisbury - according to the assumption of investigators to study the venue for a special operation. On March 4, the suspects again went to Salisbury, where, according to the British authorities, they applied the nerve substance "Novice" to the handle of the entrance door in the house of the ex-colonel of the GRU.

After completing the assignment of their curators, men, apparently, to distract attention, under the guise of tourists, studied shop windows for some time, the press wrote. Then the couple went to the Salisbury station, from where the men on the train left for London. Soon Sergey and Julia Skripal were discovered unconscious on the bench in front of the shopping center in Salisbury. The police collected records from the surveillance cameras in Salisbury, on which the suspects were captured.

On the same day, Petrov and Boshirov returned to Moscow. The British police said that in the room of the City STAY HOTEL hotel, where the suspects stopped, traces of the poisonous substance used were discovered during the examination.

It was also reported that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov flew almost 30 times to Europe from September 2016 to March 2018. Most often, the suspects were in Geneva. Now the British police are trying to establish who they met in Switzerland.

The day before, during the plenary session at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russian President Vladimir Putinsaid that the authorities know about people known by names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. In them "there is nothing criminal", these are ordinary civilians, assured the head of state. “I want to turn to them to hear us today. Let them come somewhere, here, in the media. I hope that they will appear and tell about themselves,” Putin said.

Video of a full interview

Later, the RT channel published entirely an interview with citizens of the Russian Federation Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. The whole conversation in them took about 25 minutes.

Why did the Kremlin need a whole week to find Skripals suspects in the case

London called the suspects a week ago - since then in the Russian Federation it was argued that their names Moscow were "not talking about anything." And now the Kremlin has ceased to deny their existence, but why did the authorities need so much time?

According to Deutsche Welle, a British expert on Russian special services Mark Galeotti, "they just considered possible options."

The Kremlin was looking for that it would be possible to answer those claims that were made, said by the head of the analytical company "R.Politik. Reality of Russian Politics" Tatyana Stanovaya: "We had to take some position."

"It seems extremely unlikely that these were two absolutely innocent Russian who went to spend a couple of days in Salisbury without visiting the cathedral - the main tourist magnet in the city. These were reconnaissance officers," says Mark Galeotti, who currently works at the Institute of International Relations in Prague.

He suggested that the past time in Moscow was used to find evidence that we are talking about "ordinary Russians."

Victoria Skripal, who regularly comments in the Russian media, the case of the poisoning of her relatives Sergei and Julia, just so responded about Boshirov and Petrov, saying that she knew them as " ordinary people ."

According to experts, the Kremlin did not have any special options, except to recognize the existence of Russians who regularly went to Europe on existing Russian passports. “In fact, what an alternative? It is very difficult to hide someone in the modern world. Therefore, even if any alternative options were discussed, they were most likely abandoned that if they cannot be realized in the desired form, it will be even more a blow to Russia,” says Stanovaya. “It is obvious that the first instinct, as always, is to deny everything. But I think that they came to the conclusion that this option will not hold out,” Galeotti agrees.

Now that the existence of the suspects and their Russian citizenship is recognized by the authorities in Russia, everyone expects the emergence of a new full version of events, including the trip of the suspects to the UK. “In any case, the Kremlin will support these people and prove that they are not involved in what happened,” the political scientist concluded.

The development of the Skripals case has another aspect. It is possible that the unwillingness to take responsibility for the operation to destroy the former Russian military intelligence officer caused a conflict in the Russian special services.

"There is information that is walking on the sidelines that they are trying in every possible way to relieve themselves of the responsibility for the Skripals and are allegedly unhappy what people do in the main management in the General Staff (GRU). I would not exclude that this is true," says the political scientist Stannaya.

In this context, in her opinion, it is possible to consider the recent appearance of revealing material on the purchase of residence in Hungary by the “full namesakes of close relatives” of the head of the SVR Sergey Naryshkin.

The Stanovaya says that in the authorities of Russia there is no consensus on many key issues of which they “suspect Russia”: “This concerns not only poisoning (Skripals), but also cyber attacks; how the information campaign, for example, the policy pursued by Russia Today and Sputnik in France, it caused very serious disputes. Not everyone supported such a diplomats. The controversial things always set the problem of responsibility.