Salisbury incident not worth ‘all this fuss’, says Putin

Ahead of his meeting with Theresa May at the G20 summit in Japan, Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that relations between Britain and Russia should not suffer because of last year’s Salisbury nerve agent attack.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Putin said that ‘all this fuss about spies and counterspies is not worth interstate relations’, stressing that both Russia and UK are both interested in ‘fully restoring our relations’.

The Kremlin maintains that they did not send GRU military intelligence agents to Britain to carry out the attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, which triggered scores of diplomatic expulsions between Moscow and western countries.

A spokesman for Theresa May has said she will use the meeting with Putin to ensure that Britain’s stance on ‘Russia’s wider pattern of malign behaviour’ has been fully grasped by the Kremlin.