Vladimir Putin has again denied Russian involvement in the Novichok poisonings as it was claimed Moscow has been trying to hack Scotland Yard’s inquiry.
The Russian President hit out at ‘ungrounded accusations’ that his country was behind the nerve agent attack in Salisbury and demanded to see evidence.
Speaking after his summit with Donald Trump in Helsinki on Monday, Putin said he had ‘never even heard the last names’ of the British couple who were poisoned by the nerve agent.
It comes as Russian hackers are thought to have targeted Metropolitan Police systems in an effort to find out how the police probe was progressing, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Asked by Fox News about the Skripal case after meeting Trump in Finland, Putin said: ‘We would like to get at least some sort of a document, evidence about it.
‘But nobody gives it to us. It’s the same thing as the accusations with meddling into the election process in America.
‘We recently heard that two more people suffered from the same nerve agent that is called Novichok. I have never even heard the last names of these persons.
‘What kind of package? What kind of bottle? What’s the chemical formula? Who got it? Or maybe there are other reasons – reasons of death. Well, maybe it’s the internal reasons within the United Kingdom, but nobody wants to look into the issue.
‘No, we just see the ungrounded accusations. Why is it done this way? Why our relationship should be made worse by this pretense?’
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were taken ill in Salisbury on March 4 but have since been released from hospital. Dawn Sturgess, 44, died last week while her partner Charlie Rowley remains ill.
The poisonings in March sparked a wave of diplomatic retaliations but Moscow has consistently denied any involvement.
British officials reportedly believe that Russia is ‘desperate’ to know what is happening in the Scotland Yard inquiry and have attempted to hack into it.
One officer thought his mobile phone had been targeted by Russian hackers, but police chiefs believe no security has been breached, it is claimed.
At the summit Putin also continued to deny that Russia had meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Despite the FBI’s belief that Moscow was responsible for hacking, President Trump accepted Putin’s denials during their Helsinki meeting.
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