The journalist who interviewed the prime suspects in the Salisbury poisoning case hung up on the BBC when a Newsnight presenter accused her Kremlin-funded network of being a "propaganda tool for the Russian state".

Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief, sat down with Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin called on them to talk to the media.

The pair have been charged with the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal who were poisoned by Novichok - the same nerve agent that killed Dawn Sturgess after she inadvertently sprayed the substance on her wrists thinking it was perfume.

Simonyan appeared on Newsnight and was being interviewed by Kirsty Wark, who asked her Russian guest if she was concerned by the manner of the interview, suggesting it re-enforced the idea that RT - formerly Russia Today - was a propagandist station.

The spiky response was: "You did watch the interview, didn't you? Did you see my face? Did you see the tone? You probably don't speak Russian.

"The questions were obviously quite hard for them and made them nervous and at some point they even said something like, 'We came here and we thought you would support us, you behave like we're in an interrogation in a court'.