Russian officials dismiss claim by Theresa May that GRU was to blame for Salisbury attack

Vladimir Putin signed a presidential decree making information about freelance agents working for Russia’s foreign intelligence agencies a state secret, two days before Theresa May accused Russian secret service officers of carrying out the Skripal attack in Salisbury.

Previously, only information about regular personnel was considered a state secret, according to Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency, which reported on Putin signing the order on Monday.

May said in the Commons on Wednesday that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov – the men named by Scotland Yard as suspects in the nerve agent attack in Salisbury this spring – worked for the Russian military intelligence service, known as the GRU. British police believe the names are aliases, although the men travelled on authentic Russian passports.

“Every Russian intelligence service makes uses of freelance agents in its operations, including those carried out overseas,” said Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia’s intelligence and security agencies.

Although another spy agency, the SVR, is Russia’s official foreign intelligence service, the GRU is mandated to undertake operations around the world. Experts say its officers have been involved in the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. The GRU was named in an 11-count indictment as part of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.

On Wednesday Russian officials dismissed May’s comments apportioning blame for the Skripal attack to the GRU. “The names, just like the photos, published in the media say nothing to us,” said Maria Zakharova, a foreign ministry spokeswoman.

The spokeswoman urged Britain to “move away from public accusations towards practical cooperation between law enforcement agencies”. Zakharova also said Moscow had asked the British embassy to let it examine fingerprint records that Russian nationals have to provide to obtain a British visa.

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According to one unconfirmed Russian media report, little is known about the two suspects, both of whom have no significant presence on social media or official record.

The Fontanka news agency suggested that the almost complete lack of public information about the pair supported the view of the UK government and its security agencies that the names were assumed identities.

According to Fontanka, Boshirov, 40, was supposedly born in Dushanbe, in the former Soviet republic of Tajikstan. He is registered at an address in northern Moscow but nobody living in the apartment bloc said they recognised him, it added. Even less was known about Petrov, 39, who is listed as an employee of a Moscow-based company that produced immunological drugs.

Fotanka appeared to confirm claims by the Metropolitan police that the men had used their Russian passports before. The force said the pair travelled regularly to Europe between September 2016 and March 2018, with trips to Amsterdam, Geneva, Milan and, repeatedly, Paris. Petrov visited London between February 28 and March 5 2017, the news agency said, citing its own unnamed sources.

The pair’s passports had near consecutive serial numbers, differing only by the last digit - one ending with 4, the other with 7. They purchased return tickets from London to Moscow for both Sunday 4 March – the day Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned in Salisbury – and for the following day. Boshirov and Petrov took the first of the two flights.

Speaking before Scotland Yard’s statement, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had repeatedly offered to cooperate with Britain in the Skripal investigation but had been met with “either refusal or silence”.

Dmitry Gudkov, a Russian opposition politician, tweeted: “Meet Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, suspected by Britain of the poisoning of the Skripals. Possible MPs in the next parliament!”

Gudkov’s tweet was an allusion to Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB agent who was accused by Britain of murdering the Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko with the radioactive isotope polonium-210 in London in 2006. Lugovoi was elected to the Russian parliament in 2007 and official income records for 2014 reportedly showed his earnings as £400,000 a year. He was also awarded a state honour by Putin.