In an act of propaganda disgusting even by Vladimir Putin's standards, the Russian Embassy in London tweeted this out on Wednesday.

The Embassy received a copy of Ewan Hope’s letter to President Putin. @Amb_Yakovenko sent him a copy of the report “Salisbury: Unanswered Questions” and invited to speak in person, ready to answer any questions. https://t.co/pPHgfaNLjl pic.twitter.com/jFLW15RDkf — Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) March 6, 2019



It's disgusting.

Ewan Hope is the 20 year-old son of Dawn Sturgess, and that "Salisbury: Unanswered Questions" document represents Russia's implausible denials of culpability — about as rooted in reality as Stalin was rooted in morality.

But it's worse than that. Sturgess wasn't even an intelligence officer or agent, nor even a police officer whose job requires a tolerance for risk. She was an innocent woman murdered in July 2018 by the Russian Main Directorate (GRU) intelligence service after she sprayed herself with the contents of a perfume bottle she found in public. Unfortunately for Sturgess, that perfume bottle was loaded with the exceptionally toxic nerve agent variant, Novichok, that two GRU assassins had discarded after their March 2018 attempt to kill the former Russia GRU officer turned British intelligence agent Sergei Skripal at his UK residence.

In posting its absurd conspiracy theory document alongside Ewan Hope's letter, Putin hasn't just offered a foul insult to one grieving man. Ewan also has a 12 year-old sister, Grace.

The Russian embassy doesn't care about upsetting Sturgess' children. All they care about is mitigating the negative fallout over their botched assassination attempt. Vladimir Putin's government is furious about the international sanctions that have resulted, and he's also embarrassed because he got caught thanks to supremely shoddy tradecraft.