Russia has denied allegations that its military intelligence officers were behind the Skripal poisoning in Britain and suggested that the UK government timed its accusations to a potential upcoming false flag attack in Syria.

On Thursday, the UK gave an update to the UN Security Council on its investigation of the poisoning attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in May. Karen Pierce, the British representative to the UN, summed up the statements given on the previous days by the British investigators and Prime Minister Theresa May on the case. She reiterated the claim that the two suspects in the case were officers of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, based on classified intelligence available to the British government.

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Her Russian counterpart, Vasily Nebenzya, called the allegations “a cocktail of lies” and denied any involvement of the Russian state in the Skripal saga. The Russian diplomat said the promised breakthrough in the case turned out to be disappointing for Russia and simply followed a pattern of baseless accusations against Moscow by the British side.

He said the British site itself stated that the two suspects most likely used aliases when entering Britain, which begs the question why they were called Russian nationals, yet alone agents of the Russian government. The British authorities, he added, refused to hand over to Russia the information they have on the suspects, including their fingerprints, which they must have provided to get a visa. The fingerprints, obviously, would have made identifying those individuals much easier, Nebenzya said, adding that apparently London is not interested in finding out who the suspects are.

“We have a joke in Russia about a ‘Joe-never-caught’, called so because nobody is trying to catch him. It seems that what we have been offered is two Joes-never-caught,” the diplomat said.

READ MORE: Russia is not involved in Skripal case at any level – Kremlin

Nebenzya said there were several apparent inconsistencies in the narrative of the British side. For instance, he said, the suspects were spotted on CCTV footage on March 4 at midday while the Skripals reportedly left home in the early morning. He also reiterated that the accusations against Russia fail to explain why the Russian state would want to kill Sergei Skripal or chose such a bizarre method of assassination.

Theresa May has said on Wednesday that the poisoning of former Russian Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March was ordered at a "senior level" of the Russian government. She said that the suspects, named as 'Alexander Petrov' and 'Ruslan Boshirov', are members of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, and that the poisoning was not a “rogue operation."

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