

Russia’s ambassador to the UK has described Boris Johnson’s comparison of this summer’s World Cup to the Nazi Olympics as “unacceptable and totally irresponsible”.

Speaking at a press conference, Alexander Yakovenko complained that Britain had refused to cooperate with Moscow over the investigation into the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. “We have seen no evidence,” he said.

Yakovenko repeated Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia had “nothing to do with this incident”. He suggested that the UK had its own stores of the lethal novichok nerve agent used in the attack, which was developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s in secret state laboratories.

The foreign secretary predicted on Thursday that Putin would revel in the World Cup to be hosted by Moscow in the same way that Adolf Hitler did in the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. He also suggested that the UK might advise England football fans to avoid travelling to the tournament for their own safety.

Yakovenko offered his own riposte. “Nobody has the right to insult the Russian people who defeated nazism and lost more than 25m people by comparing our country to Nazi Germany,” he said.

“We are not buying this. First we have to see the evidence and see the conclusions,” he added, complaining that the British authorities had refused consular access to the Skripals and had kept the embassy in the dark. He wished the Skripals a speedy recovery.

The ambassador downplayed the possibility of a boycott of this summer’s football tournament, saying that the “world community” had picked Russia as the host. He conceded the event would be “advertising” for Russia and said it would showcase the country’s improving living standards.



The foreign secretary said on Thursday that about a quarter of the number of fans who travelled to watch England in Brazil in 2014 were currently expected to go to Russia. He said 24,000 people had purchased tickets, as opposed to 94,000 at the same point in the run-up to the tournament in Brazil.

England fans at the World Cup in Brazil. Photograph: Tom Jenkins

Yakovenko accused the British media of waging an “absolutely hysterical campaign” against Russia. He also alleged that a Russian journalist covering the case in Salisbury had been “threatened physically”. “We have sent an official note to the Foreign Office,” he said.



The ambassador defended the use of the embassy’s Twitter account to send sarcastic messages, including a photograph of the Belgian detective Poirot and the message: “In the absence of evidence, we definitely need a Poirot in Salisbury!”

Asked if the tweet was appropriate, Yakovenko said: “Did you like it?”

Yakovenko suggested that the Kremlin had nothing to do with the string of deaths of Russian opponents of Putin, at home and in the UK. He said that Putin’s statement that traitors should be punished was “taken out of context”. Asked if Russia’s newly re-elected president was a “serial killer”, he said: “This is not a correct question.”

The ambassador said that the UK government could not be trusted over the Skripal case given its track record of “invading Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya” under a false pretext and supporting what he called a 2014 “coup d’etat” in Ukraine.



Johnson made the Hitler comparison while speaking before the all-party foreign affairs select committee and responding to remarks from the Labour MP Ian Austin, who called for England to pull out of the World Cup altogether. “Putin is going to use it in the way Hitler used the 1936 Olympics,” Austin said.



Johnson replied: “I think that your characterisation of what is going to happen in Moscow, the World Cup, in all the venues – yes, I think the comparison with 1936 is certainly right. It is an emetic prospect of Putin glorying in this sporting event.”

Yakovenko’s defiant comments show that the diplomatic row between Moscow and London is set to continue, with the Kremlin’s position implacable.

The ambassador also complained that he had been given no details of the investigation into the murder of Nikolai Glushkov, found strangled at his London home. “He was a Russian citizen,” Yakovenko said.