The Russian government and media are casting doubt on a new report claiming to reveal the true identity of a Russian man Britain accuses of the nerve-agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in southern England.



The September 26 report by the investigative website Bellingcat and its Russian partner, The Insider, claims to have conclusively demonstrated that the poisoning suspect known publicly as "Ruslan Boshirov" is, in fact, a decorated colonel in the Russian military whose real name is Anatoly Chepiga.

Russia has repeatedly denied and mocked British allegations that it is responsible for the March poisoning of Skripal and his daughter with the Soviet-developed toxin Novichok in the city of Salisbury.



Earlier this month, Britain announced charges against the man known as Boshirov and his associate, known as "Aleksandr Petrov."



Both men publicly acknowledged being in Salisbury at the time of the poisoning but said they had arrived as tourists -- a claim that British Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman called "an insult to the public's intelligence."

British officials have not publicly confirmed the details in the September 26 report by Bellingcat and The Insider, though Reuters cited two unidentified "European security sources" familiar with the investigation into the Skripal poisoning as saying that they were accurate.



British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson, meanwhile, said on Twitter following the report that the "true identity of one of the Salisbury suspects has been revealed to be a Russian colonel" but subsequently deleted the tweet without explanation.



Here's a look at how Moscow has dismissed the alleged revelation of the poisoning suspect's true identity -- and how Russian media outlets have cast doubt on the new report.



'Diverting Attention'



Asked about the Bellingcat report on a regular conference call with reporters on September 27, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "Many people look alike, but I cannot tell you who this citizen who was pointed out in this investigation is."

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously said the two men shown in British surveillance footage near Skripal's home in the English city of Salisbury were civilians on a tourist trip. Asked to comment on Putin's words after the new Bellingcat report, Peskov said: "The president said that these people were civilians. Thus, he voiced the information that he had received.... You and I know nothing about these people's past, it is outside our [job] function."

He said Russian officials would look into the information brought to light by the report.

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, suggested in a Facebook post late on September 26 that the release of the report was deliberately timed to coincide with May's address at the UN Security Council "during which she again aired accusations against Russia."

During the address, May said Russia "recklessly deployed a nerve agent on our streets" and accused Moscow of seeking "to obfuscate through desperate fabrication" in connection with the poisoning.



"There is no proof, so an information campaign is continuing with the primary goal of diverting attention to the main question: WHAT HAPPENED IN SALISBURY?" Zakharova wrote.



She did not provide any substantive rebuttal of details reported by Bellingcat and The Insider.



'Typical Conspiracy Theory'



A senior Russian lawmaker laughed off the report with a reference to Major Pronin, a fictional Soviet-era secret agent who successfully battled spies and generated scores of popular jokes revolving around the character's incredible counterespionage abilities.

"It's a typical conspiracy theory," Frants Klintsevich of the defense committee in Russia's upper house of parliament, told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. "You could just as easily say Ruslan Boshirov is named Major Pronin, if one recalls such a character from Soviet-era jokes."



Klintsevich added: "What we warned about is continuing."



"More and more details will accumulate so that the plot doesn't get dull," he was quoted as saying. "Interestingly, one gets the impression that the British media are working hand in glove with authorities. And that's completely depressing." ​



'Complete Nonsense'



A Russian news outlet owned by Klintsevich's fellow lawmaker, Vitaly Bogdanov, published interviews with a retired major-general in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) who claimed documents used in the investigation by Bellingcat and The Insider could not have made their way into the public domain.

If they carried out this task as has been told and described, then they acted completely unprofessionally: roaming around the city, being filmed by video cameras." ​