Media outlets like the BBC and CNN are failing their audiences by covering the poisoning of a Russian double agent in a dumbed-down way, but that’s how Western propaganda works, according to Russian FM Sergey Lavrov.

The foreign minister criticized coverage of the incident on Friday, saying Western media were failing to honestly report on the complexity of the situation. “I watched CNN and the BBC today. Their coverage of the story is very simplistic. They said Britain won support and solidarity from France, Germany and the United States, they all demanded an explanation about why Russia poisoned that colonel. And Russia denies poisoning him. That’s all,” he said.

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However, the nuances of the story have been omitted, Lavrov added. Those include the fact that investigation of the incident is still underway, and that Britain has failed to adhere to the rules of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on how such cases should be handled. The fact that Russia was stonewalled by London when it requested evidence to support the accusations has also been ignored.

“The media professionals from the BBC and other outlets do not tell all those things to their Western audiences. They oversimplify things and make suggestive faces,” the Russian minister said. “They put things into the people’s heads. I guess those are the methods favored by Western propaganda. I hope we will never sink to such methods.”

Sergei Skripal, a former Russia-UK double agent, was poisoned in Salisbury by what the British authorities called a Soviet-developed nerve agent. His daughter and a police officer were seriously injured by the same substance. The UK demanded that Russia disclosed details of an alleged clandestine chemical-weapons program, which it believes to be the source of the poison, saying otherwise it would blame Moscow for the attack.

Russia has rejected the ultimatum and demanded that the case be properly investigated through OPCW channels. Britain instead accused Russia of carrying out a chemical-weapons attack on its soil, and retaliated by expelling Russian diplomats and taking other measures that, the British government claims, would make the country safer.

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