The poisoning of the Skripals was a pretext to attack Russia and impose sanctions in line with a “Russophobic mentality,” Vladimir Putin said, while the world’s reaction to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi was very different.

“There are plenty of sanctions against Russia… this is a politicized, Russophobic mentality. This is a mere pretext to launch yet another attack on Russia,” Putin said on Thursday, while commenting on the Skripals’ poisoning. If Skripal did not exist, he would need to be invented, the Russian president suggested.

When an RT correspondent likened the Skripal affair to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Putin said the ill-fated reporter “was assassinated, that is evident, but Skripal is alive, thank God.” However, “there is complete silence” in the Khashoggi case, while Russia is being slapped with more and more sanctions.

“The only goal is to contain the development of Russia as a potential competitor. I don’t see any other goals,” Putin said.

UK police and security services are stuck in the long-running investigation into the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4. London maintains the pair were hit by a weapons-grade nerve agent ‘Novichok’ smuggled into the country by two Russian military intelligence agents, identified as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

London was prompt to pin the blame on Moscow, accusing it of ordering a targeted assassination of the former double agent. Russia denied the UK's allegations, insisting there was no need to target the retired officer and offered its assistance in investigating the incident, but to no avail.

Petrov and Boshirov have previously denied any involvement in the alleged nerve-agent attack in Salisbury, UK this March. In an interview with RT, they claimed they had nothing to do with Russia's military intelligence, or the GRU.

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Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who was critical of the Saudi regime, entered the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey, where he was assassinated. Turkish authorities leading the investigation later provided chilling details of the dissident reporter being killed and dismembered by a death squad sent from Riyadh.

Despite widespread condemnation of the assassination, the political response to it was conspicuously measured. The US, for instance, has so far refrained from imposing any penalties on the Saudi kingdom. “I’m not going to destroy the world economy, and I’m not going to destroy the economy for our country by being foolish with Saudi Arabia,” Donald Trump told reporters back in November.

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