UK Accusations of Ex-Spy Case Are "Unprecedented Rudeness"

"You see that President [Vladimir] Putin remains absolutely calm, restraint, and, unlike his vis-a-vis on the island, he behaves correctly," he told the NTV channel.

"For him [the situation on the international arena] is not a priority, the priority is the domestic problems that we have, and he deals with them in a daily, round-the-clock format," Peskov noted.

According to Peskov, the UK accusations of "the Skripal case" are "unprecedented rudeness."

"What is important here is that no one has ever dealt with the situation when they accuse a country of something they cannot even formulate, and they do not try to formulate it," the Spokesman added.

He described the Skripal case as an "unprecedented" international affair, which "savors of thuggery", noting that Russia’s concern now is how to cope with this provocation.

On March 4, Sergei Skripal, former Russian military intelligence colonel, and his daughter Yulia suffered the effects of a nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury. Skripal was earlier convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and exchanged for Russian intelligence officers.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said the substance used in the attack had been a Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union.

Russia rejected all of the United Kingdom’s accusations. Moscow stressed that there were no programs to develop such a substance either in the USSR or in Russia. Without providing any proofs to its accusations, London expelled 23 Russian diplomats from the country and announced other anti-Russian measures. Moscow took retaliatory steps, expelling a similar number of British diplomats from Russia, ordered the closure of the British Consulate in St. Petersburg and termination of the activities of the British Council in Russia.