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Putin Urges U.K. to Forget Spy Attack, Get Down to Business

U.K. government spokeswoman Alison Donnelly rejected the Russian president’s claims.

Putin Urges U.K. to Forget Spy Attack, Get Down to Business
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, pauses whilst speaking at a Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) event in Moscow, Russia. (Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) --

Russian president Vladimir Putin urged the U.K. to get over last year’s deadly nerve agent attack in the southern city of Salisbury, saying it is time to move on and get down to business.

“We must, in the end, turn this page related to spies, to assassination attempts,” Putin told international media executives at a meeting in St. Petersburg on Thursday. “Global issues related to national interests in the economic and social spheres and global security are more important than games of security services.”

Putin Urges U.K. to Forget Spy Attack, Get Down to Business

Relations between the U.K. and Russia have plunged to their lowest since the Cold War following the March 2018 incident, in which former double agent Sergei Skripal was attacked with Novichok sprayed on the door handle of his home. He and his daughter survived, but another woman died later after coming into contact with the nerve agent.

Skripal had sold secrets to Britain and moved there after a 2010 spy swap. The U.K. has said the weapon was produced in Russia, transported in a counterfeit perfume bottle and the attack was “almost certainly” approved by the Russian state.

‘Spying on Us’

“It was not us who spied on you,” Putin said. “It’s your agent, not ours. That means you were spying on us.”

U.K. government spokeswoman Alison Donnelly rejected the Russian president’s claims.

“We can only have a different relationship if Russia changes its behavior,” Donnelly told reporters in London. “Their behavior undermines their claims to be a responsible international partner.”

Putin urged Britain’s new prime minister, who is scheduled to replace Theresa May next month, to look past the incident. “I would very much want a person who will become head of government to take into account the interests of 600 British companies working in Russia,” he said.

The comments shocked U.K. politicians. Conservative Keith Simpson, who sits on Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, said Putin is “in denial.”

“What he has got to remember is that what we and our allies are determined to do is to make him abide by international laws and codes,” Simpson said. “We tend to forget that the Russian economy is still weak and he is looking around for trade advantages.”

Labour MP Chris Bryant said the U.K. must keep its “eyes peeled.”

“I don’t buy a word of this folksy attempt to pull the wool over our eyes,” he said. “Putin is engaged in a relentless war of misinformation and destabilization of the international rules based order.”

--With assistance from Alex Morales.

To contact the reporters on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net;Ilya Arkhipov in St Petersburg at iarkhipov@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs, Thomas Penny

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