U.K. spy attackDeny and distort: A timeline of Russia's changing story on Skripal poisoning

Published 22 March 2018

Since the poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on 4 March in England, Russian officials have been consistent about one thing: Moscow didn’t do it. Otherwise, they have offered a hodgepodge of theories, evasions, and refutations to parry British accusations that a Soviet-era nerve agent was likely used to poison Skripal and his daughter. British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said on 19 March that Moscow was “not fooling anyone” with its “increasingly absurd” denials of culpability for use of the nerve agent on British soil. Vladimir Putin was trying to “conceal the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation,” Johnson said.

Since the poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on 4 March in England, Russian officials have been consistent about one thing: Moscow didn’t do it.

Otherwise, they have offered a hodgepodge of theories, evasions, and refutations to parry British accusations that a Soviet-era nerve agent was likely used to poison Skripal and his daughter.

Skripal is a former Russian military intelligence officer who betrayed numerous Russian agents to Britain. He and his daughter continue to fight for their lives after they were discovered collapsed on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury on 4 March. British authorities have determined that the substance used in the poisonings was part of the Novichok group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet military during the 1970s and 1980s.

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said on 19 March that Moscow was “not fooling anyone” with its “increasingly absurd” denials of culpability for use of the nerve agent on British soil.

Speaking to reporters before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Johnson said the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to “conceal the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation.”

Here is a timeline of some of the statements by Russian officials and others on the Skripal poisoning affair.

March 13: Too soon to say what poison was used
“Everything is being rushed in that it was quickly determined what the substance was. But more importantly, that it was allegedly produced in Russia. It’s not possible to determine that in a week. That is just impossible,” said Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB bodyguard who later became a member of the Russian parliament,  in an interview with RIA Novosti .

Lugovoi, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, and Dmitry Kovtun were found guilty by a British public inquiry of the murder of former KGB agent Aleksandr Litvinenko, who died in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium-210.