President Trump spoke with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday regarding the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last week. The two victims remain in comas.
Before the call, President Trump said, "As soon as we get the fact straight – if we agree with them – we will condemn Russia or whoever it may be."
The White House released a brief readout of the call afterwards which read, in part, as follows:
President Trump stated the United States stands in solidarity with its closest ally and is ready to provide any assistance the United Kingdom requests for its investigation. President Trump agreed with Prime Minister May that the Government of the Russian Federation must provide unambiguous answers regarding how this chemical weapon, developed in Russia, came to be used in the United Kingdom. The two leaders agreed on the need for consequences for those who use these heinous weapons in flagrant violation of international norms.
Prime Minister May has given Russia until the end of today to explain how a nerve agent likely in its possession came to be used on British soil. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says May's accusations are ridiculous and Russia will not comply with her deadline.
NYT:
On Tuesday, Mr. Lavrov dismissed the allegations that his country was responsible for the poisoning and argued that Britain had not done enough to provide Russia with access to the nerve agent for investigation.
“It’s all nonsense, we have nothing to do with this,” he told journalists, the news agency Interfax reported.
Mr. Lavrov added that Russia had asked London for details of the substance used in the poisoning, but “had received an incoherent response” which he said amounted to a “rejection of our legitimate demands.”
(...)
Britain, however, has stood firm and Home Secretary Amber Rudd has pledged to investigate 14 other deaths that have been reported by BuzzFeed News to be connected to Russia.
An array of foreign leaders and officials have sounded alarm bells over the nerve-agent attack, which Britain has said was carried out using what is known as a novichok, a class of toxins first produced by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and ’80s.
Lavrov insisted that Russian experts should be able to examine the British evidence but again denied Russian involvement in last week’s attack.
And in the midst of the controversy over the chemical attack, British counterterrorism police said Tuesday they are investigating the unexplained death of another Russian national, Nikolai Glushkov, 68, in London.
NYT:
Nikolai Glushkov, a friend of the critic, Boris Berezovsky, was found by the police on Monday evening. His death was announced by another associate of Mr. Berezovsky, the media entrepreneur Damian Kudryavtsev. British police said that the cause of death was unclear, but that counter terrorism officers were investigating.
In the 1990s Glushkov was a director of the state airline Aeroflot and Berezovsky’s LogoVAZ car company. In 1999, as Berezovsky fell out with Vladimir Putin and fled to the UK, Glushkov was charged with money laundering and fraud. He spent five years in jail and was freed in 2004. Fearing further arrest, he fled to the UK and was granted political asylum.
In 2011 he gave evidence in a court case brought by Berezovsky against fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich, who remained on good terms with the Kremlin. Glushkov told the court he had effectively been taken hostage by Putin’s administration, which wanted to pressure Berezovsky to sell his stake in the TV station ORT.
In court, Berezovsky claimed he and Abramovich had been partners in the 1990s in an oil firm, Sibneft, and accused the Chelsea football club owner of cheating him out of $5bn (£3.2bn). Abramovich denied this. The judge, Mrs Justice Gloster, rejected the claim and described Berezovsky as “deliberately dishonest”.
Glushkov was unhappy with the judgment and launched a formal appeal, citing “bias”. Meanwhile, Berezovsky disappeared from public life. In March 2013 he was found dead at his ex-wife’s home in Berkshire. Police said they believed he killed himself but his friends were not so certain, and a coroner recorded an open verdict.
Glushkov reportedly spent some time investigating Berezovsky's death.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), in a radio interview Tuesday, suggested the U.S.and U.K. could punish Russia by implementing sanctions.
"Nothing hurts [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s regime more than $50 or $60 dollar a barrel oil coming from the United States and the North Sea," Cotton said.
"So you don’t have to meet what Vladimir Putin and his regime did in heinous fashion here, in a blow for blow, eye for eye fashion. But we do need to impose a sense of limits and boundaries on his behavior to punish him for this conduct, and to deter such conduct in the future."
However, the Trump administration has yet to implement outstanding sanctions on Russia for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.
Cotton: Russia will 'lie and deny' about British spy poisoning (The Hill)
Readout of President Donald J. Trump’s Call with Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom (White House)
Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov found dead at his London home (The Guardian)
Russia Dismisses U.K.’s Accusation Over Spy’s Poisoning (NYT)
Russia demands access to British probe of nerve agent attack, vows to retaliate for any sanctions (WaPo)