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We Were Tourists, Not Assassins, Novichok Attack Suspects Say

MOSCOW — Two Russians named by Britain as the prime suspects in a nerve agent attack that nearly killed a former Soviet spy popped up on Russian television on Thursday to deny any involvement in the assault.

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By
Andrew Higgins
, New York Times

MOSCOW — Two Russians named by Britain as the prime suspects in a nerve agent attack that nearly killed a former Soviet spy popped up on Russian television on Thursday to deny any involvement in the assault.

In an interview with RT, a state-funded network formerly known as Russia Today, the men identified themselves as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, names that Britain released last week but said were probably aliases. They insisted they were simple tourists who had traveled to the “wonderful” English city to look at its cathedral spire and 14th-century clock.

The two men, who told RT the names were real, resembled the suspects shown in pictures released by British investigators trying to unravel the March 4 attack on Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

British prosecutors formally charged Petrov and Boshirov last week with the attempted murder of the Skripals and of a police officer who fell ill while investigating the case.

Speaking with RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, the men denied being officers of Russian military intelligence, as Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain has said, or part of a murder plot gone awry. They said they were sports nutritionists who had visited Salisbury to see the sights and scout for new nutrition products.

“Our friends had been suggesting for a long time that we visit this wonderful town,” Petrov said.

They did not offer any explanation for how the London hotel room they had stayed in came to have traces of “Novichok,” the military-grade nerve agent that Britain says was used in the Salisbury attack. Nor did they explain why two sports nutritionists would travel all the way to Britain on March 2, make two trips to Salisbury on consecutive days, and then fly back to Moscow on the evening of March 4, just hours after the attack on the Skripals.

The 25-minute interview, during which the two men declined to give personal details, signaled a new and bizarre departure in Russia’s official response to an attack that led to a series of tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and helped push Russia’s relations with the West to their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War.

Though broadcast by a television network aimed mostly at foreign audiences, the account of their trip to England largely seemed meant to convince Russians that Britain’s version of events was part of a smear campaign against Moscow.

A spokeswoman for the British government dismissed the interview as more posturing by the Kremlin. “The government is clear these men are officers of the Russian military intelligence service — the GRU — who used a devastatingly toxic, illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.”

“We have repeatedly asked Russia to account for what happened in Salisbury in March,” she added. “Today — just as we have seen throughout — they have responded with obfuscation and lies.”

Even the RT reporter seemed unconvinced, saying, “This interview will leave more questions than answers.”

But the interview hammered on a theme that plays well in Russia and that figures in all of the Kremlin’s responses to foreign accusations of wrongdoing by Moscow: Russians are victims, not culprits.

“When your life is turned upside down, you don’t know what to do and where to go,” Boshirov said. “We’re afraid of going out. We fear for ourselves, our lives and lives of our loved ones.

“We just want this to be over.”

He said he expected an apology from Britain once the “real culprits” were found. Petrov said he and Boshirov were in the “fitness industry, related to sport nutrition, vitamins, micro-elements, proteins, gainers and so on.”

“We act as consultants,” he said, adding, “the trend is to consult not about growing your biceps but about building your figure, healthy lifestyle, healthy diet.”

The appearance of Boshirov and Petrov, previously incommunicado, came after President Vladimir Putin made a statement on Wednesday, exonerating the men of any criminal activity and calling on them to come forward to explain their story. Russian officials had previously denied having any knowledge of the men and even suggested that the British authorities had invented them to fan “anti-Russia hysteria.” Boshirov, who did much of the talking, said he and Petrov had no idea that Salisbury was the home of Skripal, a former military intelligence officer who was convicted of treason in Russia in 2006 and moved to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap.

British investigators say that surveillance camera footage shows the men wandering far from the usual tourist attractions and into Skripal’s neighborhood. Boshirov said it was possible that they had “maybe passed” Skripal’s house but denied knowing its location or ever hearing his name “before this nightmare started."

British investigators say Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union that was used in the attack, was transported to Salisbury in a vial made to look like a bottle of Nina Ricci Premier Jour perfume. Boshirov said there was no way he or Petrov could have passed through British customs controls with such a bottle.

“Don’t you think that it’s kind of stupid for two straight lads to carry perfume for ladies? When you go through customs, they check all your belongings. So, if we had anything suspicious, they would definitely have questions,” Boshirov said. “Why would a man have perfume for women in his luggage?

British investigators say the two men first visited Salisbury on March 3 as part of a scouting mission and returned the next day to try to kill Skripal as part of what May described as an assassination operation approved by senior Russian officials.

Boshirov and Petrov, however, said they made two trips because of bad weather, with so much slush on the streets of Salisbury during their first visit that they decided to return to London and try again the next day. There was some snow at the time in Salisbury, but seemingly nothing that would send men with many years’ experience with Russian winters rushing back to their hotel for shelter.

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