'We found them': Putin spoke about the Skripal 'poisoners'

British Prime Minister Theresa May said police and prosecutors believe the suspects in the attack on the Skripals are Russian military intelligence officers who almost certainly acted with the approval of senior Russian officials. British prosecutors said they had enough evidence to charge two Russians, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, with conspiracy to kill Skripal and his daughter.

“We, of course, looked at what kind of people they were. We know who they are, we found them,” Putin said during a plenary session at the Eastern Economic Forum.

“I hope that they will appear and tell about themselves. It will be better for everyone. There is nothing special or criminal about this, I assure you. We’ll see in the near future,” the president said.

Putin said the suspects were not military, but civilians.

“I want to appeal to them so that they hear us today. (Let) them come somewhere, to you, to the media,” Putin said.

Later, one of the defendants in the case of the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter promised to be interviewed next week. This is stated in the message on the website of the state television channel Russia 24.

“Alexander Petrov, suspected by British justice of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the UK, in a telephone conversation with a Russia 24 correspondent, promised to give a detailed comment to the press next week,” the channel’s website reported.

Petrov in a conversation with a reporter Russia 24 refused to give any comment on the charges against him.

“No comments yet. Maybe later. Next week, I think,” the TV channel’s website quotes Petrov’s words, calling him an employee of the Tomsk pharmaceutical NPO Virion, which is part of the Microgen research and production association.

Scripal poisoning in March provoked the largest-scale expulsion of Russian diplomats from Western countries since the Cold War, since London and its allies accused Moscow in an attempt on the former agent and his daughter.

Moscow denies any involvement in the attempted assassination of Skripale and suggested that the British special services launched an attack to incite anti-Russian hysteria.