BRITISH-RUSSIAN RELATIONS

THE Kremlin continues to dismiss accusations that its agents were behind the Salisbury chemical weapons attack with a mixture of threats, bad satire and misinformation, including the idea it is all an anti-Russian conspiracy.

Meanwhile, the police in Britain have been doing their job, trying to find out who attempted to murder former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, and who was responsible for the death of Dawn Sturgess and the poisoning of her partner Charlie Rowley with the same Novichok nerve agent, in nearby Amesbury.

Now detectives have identified several suspects who they believe to be Russian, a move that seems certain to ramp up tensions with Moscow.

Anyone taken in by the bizarre notion that the UK was behind the sinister poisonings in an attempt to discredit Moscow only needs to take a vague look at the ongoing chaos at Westminster to realise the Government is in no fit shape to plot such a grandiose scheme, even if it wanted to be.

What is certain, however, is that Britain is being dragged, against its will, into a deepening diplomatic crisis with Russia by evidence and truth, while the Kremlin continues to respond with obfuscation.