OREANDA-NEWS. The British police do not have the necessary evidence to bring charges against the Russian leadership in connection with an alleged attempt to assassinate Sergei and Julia Skripaley in Salisbury. This was stated in a commentary published on Wednesday by the English newspaper, Deputy Head of Scotland Yard Neil Basu. "We are the police, so we need to work with evidence. There were many hypotheses about who was responsible for what happened, who gave orders - all this was based on the assessments of experts on Russia. I need to have evidence", he said.

Basu recalled that at the same time Scotland Yard is ready to indict the attempted murder of the Skripals by the Russians Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, whom the British investigation considers probable executors. According to a police official, the Salisbury poisoning criminal investigation is still ongoing.

According to the British side, on March 4, 2018, the former colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Sergey Skripal, convicted in Russia for spying for the UK, and his daughter Julia were exposed to the novice fighting substance deposited on the door handle of Skripal’s house Salisbury. London stated that Moscow was highly likely to be involved in this incident. Russia categorically rejected all speculation in this regard, indicating that there were no programs for the development of such a substance in the USSR or in the Russian Federation.

On September 5, 2018, Teresa May, who was then the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, informed the British Parliament about the findings of the investigation, saying that two Russians were suspected of attempted assassination of Skripals with passports in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, whom the British secret services consider agents Main Intelligence Directorate". Petrov and Boshirov gave an interview to the Russian television channel, in which they denied these allegations.