Russian Embassy In UK Expects More Anti-Russian Reports By Bellingcat Based On Intel Leaks

The Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom expects the number of anti-Russian publications by the UK-based Bellingcat project to increase as Brexit looms, the embassy's spokesman said in a statement on Friday, commenting on reports about third Skripal case suspect

LONDON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th February, 2019) The Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom expects the number of anti-Russian publications by the UK-based Bellingcat project to increase as Brexit looms, the embassy's spokesman said in a statement on Friday, commenting on reports about third Skripal case suspect.

Earlier in the week, Bellingcat claimed that the third suspect in the case of poisoning former spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia was a high-ranking officer of Russia's military intelligence agency GRU, Denis Sergeev, who allegedly worked under alias Sergey Fedotov. According to other reports in UK media, Bulgarian Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov said at a meeting with Prime Minister Boyko Borissov that the suspect named Sergey Fedotov had allegedly visited Bulgaria three times, including during the period when Bulgarian businessman Emilian Gebrev, who ran an arms exporting firm, reportedly fell into coma after being poisoned in April 2015.

"We would like to recall once again that the allegedly 'independent' organization Bellingcat, which publishes the basis for media reports, is obviously linked to Western intelligence agencies. There was already enough evidence to support this statement. The fact that the results of the yet another 'investigation' of this structure were about Russian citizen Sergey Fedotov, who visited Bulgaria in the same period when Emilian Gebrev was poisoned, emerged with the active use of UK media, only confirms our observations," the spokesman said.

Bellingcat has already shown a large number of forgeries looking either like intelligence data or like good-quality fakes, he noted.

"We are confident that as we approach the date of UK exit from the EU, the number of such provocative anti-Russian publications will only grow," he added.

When asked to comment on publications in the UK media about the alleged involvement of the Russian intelligence services in alleged poisoning of Gebrev, the spokesman readdressed them to UK and Bulgarian authorities, whose intelligence services, according to the media reports, were conducting a joint investigation.

"It's difficult for us to comment on the hype around events in a third country, especially in the absence of any actual information from the UK side," he noted.

On March 4, 2018, the Skripals were found unconscious on a bench at a shopping center in Salisbury. London said they were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent. London accused Moscow of staging the attack, saying it suspected Russian nationals Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov of performing the attack and of working for the Russian intelligence.

However, Moscow has repeatedly noted that London has not provided any evidence proving Russian role in the poisoning. Petrov and Boshirov, in turn, denied their involvement in the attack in an interview with the RT broadcaster. They said that while they did visit Salisbury in the spring, they had come as tourists, further noting that they were working in the fitness industry.