Kremlin says hasn’t been informed on ‘worrying’ new UK nerve agent case

Moscow on Thursday said it has no information on the case of a couple in the UK who were exposed to what London believes is the same nerve agent used on a former Russian spy this year.

“We do not have information about what substances were used and how they were used,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding it was “difficult to get a sense of this from media reports”.

He said that the case was “very worrying”.

London accused Moscow of being behind the March poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southwestern England town of Salisbury — near the town of Amesbury, where the new incident occurred at the weekend.

The Kremlin however has furiously denied the allegations.

“From the very beginning the Russian side proposed conducting a joint investigation with the British side and this proposal remained without a response,” Peskov said.

The Skripals collapsed on March 4 on a Salisbury park bench and were treated for several weeks before being released from hospital.

A police officer who came to their aid, Nick Bailey, was also hospitalised.

The incident sparked a diplomatic crisis that saw Russia and the West expelling dozens of diplomats in tit-for-tat moves.

Britain said a Soviet-designed nerve agent dubbed Novichok was used on the Skripals.