© Mikhail Japaridze/TASSRussian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
While UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson declared that the recent investigation conducted the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons regarding the so called Skripals' affair confirm earlier findings made by British authorities, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that his British colleague distorts the truth.
"The OPCW merely confirmed the composition of the chemical substance. And the closed part of their report merely contains a lengthy chemical formula of said substance; it doesn't contain any literary titles, stating instead that this substance is not listed in the Chemical Weapons Convention," the minister explained.
Lavrov also remarked that the report contains a lot of "interesting moments" which Moscow will make public as soon as Russian experts finish scrutinizing the document.
The Skripals were found unconscious on March 4 on a bench at a shopping center in Salisbury. London promptly accused Moscow of orchestrating the attack with what UK experts claim was the A234 nerve agent. Moscow has denied having any involvement in the poisoning, pointing to the lack of evidence provided by London to substantiate its accusations.
Deceit in Douma
The foreign minister also said that Russia has obtained proof of certain foreign actors staging the recent alleged chemical weapon attack in the Syrian city of Douma.
"We have irrefutable evidence that this was yet another performance and that security services of a country which is trying to be in the frontlines of the Russophobic campaign were involved in this performance," he said during a press conference.
Comment: I.e., the UK? Syrian army arrests British and other Western forces embedded with terrorist groups in Eastern Ghouta - Local reports
Lavrov also said he hopes that the Western governments will refrain from doing something risky in Syria, noting that even minor incidents may result in new "migrant waves" surging to Europe.
The minister remarked that instability in Syria could result in unforeseen consequences that Russia and its European neighbors would prefer to avoid, and that only "those protected by ocean, who hope to stay safe as they stir up things across the region in order to advance their geopolitical projects" would welcome such development.
Earlier the US and several of its allies accused Damascus of using chlorine during an offensive in Douma and killing up to 70 people.
US President Donald Trump also blamed Russia and Iran for helping Syrian President Bashar Assad and promised to decide on his response to the alleged chemical weapons attack within 48 hours, threatening to launch "nice and new" missiles at Syria.
MH17 Investigation
Following his meeting with Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok, Lavrov also said that Russia has presented its stance on the investigation into the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
"We talked a lot about the ongoing investigation into the catastrophe with the Malaysian Boeing MH-17, which was shot down over Donbas in the summer of 2014. We presented in detail the steps that the Russian side has repeatedly taken both by government and Almaz-Antey to provide the information we have for an objective investigation," Lavrov said.
He added that the UN Security Council has not received any information on the crash of the Malaysian Flight MH17 from the Dutch investigators since summer 2015.
"From the Dutch investigators, we received only one letter of a very general nature without any specific facts, it was in summer 2015. Since then, no information was directed to the UN Security Council," Lavrov told media.
Malaysian Airlines' Boeing 777 crashed in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 during its flight to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam. All 298 passengers and crew members on board were killed.
In September 2016, the Dutch-led JIT announced that flight MH17 was allegedly downed by a Buk missile system that was brought from Russia to territories in eastern Ukraine that were beyond Kiev's control and subsequently returned after the crash.
However, Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey, which developed the Buk missile system, has rejected these findings, saying that three simulations showed that the missile was launched from the Zaroshchenske area, which was controlled by Ukraine's army at the time of the downing.
Comment: See also: OPCW report 'confirms' nerve agent used in Salisbury poisoning, but doesn't mention Russia once