West Staking on Exhausting the Political Regime in Russia, Says Russian UN Envoy

MOSCOW – Western countries have staked on exhausting the current political regime in Russia, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said on Sunday.

“The stake has been put on exhausting the regime,” he said in an interview with the Moscow.Kremlin.  Putin program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

According to the Russian diplomat, allegations of Russia’s involvement in the nerve gas attack on former foreign intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia are “yet another act in a long-running show.” He said the Western countries were obviously seeking “to picture Russia as a unprincipled member of international community” to justify “another spiral of sanctions.”

 Britain claims that Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were affected by a nerve gas of the Novichok class in Salisbury on March 4. The British government claimed that Russia was highly likely involved in this incident. Moscow strongly dismissed all speculations on that score, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia had ever had programs for making such agents. Britain’s military chemical laboratory at Porton Down has failed to establish the origin of the substance that poisoned the Skripals.

On August 27, another package of sanctions was imposed on Russia due to its alleged involvement in the Skripals’ poisoning. The sanctions include a ban on exports to Russia of commodity and technologies controlled by US regulators under the criteria of national security and on exports of electronics, components and technologies of the oil and gas sector.

TASS

R.S