Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption On the trail of Russians Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who UK police carried out a nerve agent attack in Salisbury in March 2018

Vladimir Putin must take responsibility for the Salisbury Novichok attack, UK security minister Ben Wallace has said. “We retaliate in our way, we’re not the Russians,” Security Minister Ben Wallace told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today Programme on Thursday, adding that countermeasures would take place “both in the overt and covert space, within the rule of law.”

His comments come after Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday blamed the Russian military for coordinating and authorizing the “barbaric” chemical weapons attack on former double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in March, saying the suspects were officers from the Russian military intelligence agency GRU. British and Russian officials will come face-to-face on Thursday as the UN Security Council discusses the Salisbury attack hours after Mrs May said that Moscow agents were behind the deadly poisoning. The U.K. will also take diplomatic measures against Russia, by making its case for sanctions to the United Nations and pursuing European chemical sanctions mechanisms, according to Wallace. The U.K. will take measures to “maintain the pressure on Russia,” Britain’s security minister said Thursday, after British intelligence services found the suspects in the nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy in Salisbury were employed directly by the Russia state. Police and prosecutors announced on Wednesday they had enough evidence to charge the men, named as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, over the poisoning in March.
Ben Wallace, British Security Minister, says in an interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin bears the responsibility for multiple Novichok poisonings in the U.K., in which British citizens were harmed and killed.