(Reuters) – Britain rejected accusations by Russia on Monday that British intelligence services might have been involved in an attack on Russia’s bridge to Crimea.
“This is baseless speculation from Russia and we will not dignify it by commenting further,” a spokesperson for Britain’s foreign ministry said in emailed comments.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said on Monday, without providing any evidence, that British intelligence services might have been involved in the attack that killed two, injured a girl, and damaged the bridge.
“I have not heard any condemnation of this act of terrorism from any of the Western sponsors of the Kiev regime,” Polyanskiy told the United Nations Security Council.
“And we have yet to figure out to what extent Western, in particular British intelligence agencies, were involved in the preparation and implementation of this terrorist attack. Too many things point to that.”
Early on Monday, a blast knocked out the bridge linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, in what Moscow called a strike by Ukrainian sea drones.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
