You Can’t Spot Secret Agents by Looking at Passports - Russian Interior Ministry

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian Deputy Interior Minister Igor Zubov, commenting on media reports media reports on Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov suspected by London of the involvement in the Salisbury poisoning incident, said on Wednesday that it was impossible to verify whether a person is a GRU employee based on the passport database.

"Of course, it is impossible. It is impossible to understand something like this based on the Federal Migration Service's database," Zubov said.

Last week, Bellingcat and The Insider reported that their joint investigation confirmed, through uncovered passport data, that the two Russian nationals were linked to Russian security services. Such an assumption was explained by the fact that the men's internal passports under these names were issued in 2009, while no records allegedly exist for these two individuals prior to this year.

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Earlier, British officials charged Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov with carrying out a failed nerve agent attack on former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in early March. 

The Metropolitan Police released images of the suspected perpetrators, claiming that they were Russian military intelligence officers. The police suggested that the two suspects, who allegedly traveled on valid Russian passports, arrived in London from Moscow two days before the alleged assassination attempt.

The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed the charges and said that the names and photos of the suspects didn't prove that they had links to Russian military intelligence agencies.