Russia's UN envoy referenced "Midsomer Murders", "Alice in Wonderland" and "Crime and Punishment" on Thursday as he attacked Britain at the UN Security Council for Goebbels-style propaganda over the poisoning of a former spy. It was the second showdown between Russia and Britain at the world body since the March 4 nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in an English town. Russia has denied any involvement in the attempted assassination, which has had major diplomatic ramifications, with mass expulsions of Russian and Western diplomats. Earlier on Thursday, Alexander Yakovenko, Russia's ambassador to London, laid out Moscow's position on the Salisbury attack, the latest in series of claim and counter claim surrounding the poisoning. The 15-member Security Council first met over the issue on March 14, when Russia's Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, compared the British government to Inspector LeStrade, a "hapless" investigator from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. What to believe, and not believe, about Russia's claims on Skripal poisoning "It’s some sort of theatre of the absurd. Couldn’t you come up with a better fake story?", Mr Nebenzia told the council on Thursday. "We have told our British colleagues that ’you’re playing with fire and you’ll be sorry.’" Mr Skripal, a former double agent, and his daughter Yulia were found in a critical condition on a public bench in the English city of Salisbury on March 4. In her first public statement, Yulia confirmed on Thursday that she was recovering in hospital and her “strength is growing daily”. London blames Russia but the Kremlin denies any involvement. Britain says the poisoning was carried out with a military-grade nerve agent called Novichok, which was developed by the Soviet Union. What is Novichok Mr Nebenzia claimed "a propaganda war" against Russia was being waged that sought "to discredit and even de-legitimise Russia." "This is all using the method of Dr Goebbels," he added in reference to Nazi Germany’s propaganda chief. Russia requested the UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, the same day that Moscow failed in its bid to join a probe into the Salisbury incident by global chemical watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. In response, Karen Pierce, British Ambassador to the UN, said London had conveyed Russia’s demand for consular access to Yulia Skripal and that the British government had acted entirely properly within international convention. Karen Pierce, UK Ambassador to the United Nations gives a speech during a UN Security Council meeting Credit: Getty "I won’t take any lectures on morality or on our responsibilities," said Ms Pierce, "from a country that, as this council debated yesterday, has done so much to block the proper investigation of the use of chemical weapons in Syria." "It’s yet another attempt by Russia to use this Security Council for political gains," said US diplomat Kelley Currie. "This is not a tactic that is appropriate for this body," she said of the Goebbels reference. In lengthy, rhetorical flourishes, the Russian envoy referenced popular British television series "Midsomer Murders" – set in the bucolic countryside – suggesting that anyone who watched such television crime shows would know “hundreds of clever ways to kill someone” to illustrate the “risky and dangerous” nature of the method Britain says was used to target Skripal. In another literary nod, he referred to Russian masterpiece "Crime and Punishment" as he mocked Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Yesterday, Russia failed to persuade OPCW that they, the chief suspect, should join an investigation of attempted assassinations in Salisbury. Today’s gambit is to rope the UN Security Council into their disinformation campaign. The world will see through this shameless cynicism— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) April 5, 2018 "It’s not a crime novel as the British minister thinks, but rather a deep philosophical work of literature," he said. "I would suggest that Mr Johnson read some other novels by Dostoevsky or at least get to know their names." He then mused on the whereabouts of reported Skripal pets, two cats and two guinea pigs. "What happened to these animals? Why doesn’t anyone mention them? Their condition is also an important piece of evidence," he said. A British government spokeswoman told AFP late on Thursday that both guinea pigs had died and that a cat found in a distressed state was euthanised. She did not mention a second cat. Mr Nebenzia also reached for a copy of "Alice in Wonderland" and read read a passage about a trial where the Queen demands the sentence first and the verdict afterward. "Does that remind you of anything?" he added. Ms Pierce responded: "There is another very good quote from Alice in Wonderland which is: 'sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast' so I think that's the quote the suits my Russian colleague best." Mapped: Russian diplomats expelled from West Richard Gowan, a UN expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said it suited Russia "to turn the whole business into a farce". "By playing up the melodrama at the UN, Nebenzia succeeds in distracting from the seriousness of the crime," he told AFP. "By turning it into a game, Russia aims to make the UK look a bit silly. A lot of other countries might like to let the matter drop before it worsens relations with Russia further, so Moscow’s strategy may not be a joke," he added. But even before the meeting, the British ambassador kicked off the literary allusions by taking aim at her Russian counterpart’s purported fondness for a Sherlock Holmes analogy. Allowing Russians scientists "into an investigation where they are the most likely perpetrators of the crime... would be like Scotland Yard inviting in Professor Moriarty," she told reporters of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional criminal mastermind.
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