Originally Posted by Stuart

In fairness to Putin, he is probably right, to an extent. Assuming he has full control (see above video), the security services may not want any evidence linking Putin with potentially illegal activities. As such, these men may actually appear, to all intents and purposes, to be innocent, relatively minor employees in a totally unrelated organisation. They've also doubtless gone out of their way to ensure that any orders given can not be traced back to Putin, even if he actually told someone to poison the Skripals.
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