Russia’s Foreign Minister has hit out at the UK saying they used the EU to facilitate sanctions against Russia in the wake of the Novichok scandal.

Sergey Lavrov’s criticism came hours after the EU unveiled a sanctions regime that could target people and entities worldwide who create or deploy chemical weapons.

“It’s very funny how, after Salisbury, British representatives have been running around Europe, calling on other EU countries to support sanctions,” Lavrov told Euronews’ Moscow correspondent Galina Polonskaya in an exclusive interview.

“They managed to convince not all, but many, to expel our diplomats after Salisbury. Now they are coming up with some new, systemic sanctions which will be mandatory for all the EU against any violators of the ban on chemical weapons.”

“So a country, which is leaving the European Union, is frantically trying to influence EU policy towards Russia.”

Around 18 countries in the EU expelled dozens of Russian diplomats in March after a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent, Novichok, in Salisbury, southern England.

Following toxicology tests and the identification of two Russian suspects, found to be secret agents, the UK has held Moscow “ultimately” responsible for the attack, which led to the death of a British national when the discarded poison was found in a nearby park.

Moscow denies the allegations.

“Where is Yulia Skripal? Where is Sergey Skripal?” said Lavrov. “If all we have been given is the (dead) body of a cat, of a hamster and, I am sorry, a poor homeless woman, some kind of a perfume bottle – all this looks like grotesque.”