Petrov said he and Boshirov had flown to London

Petrov said he and Boshirov had flown to London for a short leisure break, with Salisbury always intended as a day trip.

“From the very start we planned to go to London and, put bluntly, cut loose and have some fun,” he said in the interview which was pre-recorded on Wednesday and broadcast on Thursday.

“It wasn’t a business trip.”

Boshirov said the two men were innocent and had not carried the Novichok nerve agent used in the attack. He laughed off as “silly” the idea that they would have carried a women’s perfume bottle. They may have approached Sergei Skripal’s house by chance, but did not know where it was located, they said.

The reason their first visit to Salisbury was so brief was because they had been forced to cut it short due to snow. They then decided to return the next day.

The two men surfaced a day after

, but in the whole world. It’s famous for its 123 metre-spire. It’s famous for its clock, one of the first ever created in the world that’s still working,” added Boshirov.

Asked about the interview, a British government spokeswoman said: “The government is clear these men are officers of the Russian military intelligence service — the GRU — who used a devastatingly toxic, illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.”

“We have repeatedly