Moscow remains prepared for a dialogue with London over the Skripal affair on the basis of international law, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after talks with his German counterpart Heiko Maas on Friday.

"From the very beginning, just as it was the case with Alexander Litvinenko (former FSB officer poisoned by polonium in London - TASS) and [former GRU Colonel] Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, we used official channels to request launching procedures within the framework of the Council of Europe Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention," he said.

"To all our official messages we received replies that boiled down to this: ‘You are to blame. We demand explanations how you did that - on orders or by mistake’." At this level it makes no sense to conduct any serious discussion. We are still prepared for a serious discussion on the basis of international law, and not the ‘highly likely’ principle."