Vladimir Putin has said the two men accused by Britain of being Russian spies who staged a nerve agent attack in Salisbury were ordinary citizens with “nothing criminal” about them, as he dismissed the allegations against them.

British authorities said last week that two men using the likely aliases of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were agents of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency and charged them with the March attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal. Moscow has always denied any role in the incident, which inadvertently killed a British woman.

The Russian president told an economic conference in Vladivostok yesterday that Russian officials had found the two men, who Britain said were using aliases, and urged them to tell their stories to the media.