Russia's president Vladimir Putin has delivered his views on Brexit saying that Theresa May “must enact the will of the people.”
Speaking in his end of year press conference, Mr Putin stressed the importance of the government getting “out of this deadlock.”
“In terms of Brexit, if it is carried through to the end, I can understand the prime minister’s position. There was a referendum after all. What can she do?” he said.
Mr Putin added: “She must enact the will of the people, expressed during the referendum.”
He said that Russia’s relations with Britain were deadlocked but that Moscow was interested in restoring them from their current low.
Mr Putin claimed that the Skripal poisoning was “simply an excuse to organise yet another attack on Russia.”
“If there were no Skripals, they would have come up with something else, that’s clear to me.”
But he said that “it’s good that he wasn’t killed. Thank God, Skripal is alive.”
Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury in March.
The UK claims that the poisoning was carried out by Russian operatives.
In July, Dawn Sturgess died from coming into contact with the same Novichok nerve agent. Her partner Charlie Rowley survived.
The news conference, which lasted three hours, is in its 14th year. It is used by Putin to burnish his leadership credentials and send messages to foreign allies and foes.
Putin won a landslide re-election victory in March, giving him six more years in power. That will take his political dominance of Russia to nearly a quarter of a century, until 2024, by which time he will be 71.
Though he faces no serious political threat for now, plans to sharply raise the pension age saw his approval rating fall to below 60 percent for the first time in five years according to a poll published by the Levada Centre last month.
Putin, 66, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 1999.
Additional reporting by AP.
