British authorities have charged two Russians with poisoning a former spy, his daughter and a British couple. Prime Minister Theresa May said the suspects were officers of Russia's GRU intelligence agency. She accused Russia of direct involvement in the nerve agent attacks. And Britain wants the UN Security Council to hear its case. CGTN's Richard Bestic has the latest from London.

The two men were named as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, after 250 detectives trawled through 11-thousand hours of closed-circuit television footage and took 14-hundred statements.

They tracked a route allegedly taken by the pair from their arrival at Gatwick Airport to the crime scene via a hotel in London's East End. Scotland Yard says they then sprayed a Soviet-era nerve agent, Novichok, hidden in a fake perfume bottle, on the door handle of the Skripal's home.

NEIL BASU UK COUNTER TERRORISM POLICE "Both the box, the bottle and the applicator have all been specially adapted. The bottle itself contained a significant amount of Novichok. Clearly, the applicator is some form of pump dispenser. It's the perfect delivery vehicle for applying the poison to the front door of the Skripal's. That's our working theory."

The first use of Novichok six months ago targeted former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in what British police say was possibly a revenge attack on a man seen as a traitor. Critically ill initially, both survived. Then in June a man and a woman, unconnected to the world of espionage were also struck down by the military grade poison. The woman, Dawn Sturgess died. In Parliament, the UK prime minister laid the blame at the door of the Kremlin and the GRU Russian secret service.

THERESA MAY BRITISH PRIME MINISTER "The actions of the GRU are a threat to all our allies and to all our citizens and on the basis of what we have learnt in the Salisbury investigation and what we know about this organization more broadly we must now step up our collective efforts specifically against the GRU."

RICHARD BESTIC LONDON "Clearly, this action by Britain's Crown Prosecution Service and the evidence supplied by Scotland Yard will press hard on already strained UK-Russian relations. A European arrest warrant has been obtained, which means, if the two men travel anywhere inside Europe they will be arrested and extradited to the UK."