The two men accused by the UK of carrying out a nerve agent attack have been identified and are innocent, the Russian president Vladimir Putin has said.

Speaking at an economic forum in the eastern city of Vladivostok, Putin said that the two men, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, may soon make appearances in the media to protest their innocence.

“We know who they are, we have found them,” Putin said. “I hope that they will soon make an appearance and say everything themselves.”

British officials have said the two men were agents of Russian military intelligence dispatched to kill Sergei Skripal, a Russian ex-spy who had given information to the British. He was sentenced to prison in Russia before being released in a spy swap in 2010.

Putin on Wednesday described the two men as “civilians”, apparently denying that they worked for Russia’s military intelligence. The Main Directorate, as the intelligence agency is now named, is commonly called GRU.

“These are civilians,” Putin said in remarks reported by Russian news agencies. “There is nothing criminal here.”

British officials earlier this month charged the two men in absentia with the attempted murder with novichok of Sergei Skripal, as well as his daughter and a policeman who investigated the scene. Scotland Yard released CCTV images of the two suspects at Salisbury train station on the day of the attack.

Putin called on the two men to appear in media to protest their innocence, saying he “wanted to address them directly”.

The Skripals survived exposure to the nerve agent, as did Nick Bailey, the police officer, and Charlie Rowley, who found a bottle containing novichok. Rowley’s partner Dawn Sturgess died in July.

After the incident on 4 March, the UK and more than two dozen other countries expelled a total of 150 Russian spies working under diplomatic cover. Russia kicked out a similar number of those countries’ envoys.

Guardian UK