Nerve-agent attack: UK, Russia duel on literary turf; Dostoevsky walks in

The Russian embassy in the UK also weighed in on Twitter, complimenting Johnson on his "good taste in books" before adding that "Raskolnikov did have a motive, and Porfiry Petrovich had evidence"

The conflict between the UK and Russia over the nerve-agent poisoning of a former spy spread to literature this week, though it’s Crime and Punishment, not War and Peace, that’s the chosen battlefield.

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson fired the first shot by comparing Russia to Rodion Raskolnikov at the start of Dostoevsky’s classic work. “We’re all confident of the culprit -- and the only question is whether he will confess or be caught,” he said in a speech to the Lord Mayor’s Easter banquet in London on Wednesday.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova threw the book at Johnson