Russian spy Anna Chapman DELETES Instagram post days after Salisbury attack on Skirpal

But she surprisingly deleted one posting on her Instagram, perhaps due to the rising furore. 

Skirpal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, succumbed to poisoning after visiting Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury on Sunday. 

They are now fighting for their lives in hospital. 

The restaurant and a pub were later sealed off by police although it is not clear exactly where the pair were poisoned. 

Flame-haired spy Chapman – expelled from the US in 2010 after being unmasked as a SVR foreign intelligence asset –  had on Tuesday posted a seemingly innocuous comment on how 6 March was All-Russian Gourmet Day. 

She cooed: “Fans of gastronomic delights have their own holiday, celebrated on 6 March – All-Russian gourmet day.”

Yet in the wake of reports about how Skirpal and his daughter were found seriously ill on a bench after visiting a restaurant, Chapman – who was once married to an ex-public schoolboy in Britain – suddenly deleted the gourmet-related posting. 

She may have seen it as “insensitive”, say online comments. 

 Now a propagandist for the Kremlin, she had told her 108,000 followers in the harmless posting:  “It so happened that people in Russia consider gourmands to be people who are delicate connoisseurs of delicious dishes. 

“In fact, the French word gourmand means primarily a lover to consume a lot of tasty food while a connoisseur who understands the subtleties of gourmet food is called gourmet. 

“How and why there was a substitution of concepts now is difficult to find out, but it seems to me, this was the trick of the Slavs, who always liked to eat well.”

She asked her followers: “What kind of food or cuisine do you prefer?”

There was no explanation from her for the deleted posting.

Other postings show Chapman – who was stripped of her British passport by then Home Secretary Theresa May after the FBI unmasked her as a spy operating in New York – relaxing in Thailand. 

Since the spy swap, glamour SVR spy has become a multi-millionaire with her Russian business ventures including her own fashion line and work as a TV presenter.

Pictures show her  relaxing on Phuket at Nai Harn Baan-Bua  – a sumptuous jacuzzi villa complex where a minimum three night stay costs around £600.

Her latest manoeuvres including lazing on the Thai island’s tropical Rawai Beach.

In one posting she lauded Putin as a “sensation” for a recent speech.

Chapman is a mother of one, giving birth to a son in summer 2015. 

She has not disclosed the identity of the child’s father.

She has worked as a TV presenter on a show called Mysteries of the World for Ren-TV, a channel owned by National Media Group, headed by ex-Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, 34, rumoured to be Putin’s secret girlfriend. 

Chapman – who also runs her own label fashion boutiques in Moscow – is seen as having made a fortune since she was caught red handed operating as a spy in New York in 2010.