The paper addresses relations between probability as a measure of the likelihood that an event will occur and pragmatic functions of “highly likely” hedging device in modern political, legal and social media discourses, particularly in the context of infamous Scripal case in Great Britain in March 2018. On the other hand, “highly likely” pattern is viewed as anthropological linguistic phenomenon in virtual interaction between two high-profile politicians – the British Prime Minister Theresa May and the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov in a situation of  political accusation (the native speaker) and diplomatic defense (the actor alternates between two languages). The paper offers an approach to understanding the relationship between social processes and linguistic forms. Besides, five modern language corpora provided database for study of randomly selected contexts (“highly likely” concordance), that  allows to figure out several reasons of “highly likely” phrases to hedge which do not necessarily relate to probability, but may be applied to avoidance, uncertainty, imprecision, mitigating criticism, and modifying.