[noemon]

@noemon, pointing out that Russia has both motive and form in killing Russians that oppose the Putin government is not "supporting warmongering", and you deeply disappoint me in your slavish support of Putin. You really seem to think his shit doesn't stink, despite his long record of killing people and interfering in other countries. Is this some automatic support of an Orthodox country or something?

Warmongering is bad. Secret services use their resources to achieve foreign policy objectives, unsuccessfully trying to kill a useless former spy is not a foreign policy objective. It achieves nothing and spreading the idea that Russian foreign policy operates like Aladeen from the Republic of Wadiya* is nothing more than blatant chauvinism. Galvanising public opinion to support further escalation against Russia is in fact a foreign policy objective, one that is actually unraveling openly before our eyes in Syria and more generally. You understand this well but you refuse to come to terms with it for some peculiar reason. The fact that you have opted for ad-homs should tell you how desperate your own logic is. Is this some automatic support for British nationalism or something?

*If this is your image of Putin and the Russian state then clearly this is a pointless exercise:



Your entire logic rests on such a caricature and one made in haste. Caricaturing should not be normalised in international relations. It is detrimental to keeping the peace.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

No, @noemon , you really have got this hopelessly wrong. This is not a 'caricature'; Putin kills people to let others know they'll be killed if they step out of line. He's done it with journalists in Russia. He's done it with spies in the UK. He's done it with rebels in Russia - a violent suppression in Chechnya that was more than needed to stop it. He's done it in Georgia. He's done it in Ukraine.

States kill people to deter others thinking of doing the same thing. That's why many have the death penalty, not because of any idea of 'justice'. Putin is OK doing this without a trial. You call the poisoning of the Skripals as "foreign policy". No, it's Putin's domestic policy. He had to carry it out abroad, but it was to keep potential defectors in line.

You still cannot articulate any credible motive for western countries to kill the Skripals. You're reduced to painting them as taking part in a popularity contest, as if this were schoolkids trying to make their rivals look mean. And you still haven't admitted that for that scenario to even start to make sense, there'd have to be obvious reasons for Russia to do it, so that people would think of them as suspects. You are just ignoring logic.

[noemon]

You still cannot articulate any credible motive for western countries to kill the Skripals.

The issue is to articulate evidently that Russia is the culprit, not to be Sherlock Holmes, that is lacking.

States kill people to deter others thinking of doing the same thing. That's why many have the death penalty, not because of any idea of 'justice'. Putin is OK doing this without a trial. You call the poisoning of the Skripals as "foreign policy". No, it's Putin's domestic policy. He had to carry it out abroad, but it was to keep potential defectors in line.

I don't believe that Russia would carry out an attack on British soil. This is very heavy stuff and should not be thrown around lightly without absolute certainty.

[Sivad]

You still cannot articulate any credible motive for western countries to kill the Skripals.

You're the one lacking any credible motive. There are dozens of Russian traitors who have been living in the West for decades now unmolested. Why would Russia decide to target this one guy 8 years on? It just doesn't make much sense.

On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons why the the West would want to create a pretext to weaken Putin with sanctions, and there are also many third parties that would benefit from increased tensions between the West and Russia. I don't see how these possibilities can honestly be ignored?

[skinster]

An Alternative Explanation to the Skripal Mystery
An alternative explanation to the mystery surrounding the poisoning of Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter may involve a possibility that neither the British nor Russian governments want to talk about, as Gareth Porter explores.

For weeks, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson have insisted that there is “no alternative explanation” to Russian government responsibility for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last month.

But in fact the British government is well aware that such an alternative explanation does exist. It is based on the well-documented fact that the “Novichok” nerve agent synthesized by Soviet scientist in the 1980s had been sold by the scientist–who led the development of the nerve agent– to individuals linked to Russian criminal organizations as long ago as 1994 and was used to kill a Russian banker in 1995.

The connection between the Novichok nerve agent and a previous murder linked to the murky Russian criminal underworld would account for the facts of the Salisbury poisoning far better than the official line that it was a Russian government assassination attempt.

The credibility of the May government’s attempt to blame it on Russian President Vladimir Putin has suffered because of Yulia Skripal’s relatively rapid recovery, the apparent improvement of Sergei Skripal’s condition and a medical specialist’s statement that the Skripals had exhibited no symptoms of nerve agent poisoning.

How a Crime Syndicate Got Nerve Agent
The highly independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta has published a detailed account of how Russian organized crime figures obtained nerve agent in 1994 from Leonid Rink, the head of the former Soviet government laboratory that had synthesized it.

The newspaper gleaned the information about the transaction from Rink’s court testimony in the 1995 murder of prominent banker Ivan Kivelidi, the leader of the Russian Entrepreneurs’ Round Table, an organization engaged in a conflict with a powerful group of directors of state-owned enterprises.

Rink testified that after the post-Soviet Russian economic meltdown had begun he filled each of several ampoules with 0.25 grams of nerve agent and stored it in his own garage. Just one such ampoule held enough agent to kill 100 people, according to Rink, the lead scientist in the development of the series of nerve agents called Novichok (“newcomer” in Russian).

Rink further admitted that he had then sold one of the ampoules in 1995 to Artur Talanov, who then lived in Latvia and was later seriously wounded in an attempted robbery of a cash van in Estonia, for less than $1,800.

In 1995, some of that nerve agent was applied to Kivelidi’s telephone receiver to kill him, as the court documents in the murder case reveal. Police found that there were links between Talanov and Vladimir Khutsishvili, who had been a board member of Kivelidi’s bank, according to the Kivelidi murder investigation. Khutsishivili was eventually found guilty of poisoning Kivelidi, although it was found that he hired someone else to carry out the poisoning.

But that wasn’t the only nerve agent that Rink sold to gangsters. Rink admitted in court in 2007 that he had sold four of the vials to someone named Ryabov, who had organized crime connections in 1994. Those vials were said to have been seized later by Federal Security Police.

But the investigation of the Kivelidi murder found that vials had also fallen into the hands of other criminal syndicates, including one Chechen organization. Furthermore, Rink testified that he had given each of the recipients of the nerve agent detailed instructions on how it worked and how to handle it safely.

The Mystery of the Non-Lethal Nerve Agent
The newly-revealed story of how organized crime got control of hundreds of doses of lethal nerve agent from a government laboratory sheds crucial light on the mystery of the poisoning in Salisbury, especially in light of the timeline of the Skripals on the day of the poisoning and their unexpectedly swift recovery.

Reports of their activities on March 4 show that they were strolling in central Salisbury, dining, and visiting a pub for several hours before collapsing on a park bench sometime after 4 pm.

The announcements of Yulia’s rapid recovery on March 28 and that Sergei was now “stable” and “improving rapidly” about a week later appears to be in contradiction with the British insistence that they were poisoned by a Russian government intelligence team. The Novichok-type nerve agent has been characterized as quick acting and highly lethal.

But the official Russian forensic investigation in conjunction with the Kivelidi’s murder, as reported by Novaya Gazeta, concluded that the Novichok did not take effect instantaneously but generally took from one and a half to five hours.

The Russian government has now made an official issue of the fact that the nerve agent used in the poisoning proved not to be lethal. In his news conference on April 14 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Swiss Spiez Laboratory, working on the case for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), had found traces in the Skripals’ bloodsample, of the nerve agent BZ, which was never developed by Soviet scientists but was in the arsenals of the United States and Britain.

Lavrov also acknowledged that the lab had in addition found traces of “A-234”–one of the nerve agents in the Novichok series – “in its initial state and in high concentration”. Lavrov argued that had the assassins used A-234 nerve agent, which he noted is at least eight times more deadly than VX nerve gas, it “would have killed the Skripals.”

But if the poisoning had been done with some of the A-234 nerve agent that was sold by Rink to organized crime figures, it probably would not have been that lethal.

Vil Mirzayanov, the counter-intelligence specialist on the team that developed Novichok and who later revealed the existence of the Novichok program, explained in an interview with The Guardian that the agent lost its effectiveness. “The final product, in storage, after one year is already losing 2%, 3%,” Mirzayanov said, “The next year more, and the next year more. In 10-15 years, it’s no longer effective.”

Exposure to even a large dose of such a normally lethal poison more than 25 years after it was first produced could account for the apparent lack of normal symptoms associated with exposure to that kind of nerve agent experienced by the Skripals, as well as for their relatively speedy recovery. That lends further credibility to a possible explanation that someone with a personal grudge against Sergei Skripal carried out the poisoning.

An Absence of Nerve Agent Symptoms?
Also challenging the official British line is a statement by a medical specialist involved in the Salisbury District Hospital’s care for the Skripals revealing that they had not exhibited any symptoms of nerve agent poisoning.

Stephen Davies, a consultant on emergency medicine for the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Salisbury District Hospital, wrote a letter published in The Times on March 16 that presented a problem for the official British government position. Davies wrote,“[M]ay I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning in Salisbury, and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning.” Obviously, Sergei and Yulia Skripal were “patients” in the hospital and were thus included in that statement.

The Times made the unusual decision to cover the Davies letter in a news story, but tellingly failed to quote the crucial statement in the letter that “no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning in Salisbury” or to report on the significance of the statement.

To rule out the possibility that Davies intended to say something quite different, this writer requested a confirmation or denial of what Davies had written in his letter from the press officer for the Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, Patrick Butler. But Butler did not respond for a week and then refused directly to deny, confirm or explain the Davies statement.

Instead Butler said in an email, “Three people were admitted and treated as inpatients at Salisbury District Hospital for the effects of nerve agent poisoning as Stephen Davies wrote.” When he was reminded that the letter had actually said something quite different, Butler simply repeated the statement he had just sent and then added, “The Trust will not be providing any further information on this matter.”

Butler did not respond to two separate requests from the writer for assistance in contacting Davies. The refusal of the NHS Foundation Trust to engage at all on the subject underlines the sensitivity of the British government about nerve agent that didn’t work.

There are many individuals in Russia whose feelings about Sergei Skripal’s having become a double agent for Britain’s MI6 – including former colleagues of his – could provide a personal motive for the poisoning. And it is certainly plausible that those individuals could have had obtained some of the nerve agent sold by Leonid Rink that entered the black market.

Neither the British government nor the Russian government is apparently eager to acknowledge that alternative explanation. The British don’t want it discussed, because they are determined to use the Salisbury poisoning to push their anti-Russian agenda; and the Russians may be reluctant to talk about it, because it would inevitably get into details of a secret nerve agent research project that they have claimed they closed down in 1992, despite Rink’s testimony in the court case that he was still doing some work for the Russian military until 1994.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/17/a ... l-mystery/

I don't believe that Russia would carry out an attack on British soil.

To do so a fortnight before your own country's elections, at a time when the world's superpower has been demonizing you for over a year, makes as much sense as the Syrian army using chemical weapons against its civilian population just at that time when they've gained more territory and almost won the war.

[Sivad]

If the Russian mob had it back in the 90s any intelligence service, military, terrorist organization etc in the the world could have it at this point.

[SpecialOlympian]

You're the one lacking any credible motive. There are dozens of Russian traitors who have been living in the West for decades now unmolested. Why would Russia decide to target this one guy 8 years on? It just doesn't make much sense.

Yeah what kind of mad man would do something he’s done before with little to no repercussions?

On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons why the the West would want to create a pretext to weaken Putin with sanctions,

Exactly. They don’t need to invent reasons to sanction Russia. There are plenty.

[Sivad]

I don't follow?

[SpecialOlympian]

My bad, phone posting. See above.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

I don't believe that Russia would carry out an attack on British soil. This is very heavy stuff and should not be thrown around lightly without absolute certainty.

Lugovoy killed Litvinenko. There really is no doubt about this - he left a literal trail across London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Lugovoy

To 'not believe' this is just sticking your fingers in your ears and doing the 'la-la, I'm not listening' thing.

You're the one lacking any credible motive. There are dozens of Russian traitors who have been living in the West for decades now unmolested. Why would Russia decide to target this one guy 8 years on? It just doesn't make much sense.

From Russia With Blood: 14 Suspected Hits on British Soil

To do so a fortnight before your own country's elections

The Russian electorate was quite happy with the assassination of Litvinenko. TV commentators say "traitors" should get killed. The election is irrelevant.

[layman]

The fact the poisoning was clumsy adds weight to it being neither the western states, nor Russia.

The west being directly responsible is something I cannot buy into. Not because I think we are too “nice”like I was accused of earlier. It the basic risk vs reward dynamic, in additional to what do said. There are far easier ways to demonise Russia then a chemical weapons assassination on British soil.

Sending a message about traitors is a perfectly valid motive. It doesn’t really matter who they are. The Russian media proxies even put out sarcastic memes about how often Russian traitors happen to die abroad. I don’t see him w this seems impossible to some.

[Sivad]

From Russia With Blood: 14 Suspected Hits on British Soil

"British police have ruled out foul play in every last case."

Even if some of them were murdered, all of those people were involved in all kinds of shady dealings with all sorts of shady characters. Even the US intelligence officials quoted in the article say there's no certainty that Putin's the culprit.

And if it was foul play the deaths were all staged to appear to be accidents or suicides or heart attacks, so the Skripal poisoning doesn't fit the M.O.

[Sivad]

Yeah what kind of mad man would do something he’s done before with little to no repercussions?

Has he done it before? The UK government officials classified all the evidence so I guess we'll just have to take their word for it.

[Atlantis]

The fact the poisoning was clumsy adds weight to it being neither the western states, nor Russia.

No, it doesn't. An MI6 inspired/executed false flag operation would not aim to kill large numbers of people on British soil. It would merely try to demonstrate the use of a chemical agent that has historically been associated with the Soviet Union. Ideally, it would just incommode the victims for a while until they can be found to have recovered. That fits the Salisbury case.

But as I have said from the beginning, the highest probability is that exiled anti-Putin oligarchs and/or Chechen Mafia used Soviet chemical weapons that are known to have been sold on the black market in the 90s to get the West to punish Putin and destabilize the Russian Federation. That MI6 was aware of this is highly likely because of the close links between exiled Russian oligarchs and dissidents, on the one hand, and the Tory establishment and the British intelligence community, on the other hand.

The west being directly responsible is something I cannot buy into.

I understand your feeling. I would not want to believe that "my" government is capable of such an act. Yet, there can be no doubt that Britain has "past form." The chain of circumstantial evidence is just as compelling for Britain as it is for Russia. The difference is that Britain has motive. Russia has no motive to damage its own interests. Britain also has means and the added advantage of having total control of the crime scene and the victims.

It the basic risk vs reward dynamic, in additional to what do said. There are far easier ways to demonise Russia then a chemical weapons assassination on British soil.

There have been other killings of Russian oligarch/criminals in the UK, which the British government did not exploit for anti-Russian propaganda. The motive in this case is that a nerve agent associated with the Soviet Union has been used. The UK/US have strong motives

- to show that Russia has secrete chemical weapons after it allowed its known stockpiles of chemical weapons to be destroyed under OPCW control last September, because the US does not want to destroy its own stockpile of chemical weapons.

- to put Russia and Syria in the dock of international accusation to justify "punishing" airstrikes designed to destabilize the Syrian government at a time it is about to defeat the Western-sponsored terrorists. If Russia succeeds in defending the Syrian government, Russia will for the first time after 150 years have achieved its objective of extending its influence into the ME. A regional block of Iran, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, etc., under Russian influence would be a game changer. It would put the USUK and Israel into a serious dilemma.

Sending a message about traitors is a perfectly valid motive.

No, it isn't. There is no indication whatsoever that Russia would execute an exchanged spy because it would make future exchanges of spies impossible.

Moreover, there are many exiled Russian dissidents, powerful anti-Putin oligarchs and criminals who are far more dangerous to the Russian Federation. They all know that a second rate ex-spy like Skripal will do anything for money. Unlike most other actors in the Salisbury sage, the Skripals have no political affiliations.

The Russian media proxies even put out sarcastic memes about how often Russian traitors happen to die abroad.

Considering the insulting and sarcastic attitude the British government has demonstrated towards the Russian government, the Russian response has been very muted.

And whatever sins the Russian media are guilty of, they are insignificant compared to the gross distortions and demonization of the Russians by the British boulevard press.

[Atlantis]

Update by Peter Wilson, UK Permanent Representative to the OPCW, following the OPCW Technical Secretariat's assistance to the UK after the Salisbury attack.

We reiterate our call on Russia to meet its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, to end its offensive chemical weapons programme and to declare its programme of Novichoks.

If Russia has so stubbornly refused to declare its alleged secret chemical weapons program for almost 50 years, would the British government please explain why the Russians disclosed the chemical composition of this top secret weapon by sending an actual sample that would invariably be analysed at the UK's chemical weapons lab a mere 8 miles from Salisbury!

The British have always shown disdain for other people, but can they seriously believe that the Russians are that stupid?

The Russians are either hiding their secret weapons or they have disclosed them. It can't be both.

Logic doesn't seem to be a strong suit of the British government.

[ingliz]

The precursor of BZ that is referred to in the public statements, commonly known as 3Q, was contained in the control sample prepared by the OPCW Lab in accordance with the existing quality control procedures. Otherwise it has nothing to do with the samples collected by the OPCW Team in Salisbury.

It is odd that the BZ that contaminated the sample "prepared by the OPCW Lab in accordance with the existing quality control procedures" so closely mimics the action of the agent that poisoned the Scripals.

[SpecialOlympian]

Has he done it before? The UK government officials classified all the evidence so I guess we'll just have to take their word for it.

Here's the UK government's own report on it, knock yourself out.

I'm sorry if it does not achieve the high bar of truth you require from a more trusted source such as a random blog or an RT journalist who believes he is being gangstalked.

[Sivad]

UK government's own report does not achieve the high bar of truth of a random blog or an RT journalist who believes he is being gangstalked.



It really doesn't

[Atlantis]

So, yes, Lavrov is full of shit, or "Lavrov has pulled a stunt that can easily be exposed", as Atlantis suggested.

As I said, since the BZ in the control sample can easily be pointed out by the OPCW, it is unlikely that Lavrov deliberately tried to present a false picture. I can only see two explanations:

a) Lavrov commented on the Swiss report without consulting experts familiar with the OPCW procedures.

b) Somebody passed the Russians incomplete information suggesting that the BZ is in the Salisbury sample to trick the Russians into making a mistake.


Meanwhile, in his statement to the OPCW, the Russian representative A.Shulgin said

Office contacted the Russian agency responsible for issues concerning patents with a request to check the patentability of an invention made by an American scientist T. Rubin. Here is this document (demonstration).

This document talks about the invention of a special bullet, the distinctive feature of which is that it has a separate cavity for equipping it with different kinds of toxic agents. When using the mentioned invention, the lethal effect is achieved due to the effect of this toxic agent on the human body. In other words, this ammunition falls under the jurisdiction of the CWC. The principle of operation of the bullet consists in equipping it with binary components which interact with each other upon impact. And this is what we read on the page 11 of this official American document, “At least one of the active substances may be selected from nerve agents including... tabun (GA), sarin (GB), soman (GD), cyclosarin (GF), and VG, …VM, VR, VX, and [attention!] Novichok agents.”

In other words, this document confirms that in the United States the “Novichok”-type nerve agents were not just produced but also patented as a chemical weapon. And not some long time ago, but just a couple of years ago – the patent is dated December 1, 2015.

Moreover, searching by the key word “Novichok” on the digital source google.patents.com you can find over 140 patents issued by the United States, related to the use and protection from exposure to the “Novichok” toxic agent.

Either Shulgin doesn't know how to read a patent specification or he is deliberately trying to pull the woollies.

This is the patent he cites: Biological active bullets, systems, and methods

The patented invention relating to this patent is a bullet and not Novichok. Novichok and a number of other nerve agents are simply cited as in this patent. Thus, Shulgin is wrong. The funny thing is that he doesn't seem to understand the real scandal revealed by this patent:

This patent proves that the Americans have investigated "methods for delivering nerve agents including Novichok" which are far more advanced than the methods of delivering Novichoks" by smearing them onto a door handle the British have accused the Russians of having developed.

The other scandal is that the USPTO patents methods of using prohibited substances. Firstly, a method of using a substance that is prohibited cannot be patented because an invention needs to have "usefulness". If it cannot be used it doesn't have usefulness and cannot be patented.

It also shows that the Americans research the use of prohibited chemical substances. They do what they accuse the Russians of doing.

Moreover, the point of this patent is that a "binary nerve agent" is used. Western sources have always claimed that what characterizes Novichoks is that it can be used as a binary agent. Again, the West is lying.

The Russians are not doing a good job of defending their position.

[skinster]

Lugovoy killed Litvinenko. There really is no doubt about this - he left a literal trail across London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Lugovoy

To 'not believe' this is just sticking your fingers in your ears and doing the 'la-la, I'm not listening' thing.

That the UK government refused to show any evidence to the Russians on this story, speaks volumes. To take the UK government's position on the same, without evidence, is a bar below sticking your fingers in your ears and going "la-la, I'm not listening".

The election is irrelevant.

No it's not. If the Russian govt wanted to kill Skripal, they would've done so at a time not a couple of weeks before their election, when they had access to him, in their prisons.