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05 - 11 March 2018 | 146 comments (146 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Europe (4.00 / 2)
Assassination Attempt? Russian Who Sold Out Kremlin's Spies Collapses in U.K. Street - Daily Beast

Sergei Skripal, 66, is a former Russian intelligence officer who was jailed in his homeland for spying for MI6 and allowed to relocate to the West after the most high-profile spy-swap since the Cold War that included sending the infamous Russian spy Anna Chapman back to Russia.

On Monday, he was airlifted to a hospital in South West-England where he and a younger woman were being treated in intensive care. Skripal was found collapsed on a bench with the woman in the riverfront shopping district in the cathedral city of Salisbury.

(...)

Skripal was a Russian army colonel who worked for the army inteligence unit known as the GRU. He was arrested in 2006 for passing information to the British about Russian spies dating back to the 1990s. The FSB, the notorious successor to the KGB, claimed that Skripal was recruited by the British in the mid-1990s and was paid up to $100,000 into a bank account in Spain for a decade's worth of spying.

by Bjinse on Mon Mar 5th, 2018 at 09:56:41 PM EST
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Re: Europe (none / 0)
so far, all that is being said is that it was some sort of nerve agent, but hard facts are very few.

keep to the Fen Causeway
by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Wed Mar 7th, 2018 at 07:11:57 PM EST
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Re: Europe (none / 0)
It seems to have been all over the Soviet Union, not just in Russia. NY Times, 1999.
The United States and Uzbekistan have quietly negotiated and are expected to sign a bilateral agreement today to provide American aid in dismantling and decontaminating one of the former Soviet Union's largest chemical weapons testing facilities, according to Defense Department and Uzbek officials.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon informed Congress that it intends to spend up to $6 million under its Cooperative Threat Reduction program to demilitarize the so-called Chemical Research Institute, in Nukus, Uzbekistan. Soviet defectors and American officials say the Nukus plant was the major research and testing site for a new class of secret, highly lethal chemical weapons called ''Novichok,'' which in Russian means ''new guy.''

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Tue Mar 13th, 2018 at 07:58:59 PM EST
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Re: Europe (4.00 / 3)
latest that we're seeing (nb from non-UK sources) suggests this was a Soviet-era nerve agent which was widely copied and seems to be available to any number of different state actors (official or deniable).

But the problem is that the "facts" we're given depend on the narrative the state wants us to believe. The UK narrative is obiously that Putin is up to his old tricks, as with Litvinyenko and the polonium. So what we're told fits that.

But the awkward squad, Craig Murray not least, are less convinced that it adds up

Craig murray - Russian to Judgement

The same people who assured you that Saddam Hussein had WMD's now assure you Russian "novochok" nerve agents are being wielded by Vladimir Putin to attack people on British soil. As with the Iraqi WMD dossier, it is essential to comb the evidence very finely. A vital missing word from Theresa May's statement yesterday was "only". She did not state that the nerve agent used was manufactured ONLY by Russia. She rather stated this group of nerve agents had been "developed by" Russia. Antibiotics were first developed by a Scotsman, but that is not evidence that all antibiotics are today administered by Scots.

The "novochok" group of nerve agents - a very loose term simply for a collection of new nerve agents the Soviet Union were developing fifty years ago - will almost certainly have been analysed and reproduced by Porton Down. That is entirely what Porton Down is there for. It used to make chemical and biological weapons as weapons, and today it still does make them in small quantities in order to research defences and antidotes. After the fall of the Soviet Union Russian chemists made a lot of information available on these nerve agents. And one country which has always manufactured very similar persistent nerve agents is Israel. This Foreign Policy magazine (a very establishment US publication) article on Israel`s chemical and biological weapon capability is very interesting indeed. I will return to Israel later in this article.

Incidentally, novachok is not a specific substance but a class of new nerve agents. Sources agree they were designed to be persistent, and of an order of magnitude stronger than sarin or VX. That is rather hard to square with the fact that thankfully nobody has died and those possibly in contact just have to wash their clothes.

but whatever, May has said that she will huff and puff and blow Putin's house down unless he says sorry and promises never to do it again. A lot of us think she might get asthma trying

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Tue Mar 13th, 2018 at 08:54:49 PM EST
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Re: Europe (none / 0)
The Irish Times cries bullshit

Irish Times - Seamus Martin - Unlikely that Vladimir Putin behind Skripal poisoning

British prime minister Theresa May put two scenarios to parliament on Monday. The attack on former British-Russian spy Sergei Skripal may have been planned directly by the Kremlin or that through lax scrutiny Russia allowed the nerve agent to fall into the wrong hands. The situation is more complicated than that.
[....]
For President Vladimir Putin to have launched such a vicious attack would have been counterproductive as it would jeopardise any spy swaps in the future.
[....]
Perhaps it is time to realise that if your country becomes a haven for dodgy people like Berezovsky then dodgy things are likely to happen.


keep to the Fen Causeway
by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Wed Mar 14th, 2018 at 07:53:22 PM EST
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05 - 11 March 2018 | 146 comments (146 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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