Are you saying that the British police is not investigating this case?
so what? Most evidence is circumstantial. It’s strong enough to send people to jail.
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That’s never been a concern for Putin, aggravation appears to be a featured tactic.
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They are, but at this point for the domestic police it’s more about the howdunnit than the whodunnit. Most of what they’re doing seems to be about public safety and trying to make sure this deadly nerve agent isn’t spread any further. It seems they’ve concluded that the victim’s house and not the restaurant is ground zero.
The question of who did it has moved to the intelligence agencies behind the scenes and to diplomatic posturing and expulsions in public.
The evidence is circumstantial but strong – perhaps not strong enough for a court case (assuming one might be brought at The Hague against the entire Russian state) but more than enough for the media reports and diplomatic expulsions.
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This is just absurd.
First of all, there could be extremely compelling evidence that Russia was behind this and there is no reason to think we’d be aware of it. If the people who did the poisoning end up being arrested then there will be a trial and evidence will be seen by the public. It’s fine to doubt that people know what they are doing, but I’m pretty sure that Bayes theorem tells me there is likely good evidence that they didn’t feel the need to share with me.
Second, the courtroom will be for those individuals. Foreign policy doesn’t use courtroom standards of proof. We may or may not one day have a court rule that Joe Smith did the poisoning. We’ll never have a court rule that Russia did it. Courts just don’t do that.
Yeah I remember when that spy was poisoned with polonium. My understanding was that it was done that way specifically to let other people know who did it so that they could discourage others from doing similar things.
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You seem to be under the impression that “Russia” is some individual who is being unfairly tried in the court of public opinion before having a chance for a fair day in court, rather than a sovereign nation which, like all sovereign nations, do not get extradited and tried in other countries.
All clear?
You seem like you value clear thinking.
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If we’re willing to attribute perfection to the Russian secret service then why not just posit that they’re goal was to leave him badly brain damaged, able to suffer but not to carry on with his life, and to kill his daughter?
I thought the point of using the poison was to let everyone know who did it so people wouldn’t betray them in the future.
The last question is absurd. I might as well be on trial for murdering my wife and say, “If I wanted my wife dead, why didn’t I kill her the week before?”
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I do realize that. But then who is Russia? And do I get to say that Argentina got Trump elected and should be punished for it? (Where’s the evidence? Well, “Argentina” is not some individual, is it?)
Where is the court of law that will bring Russia to trial? Or Putin, if you want to be less ambitious?
Even if you’re only talking of the FSB agents or independent contractors or, I don’t know, Mossad agents posing as FSB that actually committed the crime being brought to trial — since when do we have to wait until a trial reveals evidence to comment on a crime?
If it turns out that the Chinese Guoanbu actually obtained the details of one or more ex-Russian agents in the UK and killed Skripal as a false-flag op, say, then I guess we’ll all have to eat a lot of crow when it turns out that the less-than-court-ready evidence pointing to Russia wasn’t actually pointing at Russia. But until then, I guess we’ll have to go where Occam’s razor shaves.
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It’s a Westphalian nation-state. Nation-states, like corporations, have motivations and special interests and through various legal fictions are given human-like rights and privileges under certain circumstances when dealing with other nation-states (e.g. entering into treaties, declaring/initiating war) for the sake of convenience. So we say, for example, that “the U.S. signed NAFTA” or “Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.”
Nation-states (including the U.S.) interfere with foreign elections and murder the opponents of their controlling governments on foreign soil, but covert intelligence operations are not counted amongst the rights and privileges accorded to them under international law and Westphalian sovereignty (because they’re interfering outside their own domestic realm without officially being at war). That does not change the fact that they are nation-states, so we can therefore also say “the U.S. meddled in the 1948 Italian elections” or “Russia poisoned Alexander Litvinenko in the UK”
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Nope… yer right back to ignoring that Russia is not a who, Russia is a what.
You can say Argentina got Trump elected all you want, but you will simply sound like an idiot if you do.
Can you point to a single case where the international community has expelled diplomats from a country, but only after the country was indicted and convicted in a court of law? Yeah, I did not think so.
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Oh, FFS, do not pull this Flat-Earther-grade “Where’s the evidence? I can’t see it and you can’t make me!” bullshit. If you’re now talking about Russian interference in the US elections there’s a report on that that’s been available for some time.
On the subject of Skripal, you have a difficult-to-make nerve agent that’s Russian in origin, used on an expatriate Russian who was in bad odour with the current Russian regime, a regime that in the past has murdered other expatriate Russians using unique substances in a similarly showy way. All the evidence concerning this crime is in the hands of the Counter-Terrorism Unit, as part of their ongoing investigation into the incident. You want to inspect it, I suggest you go and ask them for it, not push your unreasonable demands onto random intertube dwellers.
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Not to mention it took those Russian intelligence geniuses, who never fail at their assassinations, two attempts to poison Litvinenko and they left a trail of Polonium-210 all over London and British Airways. One of the attackers who served as the courier fell ill somewhat later, presumably from radiation poisoning.
The type of poison used to attack the Skripals belongs to a family of extremely potent Russian military “binary” nerve agents called Novichok so far used by Russians to murder Russians. Binary meaning that they can be combined from less lethal substances that are safer to store and transport before use.
If you simply want to murder someone there are far simpler ways to do that possibly undetected than using extremely controlled substances that can easily kill the assassin in the process.
Gee, I wonder who did it. Probably Iceland.
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Yeah, it’s not like Putin has ever been terribly subtle about how he has people killed.
According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, at the time of the murder all the security cameras in the area were switched off for maintenance. The only video of the incident was obtained from the video feed camera of TV Tsentr studio, from a long distance. At the time of the killing, the camera was blocked by a stopped municipal vehicle. The killing happened the day before Nemtsov was due to lead the opposition march Vesna (Russian for “spring”), a street demonstration organised to protest against economic conditions in Russia and against the war in Ukraine.
A vocal Putin critic shot dead within sight of the Kremlin the night before he was supposed to lead a big protest rally, and every camera in the area was either turned off or blocked by a government vehicle. Totally a coincidence, I’m sure.
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Do go on. I would love to know the general source of the general assumption.
How is “rare and Russia specific” consistent with this?
or this
Or even PM Mays actual statement on this where she describes the agent used as one “developed in the Soviet Union”.
Well that’s convincing! Where did you read that? Atlantic? Thing is, a regime made of of spies, klepos and gangsters usually just wants to visit the south of France in peace to enjoy their underage hookers and ill-gotten gains. There really isn’t that much upside in kicking up trouble with the West. It generates economic sanctions which loosens Putin’s (and friends) hold on power. Economic weakness generates internal opposition both from the elites who run Russia and eventually the people.
Your implicit model of how Putin’s Russia works is just silly. Its like listening to a Nato fanboy from the 80s who was afraid of the Soviet Union making a rush for the ports with its tank battalions. The Soviet Union is gone. Putin’s hold on power is tenuous. If you want a more sensible read on Putin, read Mark Ames or Yasha Levine or even Matt Taibbi. Its funny how people who actually spent time in Russia in the 90s and weren’t British spooks (eg Ed Lucas) or paid shills (Anders Aslund) have a totally different view.
If a Russian national did this, it wasn’t someone working for Putin but someone working to undermine him. The interview on RT by Peskov is quite revealing in that sense. Peskov looks like he is worried about his own personal survival. Im certainly wouldn’t be surprised if he has a scheduled “heart attack”. He didn’t help his boss when he definitely needed a good performance, and the event certainly didn’t do Putin any favors, particularly when one considers the context.
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There is a protest rally once a week about something in Moscow. I remember Nemtsov from back when he was perfectly happy taking a bribe in the 90s. Laughable to hear him referred to as “anti-corruption”.
The story out of Moscow is this was Ramzan Kadyrov’s work. He is a Putin ally. But Putin was pissing him off and so was Nemtsov. So the hit killed two birds with one stone so to speak. Demonstrated to Putin that he needed to keep his friends happy or his grip on power loosens up real quick.
Ask around.
Yes, although I thought I had read that there is no evidence that the Russians had mastered this. However they had enough in storage in 1993 that some was stolen and used to kill a banker.
“One of these substances was used to poison the banker, Ivan Kivelidi and his secretary in 1995. A cotton ball, soaked in this agent, was rubbed over the microphone in the handset of Kivelidi’s telephone. That specific dose was developed by my group, where we produced all of the chemical agents, and each dose which we developed was given its own complete physical-chemical passport. It was therefore not difficult to determine who had prepared that dose and when it was developed. Naturally, the investigators also suspected me. I was questioned several times about this incident.”
It seems that it was transported and used in its toxic form.
You are Lobavich Ludnik and I claim my five pounds!
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Close - I am Masha Avrova and I am extremely hot and sexy!
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If you actually read The Bell interview you have a scientist discuss how yes, Russia developed these agents in secret, they could and have been used to assassinate people, and only about a dozen people ever knew how to make the stuff. The Ivan Kivelidi murder does leave open the possibility that gangsters could have stolen and used it. But you know what? If someone steals your super-secret nerve gas, as head of state you’re responsible, because it’s your fucking job to keep that shit secure.
As for the Iranian chemists synthesizing the stuff for defensive detection purposes, well that shows one other nation-state can make limited quantities of the stuff. OK, then, what nation-state might possibly want to murder a turn-coat Russian spy? And what nation state has enemies that have the bad habit of getting poisoned with weird, exotic poisons? Like:
- Ibn al-Khattab, Chechen mujahideen, poisoned by a letter laced with a nerve agent
- Victor Yuschenko, candidate opposing Russian-backed Viktor Yanukovych, poisoned with lab-grade dioxin
- Alexander Litvinenko, former FSB agent with asylum in the UK, poisoned with polonium
- Alexander Perepilichny, exposed massive Russian money laundering, poisoned with heartbreak grass
Yup, total mystery. It could be anyone!
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You know, the number of people surprised the Putin managed to win this month’s election can be counted on less than one finger.
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