Thread: Former Russian spy critically ill in Britain after exposure to unidentified substance

Originally Posted by OhOh

I will assume you are referring to the UK State propaganda outlet, the BBC.

The "anyone" certainly isn't you, as you are unable to post more than the word "waffle".

You're to stupid to understand the meaning of "State propaganda".

Let alone to grasp the basic concept that there are other independent media outlets such as Sky, ITN, etc.

So yes, you're waffling again.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

there are other independent media outlets such as Sky, ITN, etc.

Are they like the "independent" media outlets here in the US that all basically stick to the same stories/narratives provided to them by State press releases?

Originally Posted by SKkin

Are they like the "independent" media outlets here in the US that all basically stick to the same stories/narratives provided to them by State press releases?

Only in your tiny little head.

Originally Posted by SKkin

I got that way long before Trump came along. Cults of personalites mean squat to me.


This Rob Slane fellow makes some interesting observations...

Trial by Propaganda

It's no wonder you lot waffle so much if you quote waffle like this.

The only point to ponder is that these little lefty bloggers *invariably* neglect to mention that Russia refuses to allow said assassins to even be questioned, let alone put in front of a jury.

They probably get upset when people make memes ridiculing the killers' claims that they were in Salisbury for "tourism".

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

these little lefty bloggers *invariably* neglect to mention that Russia refuses to allow said assassins to even be questioned

That said, it applies to all with diplomatic immunity. It's not a one way street.

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

That said, it applies to all with diplomatic immunity. It's not a one way street.

It has nothing to do with diplomatic immunity.

Originally Posted by OhOh

If and when the UK government and its agencies, provide Russian authorities with evidence conversant to the two Russian citizens, the Russian authorities will review and decide if the two may be questioned.

Unfortunately the UK government and it's agencies have yet to provide Russia with any replies to it's requests for information only continue to publish the "highly likely" excuse.

Your accusation is a total fabrication and you have yet to supply any evidence to suggest, in any way, it is true.

Unfortunately Britain doesn't have an extradition treaty with Russia because Putin would never let his minions face justice for their crimes.

As for "requests for information", Russia's rather obvious fishing expeditions have one purpose, and it isn't to allow them to decide if they are going to send their hired killers for trial; it's to try and conceal their crimes and to reveal the inner workings of the British security services. They really must be a bit stupid. It's a bit like their feeble attempts to steal the contents of OPCW servers.

Thanks for your opinion.

Novichok victim Dawn Sturgess's parents tell of their anger and hurt

The parents of the woman who died in the Wiltshire novichok poisonings have broken their silence to express their anger and hurt at losing their daughter in an extraordinary international incident and say they believe there could be more of the nerve agent yet to be found.

Speaking as the first anniversary of the poisonings nears, Stan and Caroline Sturgess also revealed their concerns that the UK authorities chose to settle the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, exposing residents to risk.

The couple told the Guardian they still had many unanswered questions and called for more clarity from the British government about the poisonings. They also spoke passionately about their sense of injustice that Dawn, a mother of three from a very respectable family, was unfairly portrayed as a homeless drug user.
---
The couple said they did not hate Russia, which has been accused by the British government of carrying out the attack. “I can’t take it personally,” said Caroline, a retired civil servant. Stan added: “If they’d targeted Dawn specifically, it would be different.” He said of the Skripals’ alleged attackers: “I don’t care if they are arrested or put in prison.”

But he continued: “I want justice from our own government. What are they hiding? I don’t think they have given us all the facts. If anyone, I blame the government for putting Skripal in Salisbury.”

Read more
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...anger-and-hurt

So many questions lingering, however, some (please no names here) have a clue on each...

Britain puts new roof on Skripal House of Horrors
(by George Galloway) 4 March 2019

A scaffolder works at the site of former spy Sergei Skripal's house, in Salisbury, Britain

In 12 months of shifting sands, one thing remains as its original foundations: the British state narrative on Salisbury stands as a castle in the air.

One year from the dastardly fate of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, no one is a step forward on what happened to them, how, why, or of course where they are.

One year ago, a nerve agent was allegedly sprayed onto their front doorknob. One year later, their house needs a new roof as a result. And why the roof? And why only the roof?

I don't know what happened to the stricken pair but then, neither do you, however much you've followed the story in Britain's mass media. In fact, the more you've read, the more confused you're likely now to be.

There are some things I do know, however.

The first is that the Russian state had as little to gain from attacking this pair in broad daylight on a Salisbury street with a signature Soviet-developed weapon, 'novichok,' as I said at the time.

It was exactly 100 days before the World Cup, just days before President Putin's re-election. If – and it's a big if – the Russian state wanted to kill the Skripals, many things would've been different.

Firstly, they would've been dead. Yulia would've been dead in Russia where she lived. And Sergei would've been dispatched at a less sensitive time by rather more reliable, less identifiable means, and by rather less comical killers.

The killers would not have flown directly from and back to Moscow. They would not have entrusted their egress to the Sunday service of Wiltshire public transport. They would not have smiled up at every CCTV camera they could find.

They would not have stayed at a downscale small hotel in East London, they would not have smoked drugs there, and they would not have noisily entertained a prostitute in their room. They would not have left traces of their nerve agent in their hotel room. They would not have spent a mere hour scoping Salisbury the day before the alleged poisoning of the Skripals. Nor would they have returned by public transport to London for their sex and drug party, only to retrace their steps by public transport the next day.

If they were going to kill a man and his daughter, they would not have trusted nerve agent on a doorknob when there was no conceivable way of knowing who's hand would touch it. Yulia? Sergei? The milkman? Any Tom, Dick or Harry in the street (or any of their children)?

If they were going to smear nerve agent on a doorknob, they would've done it in the dark – not at noon the next day, when anyone or any camera could watch them doing so, yet no one did. Quite apart from the salient fact that by noon the victims had already left the house never to return to it.

If the Skripals were merely victims in this case, why were both of their phones switched off in the hours between leaving their home and their afternoon repast. How did they manage to happily feed ducks in the park with bread between drinks and lunch, and share that bread with a local child – but neither child nor ducks suffered any ill effects?

If they left home early that morning, why were no signs of illness observed until after the pub and the restaurant at least five hours later? If the roof of the Skripals' house has to be replaced, why not the roof of the restaurant? If Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was affected, why wasn't the first responder? How come the first responder turned out to be a most senior British Army nurse?


First responder in Skripal poisoning turns out to be Britain’s most senior military nurse. Colonel Alison McCourt.

Why did the police wait months before publishing the likenesses of the two chief suspects?

If the Skripals were merely victims, why have they been hidden, why haven't they told us what happened?

Why was there a second bottle of perfume? How did it get into the hands of Dawn Sturgess? Why would the assassins need two bottles of perfume? Why and where did they discard the second, unopened, bottle?

Believe me, I could adumbrate 500 questions more but you'd be dropped down at your door if I did – from fatigue!

Suffice to say, there are way more questions than answers in the Skripal story. But not for the British government.

Their answers were swift and have had serious consequences for Russia, for Britain, and for the world. That they have made no effort to persuade a highly skeptical British public, relying on crude methods of information warfare instead, is a further reason why I and many others simply don't believe them.

Neither will history, if I'm any judge.

Journalism – history's first draft – is easy to purloin when most journalists haven't the time, inclination or resources to question the state – especially inclination. History books though, grind exceedingly fine.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/452961-skri...oning-britain/

(Sorry, I cannot find it on BBC...)

In fact, there are also others in UK who do not have a clue...

One year on, the Skripal poisoning case is still riddled with questions that no one wants to answer

Is the official version of events really supported by the available evidence?

One year on from events in Salisbury, an official version of what happened reigns supreme: “Russia did it.” This presumption is scandalously short on evidence and logic, but it survives thanks to some highly effective stonewalling by the British government and some apparent media compliance.

The Radio 4’s Today programme last week spoke of “a weight of evidence [against Russia] that even sceptical observers thought was pretty damning”.

Well, not so fast. Some of us “sceptical observers” are still out there, and the official account seems as inconsistent and gap-ridden as it always did – if not more so. Let’s consider, one year on, what we are supposed to believe.

---

Four months later, Dawn Sturgess, a woman completely unconnected with the case, died after apparently trying some perfume, picked up from a bin by her partner, which turned out to be novichok in disguise.

Two agents of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, have been identified as suspects – thanks in part to amateur sleuths at an organisation called Bellingcat and in part to CCTV footage. They have been charged with three counts of attempted murder. They have also been charged with killing Sturgess. A third suspect was recently named, who was booked on, but failed to turn up for, the same flight out of the UK as the two GRU agents.

Salisbury is now settling back into a quieter life. The roof of Sergei Skripal’s house has been replaced, and the local police have appealed for information about where the novichok-perfume box might have been between 4 March and 27 June when Dawn Sturgess was poisoned. That is pretty much where things stand now.

So why am I sceptical? What we have here are two, possibly three, dubious-looking Russian suspects, with CCTV, passport and other ID evidence that tracks their movements. We have a motive: Russia would always want to punish a traitor, wouldn’t it? And, aside from a short and entirely scripted appearance by Yuliya, we have a reason why neither of the Skripals has been seen since, despite Russian appeals for consular access: the Skripals need protection from a state that tried to kill them; the UK has a duty to ensure their safety.

All of which might suggest that the case is closed, especially as the prospects of the Russian suspects standing trial in the UK is next to zero. Allowing the Skripal affair to fade into just another example of Russian malevolence would be a travesty, however.

A year later, beyond the knee-jerk presumption of Russian guilt, we see the very same questions that some of us raised at the start.

Why would Russia risk its reputation so close to the World Cup, when it hoped to show a friendlier face to the world? Why would Vladimir Putin jeopardise future spy exchanges by signing off on the assassination of a swapped spy? Why would Russia take eight years to take its vengeance, and choose the very time when Skripal’s daughter was visiting? Other than as a “rogue” operation, none of this made much sense a year ago, and those same doubts remain now.

There is a similar clutch of questions around the suspects. It may have been a botched operation by a branch of Russian intelligence that was losing its touch. But why did it take Bellingcat to apparently reveal the true identity of the agents? Russians must have visas to enter the UK; where did they receive them, for what purpose and in what names? There are flight manifests. The UK authorities could have known within hours who was on what flight in or out of the country.

And why, if these officers had, as we are told, such impressive records, were they staying at a dive in east London? The CCTV evidence tracking them is patchy at best, and we have seen none of the Skripals. Where were they that morning when their mobile phones were switched off? Were they in the house when the door handle was supposedly smeared?

Let’s look, too, at the UK government reaction. Why was it in such a hurry to blame Russia and orchestrate international diplomatic expulsions, when the quality of the information – at least the information so far divulged – looks so deficient? Its own scientists at Porton Down said they could not know where the novichok had come from.

Put together, these are questions that occur to most people with an interest in the case, and for which there appears to be no satisfactory answer.

And there are more, about the search and decontamination of the house, about the submission of evidence to the chemical weapons watchdog, about the tragic coda of the affair with the death of Dawn Sturgess. The fact that one of the first-responders was the Army’s chief nursing officer adds yet another intriguing footnote.

And then there is the most obvious question. Where are the Skripals? It was hinted early on that they might be given new identities and resettled in a third country. Has that happened? In a recent interview with the Russian media, the UK ambassador in Moscow, Sir Laurie Bristow, insisted they were alive, and did not wish to meet Russian representatives, but he did not say where they were.

In fact, Sir Laurie’s interview, given to the Russian news agency Interfax, repays reading in full, not least for the hope it holds out that both countries might “move on”. But one section on the Skripal case stands out. “We have put a certain amount of information out to the public in the course of the inquiry, but we have not made public everything that we know,” he said. Asked to elucidate, he added: “Of course, we have more information. As I said, that information will eventually be put in front of a court in the UK. We will not make all that information publicly available to the media, because that would prejudice a trial in the UK.”

The problem with this is that Sir Laurie knows as well as anyone that a trial is not going to happen – so this information will never see the light of day. It is therefore reasonable to ask precisely what information is being withheld, and how it would prejudice a trial that will not take place.

With officials repeating the standard line and refusing to engage with even obvious questions (citing “national security” or “intelligence” considerations, of course), others are being left to fill the gaps. Bellingcat has put itself on the map, of course, while bloggers like Rob Slane have tried to question the official narrative.

The difficulties for us sceptics do not end there, because however many questions we raise, the retort comes back: OK, so what do you think happened? And, to be honest, I don’t know.

We may never know for sure but what I feel certain of is that the official version falls some way short of the truth. We are left to piece together a narrative from what we do know. If I were to offer my own possible scenario, it would be along the following lines.

It has seemed to me that both the UK and Russia have known pretty much what happened almost from the beginning, but for reasons of intelligence, embarrassment or whatever, neither is prepared to say. In my view, it may well have been either a failed extraction exercise by the Russians to get Sergei Skripal “home”, or a successful prevention job by the UK that should never have become public.

This would help to explain why Russia’s response – to accusations, expulsions, the naming of the agents, and the “Salisbury tourism” TV interview that smacked of deliberate farce – was far less virulent than might have been expected. The UK’s official version would explain this by saying Russian reticence is simply evidence of Russian guilt. Well, maybe.

Some of the more titillating conspiracy theories link the whole episode to the US election. This version claims that Sergei Skripal was the prime source for the anti-Trump dossier compiled by ex-MI6 officer, Chris Steele. I am reluctant to go this far.

But a scenario that has Skripal wanting to return to Russia, and the UK, for whatever reason, not wanting to let him go, seems plausible. Given that the named GRU officers are unlikely ever to face trial, and that there is information – as the UK ambassador in Moscow admits – that is being withheld by the British, we may never know.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-a8807191.html

You can't tell me that Skripal's house didn't have sophisticated alarms/cameras on entry points. Seems strange that they can obtain pictures of the, could be, assassins from insignificant places but Skripal's house security cameras fail to detect them.

Originally Posted by Klondyke

How come the first responder turned out to be a most senior British Army nurse?

Has she ever gave an interview as to how she came to be there?

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Has she ever gave an interview as to how she came to be there?

(Was anybody involved ever allowed to give an interview?)

First responder in Skripal poisoning turns out to be Britain’s most senior military nurse
Published time: 21 Jan, 2019 10:08

Sergei and Yulia Skripal were given first aid by the British Army’s most senior nurse, who just happened to be nearby, according to a new report – adding further intrigue to the highly controversial case.
The latest development in the Salisbury poisoning affair will fuel the claims of skeptics, who don’t believe the official British narrative. UK authorities have claimed that the former double agent and his daughter were targeted by the Russian government in a bizarre failed assassination plot involving a military-grade nerve agent.

It was previously reported by British media that the first person to provide medical assistance to the Skripals after they collapsed on a bench in Salisbury was “an off-duty nurse who had worked on the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.”

However, the healthcare professional turned out to be not just any nurse. She was Colonel Alison McCourt, a veteran service member who currently holds the position of chief nursing officer in the British Army.

The revelation emerged after her daughter Abigail, 16, was given a Local Hero award from Spire FM, a local radio station. According to a story broadcast by the radio last weekend, Abigail noticed that the Skripals were not well, misdiagnosed Sergei as having suffered a heart attack, and called her mom. The teen, who has first-aid training, then assisted her mother in providing CPR.

Spire FM explained why the story was kept in the dark for almost a year, saying neither of the McCourt women had wanted media attention after the two people they helped turned out to be victims of a high-profile crime that pitted the UK and Russia against each other in a bitter war of accusations and stonewalling.


SALISBURY: Teen that went to help Russian pair said first aid training she had learned at school made huge difference: https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local...psed-skripals/ …

However, Colonel McCourt, who herself was decorated for her deployment to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone, decided that her daughter also deserved an award and proposed her as a candidate.

Skeptics will say it’s a hell of a coincidence that Britain’s most senior military nurse and her family were celebrating her son’s birthday at just the right time, and in just the right place, to get involved in arguably the decade’s biggest spy scandal in Britain. Perhaps stranger things have happened…

The British military lab that studies chemical weapons also just happens to be located near Salisbury. The victims of the poison, which the UK government have called Novichok, collapsed at the same time, hours after allegedly coming into contact with the substance on the door handle of Sergei Skripal’s front door.

The supposed bungling assassins proved to be so inept that they couldn’t dispose of the highly conspicuous murder weapon in a way in which it wouldn’t be found. And all this coincidentally occurred to cause scandal and distraction just as Britain was failing to negotiate favorable terms for its exit from the EU.

https://www.rt.com/uk/449312-salisbu...er-identified/

It seems Trump gets a mention.

Here is a theory how all this may come together. Back in 2015 the Institute of Statecraft and its russophobic director Colonel Donnelly discussed how to increase sanctions on Russia. In 2016 the Steele dossier was created in an attempt to connect Trump to Russia. Steele's colleague Pablo Miller and his spy Sergei Skripal were quite likely involved in creating the dossier. The dossier was disseminated with the help of Donnelly's Institute of Statecraft.
For some reason the Skripals had to be taken out. Sergei Skripal probably threatened to spill the beans about the dossier after it became public. The highly scripted 'Novichok' incident in Salisbury was staged to remove Skripal and to smear Russia with an alleged murder attempt. Colonel McCourt, the trusted army nurse, was asked to help on the scene. After the Skripal incident, and with no evidence shown, Russia was blamed and massive sanctions followed. The Integrity Initiative, the propaganda arm of the Institute of Statecraft, analyzes the media results of the Skripal affair and continues to stoke the anti-Russia campaign.
It might be possible that Steele's 'dirty dossier', the Skripal case and the Integrity Initiative operation are unrelated. But that chance for that now tends towards zero.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/01/coincidence-chief-nurse-of-the-british-army-was-the-first-person-to-arrive-at-the-novichoked-skripal.html

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

It seems Trump gets a mention.


[/COLOR]https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/01/coincidence-chief-nurse-of-the-british-army-was-the-first-person-to-arrive-at-the-novichoked-skripal.html

Crikey, it reads like a description of the plot from a Tom Clancy novel.

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

It seems Trump gets a mention.


[/COLOR]https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/01/coincidence-chief-nurse-of-the-british-army-was-the-first-person-to-arrive-at-the-novichoked-skripal.html

It would do, it's one of HoHo's favourite whackjob sites.

OPCW Moves to Update Banned Chemicals List

March 2019
By Alicia Sanders-Zakre

Reacting to the use of a lethal nerve agent in the United Kingdom in March 2018, the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) agreed on Jan. 14 to expand the list of banned chemicals defined by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). It was the first time a change to the treaty’s Schedule 1 list of the most dangerous chemicals has been approved since the 193-nation pact prohibiting chemical weapons entered into force in 1997.

The change followed a chemical attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom in March 2018, and the OPCW’s subsequent confirmation that the chemical was a type of Novichok, a family of nerve agents. The United States and many other nations have accused Russia’s GRU intelligence agency of conducting the attack. (See ACT, April 2018.)

Novichok-related chemicals were not listed in the treaty’s Schedule 1, although the pact bans the use of any toxic chemical as a weapon, even if it is not included on that list.

Adding Novichok chemicals to Schedule 1 will strengthen the treaty by subjecting those chemicals to declaration and verification under the treaty, Canadian Ambassador to the Netherlands Sabine Nolke said on Jan. 14. The Russian mission to the Netherlands denounced the proposal as politically motivated.

Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States first proposed adding the chemicals to the treaty’s list in October 2018, and the 41-member OPCW Executive Council approved the proposal by consensus in January despite Russia’s reported disassociation with the decision. The treaty allows any party to object to the change within 90 days, and such an objection would lead to a vote by all treaty parties. If there is no objection, the change will enter into force 180 days following the January decision.

Russia submitted a proposal in late November to add five chemicals to the Schedule 1 list, but the council rejected the proposed change on Feb. 25. The OPCW Technical Secretariat determined that four of the five chemicals met its guidelines, but that the fifth may not. Russia refused to remove the fifth chemical from its proposal, according to Sumita Dixit, Canada’s deputy permanent representative to the OPCW. The Russian Embassy in the Netherlands blamed the rejection of its proposal on “politicized causes” in a Feb. 26 press briefing. Nolke tweeted the same day that Russia wanted to distract from the use of Novichok.

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019...chemicals-list

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

It would do, it's one of HoHo's favourite whackjob sites.

Which part of the quoted content in #1518 do you have a problem with?

Originally Posted by OhOh

Which part of the quoted content in #1518 do you have a problem with?

Oh I don't know, the fact that you bothered posting the utter shite at all?

Kept in the dark: ‘Novichok’ poisoning survivor tells Russian ambassador he got NO info from UK govt



Amesbury Novichok incident survivor Charlie Rowley has met with Russia’s Ambassador in London seeking answers, after the UK authorities kept him in the dark about any official details of the poisoning saga for nearly a year.

“Most of the information they have, they had read in the newspapers. And I got the impression that both the family of Dawn Sturgess and that of Charlie Rowley have not been adequately informed as to what happened to the pair in Amesbury and what happened in Salisbury before,” Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko said after the meeting with Rowley.

They never received any official reports… [Charlie Rowley and his brother] had a lot of questions for us, and I was happy to answer all of them.

Whatever small information Moscow has managed to gather about the incidents, with a total lack of cooperation from the UK side, was passed on to the brothers – and most of it was a “total revelation” for them, Yakovenko said. “They are ordinary people, reading British newspapers. What could they know – only what they are offered by the press. So it’s good to have an alternative point of view and understand Russia’s line of reasoning.”

Rowley and his partner Sturgess were rushed to hospital from Amesbury on June 30, 2018. At first, police believed they might have overdosed on drugs, but then claimed that the couple was poisoned by Novichok, the same nerve agent allegedly used on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury four months earlier. Sturgess died in the hospital more than a week later, while Rowley regained consciousness but has been left disabled, and has been kept in the dark regarding his case ever since.

Despite strong words coming from the British Prime Minister Theresa May that it was “highly likely” the Russian government was behind the attack, and multiple countries slapping Russia with sanctions based on that belief, the UK government made little to no evidence public as their secretive investigation drags on for over a year.

“It’s been a year now – and we still haven’t seen any official results,” the Russian ambassador said. “What led Charlie and his brother to contact us is precisely the fact that they haven’t been able to receive anything from the British authorities.”



What the victims’ families want first and foremost is the conclusion of the probe and some official data besides endless media speculations. With other survivors, the Skripals, gone completely off the radar, they have received so little information about the course of the investigation that, at a certain point, Dawn Sturgess’s son sent a letter to the Russian President, saying he felt let down by the UK government.

Russia categorically denies having anything to do with the events in Salisbury or Amesbury last year, repeatedly offering its expertise to the British investigation, yet all Russian requests have been stonewalled by London.

https://www.rt.com/uk/455757-novicho...ts-ambassador/

Blimey is it still the Russians? I thought HMgov buried that with a satisfied sigh at avoiding the stocks.

Despite strong words coming from the British Prime Minister Theresa May that it was “highly likely” the Russian government was behind the attack, and multiple countries slapping Russia with sanctions based on that belief, the UK government made little to no evidence public as their secretive investigation drags on for over a year.

It's also “highly likely” that she's the most duplicitous PM since Eden, though that doesn't appear to be much of a restraint.