Couple 'exposed to unknown substance' in Wiltshire town of Amesbury...

The message isn’t we’ll get you though. They didn’t get them dead and they had the fucker locked up in their own jail, so if they wanted to get him they wouldn’t have let him out and given him a passport and allowed him to move to Wiltshire.

Been struggling to find a motive for Russia to do this.

And have drunkenly come up with one:

To test the unity of the EU/UK/US in the face of Brexit/Trump.


Flame me.

 

GRU is the airport code for São Paulo, which in Cyrillic is an anagram for Novichok

 

They should raise this at their annual performance review. And slag the boffins for their shit gear.

 

have they hit their KPI's ?

 

Every thing in russia is creaking old shit - so are these. It's not actual Jane/idris bond.

 

military grade creaking old shit no doubt.

 

Killing People Indicators?

 

etc /

 

If they were extradited they would face a trial in the U.K., where it would have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they were guilty. They won’t be extradited though.

 

Really stand up guy, not an idiot at all, I know from work, in his mid-70's with a long and reputed background sat down with me and a few pints a couple of months back and shared his Alien Illuminati hidden hands of history conspiracy theory with some gusto. Appeared to really believe this shit. I demurred and he has never mentioned it again. My point is that this nonsense appears to have embedded itself in many otherwise sane minds.

On the OP. This looks like a botched op. The Russians have been assassinating people in the UK over quite a few years and in this case did a particularly bad job of it. If the dose had been higher and it appeared Skripal had died from a heart attack the poison would not have been detected and it would have been yet another slightly mysterious death of a Russian national in the UK to add to the already long list in existence.

 

It's all really rather strange and I don't really see what the Russians would have gained even if this had all gone as planned

 

A warning to other people not to run and/or keep their heads down when they do?

A demonstration to European governments that the Russians will do this kind of thing so factor it into any decision making?

Just good old fashioned spite?

As other people have posted, how many people here, and aground the world have been killed and the deaths gone under the Radar? We are pretty good here at the whole CBRNe thing even compared to the rest of the EU. How many heart attacks, rapid onset leukaemias, or strokes around the world in late middle aged Russian chaps were more successful interventions?

 

Security services going off on one. Lucky they didn't go to war, huh.

 

Skripal didn't run, he was a prisoner swap.

 

If I was training assassin spooks "how to conduct yourself on telly" would probably not be one of the core modules

 

This is how they ended up like that

 

Not to give any credence to conspiraloonery, but has it not been suggested that Skripal was still doing some of the type of work he was trained to do, rather than lying low, and this would be ample motive for the assassination attempt, even if that work were not related, as has also been suggested, to the whole UK/Russia/US election/referendum meddling/Trump/Brexit/Cambridge Analytica et al/ Steele etc affair?
As far as the method is concerned though, that does appear to have been about sending a message or why not use something simpler?

 

It's not been suggested it's been shown. But my faith in novichok now fatally undermined

 

I agree its not really clear what the russian motives were - but "sending a message" is definitely one of them. They used novichok as a calling card to say "it was us" without having to say it officially. Ditto the RT interview with the failed assassins. Maybe the gay stuff was a way of having a "joke" on the Uk et al - whilst humiliating the bungling agents.
As to why they felt the need to off Skripial - fuck knows. Maybe Putin was bored and just wanted to do some murderous trolling of the UK so as to buff up his bond villain credentials.

 

Keep hearing Baltic states with regard Skripal so I'd guess the forthcoming Dansk court case

 

I know this needs taking with a massive pinch of salt, but The Sun is claiming to have spoken to people at the hotel where the spies were staying, claiming that the smell of cannabis wafted from their twin room, whilst they partied with a prostitute, the night before the assassination attempt.

True or not, I don't suppose this will win them friends back home.

 

So they arrive in the UK, head to East London and book into a scabby hotel. Then pop out to Whitechapel to buy a 20 quid draw? Er?

 

Needs taking less with a pinch and more with a Siberian mine of salt. Appropriately.

The world has gone mad. I'm waiting for the photo of them at a secret meeting in an Whitechapel alley with Corbyn...

 

A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a Little Fish. He Had a Big Enemy.
Interesting article about the incident. Nothing particularly new but it lays out the hatred Putin has of traitors, especially from the intelligence community, and how Skripal raised his profile by talking to foreign intelligence agencies about his work as a spy.

 

Where's the evidence that this plays well to a domestic audience? Are ordinary people in Russia cheering on this kind of murder?

 

This may surprise you but very few people in russia read the sun

 

As I recall, there were some Moscow vox pops at the time of the poisoning saying words to the effect that he had it coming to him - possibly some stuff about traitors, too.

Russia likes its strongman leaders, and this will have been at least in part a national pride thing.

 

What channel, when?

There's been steady protests against the pension reforms for well over a month now, I don't think Russia likes its strongman leaders.