Is there a thread about the poisoning of Skripal? [title edited by MNHQ]

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I've not seen a thread about it at all, but surely there must be?

Meditrina. Extracts from Telegraph article.

The Telegraph understands that Col Skripal moved to Salisbury in 2010 in a spy swap and became close to a security consultant employed by Christopher Steele, who compiled the Trump dossier.

Valery Morozov, a former construction magnate who fled Russia after revealing corruption, claimed last night that Col Skripal, 66, was still working, and remained in regular contact with military intelligence officers at the Russian embassy.

I was imagining that perhaps he might be in touch with people in Moscow who were pissed off with Putin.

Whoever did this has tested how strong we are and how well supported we are on the international scene

With what purpose though?

Yes, that was clear from the Consortium article, which also names the consultant who is believed to behave been in touch with both ORBIS and Skripal.

The New Yorker article (also linked earlier in the thread) does not link Skripal to Steele.

I wouldn't know how much weight to put on Morozov's claims. How does he know that, and what does he say the purpose of any meetings were? It's highly implausible that a London based GRU officer would be telling a disgraced former colleague anything useful about Russia (assuming that such an officer would have good access in the first place).

Or are you/is he speculating tge Skripal was a continuing Russian asset? In which case, what would his utility be to then?

Meditrina

Who knows in the murky world of spying. I am no expert. I had imagined that Morozov, if he was exposing corruption in Russia, would have been in touch with people, perhaps in the security services, during his investigations who were not so keen on Putin and helping him. Perhaps passing on information to an old colleague in the hope he would tell our security services.

If Skripal is a continuing Russian asset that would put another spin on it altogether.

Maybe I am over anxious as it’s all so close to home and am so sad at what happened to the two poisoned; but I do wish we knew more about degree of contamination too

I completely agree, spring. I'm finding it difficult to focus on the 'bigger picture', while I'm concerned about contaminated money, for example, circulating in the area.

Its being reported today that they suspect the nerve agent was on the door handle of Skripals car. Its also said that 38 people were affected by the poison.

Whoever did this has tested how strong we are and how well supported we are on the international scene. With what purpose though?

There’s an election coming up in Russia. Putin will win, of course but they may be worried about low turnout.

The aim is possibly to hit the UK, Skripal is probably just collateral damage. It’s an action just below the level at which Britain HAS to respond with serious action. It makes Russia look strong and the UK look weak.
The Uk will probably respond with sanctions against high ranking Russians - that’s a mixed bag because forcing oligarchs out of the UK loses a lot of money (a lot of it dirty but some of it clean.) Russia is quite happy for powerful Russian emigres who may oppose Putin to lose their boltholes abroad.

It’ll also have been a sounding exercise to see how well we cope with such an attack (not brilliantly well it would appear although the first responders and porton down have done well.)

The UK loses whatever we do. We don’t have he strength or international consensus to do anything. Trump is nicely in his box due to whatever Putin has on him and so Vlad can carry out his whatever he has planned (maybe the Balkans should be worried) without threat of serious reprisal.

The fixing of the US election looks now like a way to install a weak president who will not oppose Russia.

WW3 anyone?

It really is bloody scary.

But I remember when Russia went in to Afghanistan and we all thought WW3 was imminent then.

I've recently been reminded that the UK Equestrian team boycotted the Moscow Olympics because of that.

I think that I'm more concerned about a modern style cold war, with cyber warfare and energy security the main weapons. They don't need to risk a single soldier to cripple us.

Absolutely - ww3 may well be fought with nukes (in which case as they say ww4 will be fought with sticks) but proxy wars, hacking, disruption of power supplies etc is all very effective

All Russia has to do is turn off the gas pipelines anyway. I doubt they want outright war, but they may wish to nibble away at their borders and deter us from reacting

A cyber attack on a bit of not-so-critical national infrastructure might well be the next escalation.

Defending critical national infrastructure is a role that is unsung (and quite possibly underfunded) because the importance is only noticed when there is a major outage.

So - without wanting to stray too far into prepper territory - it is worth thinking about hope you would cope for 48 hours or so if a system went down. Do you still have a chequebook and keep at least some cash at all times? Do you have offline records of key online accounts and transactions? And a printed version of your contacts list?

If you have wireless controlled equipment in your house, do you still have an override to non-smart?

I think you may have just turned me into a prepper.

If the gas is turned off my Aga will go out. #firstworldproblem.

It wouldn’t be Home stuff so much that would worry me. Read an article once on cyber attacks on logistics chains. The country would grind to a halt ver6 quickly if supply chains to Tesco, Sainsbury, fuel depots etc dried up.

Surely they wont trigger Art 5?
Doing so would put NATO in a corner wouldn't it? Because any action that fell short of a military response taken after Article 5 would be an admission of weakness: "Its an armed attack against all of us so we're imposing financial constraints..."

Whereas if we don't trigger it there are other options that could hurt Putin, without such dangerous escalation.

See, I disagree somewhat. The last time Article 5 was invoked only a relatively small part of the support offered was overtly military. The vast majority of agreed actions involved strengthening intelligence, increasing security and offering assistance as "needed". Everyone agreed that the most important thing was ensuring that the US looked and felt protected and supported by international allies. In that case, sending a few more NATO troops to Estonia or the Ukraine ought to send the message that NATO is still strong without escalating into anything crazy. I suspect that Eastern Europe would be somewhat relieved to, as I guess they're feeling even more vulnerable than usual. If Putin really is testing the water vis-à-vis the strength of NATO then that's where he'll go next.

Thanks that's interesting unweabedrainbow
So I am overestimating the significance of Art 5?
That's good I guess if it gives us more options for responding without escalating things militarily.

Its being reported today that they suspect the nerve agent was on the door handle of Skripals car. Its also said that 38 people were affected by the poison.

You see this is where I am losing faith in the Police right now.

This car, was shown at Ashley Wood Garages on the 8th March. Having been brought there to investigate.

Having already known the nerve agent, and closing down Zizzi's and the Mill (on the 5th March), why was the car brought to the garage for examination and not somewhere more secure?

Having towed/taken it from 'somewhere' (now we know it's Sainsbury's) - why take so long to shut Sainsbury's car park?

Deadliest nerve agent known, and new cordons appearing.

They're not giving a running commentary, sure, but they're not giving ANY commentary.

Moira Stewart on R2 this morning mentioned punitive measures against Russians in this country?

The UK has called for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the poisoning of a former double agent in Salisbury, the Foreign Office says.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43402506

Russians have warned of retaliation if we expel the 23 diplomats - source sky news

So what did we think of Theresa May's speech?

I thought it was fairly reasonable, measured and dignified. I don't know enough (yet) to understand whether her talk about the Magnitsky act actually covers anything to do with Russian dirty money. I think she had to hold some stuff back for the next stage following Russia's retaliation.

I think Corbyn had to ask some important questions. His timing though did not show the united front I had hoped for. I say that as a left leaning Liberal.

We really need to tackle the control Russia holds over various purse strings.

OhYouBadBadKitten
Terrible speech, she set a high bar on Monday, 3 people inc a serving Police Officer are seriously ill following a nerve agent attack linked apparently to Russia?
Yet she expels 23 Russians, says the Royal family wont go to WC and thats about it, ambassador still here....... yet he was running a 23 strong spy ring and we did nothing about it???? plus his sneering tone over the attack.
Nothing about Russian money sloshing around London and little about International response, so aside from warm words, no other country will act with us.
Corbyn and Labour have been asking for tougher actions against Russian money for some time now, May has blocked it, prob because they have funded the conservatives.

The BBC news page has "Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Britain of "playing politics" and ignoring an international agreement on chemical weapons.
He said Moscow would co-operate if it received a formal request for clarification from the UK under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which sets a 10-day time limit for a response."

Have the UK done this "formal request" do we know? Would it dot some i's to submit this to Russia then they wouldn't be able to use it as an excuse for not responding?

I guess she might be keeping the ambassador here so she can eject him at the next stage of this? I agree with you about the money laundering. It did dawn on me after I typed this that kicking RT out of this country should be happening.

Are we still sending a team to the World Cup then.