Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal (part 2)

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

new thread as the old one is practically done.

Its not irrelevant for the Skripals Counterpoint, of whom this thread is about, whoever poisoned them.

Sure, I agree, Betty. We'll never find out what actually happened to them and who was behind their hospitalisation.

Hope they both make full and lasting recoveries and are left alone to piece a life back together again.

Even if they are involved in espionage and were braced for this, Boris&May certainly milked their vulnerability and that's probably another psychological blow.

As Theresa May herself has drawn a parallel between the gas attack in Douma and what happened in Salisbury, I think it’s legitimate to pause for a moment and consider the air strike on Syria. An air strike on a chemical weapons facility doesn’t sound like the safest and most controlled way of reducing the stockpile. I note that the Chemical Weapons Convention explicitly forbids burning chemical weapons in the open air as a means of disposal.

But back to the Skripal case. The more I consider the OPCW’s statement about the high purity of the toxic agent, the more confused I become. I am assuming that the OPCW must be referring to the environmental samples, such as on the door handle, yet even if environmental contamination such as dust or pollen is disregarded, the apparent absence of any degradation products is strange. Most nerve agents would degrade through hydrolysis and there would be some sign of this after two weeks in a sample exposed to moisture in the air. (The OPCW samples were collected two weeks in.)

Would the presence of a degradation product and hardly any other impurities still allow you to speak of a very pure substance by inferring it must have been so at the time of manufacture?

At the very least, it's of interest from the point of view of environmental safety to know whether this substance degrades into a less toxic form in a reasonable time frame or not.

"a laboratory in Shikhany, near Volgograd, which is a branch of the State Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology. "

Further info re door knob, hacking, background etc. www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/04/13/russia-hacked-yulia-skripals-emails-five-years-tested-novichok/

Sorry, screen keeps renewing and blanking my messages. The above quote is where the novichok is believed to originate from.

Shikhany, near Volgograd 500km is close?

the samples they analysed may have been the agent but this agent was not used

Yes. The purity of the sample is the part that confuses me.

betty can’t read your article because of paywall

Possible motive?
The Trump administration was also motivated by how closely the attack followed the use of a nerve agent to poison a Russian ex-spy and his daughter in England in March, an action the UK government and its allies blamed on Russia. www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/warship-ruse-new-stealth-missiles-how-they-attacked-syria

Nursy Times lifted the story from Guardian www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/06/uk-us-case-file-russian-nerve-agent-shikhany-spy-poisoning

An interesting article on the nature of the samples analysed by the OPCW from Sputnik, for those who have been feeling confused about the purity issue. I think we are all aware of the potential bias of the source but would be interesting to see if any of this is taken up by the mainstream media.

www.sputniknews.com/europe/201804151063576783-skripal-case-bz-agent-opcw/

Spiez Laboratory
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Only OPCW can comment this assertion. But we can repeat what we stated 10 days ago: We have no doubt that Porton Down has identified Novichock. PD - like Spiez - is a designated lab of the OPCW. The standards in verification are so rigid that one can trust the findings. #Skipal
12:49 PM - 14 Apr 2018

Very carefully worded.

@nursy1 sorry, i would post all text but on a kindle here. Its free sign up. Am finding the most indepth articles are behind walls. Though the comments sections are still full of bots.

Well that took them longer than I was expecting to accuse the OPCW of a cover up.

I'm afraid I won't click on anything from Sputnik news. I dont want to go and have to clear my cookies.

disarmament-library.un.org/UNODA/Library.nsf/a61ff5819c4381ee85256bc70068fa14/d775b9d1998f6a6c852575cc0054319a/$FILE/cd-789.pdf The UN and other agents have been keeping an eye on Russian CW for a long time. Yes, Russia has facilities similar to Porton Down. OPCW even lets these facilities keep small amounts of CW.

Full letter from UK national security adviser to Nato head alleging Russian units trained to “deliver" novichok, including putting it on door handles. www.scribd.com/document/376270220/Letter-to-the-Nato-secretary-general#from_embed

Interesting to note Skripal was arrested in 2004 and convicted in 2006. Was the letter not proof read?

Overall, we have yet more proof that Boris&May were lying.

Boris& May: Claim a military-grade nerve agent was used.

OPCW: Found a high purity sample.

It can't be both!

Why can't it? Can't you have a high purity military grade agent?

No. The military won't bother cleaning it up just to chuck it out at a load of people they want to kill.

The high purity grade is what you'll need in a lab to use, for example, as a reference or control when doing an analysis such as gcms.

It's usually prohibitively expensive to make high purity agents.

It proves that Boris is a bs merchant and has some agenda for lying to us.

I meant to link to this last week and can’t remember if I did or not.

www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2018/04/06/myth-busting-why-didn-t-the-skripals-die-on-the-spot

Might be relevant if we’re discussing ‘military grade’.

Rafals thanks for posting that .Very interesting .

The term 'military grade' is also completely pointless. Some militaries made very high grade nerve agents during the Cold War, such as the USSR and the United States. However, militaries have made and used much lower-grade nerve agents, such as the very poor quality Sarin that Saddam Hussein made

Are high grade and purity linked ?

Thanks @RafalsTheKindofClay helpful reading

Maybe Boris had been trying to up the rhetorical impact by using the word military' and has now been hoisted with his own petard!

Either way, it looks like the OPCW was given some lab produced substance that had also probbaly served as a reference for Porton Down trying to identify its nature.

Most unlikely that the military (or an assassin) would take steps to purify something to the degree found, and stated so, by the OPCW.

Looks like the only thing of murky grade is Boris&May.

BTW - the fact that the substance analysed by OPCW was found to be so 'pure' would rule out those speculations on mixing of binary agents.

Peridito and Betty - I wouldn't waste any more time with that article posted by Rafals.

The writer who claims to be some expert (obviously isn't from his so-called 'analysis') was accused of being a fraud by a Professor from MIT.