© Toby Melville / Reuters
Police officers seal off the road on which Russian Sergei Skripal and his daughter have been staying in Salisbury, Britain, March 7, 2018.
On Sunday a former British-Russian double agent and his daughter were seriously injured in a mysterious incident in Salisbury, England. The British government
says that both were hurt due to "exposure to a nerve agent". Speculative media reports talk of Sarin and VX, two deadly nerve-agents used in military chemical weapons.
Anonymous officials strongly hint that 'Russia did it'.
New reports though point to a deep connection between the case and the anti-Trump/anti-Russia propaganda drive run by the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton election campaign.
Sergei Skripal
once was a colonel in a Russian military intelligence service. In the early 1990s he was
recruited by the MI6 agent Pablo Miller. He continued to spy for the Brits after his 1999 retirement. The Russian FSB claims that the British MI6 paid him $100,000 for his service. At that time a Russian officer would only make a few hundred bucks per month. Skripal was finally uncovered in 2004 and two years later convicted for spying for Britain. He was sentenced to 18 years and in 2010 he and other agents ware exchanged in a large spy swap between the United States and Russia. Skripal was granted refuge in Britain and has since lived openly under his own name in Salisbury. His wife and his son died over the last years of natural causes. The only near relative he has left is his daughter who continued to live in Russia.
Last week his daughter flew to Britain and met him in Salisbury. On Sunday they went to a pub and a restaurant. At some point they were poisoned or poisoned themselves. They collapsed on a public bench and are now in intensive care. A policeman one the scene was also seriously effected.
Comment: Apparently Skripal, his daughter, and the attending officer weren't the only ones
affected:
A total of 21 people were injured and three remain in hospital after the "incident involving attempted murder" which left the former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, in critical condition, British police have said.
"Multiple people have been treated, around 21 people, including the man and the woman found on the bench," the acting chief constable of Wiltshire Police, Kier Pritchard, told Sky News, referring to Skripal and his daughter. He also said that all those affected went through "the hospital treatment process" and, in particular, had blood tests.
The acting Wiltshire Police head also said an unspecified "smaller" number of the injured were police officers. He then added that only three people, including the former agent and his daughter, remain in hospital. The third person is a local police sergeant, identified as Nick Bailey.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said earlier that the officer remains in "serious but stable" condition, adding that he "is conscious, talking and engaging." She also added that Bailey was "one of the first responders," who helped Skripal.
As Moon of Alabama points out, it would make little sense for Russia to be behind this. It's the same dynamic as the "Assad/chemical weapons" propaganda in regard to Syria: using chemical weapons on civilians serves no rational purpose to Assad's government and military. There is no good reason to do so, and every reason not to. Same for Russia in this case, which begs the question: who would want Skripal dead, with the Russians left conveniently to be blamed given the hysterical anti-Russia narratives journalists and people of low IQ everywhere are primed to jump to without any actual evidence? In this context, the Steele/Skripal link is tantalizing. Can't have any loose ends lying about, lest you are exposed as treacherous, lying criminals.
Whatever the case, Skripal's poisoning has the potential to further deteriorate UK-Russian relations.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who has previously called for British fighters for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) to be killed, said the Kremlin is becoming an "ever-greater threat" following the incident. Williamson said that Moscow has shown an "increasingly aggressive stance" and that the UK must change the way it deals with the Kremlin following the "disgusting attack."
The Russian Embassy to the UK has reiterated that it has received no information on the case from the British government. "Unfortunately, we have so far received no details on the substance of the case, which is rather worrying," a spokesperson for the embassy said. "Meanwhile, the Foreign Secretary's strongly anti-Russian statement in Parliament looks more like an attempt to send the investigation upon a political track.
Well, the UK would have no interest in sharing any data, given that doing so might expose the fact that Russia
didn't do it.
"Although absolutely no facts were provided to the public, we see the issue being translated into the domain of Russia-UK relations, with an active support by the media. The parliamentary debate as well as the Government stance are a testament of London's growing unpredictability as a partner in international relations, whose policy towards Russia is inconsistent and looks rather miscalculated, not least in the eyes of the Russian public."
...
Rudd's avoidance of the UK/Russia issue follows the stance of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who said on Tuesday that the UK would "respond appropriately and robustly" if a state is found to have been involved. Johnson didn't link Russia directly to the attack, but proceeded to attack the nation, stating that "in many respects a malign and disruptive force."
He also said the UK would reconsider its participation in the upcoming World Cup, which Russia is hosting. He said it was "very difficult to see how UK representation at that event could go ahead in the normal way" if Russian state involvement was proved. Later, a Foreign Office source said that Johnson's comments were not in reference to the England football team's participation.
Commander of Joint Forces Command Sir Chris Deverell said Russia had the capabilities to cripple the UK with cyberattacks on power supplies, air traffic control and even air conditioning. "What they seek to do is to steal, plant, distort, destroy our information," he said, according to the Daily Mail. "It could have very, very serious consequences for a lot of people... They don't care about innocent people going about their lives. They are quite honestly capable of anything."
Former FSB officer Andrey Lugovoy suggested that the poisoning of the ex-Russian double agent may be part of a British campaign to demonize Moscow. "I don't rule out that this is another provocation by British intelligence agencies," Lugovoy told the Guardian.
As is becoming increasingly more the case, the Russians make more sense than the Brits.
Comment: Apparently Skripal, his daughter, and the attending officer weren't the only ones affected: As Moon of Alabama points out, it would make little sense for Russia to be behind this. It's the same dynamic as the "Assad/chemical weapons" propaganda in regard to Syria: using chemical weapons on civilians serves no rational purpose to Assad's government and military. There is no good reason to do so, and every reason not to. Same for Russia in this case, which begs the question: who would want Skripal dead, with the Russians left conveniently to be blamed given the hysterical anti-Russia narratives journalists and people of low IQ everywhere are primed to jump to without any actual evidence? In this context, the Steele/Skripal link is tantalizing. Can't have any loose ends lying about, lest you are exposed as treacherous, lying criminals.
Whatever the case, Skripal's poisoning has the potential to further deteriorate UK-Russian relations. Well, the UK would have no interest in sharing any data, given that doing so might expose the fact that Russia didn't do it. As is becoming increasingly more the case, the Russians make more sense than the Brits.