It is "highly likely" that Russia deployed a deadly weapons-grade toxin to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal. Porton Down, the UK's leading chemical research lab, says there is "no doubt" the toxin was Novichok-class nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union. And Russia surely did it, because the very word 'Novichok' is Russian for 'newcomer.'
RT's Murad Gazdiev examines the stunning discrepancies that emanate from the Skripal case, as the blame game against Moscow continues.
The report includes commentary from renowned chemical weapon experts, both Russian and Western-based, who told RT the formula of Novichok-class agents is actually an open secret as any - yes, you heard it right - laboratory in the world may produce the same substance with the same degree of purity. Moreover, the pace at which the UK authorities identified the poison used on the Skripals raises even more questions.
Watch RT's report in full here:
Comment: Given that it wasn't Russia, suspicions naturally fell on the British security services. But the choice of location for poisoning the Skripals is highly odd - Salisbury, home of British chemical weapons manufacturing for a little over a century. Why would the British paint a target over themselves in this way?
Combined with the British government's utterly bizarre handling of this incident - while being utterly convinced that this was done to them 'from without' - we are led to suspect a 'third force' was behind this.
As former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray wrote one week after the incident in early March: