Spy poisoning: why Putin may have engineered gruesome calling card

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...tin-may-have-engineered-gruesome-calling-card

The response from the Kremlin has been uncompromising. The foreign ministry described Theresa May’s accusation against Moscow as a “circus show”. Its boss Sergei Lavrov said there was no proof the poison used against Sergei Skripal came from Russia. And the embassy in London promised an “equal and opposite reaction” to any UK measures.

Beneath this bluster, however, is cool calculation. Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury with a Moscow-made military nerve agent, developed during the 1970s and 1980s during the cold war. Whoever wanted to murder him might have used a subtler weapon. Instead, his assassins picked Novichok. How it was deployed remains unclear.

Sergei Skripal scandal has sent UK-Russia relations tumbling. What next?

One former employee of the Russian special services said nerve agents were used only if the goal was to draw attention. “This is a very dirty method. There’s a risk of contaminating other people, which creates additional difficulties,” he told the Kommersant newspaper, adding: “There are far more delicate methods that professionals use.”

Hard to say if this was a frame job or an overt message being sent to all potential defectors out there. My guess is the latter. So, put me in the "Russians did it" camp.

Another spy bites the dust. Dangerous, wicked game they play.

The USSR/Russian Federation is the only country that manufactures/possesses the Novichok (Newcomer) nerve agent. The versions Novichok-5 and Novichok-7 are 8x more lethal than VX. Novichok is a binary nerve agent composed of two separate non-toxic components (not on the banned list) that only become toxic when mixed together. The combined formulation is a fine powder that is difficult to detect. Weaponized Novichok is also resistant to atropine antidote therapy. Death is from cardiac arrest or asphyxiation. It is manufactured in a Biosafety Level 4 facility (NII-2) on the outskirts of Moscow. This nerve agent is rare and definitely Russian.

Something bugging me about this.

Why the hell would Russia use a clearly USSR-origin nerve agent?

I mean...possibly because they WANTED everyone to know it was them, while still being able to deny it.
But by the same token someone ELSE could have used something that slipped through the cracks when the USSR collapsed to make it look like a Russian attack.

And since both are possible, without more data points we'll never be sure.

Damnit.


Edit: Be interesting to know whether there is any chance some of this nerve agent got misplaced or lost at some point.

Edit 2: And how fast it degrades or decomposes, if at all, over time.

JacksinPA said:

One former employee of the Russian special services said nerve agents were used only if the goal was to draw attention. “This is a very dirty method. There’s a risk of contaminating other people, which creates additional difficulties,” he told the Kommersant newspaper, adding: “There are far more delicate methods that professionals use.”

Click to expand...

You wanna talk attention?



Who shouted the loudest against Putin's plant in The White House? After that grotesquely unconvincing predidential election outcome? Everyone in the corridors knows perfectly well, it was full blown election fraud. And McCain was the leading voice speaking out against the scum, and what happened? Suddenly skull cancer.

The message is pretty damn clear, init? "Play ball, top one percent, and I'll let you line your already fat pockets with the blood of the bottom 99. But if you should listen to that little voice in the back of your mind... I'll f---ing melt your brain with your kids watching! So, you my n---a?" And the senators have stopped acting up. 'Cause Putin can get to any one of them.

This won't stop, before Putin hangs from the Kremlin.