“It is now clear that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. This is part of a group of nerve agents known as “Novichok.” Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world leading experts at the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so, Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations, and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations, the government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal.”
WOW! that’s a whole lotta weasel-worded speculation!
Definitely not WW3 worthy
People who make try to make cases like this to incite superpowers against each other scare me a whole lot more than Russia!
This whole thing plays a lot more like a spy vs spy bungle or a clandestine mission gone bad
And Putin doesn’t bungle
If he wanted this guy dead, he’d be dead
I get the feeling that somebody is going to kick over a garbage can and MASH's Colonel Flagg is going to pop out.
““It is now clear that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia.”
And that is the word of Teresa May, and the British intel establishment that tried to damage Trump, spied on Michael Flynn, stop Brexit, and intensify a new cold war.
Totally believable //s
I read they were both found slumped over on a bench. That sounds like commonly available fentanyl. Nerve gas would have them doing the funky chicken, not dozing off. Also, fentanyl explains first responders being contaminated. It’s happened to a lot of cops here in the US.
and by the way, you can look up the formula for this stuff on wiki: made of common ingredients which is why it was developed - to bypass international treaties against chemical warfare agents
Its extreme deadliness actually doesn’t make it an assassination weapon unless you want to risk taking out the assassin and causing other collateral damage too-but I;m sure Porton Down (where VX nerve agent was first developed) and other CW research facilities have been working on novichok scenarios for the past 25 years
This whole thing reads more like someone was involved running a test of smuggling this stuff to see if they could get away with it but ooops
Interestingly the UK has a spy thriller series called STRIKE Back and the Jan 31 episode was about an operation using novichok= what are the odds
Episode 6 Jan 31 2018
“Section 20 track down Maya, a local Muslim woman Lowry radicalised, to a local airport. When she attempts to release the Novichok, Reynolds shoots her. The Novichok is fake however, as Berisovich does not want an attack committed in his country. In the meantime, Yuri finds the team and attempts to kill Reynolds; she shoots him but he escapes. Jensen traces the gas’ radiation background and learns that Markov’s lab is in Pripyat, Ukraine. By the time Section 20 arrives, Berisovich had already called in the FSB to extract Markov and confiscate the Novichok. Yuri resurfaces to kill McAllister and Wyatt. However they turn the tables and strangle him to death. They then manage to engage the FSB and contain the gas. But in the process Reynolds is exposed. Markov works on an antidote but is killed by the Russians before he can complete. McAllister improvises and saves Reynolds, before Novin blows up the lab. Lowry uses the remainder of the gas to kill Berisovich for trying to betray her. She later gets a call from an acquaintance, who reveals that her husband is still alive”.
I posted the above because links to this episode storyline that I found yesterday are disappearing from the web