“A separate hit team, a man and a woman, are being sought for the direct attack. The hit team then disposed of the poison in a used clothing charity drop box in a nearby “needle park”.
Rowley, was “dumpster diving” and found the poison-filled perfume bottle and gave it to his girlfriend Sturgess as a gift. She applied it to her wrists and died. “
If this is correct (and I assume it is more likely than not) it implies that the attackers disposed of the poison in a way that they knew would harm other people.
And also, they had to assume that the bottle etc would be recovered, analyzed and connected to the Skripal poisoning.
So they actually wanted Russia to be identified as the attacker, as, I guess, a deliberate public provocation. ?
If all that is true, Putin is testing the West.
The hit team knew they were getting away clean and didn’t want that agent around any longer than they had to.
I assume it’s the Russians, although the messages back, confirming the hit were radio bounced through the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea and then on to? Likely to avoid a digital trail.
The attackers understood that blood tests of the targets would reveal the agent. They didn’t care, the GRU knew that it would all be denied politically.
Col. Skripal was a double agent that cooperated after his arrest to avoid execution and then became trade bait.
Skripal stayed in the game and was helping the Estonian spy program. That’s likely when the Russians ordered the hit.
The Russians don’ t care about exposure, they are that arrogant.