A story full of holes, not least the FACT that REAL "Novichok" is so deadly no one could survive ANY contact with it at all. The purpose of this stunt was to discredit and demonize Russia to manufacture the public's consent for a war the deluded political class thinks it can win. The British military can't fill a modest football stadium... just saying.
Not quite true. There was at least one documented survivor of an accidental lab exposure in Russia, however that person was damaged for life and did not live all that long afterwards either.
We can't know. Not one thing is verifiable, except how the story got USED for propaganda by the UK war party. And with the advent of AI, we probably won't ever really know what happened to these two people. Being an asset of UK intelligence doesn't come with a great retirement plan?
The business of both Skripals somehow "getting better" after exposure to an agent designed to "age in" and become essentially untreatable by standard antidotes in a couple of MINUTES is strong evidence that whatever happened, it was NOT what the Brits describe.
If they had been exposed to the claimed agent and then somehow treated by knowledgeable persons equipped with the right antidotes within minutes, far faster than any testing could have provided needed information on whatever might have caused their symptoms & unconsciousness?
Or they were exposed to SOMETHING ELSE.
Quite aside from the lack of any believable motive for Russia trying to kill them. Just because they're evil? Please.
It's all BS, same as the "suicide" of David Kelly.
Another great article, Kit. The Salisbury incident stunk of a false flag right from the start, so it's always nice to get some actual evidence to the fact. This'll be another one for the archive.
On a downbeat, concerned note, I do hope that Sergei and Yulia are ok. Because being disappeared by the Circus is no laughing matter.
On a positive note, I absolutely love the ironic anecdote about feeding ducks. Given that the official narrative is a third rate spy farce, it's clear in retrospect that you simply can't write a story like that without a duck-feeding scene. It simply wouldn't be the same without it.
I wonder if MI5 have put those three kids on a primary watch list. I would, if I worked in Thames House's counter-espionage section. You never know, after all, what devious tricks those pesky Russians get up to with their recruitment strategies these days. Best be vigilant, I say.
As a 55yr old grandmother living in Australia even I knew this cockameme skripal story was laughable rubbish. They must think the average person is a moron, or they just don’t care.
The average person is unfortunately quite moronic, gullible and non caring. They belive what they are told to believe, and once the majority believes it, there is no question that it's right.
An excellent contribution to a rapidly developing tale of MI6 irresponsibility and treachery. John Helmer's Dances with Bears website is essential reading on this matter.
It looks as if the Skripals have been kidnapped after the murder attempt failed- clearly Yulia had come to Salisbury to help repatriate her father and there was no way the spooks were going to allow that to happen.
The likelihood is that currently the Skripals are being detained, illegally and tortured. It is possible that they have been smuggled overseas, or killed.
Wiki says they are living in New Zealand under assumed names. Or at least it did a few years ago when I looked it up. Of course, now the war has taken place, and flopped big time, it's all water under the duck pond.
With all of the skullduggery going on with this and more by the Brits, one has to wonder where they get the idea that the U.S. military is going to be the do all, save all for the west? The U.S. military is not what it used to be. The Yanks know this, which is why they are setting up all of these proxy wars everywhere. They have been spanked too much over the last fifty odd years and don't wish to be embarrassed anymore.
Their much vaunted Abrams tanks and Bradley's are going up in flames in the Ukraine region (along with the Leopards and others). Their Navy is severely undermanned and their ships are limping along, barely able to get underway half the time.
Yet, despite all of that mess, the Europeans and the U.K. still think the U.S. is going to stand behind them in their aggressive behaviors towards Russia.
I read a news article from RT News today about an interview with former president Meledev, where he comes right out and says that the war in Ukraine is just another excuse to strip out the natural resources for the U.S. and Europe and deprive the Russians of any of it. They want to do the same for Russia. He says, it's all about the massive profits the western corporations think they can gain from the military industrial complex and the raw materials to be exploited once they win the war.
Is he right? Is all of this military aggression just power plays by the western corporations for money and power?
It all goes to show us that there are no boundaries to their obsession for wealth at any cost. Poisoning and kidnapping people to prevent secrets being leaked to the media is just par for the course. That has been going on since WWII and maybe before. It won't stop anytime soon.
The worst of them now is the United States since 9/11. They were bad before but that event in their history took them to new highs. All of this will bring down the west very soon it is beginning to look like.
Europe is coming apart, Britain is falling apart, the U.S. is fading away into irrelevance. But until those things happen in their entirety, a lot of people are going to die around the world.
A great article and one that took a long time to read because all the linked articles are equally compelling. Such a tragedy that the MSM-believing masses won't take the time to read it and see what horseshit they're being fed
So the reality, is that if you come into contact with Novichok... that's it for you. You don't make miraculous comebacks, as with the Skripals, the alleged youngster, and then that convicted con-artist and MI-6 Intelligence asset, Navalny. Even IF you just happen to have one the highest ranking Nurses in the British Military, walking by, to notice you in total collapse, while feeding ducks. Apparently there's ways to poison people with Fentanyl - and that's much more survivable... See: Narcan and Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction".
It does, doesn't it… But even if that were just 'fog of war' confusion, in the moment… if it actually WERE a Novichok poisoning…then it should be noted that nearby Porton Down actually has a supply of it.
My read on the two Russians that came to Salisbury, was that they were probably 'turned' (into US/UK assets) by someone like Haspel. Their sudden desire to visit Salisbury seems a bit odd. Were they just alleged GRU people on holiday? Or did their handler recommend they come to the area? Clearly they were already 'of interest' at the CIA, based upon the emails in this article.
My original thought was that the two GRU guys going to Salisbury, after partying in London, was a counter-surveillance provocation test (or barium meal, to flush out a mole who knew about their visit). In other words, go to London, make yourself noticed, see how long it takes for the other side to start surveilling you. Walking a few hundred yards away from the Skripals is quite a provocation, after all.
So my original thought was that MI6 got pissed off about their swallowing this barium meal and so decided to turn it into a revenge/propaganda coup. Kit's new info, though, which suggests foreknowledge of the two GRU guys' visit, puts a different slant on it. However, it doesn't remove the barium meal aspect, because CIA/6 still need to account for how they knew about the intended visit. It logically implies a man on the inside (with serious access level). If I was the Russians I'd allow the suspected mole to know about the visit, maybe suggest to him it's an assassination, then see if the other side respond, and if so how, and how long does it take them to respond. If it's a quick response then you know your suspect is a mole.
Classic counter-espionage. If I am correct, then it's no wonder the Circus' response reeks of vindictiveness. Very British public school, actually.
It's not impossible that this is true…but I think the Russians ID'd THEM as the Moles or CIA assets. I say this because the CIA Monitors all web activity, in real time, using supercomputers and things like the ProMIS software, reverse engineered for hacking and other purposes. So if those two guys had their names on a list - as soon as they bought the tickets, they would have been flagged and brought up - without any human intervention. And the Russians have to know this. Anyways - if they're ‘doubles' - then perhaps their handler SUGGESTS that they take that trip…
Either way - when the $hitstorm occurred - the Russians appear to have MADE THEM do a bunch of uncomfortable interviews with the Western MOCKINGBIRD Media. I suspect that they deny them permissions for such interviews - unless they want to make an example of them, and teach them a lesson, while trying to repair the damage that they'd caused.
If the CIA/MI6 can monitor all Internet activity with the help of algorithms to analyse it, no one need be on any watch list. They can simply wait until some Russians are making plans to be in Salisbury and plan an operation around that, hence the 'positive opportunity'. Maybe!
My read is that these guys were on a list, because they were already recruited by the West, to assist in discrediting Russia. They weren't just two random tourists. They had been identified as being in the GRU, publicly, later, after their trip. I'm assuming that they were identified previous to that, and targeted for recruitment. Hence when it was known that they had bought tickets - the people who'd assigned them to visit Salisbury, knew that they now needed to activate, the other elements of the scheme.
That's an exceedingly interesting hypothesis, and there's definitely something in it. If the 'operation' was pre-planned (as this new info suggests), and the plane tickets were the trigger, then getting an asset to trigger the algorithm would seem like a decent plan. I guess it depends what name/alias an agent uses and whether the algorithm is aware of that alias. If so, then the obvious counter-espionage question is how does it know. This is why I suggested that it was a provocation test/barium meal. If they are not sure if the algorithm knows, then doing this kind of test is a logical decision. The important point about surveillance being if you know you are being monitored then you are in control of the flow of information, or misinformation, as the case may be.
On the other paw using their own names, knowing the algorithm would be triggered, has to be viewed by the Russians as either base incompetence or deliberate treachery!
I think if it was up to me, in the counter-espionage section, I'd suggest it's truth serum time.
I really don't think those Russians were with any intelligence agency. They approached a TV station and did an interview in Russia after they were named as suspects - which they totally didn't need to do - and they came across as quite shocked and scared, and like they wanted to clear their names
I don't know anything about nerve agents but I have unfortunately seen a drone video of a Russian soldier dying from exposure to poison gas in Ukraine, and it was very quick (and horrible to watch). The idea that the Skripals got hit with a chemical weapon and then just passed out on a park bench is absurd.
I believe the Russians who got accused of the poisoning said they travelled to Salisbury for a meeting about some kind of 'supplements' that might be illegal in Russia. Would have been very easy to set them up if that was the case
So it seems obvious that this psy-op was aimed at pushing "Russian asset" Trump into the Russophobic silo the Brits wanted him boxed into. They used the Times and double agent Haspel to get it done. And when that didn't quite work as well as they hoped, they floated "Russian bounties" in 2020 which was supposed to be the coup de gras for the Trump presidency. Haspel was pivotal in that one too. Now the Brits have their ultimate dream, Biden authorizing ATACMs deep inside Russia. They can start ww3 and say "the Yanks did it."
Interesting that the Skripals aren’t allowed to testify, opens the UK to conspiracy theories. We know that ‘Democratic’ states kill their own people when circumstances ‘demand’ it (like the Hannibal Directive for example) why wouldn’t they have a couple of handy defectors terminated to forward their geopolitical agenda?
Look, it’s got a Russian dimension so how could the CIA and MI6 actually NOT be bad actors in this?
I love the fact that in MSM reports the close proximity of Porton Down is never mentioned. If there was nothing very fishy about this case you'd expect at least one hack to mention the "coincidence" of PD being not far from the "door handle".
It makes no sense for the Skripals to be poisoned by Russia but as defectors, it makes a LOT of sense for the CIA/MI6 to 'attempt' to poison them and blame it on the Russians, if I were a betting person, and there was a way of finding the truth, I'd put money on Alexander Litvinenko being poisoned by the same people, they are evil and like Pompeo said, they take courses on how to lie, cheat and steal, what's another murder for propaganda purposes! Anyone want to bet on Navalny having been poisoned as well!
I totally agree about Litvinenko. I think that's to do with the apartment bombings. Litvinenko was in agent-support for the Caucuses, from whence the terrorists came (at the behest of the CIA). So, if he was a double agent then betraying some of those agents, who would've been feeding info back to Moscow about possible attacks, means there's a gap in the defences. Interesting that this kind of thing is one of the main plot points in Skyfall. There's usually some limited hangout in the Bond movies after all.
But certainly if Russia wanted to execute Litvinenko they would've been more efficient about it, and not having their assassins take their pet vial of Polonium to a restaurant, the theatre, a football match, and their hotel room. Unless they were just weirdly fond of their little vial...
There are, in other words, very similar narrative aspects to both Litvinenko and Skripals. 3rd rate spy farce stuff, I mean.
A story full of holes, not least the FACT that REAL "Novichok" is so deadly no one could survive ANY contact with it at all. The purpose of this stunt was to discredit and demonize Russia to manufacture the public's consent for a war the deluded political class thinks it can win. The British military can't fill a modest football stadium... just saying.
@Jim Williamson
Not quite true. There was at least one documented survivor of an accidental lab exposure in Russia, however that person was damaged for life and did not live all that long afterwards either.
That means they didn't survive.
@LaVerne Karras
We can't know. Not one thing is verifiable, except how the story got USED for propaganda by the UK war party. And with the advent of AI, we probably won't ever really know what happened to these two people. Being an asset of UK intelligence doesn't come with a great retirement plan?
It was Fentanyl poisoning
The business of both Skripals somehow "getting better" after exposure to an agent designed to "age in" and become essentially untreatable by standard antidotes in a couple of MINUTES is strong evidence that whatever happened, it was NOT what the Brits describe.
If they had been exposed to the claimed agent and then somehow treated by knowledgeable persons equipped with the right antidotes within minutes, far faster than any testing could have provided needed information on whatever might have caused their symptoms & unconsciousness?
Or they were exposed to SOMETHING ELSE.
Quite aside from the lack of any believable motive for Russia trying to kill them. Just because they're evil? Please.
It's all BS, same as the "suicide" of David Kelly.
And acting like they were hit with something similar to BZ, including surviving without permanent neurological damage.
Another great article, Kit. The Salisbury incident stunk of a false flag right from the start, so it's always nice to get some actual evidence to the fact. This'll be another one for the archive.
On a downbeat, concerned note, I do hope that Sergei and Yulia are ok. Because being disappeared by the Circus is no laughing matter.
On a positive note, I absolutely love the ironic anecdote about feeding ducks. Given that the official narrative is a third rate spy farce, it's clear in retrospect that you simply can't write a story like that without a duck-feeding scene. It simply wouldn't be the same without it.
I wonder if MI5 have put those three kids on a primary watch list. I would, if I worked in Thames House's counter-espionage section. You never know, after all, what devious tricks those pesky Russians get up to with their recruitment strategies these days. Best be vigilant, I say.
To anyone who isn’t a moron or totally blinded by MSM nonsense, the Skripal “poisoning” always seemed bizarre in the extreme.
As a 55yr old grandmother living in Australia even I knew this cockameme skripal story was laughable rubbish. They must think the average person is a moron, or they just don’t care.
The average person is unfortunately quite moronic, gullible and non caring. They belive what they are told to believe, and once the majority believes it, there is no question that it's right.
Oh honey, watch your back. Pompeo and his malignant cabal don't play around.
An excellent contribution to a rapidly developing tale of MI6 irresponsibility and treachery. John Helmer's Dances with Bears website is essential reading on this matter.
It looks as if the Skripals have been kidnapped after the murder attempt failed- clearly Yulia had come to Salisbury to help repatriate her father and there was no way the spooks were going to allow that to happen.
The likelihood is that currently the Skripals are being detained, illegally and tortured. It is possible that they have been smuggled overseas, or killed.
Wiki says they are living in New Zealand under assumed names. Or at least it did a few years ago when I looked it up. Of course, now the war has taken place, and flopped big time, it's all water under the duck pond.
With all of the skullduggery going on with this and more by the Brits, one has to wonder where they get the idea that the U.S. military is going to be the do all, save all for the west? The U.S. military is not what it used to be. The Yanks know this, which is why they are setting up all of these proxy wars everywhere. They have been spanked too much over the last fifty odd years and don't wish to be embarrassed anymore.
Their much vaunted Abrams tanks and Bradley's are going up in flames in the Ukraine region (along with the Leopards and others). Their Navy is severely undermanned and their ships are limping along, barely able to get underway half the time.
Yet, despite all of that mess, the Europeans and the U.K. still think the U.S. is going to stand behind them in their aggressive behaviors towards Russia.
I read a news article from RT News today about an interview with former president Meledev, where he comes right out and says that the war in Ukraine is just another excuse to strip out the natural resources for the U.S. and Europe and deprive the Russians of any of it. They want to do the same for Russia. He says, it's all about the massive profits the western corporations think they can gain from the military industrial complex and the raw materials to be exploited once they win the war.
Is he right? Is all of this military aggression just power plays by the western corporations for money and power?
It all goes to show us that there are no boundaries to their obsession for wealth at any cost. Poisoning and kidnapping people to prevent secrets being leaked to the media is just par for the course. That has been going on since WWII and maybe before. It won't stop anytime soon.
The worst of them now is the United States since 9/11. They were bad before but that event in their history took them to new highs. All of this will bring down the west very soon it is beginning to look like.
Europe is coming apart, Britain is falling apart, the U.S. is fading away into irrelevance. But until those things happen in their entirety, a lot of people are going to die around the world.
excellent work. Kit is simply #1. No wonder the Brits wanted to snatch him. A Swiss group came to a similar conclusion concerning the Skripals: https://swprs.org/political-arrests-poisonings-deaths/
A great article and one that took a long time to read because all the linked articles are equally compelling. Such a tragedy that the MSM-believing masses won't take the time to read it and see what horseshit they're being fed
So the reality, is that if you come into contact with Novichok... that's it for you. You don't make miraculous comebacks, as with the Skripals, the alleged youngster, and then that convicted con-artist and MI-6 Intelligence asset, Navalny. Even IF you just happen to have one the highest ranking Nurses in the British Military, walking by, to notice you in total collapse, while feeding ducks. Apparently there's ways to poison people with Fentanyl - and that's much more survivable... See: Narcan and Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction".
http://dilyana.bg/skripals-poisoned-with-fentanyl/
http://dilyana.bg/uk-defense-ministry-document-reveals-skripals-blood-samples-could-have-been-manipulated/
Wow, that original statement mentioning fentanyl really seems like a smoking gun
It does, doesn't it… But even if that were just 'fog of war' confusion, in the moment… if it actually WERE a Novichok poisoning…then it should be noted that nearby Porton Down actually has a supply of it.
My read on the two Russians that came to Salisbury, was that they were probably 'turned' (into US/UK assets) by someone like Haspel. Their sudden desire to visit Salisbury seems a bit odd. Were they just alleged GRU people on holiday? Or did their handler recommend they come to the area? Clearly they were already 'of interest' at the CIA, based upon the emails in this article.
My original thought was that the two GRU guys going to Salisbury, after partying in London, was a counter-surveillance provocation test (or barium meal, to flush out a mole who knew about their visit). In other words, go to London, make yourself noticed, see how long it takes for the other side to start surveilling you. Walking a few hundred yards away from the Skripals is quite a provocation, after all.
So my original thought was that MI6 got pissed off about their swallowing this barium meal and so decided to turn it into a revenge/propaganda coup. Kit's new info, though, which suggests foreknowledge of the two GRU guys' visit, puts a different slant on it. However, it doesn't remove the barium meal aspect, because CIA/6 still need to account for how they knew about the intended visit. It logically implies a man on the inside (with serious access level). If I was the Russians I'd allow the suspected mole to know about the visit, maybe suggest to him it's an assassination, then see if the other side respond, and if so how, and how long does it take them to respond. If it's a quick response then you know your suspect is a mole.
Classic counter-espionage. If I am correct, then it's no wonder the Circus' response reeks of vindictiveness. Very British public school, actually.
It's not impossible that this is true…but I think the Russians ID'd THEM as the Moles or CIA assets. I say this because the CIA Monitors all web activity, in real time, using supercomputers and things like the ProMIS software, reverse engineered for hacking and other purposes. So if those two guys had their names on a list - as soon as they bought the tickets, they would have been flagged and brought up - without any human intervention. And the Russians have to know this. Anyways - if they're ‘doubles' - then perhaps their handler SUGGESTS that they take that trip…
Either way - when the $hitstorm occurred - the Russians appear to have MADE THEM do a bunch of uncomfortable interviews with the Western MOCKINGBIRD Media. I suspect that they deny them permissions for such interviews - unless they want to make an example of them, and teach them a lesson, while trying to repair the damage that they'd caused.
If the CIA/MI6 can monitor all Internet activity with the help of algorithms to analyse it, no one need be on any watch list. They can simply wait until some Russians are making plans to be in Salisbury and plan an operation around that, hence the 'positive opportunity'. Maybe!
My read is that these guys were on a list, because they were already recruited by the West, to assist in discrediting Russia. They weren't just two random tourists. They had been identified as being in the GRU, publicly, later, after their trip. I'm assuming that they were identified previous to that, and targeted for recruitment. Hence when it was known that they had bought tickets - the people who'd assigned them to visit Salisbury, knew that they now needed to activate, the other elements of the scheme.
That's an exceedingly interesting hypothesis, and there's definitely something in it. If the 'operation' was pre-planned (as this new info suggests), and the plane tickets were the trigger, then getting an asset to trigger the algorithm would seem like a decent plan. I guess it depends what name/alias an agent uses and whether the algorithm is aware of that alias. If so, then the obvious counter-espionage question is how does it know. This is why I suggested that it was a provocation test/barium meal. If they are not sure if the algorithm knows, then doing this kind of test is a logical decision. The important point about surveillance being if you know you are being monitored then you are in control of the flow of information, or misinformation, as the case may be.
On the other paw using their own names, knowing the algorithm would be triggered, has to be viewed by the Russians as either base incompetence or deliberate treachery!
I think if it was up to me, in the counter-espionage section, I'd suggest it's truth serum time.
I really don't think those Russians were with any intelligence agency. They approached a TV station and did an interview in Russia after they were named as suspects - which they totally didn't need to do - and they came across as quite shocked and scared, and like they wanted to clear their names
Hmm. Possibly. Then again that's precisely the kind of postmodern mischief those pesky Russkies get up to.
I don't know anything about nerve agents but I have unfortunately seen a drone video of a Russian soldier dying from exposure to poison gas in Ukraine, and it was very quick (and horrible to watch). The idea that the Skripals got hit with a chemical weapon and then just passed out on a park bench is absurd.
I believe the Russians who got accused of the poisoning said they travelled to Salisbury for a meeting about some kind of 'supplements' that might be illegal in Russia. Would have been very easy to set them up if that was the case
So it seems obvious that this psy-op was aimed at pushing "Russian asset" Trump into the Russophobic silo the Brits wanted him boxed into. They used the Times and double agent Haspel to get it done. And when that didn't quite work as well as they hoped, they floated "Russian bounties" in 2020 which was supposed to be the coup de gras for the Trump presidency. Haspel was pivotal in that one too. Now the Brits have their ultimate dream, Biden authorizing ATACMs deep inside Russia. They can start ww3 and say "the Yanks did it."
It was not difficult. Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
Actually his initial instincts are quite good. He thought the Skripal case was a nothingburger. But yes, he's easily manipulated.
Interesting that the Skripals aren’t allowed to testify, opens the UK to conspiracy theories. We know that ‘Democratic’ states kill their own people when circumstances ‘demand’ it (like the Hannibal Directive for example) why wouldn’t they have a couple of handy defectors terminated to forward their geopolitical agenda?
Look, it’s got a Russian dimension so how could the CIA and MI6 actually NOT be bad actors in this?
Always useful to pull the old Chemical Weapons card of course.
Remember: CW = evil
2000lb bombs = good
I love the fact that in MSM reports the close proximity of Porton Down is never mentioned. If there was nothing very fishy about this case you'd expect at least one hack to mention the "coincidence" of PD being not far from the "door handle".
Danceswithbears site for more lately
It makes no sense for the Skripals to be poisoned by Russia but as defectors, it makes a LOT of sense for the CIA/MI6 to 'attempt' to poison them and blame it on the Russians, if I were a betting person, and there was a way of finding the truth, I'd put money on Alexander Litvinenko being poisoned by the same people, they are evil and like Pompeo said, they take courses on how to lie, cheat and steal, what's another murder for propaganda purposes! Anyone want to bet on Navalny having been poisoned as well!
I totally agree about Litvinenko. I think that's to do with the apartment bombings. Litvinenko was in agent-support for the Caucuses, from whence the terrorists came (at the behest of the CIA). So, if he was a double agent then betraying some of those agents, who would've been feeding info back to Moscow about possible attacks, means there's a gap in the defences. Interesting that this kind of thing is one of the main plot points in Skyfall. There's usually some limited hangout in the Bond movies after all.
But certainly if Russia wanted to execute Litvinenko they would've been more efficient about it, and not having their assassins take their pet vial of Polonium to a restaurant, the theatre, a football match, and their hotel room. Unless they were just weirdly fond of their little vial...
There are, in other words, very similar narrative aspects to both Litvinenko and Skripals. 3rd rate spy farce stuff, I mean.