Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[tonyh29]

7 minutes ago, peterms said:

Yes, I suppose it might. 

But my point is that the story we are told is inherently implausible.  Do you find it believable, at all?

What’s the more plausible theory you want to put forward ?

 

[peterms]

4 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Yes.

Do I believe it all? No.

So much of this is so plainly ridiculous...

[peterms]

4 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

What’s the more plausible theory you want to put forward ?

 

You'll doubtless be aware from your studies that it's not necessary to have an alternative theory in order to make a valid criticism of one already proposed.

Nevertheless, I do have one: I think it more likely that he was hit by Russian mafia, because he seems to be still active and informing on them.  I gather fhey don't like that.

Second choice: something to do with his handler Pablo Miller and the Steele/Orbis file.  But since that brings in MI6 and US intel , I'm sure there can't be anything in it. "We" don't do that kind of stuff, do "we"?

[snowychap]

7 hours ago, peterms said:

You'll doubtless be aware from your studies that it's not necessary to have an alternative theory in order to make a valid criticism of one already proposed.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Quote

Nevertheless, I do have one: I think it more likely that he was hit by Russian mafia, because he seems to be still active and informing on them.  I gather fhey don't like that.

Second choice: something to do with his handler Pablo Miller and the Steele/Orbis file.  But since that brings in MI6 and US intel , I'm sure there can't be anything in it. "We" don't do that kind of stuff, do "we"?

Surely this suggests your issue is the accused protagonists rather than other things?

Edited August 7, 2018 by snowychap

[tonyh29]

11 minutes ago, peterms said:

You'll doubtless be aware from your studies that it's not necessary to have an alternative theory in order to make a valid criticism of one already proposed.

Nevertheless, I do have one: I think it more likely that he was hit by Russian mafia, because he seems to be still active and informing on them.  I gather fhey don't like that.

Second choice: something to do with his handler Pablo Miller and the Steele/Orbis file.  But since that brings in MI6 and US intel , I'm sure there can't be anything in it. "We" don't do that kind of stuff, do "we"?

Problem is the people linking Miller then suggest he had used the Skripals to build a dossier for Clinton to use against Trump and then they were silenced to stop them speaking out 

its all just getting a bit far fetched once you go down the twitter sphere , don’t you think ? 

[villakram]

If Mr. Skripal was still engaged in espionage, e.g., with Mr. Steele et al., is he not a valid military/national security target? Who was he working for, if he was doing so...

E.g., given he got out, if he decided to get back in, I wouldn't be surprised if that action signed his death warrant.

Anyway, the entire story as in the public domain at the current time contains so many holes as to be all too laughable.

[Xann]

11 hours ago, peterms said:

We have been told gel, and spray.  Which is it to be?  Do we go with gel, or something of the consistency of perfume?

De-Solv-It Sticky Stuff Remover kills stickers, not people - But as far as the material's characteristics go? It is a gel that can be sprayed. It matches your description.

[blandy]

12 hours ago, peterms said:

You've not been following the story, have you?

It was a gel that was smeared on Skripal's oufside door handle.  Both he and his daughter touched the door handle, because when you leave a house, it takes two of you to close the door.  It is a nerve agent many times more deadly than VX, but they were not immediately overcome, though it is the most deadly substance in the entire universe.  Instead, they went for a drink, went for lunch, fed the ducks and only then sat down on a bench and succumbed.  Despite being of very different ages, body sizes, and presumably having touched different amounts of the substance, they fell ill at the exact same instant, now several hours after the presumed contact.

Luckily, the police who went in to the house without protective gear, opening the door by turning the handle, did not die, nor exhibit symptoms.  Thanks be to the Lord.  It can only be by divine providence that they were saved.

As well as being a sticky gel, the substance was also able to be sprayed through the nozzle of a perfume dipenser, because that is a characteristic of sticky gels, yes?  It was found in a bottle only made in Russia, though also a well known brand which Charlie Rowley recognised, in a bin which had apparently not been emptied for 5 months.

I'm sure some people believe this.  I'd like to think that most have a firmer grasp on logic and reason.

Sceptical thinking is good, isn't it? So before I leap to agree with you that " most have a firmer grasp on logic and reason" may I do a litle questioning of my own?

Let's take the first point - "it takes two people to close a door". Hmm. How many people, in a household of two adults are permitted to open and/or close the front door? is it only ever one of them, or is it possible, are there any everyday scenarios you can think of, where both of the occupants might touch the door handle within an hour or so of each other? Because only if there aren't, can this "it takes 2 to close a door" be considered as remotely pertinent.

Now lets look at the second point about the lethality, speed of action of the agent and of timing generally. Two people are found on a bench, both unconscious. So the aregument is that because they were both found to be unconscious, they fell unconscious at the the exact same instant? That's very very weak as an argument. "I went into the dormitory in the middle of the night and all the people were asleep, so they must have all fallen asleep at exactly the same time"  Nevertheless, it wouldn't seem beyond the bounds of credibility that two people exposed to similar-ish levels of a toxin within maybe an hour or so of each other, maybe much less, might get to be affected to the same degree at a similar time.

The question as to exactly how long after skin contact the effects of an/the agent kick in is a sensible one. It seems like this particular agent, at the quantities  involved, took quite a while. What to make of that, then? DId the attackers want to be long gone before the victims were found,?were the quantities smaller than necessary to be rapidly effective? and so on. 

"the police who went in to the house without protective gear, opening the door by turning the handle, did not die, nor exhibit symptoms.  Thanks be to the Lord.  It can only be by divine providence that they were saved" - Did they? or is this untrue? The police went to the victims house because of a suspected crime. Would they have been wearing as a minimum those latex fingerprint gloves to avoid contaminating any fingerprint evidence? or more likely, given that by this point, poisoning was suspected, were the people wearing protective gear?

This gel business - who said it was a gel? how viscous was the gel said to be? was it a thin gel that can be sprayed by aerosol, or was it nearly as thick as a nearly set wobbly jelly? whichever, is it possible that the attackers had more than one container of toxin? maybe one with a gel in, to leave on a door handle, and one with an aerosol which they didn't need to use, for a shorter term encounter? IS it possible that once they'd made their attack they then disposed of any other potentially incriminating evidence and scarpered? Maybe as you say, it was ina perfume bottle, either marked as a common perfume, or not marked at all with any label.

Essentially, there's nothing at all in the argument you present which supports that people considering it and agreeing with it have "a firmer grasp on logic and reason" than people who may be sceptical of parts of what we've heard in the media, but nevertheless don't find all of it to be some kind of conspiracy of the media or UK government or secret forces. 

 

[peterms]

13 hours ago, snowychap said:

Surely this suggests your issue is the accused protagonists rather than other things?

My concern is that from the outset the government has stated that Russia is to blame, before much information was available; and since then, they have seemed to want to uphold that narrative rather than seeking the truth.  So we were told things like novichok had only ever been made in the USSR/Russia (untrue); that Porton Down had identified the substance used as coming from Russia (untrue) - both of which were meant to support the line that only the Russian state could be responsible; and we had a 5-month drip-feed of nuggets from "sources" instead of being told facts.  When facts were reported which undermined the narrative, eg the Guardian reporting several months ago that

Quote

...Court documents first reported by Reuters and later published by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta said that a member of Uglev’s lab, Leonid Rink, had been jailed briefly after admitting to selling a small amount of a deadly nerve agent developed under Russia’s so-called foliant programme.

That programme has become famous in the west in recent days as novichok, identified by British authorities as the Soviet-era nerve agent used in Salisbury earlier this month.

The likely sale of the nerve agent to a criminal group in the 1990s will raise questions about Theresa May’s assurances that only a state could have ordered the attack on Skripal...

they weren't followed up, and the government wasn't asked to explain why, when it was widely known that substances like this had been obtained by criminals, they were nevertheless certain that the action had been carried out by the Russian state.  It looks like the aim is to uphold the original attribution of blame instead of solving a crime.  At a time of increasing international tensions, that seems plain daft.

[peterms]

13 hours ago, tonyh29 said:

Problem is the people linking Miller then suggest he had used the Skripals to build a dossier for Clinton to use against Trump and then they were silenced to stop them speaking out 

its all just getting a bit far fetched once you go down the twitter sphere , don’t you think ? 

Some of the people referencing Miller may go on to make the further links you mention.  Others have commented that on the day Miller was mentioned in a press outlet, the government issued two D notices preventing people like Miller being named.  Since Miller lives locally, is believed to be Skripal's handler, is connected to Orbis (his Linkedin profile listing Orbis as his employer has vanished, but I gather still shows up in web searches), and is a former forces colleague of a BBC journo who has interviewed Skripal several times over the past year, it seems likely that Miller is part of the picture.  Some have claimed that Skripal was the source of some of the information in the Orbis dossier, which seems plausible.  There may turn out to be no connection between the Steele/Orbis dossier and Skripal, but it is plainly not unreasonable or far-fetched to think that there may be.

As Craig Murray pointed out some time ago, the motive for the attack on Skripal is far more likely to be to do with whatever he has been doing recently than a reprisal for actions a decade ago for which he has been tried and punished.

[tonyh29]

15 minutes ago, peterms said:

Some of the people referencing Miller may go on to make the further links you mention.  Others have commented that on the day Miller was mentioned in a press outlet, the government issued two D notices preventing people like Miller being named.  Since Miller lives locally, is believed to be Skripal's handler, is connected to Orbis (his Linkedin profile listing Orbis as his employer has vanished, but I gather still shows up in web searches), and is a former forces colleague of a BBC journo who has interviewed Skripal several times over the past year, it seems likely that Miller is part of the picture.  Some have claimed that Skripal was the source of some of the information in the Orbis dossier, which seems plausible.  There may turn out to be no connection between the Steele/Orbis dossier and Skripal, but it is plainly not unreasonable or far-fetched to think that there may be.

As Craig Murray pointed out some time ago, the motive for the attack on Skripal is far more likely to be to do with whatever he has been doing recently than a reprisal for actions a decade ago for which he has been tried and punished.

the Miller link came from the  "Meduza"   outlet in Russia , I got the impression the D notice was in response to that , telling publications to essentially not divulge his name and whereabouts ? that they both live in Salisbury could be significant ..or could be nothing more than they like the place

 

A bit of digging links Miller with Litvinenko somewhere down the chain  , how you interpret that I guess depends on ones view of who killed him ( Litvinenko )

[peterms]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

So the aregument is that because they were both found to be unconscious, they fell unconscious at the the exact same instant? That's very very weak as an argument.

No, the argument is that we have been told from the outset that the substance used was a "military grade" version of a poison which is 5-8 times more deadly than VX, and that nerve agents are very quick acting.  This doesn't sit well with the gap of several hours between them leaving the house, and being affected. 

2 hours ago, blandy said:

The police went to the victims house because of a suspected crime. Would they have been wearing as a minimum those latex fingerprint gloves to avoid contaminating any fingerprint evidence? or more likely, given that by this point, poisoning was suspected, were the people wearing protective gear?

Photos of the police outside the house show them not wearing protective gear.  However, DS Bailey is reported to have been wearing police issue standard gloves.

2 hours ago, blandy said:

This gel business - who said it was a gel? how viscous was the gel said to be? was it a thin gel that can be sprayed by aerosol, or was it nearly as thick as a nearly set wobbly jelly? whichever, is it possible that the attackers had more than one container of toxin? maybe one with a gel in, to leave on a door handle, and one with an aerosol which they didn't need to use, for a shorter term encounter? IS it possible that once they'd made their attack they then disposed of any other potentially incriminating evidence and scarpered? Maybe as you say, it was ina perfume bottle, either marked as a common perfume, or not marked at all with any label.

Reports usually refer to "sources", which I take to be the intelligence services, when they are not quoting police announcements.  That seems to be where the reference to gel comes from.  The thing about a perfume bottle comes from Charlie Rowley, who says it was a bottle in a sealed package, and was recognised by Dawn Sturgess as a perfume.  I suppose that means it had a brand name, but I've seen no mention of what brand it was.  I suppose if there was no branding, he wouldn't say that it was a perfume she recognised.

[peterms]

12 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

the Miller link came from the  "Meduza"   outlet in Russia , I got the impression the D notice was in response to that , telling publications to essentially not divulge his name and whereabouts ? that they both live in Salisbury could be significant ..or could be nothing more than they like the place

Yes, the first D notice followed the Meduza piece (I gather it's a "Russian opposition" site, never heard of it).  There was a second D notice a week later.  Not clear what prompted that - maybe in response to some questions?

[blandy]

12 minutes ago, peterms said:

No, the argument is that we have been told from the outset that the substance used was a "military grade" version of a poison which is 5-8 times more deadly than VX, and that nerve agents are very quick acting.  This doesn't sit well with the gap of several hours between them leaving the house, and being affected. 

Photos of the police outside the house show them not wearing protective gear.  However, DS Bailey is reported to have been wearing police issue standard gloves.

Reports usually refer to "sources", which I take to be the intelligence services, when they are not quoting police announcements.  That seems to be where the reference to gel comes from.  The thing about a perfume bottle comes from Charlie Rowley, who says it was a bottle in a sealed package, and was recognised by Dawn Sturgess as a perfume.  I suppose that means it had a brand name, but I've seen no mention of what brand it was.  I suppose if there was no branding, he wouldn't say that it was a perfume she recognised.

That's a more reasoned post than the earlier one, with good points/questions/observations.

I'm not an expert on these things at all - my experience being limited to being gassed once a year as a member of the forces and having to do the various drills and exercises and so on for an in NBC gear (noddy suit and mask etc.). I do know that the method of delivery and dosage has a significant impact on how long it takes for CWs to have effect - inhalation of gas/aerosol is very rapid (can be pretty instant), skin contact much less so.

We don't know what actions the Skripals took, unconsciously even - i.e. did they wash their hands before their meal, did they "feel" the oily substance on the door handle and wipe their hand(s) on coats or clothing or whatever to get the "grease" off?

It's absolutely certain that 1 person has died and 4 were seriously harmed by rare toxic substances in Salisbury - so there was a CW agent of some sort. The international labs, the UK lab are all as one as to the nature of the CW. Personally, while we may not have all the information as to why it took more than 2 hours for the Skripals to become unwell from the CW, this is kind of tangential to the main issue, which is that they did become unwell due to the contact with a CW (as did the policeman and the two more recent victims).

So for all the curiosity and (public or private) unknowns, the conspiracy theory stuff and accusations of lacking in "reason or logic" is pretty weak. The 3 theories that don't range into complete fantasy are

1. Russian Gov't agency hit. As per multiple previous state murders of opponents defectors, critics etc. 

2. Arms length Russian hit, deniable by the Russian Gov't and official agencies - ditto above

3. Russian mobsters did it, motive being either to make Putin look weak or bad, or for some unknown reason, (speculatively Skripal did something they didn't like, maybe).

Our government may or may not have gone OTT on blaming it on Russia with such certainty, or without having the absolute 100% proof, but realistically, chances are they're right. There's basically no other credible possibility. 

[peterms]

12 minutes ago, blandy said:

1. Russian Gov't agency hit. As per multiple previous state murders of opponents defectors, critics etc. 

Is there a previous case of the murder of a spy who has served his/her sentence and been traded in a spy swap?  Commentators with experience of diplomacy (Craig Murray) and spying (Annie Machon) say not.  The point that is made is that it's not just pointless, it's actually counterproductive because it would discourage future spy swaps, and in the face of that, reverting to an idea that it's about some kind of "revenge" is pretty weak. 

If killing him would in some way advance the interests of Russia, it would seem a much more reasonable conclusion that they did it.  And the idea that they would do it using something which has inevitably been linked to Russia suggests that they cared so little about the consequences that they chose this over an anonymous attack.  The argument for this seems to be that they think it will be a powerful warning to other possible traitors, but people making this argument don't explain why trying to kill him in a way that isn't quickly blamed on Russia would not also send such a warning, with less danger of international repercussions.

[blandy]

31 minutes ago, peterms said:

Is there a previous case of the murder of a spy who has served his/her sentence and been traded in a spy swap?  Commentators with experience of diplomacy (Craig Murray) and spying (Annie Machon) say not.  The point that is made is that it's not just pointless, it's actually counterproductive because it would discourage future spy swaps, and in the face of that, reverting to an idea that it's about some kind of "revenge" is pretty weak. 

If killing him would in some way advance the interests of Russia, it would seem a much more reasonable conclusion that they did it.  And the idea that they would do it using something which has inevitably been linked to Russia suggests that they cared so little about the consequences that they chose this over an anonymous attack.  The argument for this seems to be that they think it will be a powerful warning to other possible traitors, but people making this argument don't explain why trying to kill him in a way that isn't quickly blamed on Russia would not also send such a warning, with less danger of international repercussions.

Round and round we go. I think this conversation/line has been done in this thread before. The questions are reasonable, though, as they were previously.

It's true as far as I know (by looking at the internet) that there's apparently a bit of a unspoken code about not bopping each others traded spies. Though the extent to which that would hold under various circumstances has to be questionable. Like (as you suggested) if he started doing something more recently (e.g. passing on more info to new countries, such as Spain, or being more public with his talking about Russia and Russian secrets and activities). I mean there's a firsat time for everything, right? and it's not like there isn't a long and sad list of opponents and critics being bumped off by Putin and his cronies. A very long list. There's also, as was posted previously the spoken threat from Putin that he would kick the bucket for betraying Russia (if I've remembered right).

Second point - Litvinenko, for example. Poisoined with radioactive Isotrope after a couple of failed attempts. Russia did it. The UK did little in return. May tried to do nothing at all. Pretty standard Russian modus operandi.

[peterms]

There was a thoughtful piece in the Independent on comparisons between Skripal and Livinenko.

Quote

Boris Johnson just about observed diplomatic protocol when he addressed MPs about the apparent poisoning of Sergei Skripal. He stopped short of accusing the Russian state directly.

But his inference – a malevolent and unjustified inference for the Foreign Secretary of a country that harps on about the rule of law – was indeed of Russian guilt. And it was clearest in the parallel he invited MPs to draw with the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

Now it may indeed be that Russia – or Russians (something rather different) – are responsible for whatever happened in Salisbury. And it is true that Russians in the UK seem disproportionately accident-prone. But it is premature in the extreme to blame the Russian state, and just as misleading to draw this particular parallel with the Litvinenko case.

Both men may have been Russians branded traitors by their homeland, and both may have been victims of poisoning, but there are important differences.

In Russia, Litvinenko worked against organised crime; he was less a spy in the conventional sense than a criminal intelligence officer. He fled the country after blowing the whistle on his corrupt bosses, and applied for asylum in the UK. His first choice, the US, had turned him down on the apparent grounds that the information he had to offer was not valuable enough.

Unlike Skripal, he started working for MI5/6 only after arriving in the UK, and even then seems to have had difficulty getting on the payroll. His widow, Marina, is still battling to get the intelligence agencies to pay a pension or recognise a duty of care.

It is cruel to say so, but Litvinenko seems almost to have been more use to the UK in death – as a totem of Russia’s general badness – than he was in life.

Sergei Skripal’s history is quite different. As a colonel in Russian military intelligence (the GRU), he was recruited by the British in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, before being tried and imprisoned in Russia for treason.

His luck turned in 2010, when he was included in the spy swap that allowed Anna Chapman and her fellow “sleeper” agents to return from the US to Russia. Skripal was pardoned; he and his wife came to the UK, and their adult children were free to travel to and fro.

The point is that an honour code has governed spy swaps pretty much since they began. Those exchanged become the responsibility of the country they spied for and are left alone by the country they betrayed. If it were otherwise – if the swapped spy became fair game for state retribution of whatever kind – then the whole practice would be negated.

This – even more than the time lag, and the fact that Skripal’s children were able to travel – is why the Russian state, as such, is unlikely to have targeted Skripal. Either that, or – as some are suggesting – Russia now feels that it has so little to lose that it is ripping up the rule book. Personally, I doubt that.

I doubt, too, that the presentations Skripal reportedly gave to the UK military and others about the workings of the GRU – a sort of quid pro quo for his UK pension – were a reason, as some have suggested, why he might have been vulnerable.

This is a common deal for swapped spies; Oleg Kalugin, the highest-level known KGB defector to the US, and Oleg Gordievsky in the UK, have both given talks about their former work for years without fatal consequences.  

This does not mean that individuals or groups with their own grievances against Skripal might not have sought to exact revenge. Nor that his continuing ties in Russia, via his daughter and late son, might not have increased any risks. What he did, in betraying agents, is in many books the worst form of treachery. And it is possible to divine other, more exotic, theories.

For the moment, though, I will resist the temptation to delve into my inner Le Carre and return to Litvinenko. As I said, there are crucial differences between the two – differences that should militate against state-sponsored assassination being the favoured explanation for Skripal’s plight.

But there should be doubts, too, about this judgment in the case of Litvinenko. The conclusions of the Litvinenko inquiry, now treated as unimpeachable proof of Russian state culpability, are nowhere near as definitive – or credible – as they have since been presented.

The much-trumpeted (and over-interpreted) conclusion of the judge, Sir Robert Owen, was that “the FSB operation to kill Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev [then head of the FSB] and also by President Putin”.

He said there was “a strong probability” that Andrei Lugovoy poisoned Litvinenko “under the direction of the FSB” and the use of polonium-210 was “at very least a strong indicator of state involvement”. What sort of proof is that?

Plus, the inquiry itself was defective. It took place eight years after Litvinenko’s death – a scandalous delay for a country, let’s say it again, that presents itself as a model of the rule of law.

By then, a consensus had long crystallised on the basis of a massive propaganda campaign (yes, a propaganda campaign), underwritten by Putin’s exiled arch-foe, Boris Berezovsky.

In fact, the inquest exposed Litvinenko’s deathbed indictment of Putin as an artifice composed by others, but this not insignificant detail seems to have been lost.

The biggest defect of all, however, was that possibly vital evidence was not heard in open court, nor was it heard even by the lawyers – only by the judge. This was evidence from the UK intelligence services.

In open court, very few details emerged about Litvinenko’s interactions with MI5/6. One was that, at the time of his death, Litvinenko was receiving a monthly stipend and held regular meetings with his “handler”. Another was that an intelligence officer was present when police interviewed Litvinenko as he lay dying. There was nothing more.

Which brings me to what the Litvinenko and Skripal cases really have in common – and several of the other unexplained deaths of Russian exiles, too: the involvement of UK intelligence.

Now I am not suggesting that “we did it”; nor am I suggesting that it is unusual, or wrong, for MI5/6 to track or “groom” those individuals who might at once be judged vulnerable and useful.

The difficulty – if you want the facts – is that the moment the intelligence services are involved, as they may well be with Russian exiles, the whole subject is covered by a sort of veil, that can both distort and conceal. Practically every conclusion of the Litvinenko inquiry is hedged to some degree. Yet all the hedging has long been removed in the retelling.

Without knowing what British intelligence knew, the rest of us have something less – perhaps a lot less – than the whole truth. Many of the “whats” and the “whys” remain elusive.

It would be consoling to believe that the Litvinenko and Skripal cases will turn out to be different in this respect, too, and that a new openness will prevail. But I can’t say I am holding my breath.

 

[blandy]

That Indie article...quite a long time ago, the Indie did a whole series of articles on Litvinenko, many of them lamenting the weakness of T.May Home Secretary and the U.K. Government in firstly delaying and delaying even an inquiry, and then in essentially making sure the verdict left wriggle room politically, and wasn’t to harsh on Russia. They also lamented Russia’s noncooperation with the inquiry, not allowing the accused to attend etc.

Mary D is obviously at liberty to hold a different view, and writers having different takes is good, but tbh it’s not the best thing there’s been in the Indie about the case. Sometimes she’s good on Russia, sometimes less so. Still, it stops her writing about cricket, then maybe it’s for the best.

[snowychap]

4 hours ago, peterms said:

My concern is...

That appears to support what I wrote.

 

[peterms]

1 hour ago, snowychap said:

That appears to support what I wrote.

 

No, you said it appeared my concern was with the accused protagonists.  As I tried to explain, it is about the behaviour of the government in seeming uninterested in establishing the truth but rather fastening on to a narrative and seeking to defend it, including by making untrue claims.