Former Russian spy in 'critical condition' after being exposed to unknown substance

[Crazedwraith]

Were all The US' noise on this coming from Rex Tillerson? Because with him being fired that may come to nothing.

[The Romulan Republic]

Clearly from Russia my ass. Why in the world would Russia deliver such a self own to NATO?

I guess Putin might want to shit test Britain somehow, but I don't buy it.

Now I guess these WMD attacks demand a massive war on Iraq to deliver democracy and untold peace to the broader Middle East

So you're not only a racist but a Putin apologist. Why am I not surprised? Those two things do tend to overlap a lot these days.

TRR, I owe you a bit of an apology for giving you shit about lighting your pants on fire over this. Back channel efforts to invoke Article V are actually in progress according to VOA. Not sure if they count as American propaganda, though, and haven’t seen it picked up elsewhere.

Given that invoking Article V seems to me a very short step away from declaring World War III, I can honestly say that I really, really wish that I had been wrong, and that you had been right.

On that note- can anyone clarify what the point of invoking Article V would be, and what actions it would allow to be taken, other than war with Russia? Because I find it hard to believe that Britain is actually ready to burn the world over this.

Russia is already doing more to aggravate NATO than this spy assassination so it most probably wouldn't make much difference. I mean what is the UK going to do, invade Russia like it did Iraq?

Or perhaps to look at it another way, what was done to Skripal with the violation of the sovereignty and targeting of UK citizens with collateral damage is minor compared to what the UK and allies did in Iraq in terms of citizens killed and collateral damage. What were the consequences to them by the rest of the world? Nothing significant, and that's most probably what's going to happen here with Russia. I mean if they think its going to hurt by denying oligarchs the ability to shop at Harrods, then all I can say is that if true, those oligarchs are wimps.

I'm glad you find it amusing that Russia's nuclear weapons allow it to commit terrorist attacks with chemical weapons without fear of really serious retaliation (unless Britain is actually prepared to burn the world over this).

Were all The US' noise on this coming from Rex Tillerson? Because with him being fired that may come to nothing.

I'm really not sure what to feel about that, if so. Tillerson being fired for being critical of Russia would be further proof of Trump's... well, if its not technically treason, its certainly treasonous in spirit.

Tillerson being fired for trying to push us on a possible course to WW3 though? It would be hard for me to fault that. I really don't want to be nuked.

[FireNexus]

On that note- can anyone clarify what the point of invoking Article V would be, and what actions it would allow to be taken, other than war with Russia? Because I find it hard to believe that Britain is actually ready to burn the world over this.

The point of it would basically be to get the rest of NATO to start treating Russia like the rogue state it is, including harming their own interests in pursuit of that goal. It probably wouldn’t jump to war were it to happen, but it would be like a mosquito bite to everyone’s trigger finger.

What more worries me is that Britain is shopping around Article V at all and that it probably won’t happen. Britain has talked big shit on this, they’re fingering Russia for blame, and they’ve gone so far as using diplomatic back channels to discuss calling it an act of war against them. This leaves us with three potential scenarios:

1.) Article V is invoked and everybody goes along with it. We have a situation where the second biggest nuclear power is back in at least a Cold War with the whole West. Possible WW3, but not guaranteed.

2.) Back channels tell the brits that Article V being invoked will not be respected. This includes not just the US, but most of the rest of Europe who are all still pretty fucking pissy about Brexit. This means NATO is functionally broken, but officially intact.

3.) Britain invokes Article V and somebody in the alliance tells them to fuck off. Probably just the US, but maybe a lot of the EU. NATO is broken visibly and officially.

There is also:

4.) Britain finds a way to give Russia a suitable punishment and the reports of backchanneling on Article V are bullshit. This is my propaganda worry, because it would mean VOA is being used to attempt to break up NATO. Which is fucking still scary.
———————
I’m not sure where we stand right now. But I’m almost certain Article V doesn’t get invoked. I just have no way to be sure exactly what shade of Very Bad Thing this is if not.

[The Romulan Republic]

Okay, thanks.

I hope that the Article V stuff is just idle talk, not something that's likely to happen. Although, if it were invoked... at this point, I honestly doubt Trump would come to Europe's aid against Russia (I doubt Turkey would, either). In which case, I guess NATO becomes the European Treaty Organization (plus Canada)?

Congress might (in fact, probably would) vote to honour Article V, but the only thing scarier than possibly waging war with Russia, is possibly trying to wage war with Russia while our Commander in Chief is a Quisling.

As much as Russia needs to be checked, it would be in everyone's best interests if we stayed clear away from any mention of Article V, and anyone who's bringing it up (weather because they want to invoke it, or because they are trying to spread misleading information for ulterior motives) is behaving irresponsibly, in my opinion. There are a lot of other possible responses that would be less dire in their implications, and should be tried first.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Clearly from Russia my ass. Why in the world would Russia deliver such a self own to NATO?

I guess Putin might want to shit test Britain somehow, but I don't buy it.

Now I guess these WMD attacks demand a massive war on Iraq to deliver democracy and untold peace to the broader Middle East

Britain has no means of meaningful retaliation. NATO might back sanctions, but Putin's favorite puppet is gonna ignore those like he ignored the ones that passed the US Congress with a veto-proof majority. Nobody is gonna go to war over a low-casualty nerve agent assassination attempt. It warns other spies that they're never outside Putin's reach. It offers up a chance for NATO to start making noises and Putin's favorite puppet to throw one of his trademark tantrums and effectively destroy NATO by making it absolutely clear that the only truly meaningful player in it doesn't give a shit what Russia does.

Nerve agents that actually are an effective means of killing people can't be cooked up in some shed. They're complicated. They're expensive. This was a state-sponsored action. Maybe North Korea, to try and make Russia look bad. But that's pretty damn implausible Putin has a history of having people killed, and Russia has learned that polonium-210 poisoning is about the most easily traced way to kill someone.

[The Romulan Republic]

Clearly from Russia my ass. Why in the world would Russia deliver such a self own to NATO?

I guess Putin might want to shit test Britain somehow, but I don't buy it.

Now I guess these WMD attacks demand a massive war on Iraq to deliver democracy and untold peace to the broader Middle East

Britain has no means of meaningful retaliation. NATO might back sanctions, but Putin's favorite puppet is gonna ignore those like he ignored the ones that passed the US Congress with a veto-proof majority.

Frankly, Trump should be impeached for that alone.

Ah, well, we'll see what's possible in that direction after this November.

Nobody is gonna go to war over a low-casualty nerve agent assassination attempt. It warns other spies that they're never outside Putin's reach. It offers up a chance for NATO to start making noises and Putin's favorite puppet to throw one of his trademark tantrums and effectively destroy NATO by making it absolutely clear that the only truly meaningful player in it doesn't give a shit what Russia does.

The Quisling has to go. Any effort to contain Putin is unlikely to succeed as long as his lickspittle is "President" of the United States.

In a sane world, Trump would have been impeached and imprisoned (or removed for mental instability under the 25th. Amendment) already. But he's not the only Quisling in our government.

Nerve agents that actually are an effective means of killing people can't be cooked up in some shed. They're complicated. They're expensive. This was a state-sponsored action. Maybe North Korea, to try and make Russia look bad. But that's pretty damn implausible Putin has a history of having people killed, and Russia has learned that polonium-210 poisoning is about the most easily traced way to kill someone.

This. Plus its been positively identified as a type of nerve agent that was created by the Russian government (well, specifically, the Soviet government).

[Rogue 9]

Novichok nerve agent attack 'clearly came from Russia', says Tillerson

And right after saying that, he was fired.

[MKSheppard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent

Extremely potent fourth-generation chemical weapons were developed in the Soviet Union and Russia from the 1970s until the early 1990s, according to a publication by two chemists, Lev Fedorov and Vil Mirzayanov in Moskovskiye Novosti weekly in 1992.[10][11][a] The publication appeared just on the eve of Russia's signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention. According to Mirzayanov, the Russian Military Chemical Complex (MCC) was using defense conversion money received from the West for development of a chemical warfare facility.[2][3] Mirzayanov made his disclosure out of environmental concerns. He was a head of a counter-intelligence department and performed measurements outside the chemical weapons facilities to make sure that foreign spies could not detect any traces of production. To his horror, the levels of deadly substances were 80 times greater than the maximum safe concentration.[3][12]

The existence of Novichok agents was admitted by Russian military industrial complex authorities when they brought a treason case against Mirzayanov. According to expert witness testimonies prepared for the KGB by three scientists, Novichok and other related chemical agents had indeed been produced and therefore the disclosure by Mirzayanov represented high treason.

Mirzayanov was arrested on 22 October 1992 and sent to Lefortovo prison for divulging state secrets. He was released later because "not one of the formulas or names of poisonous substances in the Moscow News article was new to the Soviet press, nor were locations ... of testing sites revealed."[3] According to Yevgenia Albats, "the real state secret revealed by Fyodorov and Mirzayanov was that generals had lied—and were still lying—to both the international community and their fellow citizens."[3] Mirzayanov now lives in the U.S.[14]

One of the key manufacturing sites was the Soviet State Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology (GosNIIOKhT) in Nukus, Soviet Uzbekistan.[15] Small, experimental batches of the weapons may have been tested on the nearby Ustyurt plateau.[16] It may also have been tested in a research centre in Krasnoarmeysk near Moscow.[15] Since its independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has been working with the government of the United States to dismantle and decontaminate the sites where the Novichok agents and other chemical weapons were tested and developed.[15][16]

In 2002, the United States Department of Defense dismantled the major research and testing site for Novichok at the Chemical Research Institute in Nukus, under a $6 million Cooperative Threat Reduction program.[17][18]

....

On 12 March 2018, the UK government stated that a Novichok agent had been used in an attack in the English city of Salisbury on 4 March 2018 in an attempt to kill former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.[30] British Prime Minister Theresa May said in Parliament: "Either this was a direct action by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of its potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others."[30]

Idiots. if you want to send a message about a GRU turncoat spy, you send people to beat his knees with truncheons, not use a nerve agent that only you ever produced

[MKSheppard]

If I was Theresa May, I'd have some FSB "illegals" suddenly get killed in totally deniable ways, and then act like "who? what? we don't know of them"

[EnterpriseSovereign]

A Russian exile who was close friends with the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been found dead in his London home, according to friends.
Nikolai Glushkov, 68, was discovered by his family and friends late on Monday night. The cause of death is not yet clear. One of his friends, the newspaper editor Damian Kudryavtsev, posted the news on his Facebook page.
Without confirming the man’s name, the Metropolitan police said the counter-terrorism command unit was leading the investigation into the death “as a precaution because of associations that the man is believed to have had”.

Link. Timing is suspicious but so far there doesn't appear to be any link to the nerve agent.

[Vendetta]

Britain has no means of meaningful retaliation.

There are a hell of a lot of Russian oligarchs with assets in London (London property is very often used for money laundering because it is quite easy to anonymise). It would be a shame if someone were to levy taxes on them....

Magnistky laws in the UK would actually have an effect on the people Russia is governed for and by.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well May has announced that a bunch of Russian diplomats will be kicked out of their embassy within the next week.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm glad that Britain is taking a hard line, without doing something crazy like invoking Article V or declaring it an act of war.

However, really crushing sanctions will depend on US cooperation. Nicky Halley said the right things from what I saw at the UN today, but we all know who she ultimately answers to, and how little his word on anything means.

[Sea Skimmer]

Crushing sanctions would require the Germans not to literally be in the process of hooking up another gas pipeline to Russia as we speak. Which they are, and have steadfastly refused not to build. I doubt anything economic will come out of this at all, let alone anything that would actually matter. Europe has too much stake in the Russian pie as a market, and if the Ukraine war ect... only got us what we have now, why should anyone care about nobody dying (yet anyway) in a WMD attack on NATO soil?

The US wouldn't mind more economic sanctions on Russia one bit, because the stuff that would bite the deepest, sanctions on the Russian oil and gas industry, would actually be economic boosts to US exports. Trump would have no problem signing sanctions that reduce the US trade deficit to the EU and stimulate fracking. But again, even under Obama sanctions against Russia for a much bigger problem were heavily deflected by European opposition.

[His Divine Shadow]

I'm glad that Britain is taking a hard line, without doing something crazy like invoking Article V or declaring it an act of war.

However, really crushing sanctions will depend on US cooperation. Nicky Halley said the right things from what I saw at the UN today, but we all know who she ultimately answers to, and how little his word on anything means.

It's interesting how differently we can view this... In my view, the brits are not taking a hard line but giving the russians a slap on the wrist. In my opinion they are posturing ineffectively and being premature about it. They should have done what Macron and Corbyn said and waited.

If they wanted to take a hard line they'd do what Corbyn talked about re all that shady russian money. Ofcourse that caused the tories to shit themselves in parliament.

[LaCroix]

I think the Article V thing is a bit of posturing that has to be seen in regards to the Brexit negotioation. Britain is getting spanked there, right now, and they want to be seen as strong.

[Mange]

TRR, I owe you a bit of an apology for giving you shit about lighting your pants on fire over this. Back channel efforts to invoke Article V are actually in progress according to VOA. Not sure if they count as American propaganda, though, and haven’t seen it picked up elsewhere.

Given that invoking Article V seems to me a very short step away from declaring World War III, I can honestly say that I really, really wish that I had been wrong, and that you had been right.

On that note- can anyone clarify what the point of invoking Article V would be, and what actions it would allow to be taken, other than war with Russia? Because I find it hard to believe that Britain is actually ready to burn the world over this.

No, I also don't think that Britain wants that. However, with the U.S. and Russia possibly inching towards a military confrontation in Syria, the effect of invoking Article V could be disastrous (and I doubt Britain will actually invoke it).

[His Divine Shadow]

This is great.
https://twitter.com/PeoplesMomentum/sta ... 5689795584

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm glad that Britain is taking a hard line, without doing something crazy like invoking Article V or declaring it an act of war.

However, really crushing sanctions will depend on US cooperation. Nicky Halley said the right things from what I saw at the UN today, but we all know who she ultimately answers to, and how little his word on anything means.

It's interesting how differently we can view this... In my view, the brits are not taking a hard line but giving the russians a slap on the wrist. In my opinion they are posturing ineffectively and being premature about it. They should have done what Macron and Corbyn said and waited.

If they wanted to take a hard line they'd do what Corbyn talked about re all that shady russian money. Ofcourse that caused the tories to shit themselves in parliament.

Let me qualify that statement: they're taking a harder line than they have in the past, and than some expected that they would.

They could certainly do more. I am skeptical, however, as to how effective certain measures would be without US cooperation, and... well, there's a Quisling in the White House.

Hopefully come November, we'll be able to get some real movement on remedying that.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well the Brit Cop who was hospitalised has been discharged, still no word on the condition of the original victims though.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, that's good news, and gives me a little more hope for the victims who are still in hospital.

[Broomstick]

Well the Brit Cop who was hospitalised has been discharged, still no word on the condition of the original victims though.

A little digging got me "critical but stable, probably with some loss of cognitive ability" but that's still vague.

The antidote to that sort of nerve agent is, itself, toxic - it's not unusual for survivors to be left disabled.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well the Brit Cop who was hospitalised has been discharged, still no word on the condition of the original victims though.

A little digging got me "critical but stable, probably with some loss of cognitive ability" but that's still vague.

The antidote to that sort of nerve agent is, itself, toxic - it's not unusual for survivors to be left disabled.

The news speculated that there's a strong possibility that they might never recover, I believe that was based on the typical effects of nerve agents rather than their specific condition.

The police have gone from telling other customers from the same diner/restaurant to wash the clothes they were wearing (and double-bagging stuff to be dry-cleaned), to arrange for the police to collect the items to be destroyed via incineration. IMO, I can't imagine anyone wouldn't have already thoroughly washed whatever clothes they had on at the time.

[Broomstick]

That would also include things like shoes, which aren't normally washed frequently.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Other countries have shown a surprisingly large amount of solidarity with the UK versus Russia now, with several of them expelling Russian diplomats themselves.

Link.