Nerve Agent Attack In Britain.

[Wobbly Head]

 

Wish she was our PM. Her hair is much nicer for starters.

And she does have more balls than Boris

[JasonJ]

Here is where the arrogance is startling. They thought they would kill him, and that nobody would try to smuggle any samples out. Or if they did, that it simply didnt matter, because nobody would believe it.

 

So why didnt they shoot him and blame it on a Chechen? They got away with it fine last time. Or is it they have a shitload of this stuff filling up the communal fridge at GRU headquarters and they are desperately trying to get rid of it?

They might have known it wouldn't be enough to kill him. Instead maybe kind of like riding on the edge of tolerance and hitting on Navalny in a long term sort of way by whittling down but also by putting him out of activity for a while in the short term. If he was killed, surely the international response would be more severe.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well they arrested his family. That didnt work. They arrested him. That didnt work. They fired paint in his eyes and nearly blinded him. That didnt work. I think that that point the only option they had left in the box was state execution.

 

If this was a misguided effort at a warning, I cant help but think using something other than one of the worlds most powerful nerve agents would be a starting point. OTOH, neither the GRU or FSB really show any indications of hiring Mensa level individuals, so there is that....

[Der Zeitgeist]

Well, looks like they screwed up actually killing Nawalny, but possibly at least managed to finally kill Nord Stream 2. I guess that's something.

[Adam Peter]

Wish she was our PM. Her hair is much nicer for starters.

If only she would care about the baby Putins she created in Central Europe as she cares about the Russian opposition. Hope the NL will be strong enough to break her back.

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

 

Wish she was our PM. Her hair is much nicer for starters.

And she does have more balls than Boris

 

Even my Jack Russell Terrier has more balls than Boris, and she is a bitch.

[JasonJ]

Navalny out of the hospital today.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-europe-54262279

[Stuart Galbraith]

They must have made that man out of the very same stuff the built the T34 out of. Putin must be beside himself. 'Ive tried paint! I tried arresting him! I arrested his family! I used my chemical stockpile, now what?'

My heart bleeds for him.

[JasonJ]

On the bright side, he's doing better than Liu Xiaobo.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well he was, till they took his flat away, and seized his bank account.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bailiffs-freeze-navalnys-moscow-home-over-dollar11-million-lawsuit/ar-BB19nX76

Then they blamed him for poisoning himself.

https://www.ibtimes.com/vladimir-putins-latest-theory-his-rival-alexei-navalny-may-have-poisoned-himself-3051241

Which I do find absolutely hilarious. Despite having no apparent knowledge of chemistry, he synthesized the most deadly battlefield agent known to man (actually a different variant of the Novichok used in Salisbury so he appears to have an ability to develop entirely new weapons as well), then uses it on himself with apparently no guarantee he would survive. For what end? No idea. Fortunately Navalny seems to have retained his reknowned sense of humour.

'Navalny responded to Putin’s theory on Instagram after he was released from the hospital.

“Good theory, I believe it deserves the most careful attention,” Navalny said in a post translated from Russian. “Cooked Novichok in the kitchen. Took a sip from a flask on the plane. Fell into a coma.'

“Putin outmaneuvered me," he continued. "You can’t fool him. As a result, I lay in coma for 18 days like a fool, but didn’t get my way.”

Edited September 24, 2020 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stuart Galbraith]

Good review of the Salisbury poisonings and deeper thoughts about the incident in the New York times. It's due in TV in the US soon.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/arts/television/salisbury-poisonings.html#click=https://t.co/Mxe1LXuf1U

[BansheeOne]

While I'm posting "Spiegel" interviews, here's one with Navalny.

Quote

Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny on His Poisoning

"I Assert that Putin Was Behind the Crime"

For the first time after his poisoning, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny discusses his near-death experience, Putin's alleged responsibility and Merkel's visit with him in the hospital.

 

Interview Conducted by Benjamin Bidder und Christian Esch

01.10.2020, 13.01 Uhr

 

It's six o'clock in the morning on Wednesday when Alexei Navalny shows up at the Berlin editorial office of DER SPIEGEL for an interview. The office is located a few hundred meters from Charité University Hospital, where Navalny spent a month receiving treatment, hovering between life and death.

 

Navalny, who was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, was only released from the hospital last week.

Four agents from the State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) accompanied him during his visit. Navalny, who wasn't able to walk not long ago, took the stairs to the office rather than the elevator.

Alexei Navalny, 44, is Russia's most prominent opposition politician. Following the attempt on his life on August 20 in the Siberian city of Tomsk, however, he is now squarely in the international spotlight. German Chancellor Angela Merkel intervened for him to be allowed to leave Russia for treatment in Germany. Because he was poisoned with a substance that can essentially only come from state-run laboratories in Russia, the question of Russian President Vladimir Putin's personal responsibility is one that many around the world are asking. It's not the first time that a Russian opposition politician was to be killed, but it is the first time that the circumstances seem to so clearly point at the Kremlin.

The interview with DER SPIEGEL is the first that Navalny has given since the attack. He is alert at the meeting and he remembers many things - and yet the impact of the poisoning is still clear. Scars on his neck show where he was hooked up to a ventilator. When he pours water from the bottle into his glass, it is obvious that it requires effort and he has to use both hands. But he refuses assistance. "My physical therapist says I should try to do everything myself," he says

Navalny seems more nervous than he did at previous meetings. His face is gaunter and his figure more angular after losing 12 kilos. But his voice is the same as it has always been, as is his humor, his irony. Sitting next to him is his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, who was with him on the plane on August 20 when he first began showing signs of having been poisoned.

Before the interview begins, he has something he wants to say.

Navalny: It is important to me that this interview appears in the German press. I have never been closely associated with Germany. I don't know anyone here. I didn't know a single politician. And yet it turned out - you see, my voice is trembling, I have become so emotional - that German politicians and Angela Merkel have taken an interest in my fate and saved my life. The doctors at Charité saved my life a second time and, more importantly, they gave me back my personality. So, the first thing I want to say is: I feel a tremendous gratitude to all Germans. I know it sounds a bit overblown, but Germany has become a special country for me. I had few connections here before and only visited Berlin for the first time three years ago! And then so much human compassion from so many people.

 

DER SPIEGEL: Our readers will be happy to hear that. How are you doing Mr. Navalny?

Navalny: Much better than three weeks ago, and it is getting better each day. Not long ago, I could only climb 10 steps, but now I can make it up to the 5th floor. The most important thing for me is that my mental abilities have returned. Well, maybe we will find the opposite to be true during this interview (laughs).

DER SPIEGEL: You wrote on Instagram that you are no longer able to stand on one foot.

Navalny: Now I can again. My next challenge is to stand on one leg and stretch the other leg forward, which I practice every day. These are actually exercises that ninety-year-olds do in the park.

DER SPIEGEL: Are you able to sleep well?

Navalny: That's my biggest problem. I used to laugh about people with sleep problems because I never had them myself. But then came the coma, the anesthesia, the weaning off of the sedatives, that long hovering state when I was neither asleep nor awake. I haven't been able to sleep without sleeping pills since.

[...]

DER SPIEGEL: What has daily life been like for you since you left the hospital? Where are you living?

Navalny: I live with my wife and my son here. My daughter has returned to Stanford University. We've rented an apartment. My everyday life is monotonous. I exercise daily - that's all I do. In the morning, I take a walk in the park - that's my job. Then I do the exercises with the doctor. In the evening, I go for another walk. During the day, I try to work on the computer. The doctors say I can be restored to 90 percent of my former self, maybe even 100 percent, but nobody really knows for sure. Basically, I'm a bit of a guinea pig. After all, there aren't many people you can observe who are still alive after being poisoned with a nerve agent. At some point, I will probably be written about in medical journals. And I am happy to share my experiences. Seriously: The Russian leadership has developed such a penchant for poisoning that it is not going to stop doing so anytime soon. My medical history will be instructive.

DER SPIEGEL: Going by your posts on social media, it appears that you left your bed in the hospital often.

Navalny: The doctors and nurses at Charité are the most tolerant people in the world. I was a difficult patient. I would get up at night in the intensive care unit, and one time I tore all the tubes out of my body and started bleeding. Later, when I was already conscious and could recognize and talk to the people around me, I had hysterical fits. I said I was healthy and wanted to go to a hotel. Weeks later, I understood that this strange behavior was a consequence of the poisoning.

DER SPIEGEL: Let's go over what happened to you, and we'll start with your last memory before you lost consciousness. It's August 20, at eight o'clock in the morning. You're sitting in a plane from Tomsk to Moscow. You had spent a few days in Siberia. What was going through your head?

Navalny: It was a wonderful day. I'm on my way home, with a strenuous and successful business trip behind me. We shot videos for the regional election campaign, and everything had gone according to plan. I'm sitting comfortably in my seat and I'm looking forward to a quiet flight during which I can watch a series. Once I get back to Moscow, I am looking forward to recording my weekly YouTube show and then spending the weekend with my family. I feel good, as I did at the airport. And then… it's hard to describe because there is nothing to compare it with. Organophosphorus compounds attack your nervous system like a DDos attack attacks the computer - it's an overload that breaks you. You can no longer concentrate. I can feel that something is wrong. I break out in a cold sweat. I ask Kira beside me for a tissue. Then I say to her: Speak to me. I need to hear a voice - something's wrong with me. She looks at me like I'm crazy and starts talking.

DER SPIEGEL: What happened then?

Navalny: I don't understand what is happening to me. The stewards come by with the trolley. I first want to ask them for water, but I then say: No, let me by, I'm going to the bathroom. I wash myself with cold water, sit down and wait and then wash myself again. And then I think: If I don't get out now, I'll never get out. The most important feeling was: You are feeling no pain, but you know you're dying. And I mean, right now, yet nothing hurts. I leave the toilet, turn to the steward - and instead of asking for help, I say, to my own surprise: "I've been poisoned. I'm dying." And then I lay down on the ground in front of him to die. He’s the last thing I see - a face that looks at me with slight astonishment and a light smile. He says: "Poisoned?" and by that he probably means I was served bad chicken.

And the last thing I hear, already on the floor is: Do you have heart problems? But my heart doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts. All I know is that I am dying. Then I hear voices growing ever quieter, and a woman calling: "Don't leave us! Don't leave us!" Then it's over. I know I'm dead. Only later would it turn out that I was wrong.

DER SPIEGEL: There's a video shot by a passenger in which your screams can be heard on the plane. It sounds horrible, almost like the cries of an animal.

Navalny: I've watched it - it's circulating on the internet under the title: "Navalny screaming in pain." But it wasn't pain. It was something else, worse. Pain makes you feel like you're alive. But in this case, you sense: This is the end.

DER SPIEGEL: How long did the whole thing last?

Navalny: Perhaps 30 minutes passed from the point where I thought something was off to unconsciousness. That was all after we took off.

DER SPIEGEL: You had spent the night at the Hotel Xander in Tomsk, which is where you likely came into contact with the poison. Do you remember what you touched there?

Navalny: Traces of the poison were found on a water bottle. Apparently I touched a contaminated surface, then reached for the water bottle, drank something from it, put it back and then left the hotel room. So I assume that I absorbed the poison through my skin. There are many objects that you touch in a hotel before you leave - the shower, the toilet, the clothes rack, the handle of your bag - you are sure to touch something. That's why it is so important to examine my clothes. The poison can be applied to any item of personal clothing.

DER SPIEGEL: The clothes were taken after you were admitted to the hospital in Omsk and they were never returned.

Navalny: I have no doubt that my clothes have been simmering in a large tank of bleach for a month! So that the traces are removed (laughs). If it hadn't been for this chain of fortunate circumstances - the pilots making an emergency landing in Omsk, with the ambulance already waiting at the Omsk airport, and the fact that I was given atropine within an hour and a half - I would have died. The plan was smart: I would have taken off, died in flight and wound up in a morgue in Omsk or Moscow. And then nobody would have found Novichok, because morgues don't have mass spectrometers. Besides, they could have waited a bit before performing the analysis. I would have just been a suspicious death.

DER SPIEGEL: You could have died in the hotel.

Navalny: Some people suspect that the plan was to have me die in my sleep. Honestly, though, after going through the poisoning, I think I would have woken up. It would have been an amusing sight for the hotel security cameras: Me crawling across the hallway in my underwear with these symptoms. I guarantee that with these symptoms, I would have used the last of my strength to crawl out. Having me die in that hotel would have been a risky plan. The staff still could have called the ambulance.

DER SPIEGEL: What is your explanation for the fact that nobody else was harmed by the poison? Others were injured in Salisbury, in Britain, where former agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned.

Navalny: I think they learned their lessons from the Skripal case when 48 people were contaminated and one woman died. That's why you can't apply the poison to an object such as the sink or the shower, which I might not even use. Or to my mobile phone, which I might have given Kira - in which case, instead of one suspicious death, you would have had two. Like I said: I'm just speculating here. Obviously we're looking at a more sophisticated means, and it was applied to an object that only I touch.

DER SPIEGEL: What about the traces you left on the water bottle?

Navalny: They were harmless. It was a minimal amount of poison. Anyone could have touched it without suffering any harm.

DER SPIEGEL: The fact that the water bottle could be examined at all in Germany is thanks to members of your staff, who removed it from the hotel room along with other objects.

Navalny: They were still sitting in the same hotel at breakfast when they received a text message from Kira in Omsk that I had been poisoned. The scenario of me getting killed was, of course, always present, although more as a joke. But their first thought was that they needed to get to my room to secure what they could. It was more out of desperation, because everyone thought I had been poisoned by tea at the airport. No one was thinking about a nerve agent. I could hardly believe it myself. It's like dropping a nuclear bomb on a single person. There are a million more effective methods. When my wife Yulia and our staff member Maria Pevchikh brought the items to Germany, they weren't thinking about evidence, but simply about learning what I had been poisoned with. They handed the things over to the doctors, not some secret agents in dark sunglasses with ear pieces.

[...]

DER SPIEGEL: You have many enemies. Who do you think is behind your poisoning?

Navalny: I assert that Putin was behind the crime, and I have no other explanation for what happened. I'm not saying this out of self-flattery, but based on the facts. The most important fact is Novichok. The order to use or produce it can only come from two men - the head of the FSB or the head of SWR, the foreign intelligence service.

DER SPIEGEL: What about the military intelligence agency GRU, which has been linked to the attack on Sergei Skripal?

Navalny: Probably also the GRU. When Putin claims that I myself produced Novichok and poisoned myself with it, it's an impossibility. We can assume that only three people can give the order to initiate "active measures" and deploy Novichok. If you're familiar with the Russian reality, then you also know that FSB head Alexander Bortnikov, SVR head Naryshkin or the head of the GRU cannot make a decision like that without being instructed by Putin. They report to him.

DER SPIEGEL: But if Putin is behind it, why did he let you out of the country?

Navalny: I think they were determined not to let me leave the country, so they declared publicly that I was not fit to be transported. They were waiting for me to die. But thanks to the support for me and thanks to the efforts of my wife, the whole thing threatened to turn into a kind of online reality show called: "Navalny Dies in Omsk." And an enormous amount of people, to whom I am very grateful, said: We don't want to watch that show. It's important to Putin’s people that they don’t give their opponent martyr status, that they don't give him - whether dead or alive - any political capital. If I had died in Omsk or suffered permanent harm there, it clearly would have been their responsibility. It might not have been possible to prove the use of Novichok in that case, but it clearly would have been their fault that I was not allowed to leave the country. Besides, they did wait 48 hours, likely hoping that the poison could no longer be proven after that.

DER SPIEGEL: Putin is known for dividing his opponents into two categories: "enemies" and "traitors." All means are permitted against traitors, a group to which ex-agent Skripal belonged. You, though, are in the "enemies" category. So, why did they use Novichok?

Navalny: If someone had told me a month and a half ago that I would be poisoned with Novichok, I would have laughed at them. After all, we know how Putin fights the opposition. We have 20 years of experience. You can be arrested, beaten up, sprayed with disinfectants or shot on a bridge like Boris Nemtsov. But chemical warfare agents were considered the domain of the intelligence services.

DER SPIEGEL: Did Putin upgrade your status from enemy to traitor? Or do we have the wrong image of Putin's system?

Navalny: I believe the image was correct but that the reality has changed. And something in Putin's head has changed. Putin knows everything about me. I live under total surveillance. He knows that I am neither an oligarch nor a secret agent, that I'm a politician. But there have been changes: The protests against Lukashenko in Belarus, the protests in the Khabarovsk region against the Kremlin party. And the fact that our regional offices still exist …

DER SPIEGEL: ... the local offices of your organization, with which you run a de facto national party, even though it officially isn't allowed to be one.

Navalny: For two years, we have been subjected to unprecedented pressure: Several searches a week, the confiscation of office equipment, the freezing of accounts and attempts to force people out of Russia. But our organization still exists. We have 40 regional offices. I am speculating here, but perhaps they decided: We've done all we can, but if these methods don't work, then it's time to resort to extreme means.

DER SPIEGEL: And what if it wasn't Putin?

Navalny: If it wasn't him, things would be a lot worse. One cup of Novichok would be enough to poison all passengers in a large Berlin subway station. If access to the agent isn't restricted to three people, but actually 30, then it's a global threat. That would be terrible.

[...]

DER SPIEGEL: There's a powerful man, who is visibly pleased about your condition and who has been waging a private war against you for years: the businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who controls a mercenary army and is known by the nickname "Putin's chef." What role do you think he played?

Navalny: We've gone up against quite a lot of people who have access to certain resources, a number of generals in the intelligence agencies, for example. Could I imagine that Prigozhin has access to Novichok? A man who had three Russian journalists killed in Africa? No, because if he did, he probably would have poisoned half the world by now.

[...]

DER SPIEGEL: You've been asked many times: If everything in Russia is as bad as you say, why didn't Putin try to eliminate you long ago?

Navalny: There has to be a silver lining for me in this story. Finally, people will stop asking that question.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Navalny, we thank you for this interview.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/alexei-navalny-on-his-poisoning-i-assert-that-putin-was-behind-the-crime-a-ae5923d5-20f3-4117-80bd-39a99b5b86f4

[Stuart Galbraith]

There has been some in the UK media speculating that the variant of Novichok used was designed to damage the human system, but not to kill. There is no real evidence of that, and to be honest, what is the point of poisoning the man just to warn him? He has had more warnings than Riggs and Murtaugh. It also doesnt explain why they allowed him to languish until Putin was convinced to let him go abroad.

 

[glenn239]

On 10/4/2020 at 7:00 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

There has been some in the UK media speculating that the variant of Novichok used was designed to damage the human system, but not to kill. There is no real evidence of that, and to be honest, what is the point of poisoning the man just to warn him? 

The point would be that if he's focused on his health rather than trying to overthrow Putin then the objective of the poisoning has been achieved.

[Stuart Galbraith]

They could have achieved the same end with considerably less international comment, with a 9mm bullet to the kneecaps. Or just handing him over to the Chechens to hold hostage for 6 months.

No, if they poisoned him, they wanted to kill him. The extraordinary thing is that having decided to kill him, they belatedly realised how unpopular it was making them in Germany, and then decided it would be better that he might live. You would have thought they would have clearly considered the pro's and con's before murdering someone, but clearly not. Go figure.

[glenn239]

6 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

No, if they poisoned him, they wanted to kill him.

If they wanted to kill him he'd be dead. 

Looks to me they wanted to inflict disability on him, make him crippled as a message to what happens to those that mess with Putin.  Crippled and weak does not a leader make.  But at the same time, to not kill him so that there is no martyr for the cause. 

Quote

You would have thought they would have clearly considered the pro's and con's before murdering someone, but clearly not. Go figure.

I think the message is that if stooges want to puppet for the West in order to destabilize Russia, that they can and will pay massive personal consequences for that.  Most politicians being, of course, personal cowards, so the technique probably weeds out 99% of the potential rival leaders right there.  And, for the 1%, we get what we got here.  You're pretty bullish on violence as national policy in all things - don't you recognize your own dish on the menu being served here?

Edited October 5, 2020 by glenn239

[Ssnake]

2 hours ago, glenn239 said:

If they wanted to kill him he'd be dead. 

That's a favorite Russian propaganda line, but I'm not buying it. They wanted to kill him with somewhat plausible deniability, that he'd die mysteriously on the plane, his body then be recovered in Moscow, so they could make sure that an autopsy would find nothing.

It didn't work out because, as usual, poisonings are a fickle thing to get right. You can overdose and still not kill your target (Skripal) but contaminate enough other people to make it a high profile international affair. Don't tell me that this was intended, because if it was, it qualifies as state terrorism.

Here they tried to get the dosage right and probably applied the poison to something that only Nawalny would touch (he suspects a piece of his clothes). They did not expect the pilot to divert to Omsk and make an emergency landing, they hoped for Nawalny to die within those 48 hours that his extraction to Germany was delayed, and then realized that keeping him in Russia would appear completely unreasonable (and an admission of guilt), and make Nawalny a martyr and create even more damage both nationally and internationally.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Exactly. After all, they tried to kill Trotsky 2 or 3 times before he got the ice pick in the ear. I dont recall anyone suggesting it was Stalin just giving a polite warning.

You dont use part of your military chemical warfare stockpile just to tickle someones fancy. Its ludicrous.

The only reason Navalny is alive, (other than German doctors), is that they didnt give him a high enough dose, and he is one tough son of a bitch. They must have built him out the same stuff they built JS2's out of.

[glenn239]

1 hour ago, Ssnake said:

It didn't work out because, as usual, poisonings are a fickle thing to get right. You can overdose and still not kill your target (Skripal) but contaminate enough other people to make it a high profile international affair. Don't tell me that this was intended, because if it was, it qualifies as state terrorism.

 Terrorism, certainly, insofar as terrorism is the use of lethal force without consent.  The point seems to be to terrorize the political opponents of Putin that go past some point he's willing to tolerate.   In terms of killing, I think you're onto the right path to suggest that a lower dose is more important than high probability of a kill, since even a lower dose will probably achieve the desired effect.

The Belarus opposition leader in the Baltic States will be another one where this form attack seems likely.

 

  

Edited October 5, 2020 by glenn239

[Ssnake]

The assumption that they had a good plan but simply botched it requires far fewer assumptions. And it's in line with the Polonium poisoning (where apparently they didn't think about the possibilities of isotope analysis to track precisely the source of the material until the whole affair blew up in their face), with the Skripal attempt (where, again, the political damage by far exceeded any conceivable gains - and they managed to not kill the target), with the murder in Berlin (where at least they managed to put a bullet into a brain, and would have gotten away with it had it not been for those meddling kids).

Russian killers are competent only at home where they have the full might of regular police and state attorneys covering for them rather than investigate their crimes thoroughly.

Bellingcat, simply being journalists armed with nothing but minor sums in cash bribes, managed to burn at least a dozen or more GRU agents for foreign work (which is their prime task) just because they were so lazy as to use consecutive passport numbers combined with the same address of the ministry of defense. Now every counterespionage agency has their faces. The assumption that the Russians make no mistakes simply isn't justified if you look at the last few years. They are just as sloppy and semi-competent as anyone else. Other examples? Like, the CIA operatives performing extraterritorial renditions in Rome by buying burner phones with consecutive numbers on the same government-issued credit card with which they paid their hotel rooms, rental cars, etc. - so, again, they are burned for foreign operations and officially wanted for kidnapping in Italy (and by extension, the rest of the EU).

[Stuart Galbraith]

Russian secret service foreign assassination's have always been woefully incompetent. The assassin of Trotsky got arrested. There was a well known case in the 1960's where a man called Bogdan Stashinsky, who defected to West Germany and confessed to 2 murders, one being the Stephan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist.

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

 

So it seems quite clear that Soviet secret service as it then was completely lack the art of guile. Even John Le Carre in his novels makes a note of how bloody, vindictive and artless they were in 'Smiley's People'. The only time they achieved their ends halfway competently and covertly was when they handed it over to the Bulgarian secret service, who seem to have been fairly competent.

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

Even then the method of assassination was detected by coroners, which really should tell people, you dont assassinate people in Western Europe if you expect to remain undetected. They dont even seem to get away with it in their own country anymore. Usually they seem to hand it over to Chechens, and they are brutal, but dont seem any more competent.

I think, and this is just a personal view, these murders and attempted murders are largely due to the President of Russia who is a fantasist, and with overly inflated views of the competency of the secret services in his employ. Its hardly surprising when you remember his favourite TV show is 17 moments of spring, a woefully improbable tale about a Soviet Spy who infiltrates the highest levels of the Gestapo and is on speaking terms with Martin Borman. At least MI6 dont mistake James Bond for reality.

Yes, you are right Nils to doubt the CIA's competence as well, which largely explains why they got out the assassination business. Other than by drone anyway. Kind of hard to argue who is flying the hardware sometimes, even if you know where the weapons ultimately came from.

In the end, it seems improbable they would have attacked Navalny if they expected him to survive. Its a nerve agent FFS. Here is a training film for Glenn. I would invite you to give it a miss if you like Goats (like, what did the US Army have against Goats anyway? They were always nuking them, cheming them or just generally staring at them).

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by Stuart Galbraith

[DB]

I'm not sure that invoking fictional examples, however well written, does more than increase the length of your response. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

John Le Carre, or David Cornwell, it will be remembered worked for both MI5 and MI6. And if you had troubled yourself to read 'The man with the poison gun' by Seri Plokhy, you would recognise the gun used by Stashynsky was eerily similar to the one that killed General Vladimir in 'Smileys People', the only difference was that one fired poison, the other apparently a dum dum bullet. In fact, as Plokhy relates, so well known did the KGBs supposedly covert assassinations become, Stashynsky also formed the basis of scaramanga in 'The man with the golden gun'. They were a joke, and still are.

As for the length of my posts, don't trouble yourself to read them if it brings you issues. 

[glenn239]

 

16 hours ago, Ssnake said:

The assumption that they had a good plan but simply botched it requires far fewer assumptions. And it's in line with the Polonium poisoning (where apparently they didn't think about the possibilities of isotope analysis to track precisely the source of the material until the whole affair blew up in their face), with the Skripal attempt (where, again, the political damage by far exceeded any conceivable gains - and they managed to not kill the target), with the murder in Berlin (where at least they managed to put a bullet into a brain, and would have gotten away with it had it not been for those meddling kids).

The question from Putin's perspective I would bet is whether or not these poisonings do or do not dampen the resistance to his rule internally, in Russia.  The message being sent to the Russian opposition is that they can and will be selectively targeted, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.    You're suggesting that the metric of success for Putin is whether or not the target is killed, but I don't think that's the case at all.  The objective is to leave the opposition toothless, and in many ways the gruesome symptoms of the survivors does better at that then a KIA does.

 

[BansheeOne]

Quote

WED OCT 7, 2020 / 10:06 AM EDT

Russian goes on trial for suspected state-backed murder in Berlin

(Reuters) - A Russian man charged with murdering a former Chechen rebel in Berlin on behalf of Moscow went on trial amid tight security on Wednesday, heaping further pressure on bilateral ties already strained by the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

The shooting in August 2019 of Tornike K., a Georgian who had fought against Russia in Chechnya, led to the expulsion of Russian embassy employees in December.

Prosecutors say 55-year-old Vadim K. approached the victim from behind on a bicycle in the Tiergarten park in central Berlin in broad daylight and shot him with a pistol equipped with a silencer. The suspect then shot the victim twice in the head while he lay on the ground, they say.

The suspect was arrested nearby soon after the attack and has been in custody since. Charged with murder and the illegal possession of a weapon, he faces life in prison if convicted.

"Our findings show this was a contract murder by Russian state authorities," prosecutor Ronald Georg told reporters, adding that the Russian government viewed the victim as an enemy of the state because he had fought Russia in the Chechen war.

Russia has denied any involvement in the killing.

SUSPECT'S IDENTITY

A court spokeswoman said the defendant, who sat behind bullet proof glass, said nothing during the proceedings. His identity will be a big part of the trial as the defendant argues he has a different name and is 50 years old, she said.

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-trial/russian-goes-on-trial-for-suspected-state-backed-murder-in-berlin-idUSKBN26S193