So a number of the things we've been questioning as vague and sketchy at best have now at least been addressed in some part.
Two suspects - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Although while presumably these are the names on their passports it is not believed that these are their real names. The government claim they are 'agents' of the GRU, but Moscow (perhaps hardly surprisingly) denies all knowledge of them.
The question I'd be asking Russia is, in that case who are they? You let them fly. Somebody let those passports through for them to fly to the UK. Trace them.
We now have (what is presumably) passport photos of them, CCTV footage of their time in the UK, and enough to at least propose a case for their having being involved.
If Moscow is telling the truth, and these are just two random Russian citizens who somehow managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, then so be it.
But UK authorities are now able to construct a plausible sequence of events for the pair.
- March 2nd they arrive at Gatwick. They stay at the CityStay Hotel in East London.
- March 3rd they're on CCTV at Salisbury station. It's assumed this trip was a reccie for the following day.
- They return to London that evening but March 4th they're back in Salisbury, captured on CCTV only streets away from the Skripal residence.
- An hour later CCTV has them in the town centre heading in the direction of the train station.
- That evening they are back in London, this time at Heathrow, heading onto a flight to Moscow.
It's certainly a plausible sequence of events. It is now alleged that between points 3 and 4 above they drifted past the Skripal residence sprayed nerve agent on the front door, and left. When the Skripals returned home a while later they came in contact with it, and Novichok began to work its way into their systems.
By the time both suspects were boarding their plane it would probably have been on the news.
The nerve agent itself was dressed up as bottle of Premier Jour Nina Ricci perfume. A small bottle with an applicator, which is presumed to have been used to apply the substance to the door. The bottle, had a modified nozzle, which contained a "significant amount" of Novichok according to Scotland Yard.
It is unknown when or how the bottle was discarded by the pair, and how it got to the next phase of its journey.
Charlie Rowley finds the bottle in a charity bin (we don't know which, where, how...) but thinking his luck is in he pulls it out. He intends to give it to his girlfriend Dawn Sturgess, from nearby Amesbury.
At an unknown point Rowley screws the two parts of the bottle back together, exposing himself unwittingly to a small amount of nerve agent.
On the 30th June the pair are both admitted to hospital. It is assumed that Dawn Sturgess directly applied the substance to her wrists, assuming it (unsurprisingly) to be perfume.
She dies on the 8th July.
Rowley, as we know from above, was discharged on the 20th of July but has since lost his sight in relation to damage done by the nerve agent.
While the Skripals, and Det Sgt Nick Bailey, all recovered after contact with Novichok it is worth remembering that they contacted it most likely from the door of the house, hours after after it was applied.
Charlie Rowley got it on his hands, Dawn Sturgess sprayed it on her wrists, and therefore it is perhaps unsurprising that direct to skin contact in that fashion proved more potent.
But anyway, we do know a lot more details now.
The biggest questions though remain over who these two men actually are and how this came to be. Because proving them to be bonafide foreign agents is going to be very difficult. Proving that anybody within the current Russian government ordered it or signed off on it even more so.
And again we come back to bumbling Boris' careless Putin accusation! We still have no such proof. Theresa May can stand up in Parliament and say that the Russian government are responsible, but that is only an assumption. A pretty dangerous one at that.
It is still far from implausible that this was perpetrated by citizens working for a third party. A grudge from persons unknown relating to something Skripal either did or knows from his time in Russian military intelligence. He was working in Afghanistan in the 80s, who knows what that actually involved. It is still distinctly possible that somebody holding a grudge from that era is responsible for this. An individual who either always was, or at this point now is a private citizen.
To say 'Putin did this' is utterly half-cocked, inflammatory and ill-thought-through. There is simply no proof of it. Nor are we ever likely to gather much in the way of evidence to support it.
To have jumped straight off to attack Russia over this, in this manner, is a gigantic cock-up in my opinion and it will blow up in the British government's faces. It would have been far more sensible to have waited until now, with actual suspects, to ask for Russia's cooperation in trying to find these men. Making dramatic accusations without a shred of proof does more damage than it does good.