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"so what next?"

I expect an international arrest warrant will be issued shortly for Anatoly Chepiga and Aleksander Mishkin.
It will then be up to Putin as to whether he agrees to their extradition to stand trial.
But he won't. There's no extradition agreement between Russia and Britain, so he doesn't have to.
Of course... we could send our people over there to splash neurotoxins about... wonder how they'd like that?

But we won't.
 
well after second one being identified seems Bellingcat could well be correct..
so what next ?
now that we have the perps ?
and its pretty obvious it was Putin who sent them..
what do we do about it ?

It's war isn't it?.. as said earlier. Then I owe you a quid.
 
But he won't. There's no extradition agreement between Russia and Britain, so he doesn't have to.
Of course... we could send our people over there to splash neurotoxins about... wonder how they'd like that?

But we won't.
You'd hope our lot would be a bit better at covert operations than this pair and not then go on the tellybox complaining about slush and discussing the height of Russia's historic buildings. But then nothing would surprise me.
 
The Third Man..

A suspected third member of the Kremlin hit squad behind the Salisbury nerve agent attack has been named, according to a respected Russian news website.

Sergey Fedotov, 45, travelled to the UK on the same day as the two assassins already charged by British authorities - and boarded the same flight home.

According to Fontanka, Fedotov flew to the UK on a passport whose number differs by only a few digits from those used by the two GRU military intelligence agents officially wanted for the nerve agent attack.

It is almost certain Fedotov is not the passenger’s real name but an alias. No traces of Sergei Fedotov have been found in documentary databases or on social media. He has no property, vehicles or telephone numbers registered to his name in Russia, according to Fontanka.
 
Well at the risk of coming over all Mandy, she would say that, wouldn't she?
She's penned plenty of Putinophilic articles over the years, praising him for "putting Russia back on the map" and slagging off the West for "creating a Russian bogeyman".

Find me a Putinophilic article by her - as opposed to an anti-Russophobic one.I have not read any of the former by her, but plenty of the latter.

Willing to be proved wrong - but she is a former Moscow correspondent who writes for two of the main liberal broadsheets in the UK - so maybe, just maybe she has an informed opinion on this which is worth listening to. Besides. isn't just it an `ad hom` argument to dismiss a piece of writing by one person just because we have disagreed with other things they have written? How about the content iself?
 
Find me a Putinophilic article by her - as opposed to an anti-Russophobic one.I have not read any of the former by her, but plenty of the latter.

Willing to be proved wrong - but she is a former Moscow correspondent who writes for two of the main liberal broadsheets in the UK - so maybe, just maybe she has an informed opinion on this which is worth listening to. Besides. isn't just it an `ad hom` argument to dismiss a piece of writing by one person just because we have disagreed with other things they have written? How about the content iself?

You can Google for Mary Dejevsky + Putin as easily as I can. Her many articles in The Guardian reek of apologism for Putin's expansionist plans and she routinely blames the West for demonising him. Even the Guardianistas, with their traditional antipathy towards the West, found this article particularly distasteful, if you check out the replies.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...mats-cynicism-putin-ceasefire-misread-motives

Similarly, she doesn't like Bellingcat because their exposé is contrary to her own prejudices.
 
The Independent article was just waffle imo. Cctv does not show the pair less than 500m from the house. Pure coincidence then eh?
 
You can Google for Mary Dejevsky + Putin as easily as I can.

I idly did just what you suggested - googled Mary Dejevsky + Putin. Most of the stuff was not about Putin at all but about the Western responses to Putin's perceived threat. The exception to this was this article which (as I read it) is something of a tribute to one Ksenia Sobchak - a thorn in Putin's side who stood against him in the last Presidential elections.

The same article also gives fair mention to some other opposition politicians too. This is really not the sort of article a `Putinophiliac` would write.

https://gulfnews.com/opinion/thinkers/is-russia-without-putin-possible-1.2110158
 
" as many British would not accept a distinction between Britain and the "May regime". Presently, Putin embodies Russia."

I feel you are very wrong on that point. May is routinely savagely ridiculed in the UK media (notably The Guardian) and the notion of the leader or even government embodying the state may well be a fascist/communist one, but is certainly not a British one.
You're right that many British would vehemently disagree, but it is mainly a matter of political affiliation. As a whole, rightists are more prone to identify with their government as the embodiment of their nation, notably in all matters relating to security and the military.

I suspect that the so-called waste of the spying on the OPCW in the Netherlands may have less to do with incompetence than with Western rulers becoming angered after the release by Russians of crucial files, like the UN Secretary anti-Syrian directive and photos showing the identification number of the Buk missile that stroke the MH17 plane. They have had their fills of seeing some of their manipulations exposed, didn't want to see the same thing happening with the OPCW, and reinforced their monitoring on Russian spies.
 
Burgess of course based a lot of his nadsat slang on Russian words, including nadsat - the Russian suffix for -teen. I'm still bitter all these years later that my English teacher at school would not accept the obvious derivation of horrorshow from хорошо...
Vindication! At last. I knew I was right, even then.
Anna Aslanyan said:
Burgess had been learning Russian before the trip. As he recalls in his autobiography, he tried teaching his wife too, but the only word she mastered was horrorshow, a ‘folk-etymologising’ of khorosho (‘good’ or ‘well’). The word played an important part in Burgess’s career. Working on A Clockwork Orange (1962), he wasn’t sure what language his delinquent characters should speak, until he fixed on ‘a mixture of Russian and demotic English, seasoned with rhyming slang and the gypsy’s bolo’. Russian loanwords, he thought – not cumbersome polysyllables but snappy ones, like brat for ‘brother’ – would suit English better than anything borrowed from German, French or Italian. He called it ‘nadsat’ (the Russian suffix for ‘-teen’, simplified in transliteration).
 
Vindication! At last. I knew I was right, even then.

I'm off to see a stage version of `A Clockwork Orange` - `Zavodnoi Appelsin` -in Moscow next month.

Obviously it'll be in Russian so I'm intrigued to see how they deal with the `Nadsat`- the Russlish slang. Will they reverse it and use Angliscisms, or use loan words from some other language? (Japanese could work here).

Anyway, it'll get a write up in my blog.

Burgesses original novel - at least from what he once told Malcolm McDowell -was in fact inspired by an incident in Moscow in the sixties! He and some fellow Russian author were sitting in a cafe when a thug came to the window and pressed his face against it and leered at them. (I can't recall the source for this story but I've definitely read it).

Not a lot of people know that!
 
I'm off to see a stage version of `A Clockwork Orange` - `Zavodnoi Appelsin` -in Moscow next month.

Obviously it'll be in Russian so I'm intrigued to see how they deal with the `Nadsat`- the Russlish slang. Will they reverse it and use Angliscisms, or use loan words from some other language? (Japanese could work here).

Anyway, it'll get a write up in my blog.

Burgesses original novel - at least from what he once told Malcolm McDowell -was in fact inspired by an incident in Moscow in the sixties! He and some fellow Russian author were sitting in a cafe when a thug came to the window and pressed his face against it and leered at them. (I can't recall the source for this story but I've definitely read it).

Not a lot of people know that!
Clockwork Orange has one of the most striking opening sequences of any film. It will be interesting to say the least to see a Russian stage version of the film.
 
More rumour & speculation.

Viktoria Skripal, cousin of Yulia, talks to their reporter in Moscow.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/novichok-poisoning-plot-left-nightmare-13520779

Yulia's fiance has "disappeared off the face of the earth" fuelling growing speculation that he was a “male honeytrap”, involved in the novichok assassination plot right from the start. The flat they shared has been let to someone else.

It emerged that he worked for a clandestine organisation called the Institute of Modern Security Problems.

His mother Tatiana headed the unit, thought to be “an integral part” of the FSB – which replaced the KGB secret service.

“There are two schools of thought – the first was that he was a ‘honeytrap’ involved with the Russian authorities right from the very start.

“Therefore he is now being protected by the FSB in a safe house where no one will find him. Or has his mother, who is very wealthy, whisked him away for a new life. There are more questions than answers on him and their relationship.

“I know his mother didn’t like him dating the daughter of Sergei Skripal. It was well known she was the daughter of a treacherous spy.

“She was openly hostile to Yulia.

Viktoria & her husband were involved in a "mysterious" car accident resulting on them hitting the central reservation at 65mph.
 
"The head of Russian military intelligence, which is accused of orchestrating the Salisbury Novichok attack, has died.

Igor Korobov died on Wednesday after "a serious and long illness," Russian news agencies reported, citing the defence ministry.

TELEMMGLPICT000181610044_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqO2wBkCq2Mm4bNdLs0EhrYyQynkOUP7jc1iwm7BKtzoM.jpeg


The 63-year-old GRU Chief's death comes after a series of embarrassments for the secretive organisation, for which he was reportedly berated by President Vladimir Putin."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ary-spy-agency-accused-salisbury-attack-dies/

Or is that next week?

:rolleyes:

maximus otter
 
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Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack - The Inside Story

BBC Panorama on iplayer.

Probably not that much you wouldn't know if you've been following the story but lays out the details so far. They go to Russia to interview Yulia's cousin. The policeman poisoned speaks about his ordeal. His family couldn't go back to their house & all their possessions were destroyed. The Russian scientist who concocted & developed Novichok before defecting speaks. Various people involved in the investigation are interviewed.
 
Just a thought, and I don't know if this has been voiced elsewhere. And this, I freely say, is speculation. The nerve agent used seems to have been remarkably ineffectual - you expect these things to kill within seconds, not leave people lingering on for months. Received wisdom - and such military training as I got in these things stressed it - is that the merest droplet on the skin kills. Within minutes, at the outside. It's almost as if the variant used in Salisbury was denatured or diluted, somehow. I'm wondering here. From the Russian point of view, knocking off a dangerous dissident was a result. But what if the real reason was something else: getting the gobby dissident who picked the wrong side was a bonus. What if. somebody was conducting a practical test. Of the ability of a possible enemy to respond to a chemical attack, in a town in one of the most advanced societies in the world. Just one chemical attack tied up the civil defences of Salisbury for months and drew in expertise from the rest of Britain. News coverage enabled the Russians to practically assess how much of Britain's resources would be tied up in investigating and cleaning up afterwards. And this wasn't a full scale bombing or missile attack - just one small isolated incidence which affected a handful of people. Scale up from that and imagine a single aircraft dispersing the full-potency version from overhead as an aerosol... a remarkably cheap way of assessing how open to attack a possible enemy is and how it can be tied down...
 
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