Russians blow their argument every time with insults, one of the ways you can tell they’re defensive or lying. Or, just whenever they open their mouths, they’re lying.
This incident presents troubling questions we may never get answers to. I was listening to a nerve agent expert interview. He was very dubious the toxin that was allegedly used allowed for someone to “get better” after reports of incapacitation after exposure that reportedly led the victims to the brink of death or permanent disability. He expressed genuine surprise and suspicion about reports that both the daughter and father were about ready to be released and, according to reports, gain full recovery.
Trusting the Russians is unwise, but on this one I have to place a small measure of credence in their protests about something being fishy about the whole affair. But what?
I have also read reports that said if they survived, they would be invalids for the rest of their lives. If we do not see any footage of them walking around, then I’d be kind of suspicious of their reputed recovery. Hard to know what to believe anymore.
This is admittedly getting close to CT but what about another scenario? The source of the agent and the perpetrator is indeed Russian. But, perhaps this was an “unauthorized” hit by persons associated with some oligarch with a score to settle and the Russian Goverment is as surprised as everybody else. This might explain why they are both belligerent and on the other hand are also offering to help. I’d be scared I were Putin and a supply of this crap was somewhere in Russia in private hands.
I suppose it’s possible they used old stock and it was a few half lives beyond its “use by” date? Rampant speculation, of course.
Anything’s possible. The UK authorities suggested that the means of exposure was absorbtion through the skin owing to the nerve agent being smeared over the front door. This is a less efficient means of poisoning the two victims and I suppose it’s possible that the two victims could have picked up a sub-lethal dose.
Also, the insensive medical care surely upped their survival chances.
We’ll know more as the investigation proceeds.
I think saying they are about ready to be released is far too optimistic and inaccurate. They have been hospitalized for weeks and have been receiving the best care possible. There are medical interventions for nerve agents and the supportive care they received kept them alive long enough for it to produce results. The Skripals are finally in stable condition not skip and jump out the door condition. The Russians are full of shit and want to cook up conspiracies to muddy the waters. The nerve agent was theirs and theirs alone.
Maybe. But Soviet weapons labs are notorious for having rogue scientists willing to look the other way as stuff goes out the back door, for a price. Dick Lugar labored for years to craft treaties that would place control of dangerous Soviet era materials and weapons in the hands of independent overseers, as black market theft and sales were so feared. There’s no telling how much of the stuff is squirreled away in the hands of non-state bad guys.
I think it’s unnecessarily complicating the issue and unfortunately exculpatory. The Russians have demonstrated they have no qualms about using unconventional, even exotic means to kill off opponents (see Alexander Litvinenko). This was a top secret nerve agent that had the potential of being used undetected. The intelligence services would have had the easiest access to use it for their own ends.
Again, Russia has a well established pattern of killing dissidents and former spies even if they live in Western countries. The Russian state also had the motive and the means to carry out this attempted assassination. What plausible other party has the same three damning facts? This is Occam’s razor. The evidence all points to Russia and no one else. To say otherwise is to engage in fanciful speculation. Speculation that only benefits Putin. Alternative theories may have some appeal to the imagination but they are baseless nonetheless.
Personally, I put more faith in the British assessment than I do the protestations and attempted misdirection of the Russian embassy.
Good point and no doubt on the Putin fear of the stuff in the wrong hands.
If they did lose track of the stuff they’re also in trouble, but Occam is against it. And they’ve been used to doing this kind of thing with impunity.
And it makes sense with things that attack your neurotransmitters that if you can keep the victim alive until the stuff clears (or is cleared by additional treatment) they would no longer be in critical condition – but it’s really not until this point that you can even assess the level of longterm organ damage.
Any speculation on the sister? If she’s in a government position despite the defections, the odds would seem to be that she’s in on the gag. Or maybe she’s just desperately trying to convince herself that the people who ordered her cousins killed won’t kill her before she can get out of the country.
Another consideration - in theory, this is Putin’s last term because of term limits. Could this poisoning be an effort by someone to curry favor with Putin? To ‘earn’ Putin’s endorsement as his successor? Or intended as a warning to Putin not to get rid of the term limits?