European Politics > Possible Inquiry into Novichok Poisonings; EU Clamps Down on Members with Lax Terrorism Procedures; Poland Fined €500,000 Per Day; Migrants Dying on Poland-Belarus Border; Angela Who?

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U.K. Novichok poisoning inquest should be public inquiry, coroner says

Inquiry would allow coroner to examine Russia's possible involvement in death of Dawn Sturgess

The Associated Press · 

Posted: Sep 22, 2021 4:30 PM ET 

Police stand near Salisbury, Britain, home of Dawn Sturgess in July 2018. Sturgess died after being exposed to the nerve agent Novichok. The coroner presiding over the inquest into her death wants to examine Russia's possible involvement. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)

A coroner presiding over an inquest into the death of British woman poisoned by a Soviet-developed nerve agent after a similar attack targeting a Russian ex-spy said Wednesday that she wants the probe to be turned into a public inquiry so she can examine Russia's possible involvement.

Unlike an inquest, British law allows a public inquiry to consider sensitive intelligence material during partly closed hearings. The inquiry that coroner Heather Hallett requested in order to consider any role played by the Russian government in the 2018 death of Dawn Sturgess would be unlikely to start before 2023.

Sturgess, 44, and her partner collapsed in the southwest England town of Amesbury after coming into contact with a small perfume bottle containing Novichok, a military grade nerve agent.

The pair were exposed three months after Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were sickened in a Novichok attack in the nearby city of Salisbury.

Adam Straw, a lawyer representing Sturgess' family and her partner, Charlie Rowley, said the "overriding concern is to ensure the truth of how Ms. Sturgess died is established."

A photo made available by London police shows Sturgess, 44, who died in 2018 after being exposed to Novichok. (EPA-EFE)

"No family should wait five and a half years to find out how someone died," he said.

Britain's government on Tuesday named and charged a third Russian suspect in the Novichok poisonings.

It alleges that three men working for Russia's military intelligence service travelled to the U.K. for a mission targeting the Skripals before flying back to Moscow. Russia vehemently denies the allegations.

Rowley told authorities he found the perfume bottle containing traces of the nerve agent in a trash bin.

Since all three Russian suspects returned immediately to Russia, it begs the absurd question, 'how often are garbage bins emptied in Amesbury?' 

Britain has acknowledged that extradition requests for the three suspects would be futile and they cannot be brought to trial as long as they remain in Russia. While there is almost no chance of a criminal trial, lawyers believe a public inquiry is the best way to find out what happened.

The Skripals became seriously ill after Novichok was smeared on Sergei Skripal's door handle in March 2018, but the father and daughter survived.

Sturgess died in July that year after she and Rowley came into contact with the discarded perfume bottle the month before. Rowley later recovered.

Police said they could not account for the whereabouts of the perfume bottle between the attack on the Skripals and when Rowley said he found it three months later.

Cathryn McGahey, a lawyer representing the British government, said she hoped authorities will make a decision about the public hearing by the end of the year.

Porton Down is a microbiology lab that happens to be equidistant from Amesbury and Salisbury

I'm sure that's a coincidence!

Brussels begins infringement proceedings against Austria and other

states for failing to implement EU rules on combating terrorism

24 Sep, 2021 12:42

European Union flag in Brussels

The European Commission announced that it has launched infringement procedures against Austria, as well as Finland, Croatia and Luxembourg for failing to correctly implement certain elements of EU rules on combating terrorism.

On Thursday, the bloc’s executive body announced that it was sending a letter of formal notice to Vienna, remarking that it now has two months to respond to arguments put forward by Brussels. If there is no response, the Commission may send a “reasoned opinion”.

Oh my gosh, no! Not a reasoned opinion!

Aside from Austria, the EU said that it will be sending formal notices also to Croatia, Luxembourg and Finland for their failure to adopt the union’s terrorism measures.

Under the EU directive, there are regulations that criminalize and sanction terrorist training, going overseas for terrorism, as well as returning to or traveling across the bloc to commit offences.

The rules in place also have provisions for victims, such as making sure people affected receive professional and specialist support and reliable information, both in the wake of incidents and in the long term if needed.

Austrian Social Democrats security spokesman Reinhold Einwallner called for Interior Minister Karl Nehammer and Justice Minister Alma Zadić “to explain how this government failure could occur”, slamming the lack of action in a statement.

“The Austrian population deserves the highest protection of terrorism”, Einwallner remarked, calling it a scandal that Vienna “has been failing to implement the EU-directive since 2017.”

The central European country’s capital was rocked by a terrorist attack on November 2, 2020, when a shooting broke out outside of the city’s main synagogue, which then spread to other locations. The attack claimed four victims and left over 20 injured.

In the wake of the attack, the Austrian Interior Ministry confirmed reports that the gunman had met with a group of fellow jihadists from Switzerland and Germany in Vienna several months prior. Nehammer also admitted that Austrian officials had made “intolerable mistakes” and had failed to act on information from Slovakia about suspects trying to buy ammunition there in the summer.

Poland must pay €500,000 daily for ignoring

top EU court’s ruling on Turow mine

Is EU's overreaction being pushed by the 'Climate Change' hysteria crowd?

20 Sep, 2021 15:25 / Updated 1 day ago

The Polish coal-fired power plant Turow is seen from a hill near Vitkov village in the Czech Republic

on June 28, 2021. © AFP / Michal Cizek

Poland must pay a daily penalty of €500,000 ($585,550) for ignoring a previous order from the European Union’s top court to cease operations at the Turow lignite mine, with its CEO slamming the fine as “bizarre”.

On Monday, the EU’s Court of Justice (CJEU) confirmed it was enforcing the financial penalty against Warsaw, stating that Poland must pay the European Commission the daily half-million euro fine until it sees compliance with the earlier order.

Judges from the Luxembourg-based court said that the fine is “necessary… to deter that member state from delaying bringing its conduct into line with that order.”

Wojciech Dabrowski, the CEO of the company that operates the mine, Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE), said that the court’s decision to impose fines was “bizarre” and that the firm does not agree with the action taken. The Polish government has also vowed that the mine's operations will continue despite the ruling.

The Czech Republic took legal action against Poland in February over activities at the mine, which also sits close to the German border, claiming that it spoiled its citizens’ drinking water. After Warsaw failed to obey the court orders in May to “immediately cease lignite extraction activities at the mine”, Prague asked the court to fine Poland €5 million per day.

Poland’s PM Mateusz Morawiecki criticized the May ruling, calling it “very dangerous” for the central European country’s energy security and for the 5,000 people employed at the mine.

Unlike neighboring Germany, Poland is still heavily reliant on coal as a major source of power, accounting for around 70% of its total energy production. In 2018, the mine at the centre of the legal action produced some 6.5 million tons of the brown coal, lignite.

If the EU was a genuine union for the betterment of all, it would find a better way to deal with this issue. A big stick is not what unions are about, or shouldn't be. There must be some carrots they can throw around such as assisting Poland to switch to better sources of power.

The EU lied, refugees died: Belarus’ deadly game treats desperate

people as pawns. But the West sees them as something even worse

25 Sep, 2021 08:06

Poland Erects A Border Between Belarus And The EU. © Getty Images / Dominika Zarzycka

By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian at Koç University in Istanbul working on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

Just a few days ago, four migrants died of exhaustion and hypothermia while trying to cross the border between Poland and Belarus. Nobody knows how many others have perished in this same way, dreaming of a new life in the West.

The would-be asylum seekers have unwittingly become pawns in a wider geopolitical game. EU states, which stand accused of turning back desperate people along the frontier, have alleged that the Belarusian government has laid on flights to troubled destinations such as Iraq and Afghanistan and is now ‘weaponizing’ refugees to create a border crisis for Brussels. The lives at stake, however, have received little sympathy.

At around the same time as the bodies of the four people who had dreamed they would be welcome in Poland were found, the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, gave an address to the UN General Assembly in New York. The contrast is stunning.

Duda made a special point of lecturing his global audience on the merits of “solidarity,” and was clearly trying to cash in rhetorically on the name of the Polish trade union movement that resisted Communism in the 1980s. And not just any solidarity, but that between the wealthy global “North” and the neglected “South.” Tying himself into a bit of a geographical pretzel, Duda even claimed that the “North” had let down Ukraine – apparently now part of the “South,” if you ignore its location, economy, and massive privileges of Western support – over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that Polish conservatives can’t stop bemoaning.

And also at the same time, actual people from the real Global South were being systematically abused in a deadly game of chicken between Belarus’ embattled autocrat, Alexander Lukashenko, and Polish nationalist populists. The essence of the row is simple: Lukashenko, unhappy over EU pressure on his domestic crackdown on the opposition and increasingly repressive rule, is trying to use migrants to deliver payback by encouraging or compelling them to cross the border into the EU – that is, Poland, as well as Lithuania and Latvia.

The countries he has reportedly targeted in this manner have responded by locking down their frontiers with fences and troops and by, declaring states of emergency. Lithuania and Latvia did so first. Poland followed at the beginning of September, severely restricting the media and the civil rights of its own population in the significant area bordering on Belarus. 

This is a clear over-reaction that contradicts the spirit and the letter of Polish law, which reserves a state of emergency for – unsurprisingly – emergencies. That is, situations that pose far greater challenges and cannot be dealt with by ordinary means. 

The Polish measures, undertaken by a government with a well-deserved reputation for repeatedly undermining democracy and the rule of law, reek of panic-mongering and nationalist populism. They have come with the rhetorical cover you would expect: Lukashenko’s dirty tricks are denounced as a “hybrid war,” thereby invoking the dire necessities of wartime in a situation that has nothing to do with it. Here, Polish conservatives follow in the footsteps of the US, with its dishonest “wars” on drugs and on terror.

And, just as in the American case, one big lie requires more to be added to it: Polish government members have indulged in hyperbole, presenting their intransigence towards the migrants as protecting all of the EU from a non-existent great migration crisis (and, as if in passing, darkly warning of the also non-existent dangers emanating from pre-scheduled and transparent Russian-Belarusian military maneuvers). 

Really, non-existent migration crisis? Only because the doors are slamming shut on them.

In reality, the Polish state of emergency has made it easy for the authorities to impede the work of those Poles who do care for refugees, restricting the access of not only the media but also activists and NGOs, such as the Ocalenie Foundation, which are trying to help them. In particular, a group of 32 refugees from Afghanistan who have been stranded in inhospitable terrain and under very harsh conditions near the village of Usnarz Górny, between Poland and Belarus, for more than 44 days, and counting. According to the foundation, which has managed to stay in touch with the group despite its deliberate isolation by the state of emergency, their plight is now “dramatic.” They are surrounded by barbed wire on all sides, weak with hunger, cold, and in despair. At the same time, Polish border guards have repeatedly prevented doctors and UN representatives from reaching them. 

Poland’s president, Duda, meanwhile, has used the same speech in which he held forth on “solidarity” to insist that his country will stand firm and not give in to what he called Belarus’ “instrumentalizing of migrants” and the “use of their difficult situation” to endanger the safety of the Polish border. 

Perhaps rankled by some, far too reticent, criticism of his country’s brutal course, or perhaps aware that the UN presents a very different audience from the one he faces at home, Duda was clearly trying to signal at least some recognition of the migrants’ suffering. Yet words are cheap. In reality, there is a glaring contradiction that makes his talk hypocritical: It is impossible to both stay firm – that is, to continue Poland’s current policy – and to do justice to the humanity of the victims of both Lukashenko’s strategy and Poland’s response.

Poland is, of course, by no means alone in betting on deterrence by brutality. The US has done so for a long time, and the current scandal over the treatment of Haitian migrants stranded in the small Texan border town of Del Rio shows, once again, that this attitude is bipartisan: Despite his promises to do better, when the going gets tough, President Biden uses the tools of his predecessor Donald Trump, even if both the Democrats and the opposing Republicans pretend otherwise, for obvious if different reasons. 

The EU as a whole has a nasty record of abusing migrants and letting them die, rather than letting them in. This year alone, for instance, almost 1,400 migrants have already lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean, continuing a steady trend that reached a peak in 2016, with 3,557 estimated deaths. After a history of scandals over harsh camps, Greece has just opened a facility that critics describe as akin to a prison. 

In that sad sense, both Poland and Belarus, one inside and the other outside the EU, turn out to be really very European: ruthless and bereft of compassion. For the migrants lost between them, exhaustion and hypothermia were the immediate causes of death, yet politics is the fundamental one. And these lethal politics are produced by both governments together. The last thing a Polish president should dare to speak about right now is solidarity.

52% of Germans won’t miss Chancellor Angela Merkel,

new poll indicates a day before general election

25 Sep, 2021 09:42

German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a campaign event in Munich, September 24, 2021. 

© Matthias Schrader / AP

As her long service as chancellor comes to an end, more than half of all Germans will not be missing Angela Merkel, a new poll has shown. The country’s new leader will be determined on Sunday.

In a poll of 5,007 people conducted by Civey for the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper between September 22 and 24, respondents were asked if they would miss Merkel after her chancellorship ended.

The majority (52%) said they would not miss the veteran politician, who has continuously governed Germany since 2005. Just 38% said they would miss Merkel, while the rest were undecided.

Merkel, Germany’s second-longest-serving chancellor since World War II, will step down after this Sunday’s general election. The state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, is tapped to succeed her as chancellor if the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) draws enough votes.

The CDU’s main rivals are the Social Democratic Party, led by Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the Greens, whose chief candidate is Annalena Baerbock, the party’s co-leader.

European Politics > Russophobia - Election Interference; Novichok; Novichok; Polonium-210

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Russia claims hostile EU report listing ‘factually wrong’ grievances

& demanding more sanctions is attempt at election meddling

This report comes from RT (Russia Today) and may have some inherent bias.

19 Sep, 2021 13:05

© Getty Images / Oleksii Liskonih; (inset) Vladimir Chizhov © Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich

A fresh report on EU-Russia relations released by the European Parliament is a futile attempt to influence this weekend's parliamentary elections in the continent's largest country, Moscow’s top envoy to Brussels has alleged.

On Thursday, the bloc's lawmakers approved a document outlining the EU’s relationship with Russia. It was prepared by former Lithuanian PM Andrius Kubilius and passed by a 494 to 103 vote, with 72 MEPs abstaining. It's important to note that setting foreign policy is a function of member states and not parliamentarians in the Belgian capital. 

Russia's Permanent Representative to the EU Vladimir Chizhov blasted the report on Sunday, calling it biased, factually wrong and, in his view, aimed at swaying votes in the ongoing parliamentary elections in Russia. If that was the intention, nothing would come out of it, the diplomat predicted, saying that Russian people “are conscious and politically educated enough not to fall for such a move.”

“This entire resolution has this common thread that the government, the president, the parliament are all bad. And there are good democracy-thirsty Russian people, whom the MEPs want to direct toward the light,” he said.

I am certain that many in our country will find this hubris insulting to their intelligence and capacity for independent thinking.

Chizhov believes the adoption of the non-binding resolution was timed to coincide with legislative elections, which Russia is holding this weekend.

The EU report contains a laundry list of grievances it has toward the Russian government, some of which are simply factually untrue, according to the Russian envoy. For example, it states that “the collapse of arms control with Russia (e.g. withdrawals from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies) and the lack of progress on nuclear disarmament…is of great concern for the security of European citizens.”

Russia indeed abandoned the INF Treaty and the Open Skies treaty, but in both cases the US was the party that initiated the situation. Russia and the US significantly reduced their respective nuclear arsenals under the bilateral New START treaty.

However, that agreement was almost scrapped by former American leader Donald Trump and renewed at the last moment by his successor, Joe Biden. The EU report omits those facts, implying that the collapse was Russia’s fault and part of a wider Russian military buildup threatening other European nations, Chizhov highlights.

This is NATO propaganda as they attempt to convince the west that they still have a purpose. 

The MEPs offered a long list of recommendations to the EU and member states on how they should treat Russia, proposing sanctions, the reduction of trade and other measures. Among them was a proposal “not to recognize the Parliament of Russia” after it is sworn in and suspend Moscow from international organizations with parliamentary assemblies, suggesting that the ballot could be “recognized as fraudulent” by the EU. The bloc should also pressure on the country to change its election procedures, the document directed.

The Russian ambassador said such recommendations were clearly directed at meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs. Ironically, the document accused Moscow of conducting hostile political interference in other countries.

For example, RT, together with the Sputnik broadcaster, were accused of promoting the concept of the ‘Russian World’ “in the native languages of the EU Member States” and trying to “rehabilitate Russia’s image in the eyes of the EU population, particularly via the promotion of the Sputnik V vaccine” against Covid-19.

Does this mean the RT and Sputnik should be condemned for not falling in line with the approved narrative of NATO?

Chizhov said he saw a silver lining in the fact that 175 lawmakers refused to support the resolution, indicating that “some MEPs still have reserves of common sense.”

British cops charge third Russian national over dramatic alleged

2018 Salisbury poisoning of spy Skripal & point finger at GRU

21 Sep, 2021 11:54

FILE PHOTO. House of former spy Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, Britain January 9, 2019.

© Reuters / Peter Nicholls

The British police have named a third person they believe had a part to play in the 2018 poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal. London has accused Moscow of being behind an “attempted murder.”

The man, who traveled to the UK on a passport with the name Sergey Fedotov, was charged on Tuesday with conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, causing grievous bodily harm, and the use and possession of a chemical weapon. According to Scotland Yard, the man’s real name is Denis Sergeev.

These are the same accusations leveled at the two previously accused Russian nationals, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Britain believes their real names to be Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga.

According to London, the three men work for the Russian GRU, the country’s foreign military intelligence agency. In March 2018, they were alleged to have come to the UK to smear a military-grade nerve agent on the handle of former GRU officer Skripal’s front door. The poison – later named by London as ‘Novichok’ – caused Skripal and his daughter to fall ill, also affecting police officer Nick Bailey. Another woman, Dawn Sturgess, allegedly died after spraying it on herself, believing it to be a perfume.

While the British authorities initially blamed just two men, the police now say they have evidence that the three were working as a team and met multiple times over their short trip to the UK.

“All three of them have all previously worked with each other on behalf of the Russian state as part of ops carried on outside Russia,” said Dean Haydon, the Metropolitan police’s deputy assistant commissioner. “All three of them are dangerous individuals.”

The new development is also the first time that the police have explicitly blamed the GRU, three years after former British Prime Minister Theresa May pointed the finger at the organization.

Moscow has consistently denied its involvement in the alleged poisoning, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov insisting that the authorities had nothing to do with it. President Vladimir Putin has also claimed that the suspects fingered by London are simply innocent civilians.

Skripal was arrested in Russia in 2004 and was convicted of passing secrets to MI6, the British foreign intelligence service. The double-agent later confessed and cooperated, before being pardoned and sent to the UK as part of a spy swap for ten Russians convicted as part of the so-called illegals program, including the infamous Anna Chapman.

In 2018, Putin dubbed Skripal a “traitor to his country,” accusing some media outlets of talking about him as if he was a human rights defender.

“He is just scum,” the president said.

UK says it will take all possible steps to extradite Skripal suspects,

as Moscow claims London shifting blame for 'Novichok' case

21 Sep, 2021 15:15

A handout picture taken on Wilton Road in Salisbury, west of London on March 4, 2018, and released by the British Metropolitan Police Service in London on September 5, 2018, shows Alexander Petrov (R) and Ruslan Boshirov. © AFP / Metropolitan Police Service

Speaking in the House of Commons on Tuesday, after prosecutors announced they had charged a third suspect over the 2018 incident, Home Secretary Priti Patel said that the government will be "relentless" in pursuing the trio. "Should any of these individuals ever travel outside Russia we will work with our international partners and take every possible step to detain them and extradite them to face justice," she said.

Earlier that day, police said they wanted to bring a case against a man who travelled to the UK under the name Sergey Fedotov for conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, causing grievous bodily harm, and the use and possession of a chemical weapon. Fedotov had been added to the wanted list in addition to two other Russian nationals, known as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who investigators claim are military intelligence agents who were sent to kill Skripal.

In March 2018, the city of Salisbury, around 80 miles southeast of London, went into lockdown after reports that a deadly Soviet-era nerve agent, Novichok, had been smeared on the handle of Skripal's front door. A former member of Russian military intelligence, he served as a double agent for the UK's intelligence services during the 1990s and 2000s, before moving to Britain in 2010 under a spy swap deal. He and his daughter, Yulia, were found on a park bench having been taken ill, and were admitted to hospital.

Police officer Nick Bailey, who was sent to investigate the Skripals' house, was also hospitalized. Another woman, Dawn Sturgess, later died after reportedly finding a perfume bottle containing the supposed nerve agent and spraying it on herself.

Russia has consistently rejected allegations that there was a state-sponsored effort to kill the Skripals. Responding to the news later on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that "it has been a long time since we dealt with this subject, and I'm not sure why it is resurfacing now," suggesting the allegations are part of a wider geopolitical play.

"For more than two years now, the British authorities have been using the Salisbury incident to deliberately complicate our bilateral relations," she said. "We strongly condemn all attempts by London to blame Moscow for what happened in Salisbury and insist on a professional, objective and impartial investigation of the incident."

"Despite numerous requests from the Russian side and appeals for a responsible joint investigation, London continues to refuse proper discussions or a shared inquiry into this incident, as a result of which, I recall, Russian citizens have suffered," Zakharova added.

The UK's foreign policy chiefs summoned the Minister-Counselor of the Russian Embassy to a meeting on Tuesday in order to discuss the charges against the three Russian men. In comments after the meeting, Moscow's envoys said that it was entirely unfounded to assess that a Russian citizen was involved in the case because of when they entered the UK.

Kremlin says ECHR's claim Russia behind Litvinenko poisoning

'unfounded,' arguing court has no evidence of Moscow's involvement

21 Sep, 2021 10:41 

The building of the European Court of Human Rights. © Reuters / VINCENT KESSLER;

(inset) press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov. © RIA / Sergey Guneev

Speaking to journalists after the court gave its verdict on Tuesday, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that justices had no substantive evidence to back up the allegations that the Russian state was involved in Litvinenko’s death.

“It is unlikely that the ECHR has the powers or technological capabilities to have information on this matter,” he said. “There are still no results from this investigation,” Peskov added, “therefore it is at least unfounded to make such statements.” 

The judgement, passed down by justices earlier on Tuesday, argued that “Russia was responsible for the assassination of Litvinenko in the UK.”

The former security agent died in a London hospital in 2006 after what British investigators concluded was poisoning with a rare radioactive isotope, Polonium-210. They claim that the substance was slipped into his drink during a meeting at a nearby hotel, and insist that the Russian state had ordered the killing.

Litvinenko defected to the UK in 2000, having previously worked as a high-ranking officer in Russia’s FSB, running agents in war-torn Chechnya during its bloody conflict in the early 1990s. He was later recruited by Britain’s MI6 spy agency, officials said, to provide “useful information about senior Kremlin figures and their links with Russian organized crime.” A Moscow court found him guilty of corruption in absentia and sentenced him to three-and-a-half years in jail.

In the ruling, the ECHR alleges that two Russian citizens, Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, were behind his death, and acting on orders from above. “The Court found in particular that there was a strong prima facie case that, in poisoning Mr Litvinenko, Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun had been acting as agents of the Russian state,” the statement from the court reads.

Russia has consistently denied any involvement, and Lugovoy told reporters in Moscow the year after the incident that “Britain is making me a scapegoat.”

Russophobia - Skripal Poisoning Handling Leaves Room for Manipulation

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UK Defense ministry document reveals Skripals blood samples

could have been manipulated

By Dilyana Gaytandzhieva - Dilyana.BG

September 3, 20210

Incredible transformation: Yulia Skripal (left) following the alleged poisoning with the deadliest known nerve agent Novichok. Yulia and her father Sergei Skripal (right) before the alleged nerve agent poisoning.

New evidence has emerged of gross violations during the UK investigation into the alleged poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on 4th March 2018. The new revelations put into question the main evidence that the Skripals were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok.

The blood samples taken from the Skripals could have been tampered with so that they test positive for Novichok, newly disclosed information obtained from the UK Ministry of Defense reveals. Furthermore, documents show that Russia was not the only country in the world that could be linked to the nerve agent Novichok.

The US had covered up its own Novichok program masked as research on fourth generation nerve agents (FGAs) and muzzled the Organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons (OPCW) a decade before the Skripals attack.

Breach of chain of custody

Newly disclosed information obtained from the UK Ministry of Defense (MOD) under the Freedom of Information Act questions the integrity of the main evidence that the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok, namely their blood samples. The ministry is in charge of the British military laboratory DSTL Porton Down which analyzed the Skripals blood samples and reportedly identified Novichok.

“Our searches have failed to locate any information that provides the exact time that the samples were collected”, the ministry states. The information held by MOD therefore indicates that the samples were collected at some point between 16:15 on 4 March 2018 and 18:45 on 5 March 2018 (the approximate time according to MOD when the samples arrived at DSTL Porton Down). Even the time of arrival at Porton Down is indicated as “approximate”.

The lack of this information is gross violation and breach of the chain of custody. The UK NHS protocol requires that a request form accompany all specimens sent to the laboratory and clearly state the exact (not approximate) date and time of collection. This newly disclosed information questions the whole Skripals Novichok poisoning story. The fact that the chain of custody of these blood samples was broken directly suggests that they could have been manipulated and tampered with.

There is so much more on this story, some of it a little technical. There is also some reference to the Navalny poisoning. Read it at DILYANA.BG. 

Two Years Later: The Skripal Case Is Weirder Than Ever

by Matthew Ehret
The Duran

While navigating through today’s propaganda-heavy world of misinformation, spin and outright creative writing which appears to have replaced conventional journalism, it is most important that two qualities are active in the mind of any truth-seeker. The first quality is the adherence to a strong top down perspective, both historic and global. This is vital in order to guide us as a sort of compass or North Star used by sailors navigating across the ocean. The second quality is a strong power of logic, memory and discernment of wheat vs. chaff to process the mountains of data that slaps us in the face from all directions like sand in a desert storm.

As the second anniversary of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal has arrived, it is a useful time to take these qualities and revisit this bizarre moment of modern history which took place on a park bench in Salisbury UK and which led to one of the greatest frauds of the modern era derailing all attempts to repair relations between Russia and the west.

To do this, I decided to plunge myself into a new book called Skripal in Prison written by Moscow-based journalist John Helmer and published in February 2020.

This incredible little book, which features 26 chapters written between March 2018 to February 2020 originally published on the author’s site Dances with Bears, unveils an arsenal of intellectual bullets which Helmer skillfully uses to shoot holes into every inconsistency, contradiction and outright lie holding up the structure of the narrative that “there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian State was culpable for the attempted murder of Mr. Skripal and his daughter”.  This line was asserted without a shred of actual evidence by Theresa May in the House of Commons on March 16, 2018 and in the months that followed, western nations were pressured to expel Russian diplomats (23 in Britain, 60 in the US, 33 across the EU), close down consulates (one Russian consulate in San Francisco and one American consulate in St Petersburg) and impose waves of sanctions against Russia.

Four months after the Skripals (and one unfortunate detective named Sgt. Nick Bailey) were released from British hospital care, two more figures were stricken with Novichok poisoning and taken to hospital on June 30 with one of them (Dawn Sturgess) dying 9 days later. This too was blamed immediately on Russia.

Helmer’s research systematically annihilates the official narratives with the craftsmanship of a legal attorney, taking the reader through several vital questions which shape the book’s composition as a whole, and which I shall lay out for you here:

Why have Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia fallen off the face of the Earth since their release from Salisbury hospital? It is known that one controlled video was recorded featuring Yulia speaking, and several short calls to family were made by Yulia and her father after their poisoning… but nothing more. Beyond the fact that it appears the Skripals were kept on an American military base in Gloucestershire for an indeterminate amount of time, Helmer points out “at the point in their recuperation when the two of them were beginning to be explicit in their public remarks about what had happened, their communications were cut off. Nothing more is known to this present day.”

Despite the fact that the UK Prime Minister asserted that a European Arrest Warrant was issued for the two Russians that were alleged to have carried out Putin’s malevolent will onto the poor Skripals- why were no such warrants ever registered in Interpol? Is it because such warrants actually require evidence?

Why did British Intelligence sanction the tearing down of big sections of Skripal’s home at 47 Christie Miller Road in Salisbury due to the apparent “dangers of deadly contaminants”, while only the door handle was tainted with Novichok? If the reasoning was due to health safety, then why were similar actions not taken to the Bourne Hill police station which Sgt. Bradley contaminated or the restaurant and pub which Sergei Skripal went to before his trip to the park … or the contaminated London hotel where the two Russian agents apparently stayed?

Since Novichok is an extremely fast acting substance, generally attacking the nervous system in minutes, how is it possible that the time separating the Skripals’ moment of contamination to the moment of losing consciousness on a park bench was over three hours?! How is this possible? Similarly how was it possible that Sgt. Bailey’s point of contamination at Skripal’s home occurred a full 12 hours before he felt the need to go to the hospital?

What the hell was up with the strange case of the two unfortunate victims of the July 2018 Novichok poisoning in Amesbury (9 miles from Salisbury)? Were Dawn Sturgess and her partner Charlie Rowley simply collateral damage in an MI6 effort to plug a missing hole in the narrative caused by a lack of any evidence of a device used to apply the nerve agent to the door handle in the first place? Why does Rowley (a known heroin addict) have no recollection where he found the perfume bottle filled with Novichok which he gifted to Sturgess on June 26? Why was the perfume bottle only found by authorities on Rowley’s kitchen counter two days after Sturgess died on July 9th even though a search for Novichok had been carried out at his apartment beginning with the couple’s admission into Salisbury hospital on June 30?

What was the role of the Ministry of Defense’s Porton Down chemical laboratories in this bizarre story? The lab itself was located just a few miles from the crime scene, and the first responder on the scene was an off-duty Colonel named Alison McCourt who happened to be shopping nearby and rushed to the scene. Helmer describes how Col. McCourt is head of nursing for the British Army and Senior Health Advisor which connects her closely to the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down which also happened to have held a major chemical warfare exercise named Toxic Dagger in the area just two weeks earlier. Are these things nothing but coincidences?

Porton Down labs which tested the Skripal blood samples and Novichok at the Skripal residence is part of the Ministry of Defense and to this day, no public admission of those samples’ existence at the labs has occurred. Requests by Helmer and others to receive confirmation of from the labs according to Freedom of Information laws have been denied outright on the grounds of “the public interest”. Why? Could it be because blood tests were never actually carried out? Helmer’s book probes this question deeply and the lack of evidence will shock you.

How about the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)? Since the OPCW ran parallel tests of the apparent blood samples of the Skripals as well as the later July victims Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley to get “matches” with the novichok traces in a perfume bottle and Skripal door handle, why has evidence of these samples not been made available? Also why was a British intelligence officer the only figure who oversaw the samples taken to the OPCW for verification? In fact, Helmer points out that the one Swiss contract laboratory (Spiez) associated with the OPCW has contradicted all British claims that any “match” exists between the Skripal samples and Novichok A-234 poisoning.

Finally, Helmer asks: Why were all OPCW Executive Council votes in regards to matters surrounding the Skripal case, taken in secret, and thus in conflict with its own charter and why was Russia denied the right to share in the investigation of the Novichok attack as guaranteed in Articles XIII and IX of the OPCW Chemical Weapons convention? Could that have something to do with the role of former OPCW Director General Ahmet Üzümcü, a Turkish NATO-phile, who Helmer notes “has also been a member of the NATO staff in charge of expanding NATO military operations to the Russian frontier, as well as NATO operations in Ukraine and Syria.” In 2019, Üzümcü was inducted into the Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the Empire.

Helmer goes onto make the point that the overarching dynamic shaping the events of the Skripal/Novichok affair are guided by the collapsing western empire which has been working tirelessly to surround Russia with a ballistic missile shield while sabotaging all efforts by genuine patriots in the west from establishing positive alliances with Russia.

Taking the opportunity of the second anniversary of the Skripal affair to read this book is not only a valuable exercise in logic but also key into the desperate and increasingly fear-driven mind of the London-centered deep state which is quickly losing its grip both on reality and the very influence it had spent generations putting in place.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , a BRI Expert on Tactical talk, and has authored 3 volumes of ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation and can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

How UK Police Painstakingly Traced Suspects in Skripal Nerve-Agent Attack

Jonathon Gatehouse, CBC News

In this handout photo issued by the London Metropolitan Police, Salisbury Novichok poisoning suspects Alexander

Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are shown on CCTV on Fisherton Road, Salisbury, the day of the nerve-agent attack.

(Metropolitan Police via Getty Images)

There are somewhere between 4 million and 6 million CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom, according to the best estimates.

The Metropolitan Police in London operate 10,000 of them. The city's underground has 11,000 in use. And the major rail network that spans the country boasts 4,000 more.

All of which helps explain how British investigators were able to track almost every step of the two Russian men they charged today in connection with the March 4 Novichok poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern city of Salisbury.

Alexander Petrov, right, and Ruslan Boshirov are suspected of poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal

and his daughter Yulia. (EPA-EFE)

A team of 250 officers examined 11,000 hours of footage to zero-in on their suspects and then piece together how they carried out the attack.

Standing in the House of Commons this morning, Prime Minister Theresa May outlined the "painstaking and methodical work" that led police to identify and charge Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov in absentia with conspiracy to murder, attempted murder and possession and use of the deadly nerve agent. And to link the men to the later, presumably accidental, poisoning death of Dawn Sturgess and the sickening of her boyfriend Charlie Rowley.

May explained how the Russian pair arrived at London's Gatwick airport at 3 p.m. on Friday, March 2, aboard an Aeroflot flight. They then travelled to the city centre by train, taking the tube to their discount hotel near the main site of the 2012 Summer Games.

In this photo issued by the Metropolitan Police, Salisbury Novichok poisoning suspects Alexander

Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are shown on CCTV at Salisbury train station on March 3.

(Metropolitan Police via Getty Images)

They journeyed by train to Salisbury the next afternoon, on what police believe was a reconnaissance mission, returning to London two hours later.

May described how on Sunday, March 4, the day the Skripals fell deathly ill, the two men took a morning train to Salisbury. They were filmed walking along a road near Sergei's home just before noon. By late afternoon, they were back in London and one their way to Heathrow, where they boarded another Aeroflot flight to Moscow, touching down in Russia before British authorities even figured out what they were dealing with.

"There is no other line of inquiry beyond this," May told the Commons, saying her government believes the two men are agents of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service.

A reasonable assumption, although it is certainly possible they were working for someone who wants to destroy Putin. If that were the case, I seriously doubt that Putin would protect them as he appears to be doing. 

Skripal was, apparently, sharing info on Russian oligarchs to MI5, which would be the obvious motive for attempting to kill him. It means, Putin may not have been involved, or Putin may have been protecting the oligarchs, of which he is one. Again, his protection of the agents who appear to have administered the Novichok, may indicate the latter to be true.

A still image from CCTV footage recorded on Feb. 27, 2018, shows former Russian spy Sergei Skripal

buying groceries at the Bargain Stop convenience store in Salisbury. (AFP/Getty Images)

"As we made clear in March, only Russia had the technical means, operational experience and motive to carry out the attack."

At a news conference in London, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, a senior counter-terrorism investigator, released a dozen images of the men, showing their arrival on British soil, journeys in London and Salisbury, and eventual departure.

He confirmed the Russian passports were authentic and that the men had used them to enter the U.K. on several previous occasions. But Basu said that police assume the names the men used are aliases, and appealed for information about their true identities.

Police also disclosed new details about how the Novichok was smuggled into the country, providing pictures of a bronze-coloured Nina Ricci 'Premier Jour' perfume box and bottle. The manufacturer says both are fakes.

The counterfeit perfume atomiser found at the property of Novichok poisoning victim Charlie Rowley

had a modified spray mechanism. (Metropolitan Police via Getty Images)

Detectives believe that the two men sprayed the nerve agent over Skripal's front door using a long white plastic spray nozzle.

In mid-June, Charlie Rowley found the perfume box and bottle inside a charity donation bin in the nearby town of Amesbury and took it home. He spilled some of the bottle's contents on his hands while attaching the nozzle. Sturgess, his partner, sprayed a great deal more on her wrists and fell ill almost immediately.

The U.K. has issued Europe-wide arrest warrants for the two suspects and has added their names to Interpol's red notice list, but there will be no formal extradition request as the Putin government will not allow its citizens to be tried overseas.

"Should either of these individuals ever again travel outside Russia, we will take every possible step to detain them, to extradite them and to bring them to face justice here in the United Kingdom," May told the House of Commons.

Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned in Salisbury along with her father, has recovered from the attack

and is seen here speaking to reporters in London on May 23. (Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

And in the interim, the U.K. will push for new EU sanctions against Russia, and will step up counter-intelligence operations against the GRU, the prime minister added.

But justice will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

In Moscow, Yuri Ushakov, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters that the names released by the British "do not mean anything to me."  

Andrey Kortunoy, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, suggested that "two photos and two maybe fake names doesn't mean that much."

An exceptionally cool response in a renewed Cold War.

Is Putin trying to take Russia back into the Soviet days? Does he consider them to be the glory days of the empire? They were certainly the glory days of the KGB; perhaps Putin thinks they are one and the same?

UK Restricting OPCW Access to Amesbury and Salisbury Cases, Says ex-UN Chemical Weapons Inspector

A police officer stands in front of screening erected behind John Baker House, Britain, July 5, 2018

© Henry Nicholls / Reuters

The UK is restricting the work of OPCW specialists involved in the investigation into the Amesbury poisonings, says a former UN chemical inspector, after Britain invited experts to assist with the case.

Detailing that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) remit will be limited by the UK’s ‘technical assistance request,’ Anton Utkin, a former UN chemical inspector in Iraq, stated: “The UK’s desire is that OPWC confirm the chemical agent, that the UK has already identified. That means that the OPWC specialists will be limited to take only those samples that UK will allow, they will interview only those people that the UK would allow.

“So it's very important for the UK that OPWC specialists only perform their requested tasks, otherwise the information about the investigation could spill out.”

It's kind of like detectives showing you slides of a crime scene, but only allowing you to see 3 or 4 of the dozens of slides, then demanding that you agree with their theory.

Experts from the OPCW will return to the UK following a request from the UK Deputy Permanent Representative who invited them to assist the work already taking place – in accordance with Article VIII 38 (e) of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In March, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury by what the UK government reported to be the Russian military-grade nerve agent ‘Novichok.’ The Skripals have since recovered and were discharged from hospital.

Utkin who has previously led the process of destroying chemical weapons in Russia, said of the poisonings of Yulia and Sergei Skripal, that: “If you read the report of the Salisbury technical assistance, the OPCW stated very clearly they were not allowed by the UK to identify other chemicals found in the sample, other than those that were requested. And we know that the UK asked to confirm only one chemical A-234 [referred to by the British government as Novichok].

“So here’s the question, why was the technical assistance only asked after such a long time after Sturgess and Rowley were exposed to the poison. Because the UK would like to make sure that the OPWC would be directed only to the right spot to take the samples.”

On July 4, British police reported that a local couple was poisoned in Amesbury, a town not far from where the Skripal incident occurred. One victim, Charlie Rowley, 45, recovered, while his partner Dawn Sturgess, 44, died in hospital.

The time that has passed from the initial poisoning to the London’s request, was also cause for concern for Utkin. “It might be too late to take samples [from Charlie Rowley] because after three-four weeks the chemical nerve agent, would be washed out of the body due to metabolism. It might be difficult to find the enzyme affected by the nerve agent.”

In the case of [Dawn] Sturgess who died, metabolism processes have stopped, it is then possible to find the enzyme which was affected by the nerve agent. There is a chance.”

Utkin reiterated that it's the limited nature of the OPWC’s remit that will hinder the investigation. “I believe that if we were able to know about other chemicals that would be found in the bodies of the victims, it would shine light on what really happened to them.”

If the Novichok was Planted by Russia, Where’s the Evidence?

This is a good sign in our continual search for what's true - The Guardian is questioning the government's near-hysterical ranting against Russia and Putin. It's about time!

Simon Jenkins, The Guardian

No one has a clue about the Wiltshire poisonings – though the most obvious motive is someone out to embarrass Vladimir Putin

Emergency services on the scene of the latest novichok scare in Amesbury. In this still from a video, a man found unconscious is taken out on a stretcher. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

I seem to be the only person alive with no clue as to who has poisoned four people in Wiltshire. 

I am told that only Russians have access to the poison, known as novichok – though the British research station of Porton Down, located ominously nearby, clearly knows a lot about it. Otherwise, I repeat, I have no clue. 

It is very curious to me that both Novichok events occurred within a few kilometers of Porton Down, UK's very large chemical research community. Check out this map. Porton Down is even closer to Amesbury than it is to Salisbury. If I were investigating these poisonings, I would start right there.

I suppose I can see why the Kremlin might want to kill an ex-spy such as Sergei Skripal and his daughter, so as to deter others from defecting. But why wait so long after he has fled, and why during the build-up to so highly politicised an event as a World Cup in Russia?

Four months on from the crime, the Skripals have been incommunicado in a “secure location”. Barely a word has been heard from them. Theresa May has persistently blamed Russia. She has called the incident “brazen and despicable”, and MI5 condemned “flagrant breaches of international rules”. But I cannot see the diplomatic or other purchase in prejudging the case, when no one can offer a clue.

As to why the same person or persons should want to kill a couple, unconnected to the Skripals, on an Amesbury housing development, the questions are even more baffling. It seems a funny sort of carelessness. Did the couple pick up the infecting agent nearer the original site, eight miles away? Might the new poisoning be an attempt to divert attention from the earlier one? Could it be a devious plot, to make it seem that novichok is available on every street corner, from your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer? Or perhaps one of the victims, Charlie Rowley, has mates in Porton Down? Perhaps someone is showing off, or panicking, or behaving like a complete idiot. Who knows?

 The most obvious motive would surely be from someone out to

embarrass Vladimir Putin - one of his enemies

Now, I wonder who that might include? Gosh, hmmmm, UK? NATO? Deep State? USA? Ukraine? Oligarchs? Political Opposition in Russia? George Soros? No! It was clearly Putin determined to embarrass himself and ensure more sanctions on his country. That's the only thing that makes any sense, at least, to Theresa.

Since I have not a smidgen of an answer to any of these questions, I feel no need to capitulate to the politics of terror and fear. I can open my front door without cleaning my hand. I can visit Wiltshire in peace and safety and marvel at the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. I can revel in the remains of the bronze age Amesbury archer – whose death from bone disease has finally been resolved by the scientists. Where knowledge is nonexistent, ignorance is bliss.

That clearly does not apply to government ministers, for whom ignorance is not a sufficient condition for silence. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, said it was time “the Russian state comes forward and explains exactly what has gone on”. His security minister, Ben Wallace, had earlier reached the same conclusion, given that the Russians “had developed novichok, they had explored assassination programmes in the past, they had motive, form and stated policy”.

Like Javid, he asserted “to a very high assurance” that Russia was to blame, and spoke of “the anger I feel at the Russian state. They chose to use a very, very toxic, highly dangerous weapon,” and should “come and tell us what happened”. Since Moscow vigorously denies any involvement, it is hard to see how the Russians would now “explain”.

Specialist officers in protective suits investigate the first novichok incident – the poisoning of the Skripals, in Salisbury. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Surely, three months after the poison attack on the Skripals, ministers could have produced some evidence for all these accusations? I am at a loss to see what motive the Kremlin might have to commit murders on foreign soil during the buildup, let alone the enactment, of a sporting event that is of mammoth chauvinist significance to Russia.

Clearly it is possible that freelancers, wildcats or private contract killers could have operated at many removes from the Kremlin. But who knows? The most obvious motive for these attacks would surely be from someone out to embarrass the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – someone from his enemies, rather than from his friends or employees. But once again we have no clue.

That the Skripal attack was not long before Russian elections might lend credence to this theory.

As it is, all we can see are the devious tools of the new international politics. We see the rush to judgment at the bidding of the news agenda. We see murders and terrorist incidents hijacked for political gain or military advantage. Ministers plunge into Cobra bunkers. Social media and false news are weaponised. So too are sporting events.

Sport is the most flagrant. The plea that “politics should be kept out of sport” is as hopeless as demanding the exclusion of corruption and fraud. The very phrase, “international” sport, drips with politics. Why else do politicians shower sports festivals with taxpayers’ cash? As the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz would say, such events are the continuation of war by other means. Witness the obscene glee with which the British tabloids greeted Germany’s ejection from the World Cup last week.

Any politicians or heads of state who grace an international sporting fixture – not least one as self-congratulatory as an event hosted by Russia – cannot pretend their presence is apolitical. Hence the pressure on Theresa May to boycott the World Cup because of the Wiltshire poisoning – assuming that she ever intended to go, that is.

To all this there is an easy way out. As we flounder through the novichok morass without a jot of evidence, these crimes should be treated as they remain, local cases of attempted murder. They should be detached from global power plays, political grandstanding and penalty shootouts. They belong to the Wiltshire police and their advisers.

If nothing eventually emerges to implicate Moscow in the poisonings, more fool the politicians. If they were indeed a Russian plot, then the time to get justifiably angry is when this has been proved. Until then, I recommend the tennis.

• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist