There’s enough smoke and mirrors in the Salisbury poisonings to make the Magic Circle blush. It is impossible for the public to understand what happened, and who did what to whom, not only because the details don’t add up, but because many of the so-called “facts” that have been released are suspicious in and of themselves. Whichever aspect of the case we look at to try to make sense, we can never quite be sure that we are not going down a rabbit trail, since the “facts” we base our case on may in fact not be facts at all.

What we can do, though, is to keep looking at the official claims. The investigators of the case obviously have access to information that ordinary members of the public don’t have, and they have made an accusation. But the big question is whether the claims and the accusation they have made stand up to scrutiny – not just to the “facts” that have been given out, but also to logic and to reason.

It is important to begin by defining exactly what the claim is. There are essentially two branches.

The first comes from the British Government, who have declared the Russian State to be responsible for an attempted assassination of Mr Skripal on 4th March (to begin with they hedged their bets between direct responsibility and indirect responsibility, but later statements are more explicit about direct responsibility). In making this claim, because they are not in a court of law, but rather in a Parliament full of remarkably incurious folk, they have been able to able to come up with vague and airy statements about the case, all of which may well be enough to satisfy the incuriosity of that particular audience and their chums in the media, but which are unlikely to satisfy the minds of the more discerning.

The second branch comes from the Metropolitan Police. It is by far the more important of the two, since it is the specific claim of those paid to investigate the case, and is therefore the one upon which the Government’s claim ultimately rests (it is, however, worth reminding ourselves that in the Alice in Wonderland times we now find ourselves in, the Government’s claim came prior to the investigation, not after it, which as anyone acquainted with logic, reason and justice will tell you, is precisely the wrong way around).

To understand The Met’s central claim, however, we must first hack our way through much smoke and navigate our way around many mirrors. So let’s do that by first establishing what the claim is not:

It is not that the Russian state was behind the poisoning (although the Metropolitan Police statement of 5th September does repeats the claim made by the Prime Minister on 14th March, it does so only as a prelude to what is then said about the two suspects, and is not central to its claim about those men).

It is not that Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov are GU Intelligence Officers.

It is not that Ruslan Boshirov is in reality Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga.

All these are peripheral to the central claim made by the Metropolitan Police, and in many ways just smokes and mirrors. The Metropolitan Police’s central claim can be succinctly said to be the following:

“That between 12:10pm and 12:40 on 4th March 2018, the two men named as suspects – Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov – went to the house of Sergei Skripal at 47 Christie Miller Road, Salisbury, on foot, and there applied a high purity, military grade nerve agent to the handle of the front door in an attempt to assassinate Mr Skripal.” [see my note below]

Now, astute readers will realise that the Metropolitan Police has mentioned nothing about the timing that I have stated: 12:10 – 12:40. Nevertheless, that this is what their claim entails is an incontrovertible fact taken from two pieces of information:

a) The image released by the Met of the two men on the Wilton Road at 11:58 (ten minutes after another image showing them arriving at Salisbury train station), which is a little over 5 minutes walk from 47 Christie Miller Road.

b) The image of the two men walking towards the train station on Fisherton Street, some 25 minutes walk or so from Christie Miller Road, at 13:05 [see my note below]

In other words, the claim that the Government first made back in March, when there were still various conflicting claims as to where and how the poisoning took place, have now been distilled into a very particular location — the door handle of 47 Christie Miller Road — and a narrow timeframe — approximately 30 minutes.

To put that into Cluedo terminology, the Metropolitan Police have made an accusation, and it is as follows:

“We believe it was Boshirov and Petrov (perhaps not their real names), at the door handle of Christie Miller Road, with the Novichok, between 12:10 and 12:40.”

The whole of the Government accusations from March onwards are now indelibly connected with this claim, and its truth or otherwise.

Now, the first thing to say about the claim is that the information released by the Met so far has not proven this claim at all. The images showing the two men coming into the UK do not prove the claim. The images of the two men walking around Salisbury do not prove the claim (in fact, they tend to do the opposite, since the idea that two apparently highly trained intelligence officers would not only carry out their deed under cover of daylight, walking together at all times, but would then spend almost two hours traipsing around town are frankly not very credible). The image showing the two men on the Wilton Road does not prove the claim, since it is some 600 yards from the alleged crime scene.

It may all be enough to convince the nation’s MPs, but it ought not be enough to convince anyone still committed to reason and logic.

However, comments in a new book by the BBC reporter, Mark Urban, reveal a couple of things that are of crucial interest in light of the claim. Here is the first:

“Urban discovered that Skripal spent much of his day watching Russia’s Channel One, a pro-Kremlin state broadcaster. He adopted ‘the Kremlin line in many matters’, the journalist writes, ‘even while sitting in his MI6-purchased house’, especially over Moscow’s fraught relations with Ukraine.”

The key part I want to draw your attention to is that, according to Urban, Mr Skripal’s house was “MI6-purchased.” This may come as no surprise to those who have been paying attention, but it does at least clear away some of the smokes and mirrors. So the house that Mr Skripal lived in, and the one that he was apparently targeted in, was owned by MI6. And the reason for this, as the British media seem to have belatedly discovered, is that Mr Skripal was still working for MI6.

Mr Urban also says this:

“The people closest to him [Sergei] were probably what he called his ‘Team’ — the officers from MI5 and MI6 who looked after his welfare. He spoke about them with affection and had a special mobile phone that went directly to their duty officer.”

Hopefully, you’re beginning to get the picture. Sergei Skripal was not only active for MI6, and not only lived in a house which was purchased by MI6 but – according to Mr Urban – he had MI5 and MI6 officers assigned to protect him, as well as a direct line should he need to get in contact. As an aside, would it be cheeky to enquire whether this particular phone was one of the ones that was allegedly made untraceable on 4th March?

Given what Mr Urban says about the house, the phone and the protection, let me ask a few simple questions:

  1. How conceivable is it that the house did not have some kind of security measures in place, including CCTV cameras?
  2. How conceivable is it that Russian intelligence wouldn’t have assumed that Mr Skripal’s house would have had some kind of security measures in place, including CCTV cameras covering the front door?
  3. How conceivable is it that Russian intelligence would have chosen a method of assassination that was not only highly untargeted, but which was practically guaranteed to result in the filming of the assassins committing the crime?

To discerning persons, the answer to all three questions is quite obvious, though perhaps not to the nation’s MPs or media.

But let’s just suspend reason and logic for a moment, and imagine that despite the extremely high probability that Russian intelligence would have assumed Mr Skripal’s house to be well protected, and the absurdly low probability that they would then have chosen this particular method of assassination, they had still carried out the attack in the way the Met claims. What would it mean?

It would mean that there has been a massive failure on the part of British intelligence to protect one of their own assets in his own house — a house which they owned, and which should therefore have been made safe. In which case, why are there no questions being asked about this failure in the House of Commons? Or do we already know the reason for that.

Let me spell it out even more clearly. There only three options here:

Option 1: Mr Skripal’s MI6-bought house did indeed have the kind of security measures you would expect it to have had, given that Mr Skripal was actively working for British Intelligence. In which case, if the central claim of the Metropolitan Police is true, there must be CCTV footage of the two suspects, applying “high purity, military grade nerve agent” to the door handle.

Option 2: Mr Skripal’s MI6-bought house didn’t have the kind of security measures one would expect it to have had, given that Mr Skripal was actively working for British Intelligence. In which case, if the central claim of the Metropolitan Police is true, does this not constitute a failure of security of the highest order?

Option 3: Mr Skripal’s MI6-bought house may or may not have had the kind of security measures you would expect it to have – but it’s all neither here nor there because the door handle assassination claim is untrue.

The discerning amongst you will make your own minds up as to which of these possible scenarios is correct.

Note: I originally stated in this piece that the specific timeframe that the Met’s and by association the Government’s claims rest was 1 hour and 20 minutes. This is the time between when Boshirov and Petrov could reasonably have got from the Wilton Road to Christie Miller Road, and done the alleged deed, and the time that Mr Skripal’s car was seen driving towards the town at 13:33. But as one of the commenters, David, has pointed out, there is a Met released image of the two men in the town (about 25 minutes walk away) at 13:05. This reduces the timeframe to between 12:10 and 1240. So half an hour, rather than 1 hour 20 minutes.

It is also worth reiterating that the claim also rests on the Skripals being out in this 12:10-12:40 timeframe, coming back sometime just after it, and then going out again at approximately 13:30, plus of course both Sergei and Yulia touching the outside door handle.

556 thoughts on “Urban’s Tale Clears Away Some of the Smoke and Mirrors in Salisbury”

  1. ‘DSMA notice’ (formerly known as ‘D notices’) issued to the British media on 7 March 2018 :
    The issue surrounding the identify of a former MI6 informer, Sergei Skripal, is already widely available in the public domain. However, the identifies of intelligence agency personnel associated with Sergei Skripal are not yet widely available in the public domain. The provisions of DSMA Notice 05 therefore apply to these identities.
    http://powerbase.info/index.php/DSMA_notice_7_March_2018

    Christopher Steele is as widely available in the public domain as Sergei.
    Therefore all attention was focused on Pablo Miller.
    But read the text of the ‘DSMA notice’ again – it does not just refer to Miller.

    Mark Urban kindly wrote about Sergei´s „team“, referring to his MI5/6 handlers.
    Quote „Skripal Files“ :
    „I got the impression that the ones he was closest to were ‘Team’, said without the article, those from the intelligence agencies looking after his welfare. He was evidently in regular contact with them, and had a special mobile phone that went direct to their duty officer. There is a special section within MI6, Agent Resettlement, or AR, that looks after the service’s old Joes. MI5 are also involved with the protective security aspects of this, it’s a joint operation.“

    I´m sure the team introduced Urban to Sergei and is feeding him with „information“.
    This „team“ is protected by the ‘DSMA notice’.

    Members of the team might be seen on CCTV near the Skripals on March 4. The Skripals are now most likely „protected“ by the team.

    Where did Sergei met his team ? In London, in Salisbury restaurants, at his home ?
    What did they talk about ? What did they offer him before and after the poisoning ?
    How much are the Skripals aware who their real enemy is ?
    „Teams“ can be very convincing…

  2. Three links from October 6 for the ones who want to be informed about the Steele Dossier :

    George Soros funded research firm behind the Steele dossier, his spokesman confirms
    https://milnenews.com/2018/10/06/george-soros-funded-research-firm-behind-the-steele-dossier-his-spokesman-confirms/

    Coordinated Effort to Hijack Presidential Election Exposed
    James Baker revelations further expose FBI, Democrats as real colluders.
    https://www.libertynation.com/coordinated-effort-to-hijack-election-exposed/

    The Role of Law Firm of Perkins Coie in #SpyGate:
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1048559488477945856.html

    Note : All the names that appear around the Steele dossier are also connected to the mess in the Ukraine.
    The complicity of the media was the same we find now in the Skripal case.

    1. The funny thing : the driver’s license came from the CIT, one of Bellingcat´s „trusted sources“.
      Aric Toler retweeted it, without any checking.
      But when the photo was debunked by people like Elena, the CIT deleted the tweed.
      https://twitter.com/hashtag/skripal?f=tweets&vertical=news&lang=de

      In the long run, Bellingcat will claim they have a lot of proof for Chepiga being Boshirov.
      In their enumeration they will include this fake driver’s license.
      That´s how Bellingcat works – for the short minded people.

  4. http://www.wallstreetitalia.com/skripal-avvelenato-in-macchina-novita-sul-caso-dellex-spia-russa/

    19 March 2018, by Livia Liberatore
    Si fa ogni giorno più complicato il caso dell’ex spia russa Sergei Skripal, ucciso insieme a sua figlia nella cittadina di Salisbury, nel sud dell’Inghilterra.

    This is the story run by Wall Street Italia on March 19, saying that the Skipals had died. Was this news given out before Viktoria released her recording of the telephone conversation with Yulia, which proved they had not died? Then the story of the deaths had to be abbandonned.

    1. I think the story of the “recovery” was broken on the 29th in the UK

      There was no doubt that we were being prepared for a double tragedy but the phone call wasn’t reported until the 5th April

      There was a very good reason why Sergei was not going to die at this stage (whether he was dead or not) and that was an inquest was not a welcome idea.

      But either way (I have been informed) by the 19th Sergei had been long gone from Salisbury. Whether he left this mortal coil I do not know.

      1. Would HMG have killed Yulia and Sergei?

        Of Course.

        But not if Sergei was whisked away from under their noses.

        They have Yulia then but can’t kill her, not if Sergei can pop up at any moment and speak out

    2. Interesting spot that is.

      Andrew Marr on the Marr Show mentioned the word ” dead” twice without blinking re: the Skripals if I remember correctly?

      Where was his info coming from at the time?

      Latest developments form Bullandcrap is that a medical doctor was on standby in case the assassin ( is there only one now?) got some nasty Novichock on his handy pandys. His doctor mate then could administer the antidote in an instant and drah his still limp ( but alive body back to Russia ) for follow up reports in Putin’s Office. No-one at the airport or the Hotel in London would notice for sure.

      You can’t beat planning and forward thinking, can you?

      Here’s the problem for the perfume tale:

      If the alleged assassins smuggled THE perfume bottle into the UK then if IT was wrapped in cellophane they would have to unwrap their perfume package.

      Charlie say’s that his was wrapped when he found it.

      So, if the truth is being told there are/were TWO bottles of perfume knocking about in Salisbury.

      The problem for the authorities is that one has been found ( freshly unwrapped by Charlie ) and one was used on the door handle.

      If that’s correct, why aren’t the police running round like madmen and women looking for this first unwrapped bottle that’s been dumped in the Salisbury area?

      It could be half full and a danger to the public. It is Novichock afterall – isn’t it?

      Ah……that’s why the assassin had his personal doctor because it could have been dangerous when they took the half bottle back to Moscow.

      ” Take two perfume bottles into Salisbury – Not me – I just Novichock and go! ”

      It is all getting beyond parody – it truly is.

  6. Back to basics.

    One part of the Sunday does not seem to be in dispute.
    The Duck Feed
    The police called on the home of Aiden Cooper’s parents and showed them the CCTV footage of their son, two of mates feeding the ducks with the Skripals.
    Mrs Cooper was contacted by the Sun and the rest we know. (Because we read the article)
    Why is this significant?
    Because it is the only incident where we could describe the police action as “Proactive and confirmed.”

    What does this mean? Well it means that the HMG side of the incident agrees with the “public” perspective of what actually took place.
    Mrs Cooper agreed that the CCTV footage was indeed her son, and the police by their actions knew the two other adults were in fact “The Skripals.”
    Of course, you may say that this footage at 1-50 or so on Sunday afternoon, March 4th does not necessarily prove that the boys were indeed breaking bread with Sergei and his daughter, but logic indicates this is true. The police, belatedly, (Yes, my complaint to the Wiltshire Police Standards continues) contacted the parents and advised them to see medical diagnosis for their son and casually incinerate his clothing.

    Right now, we are embroiled in a red/grey bag, blonde third or fifth agent.
    Even worse, we are discussing Mark Urban’s fantasy and trying to use his words to justify a direction we agree with or ridicule his prose because it does not agree with what we are trying to fit into our narrative.

    Why am I saying this?
    The duck feed disproves the door handle dosing.
    If the door handle did not happen, then the HMG story is false.
    If the duck feed is true, then the HMG story is false.
    The police approached Mr and Mrs Cooper, so I venture the duck feed is true.

    The duck feed is NOT on any Basu, Met timeline. Just as bizarrely, even the Sun writer, Nick Pisa and his photographer, did not follow up on the story. (I have given up encouraging the Sun writers to understand the significance of the story and go for the bigger story.)

    But it has to be, the police visited the parents.

    2. Urban has the duck feed. Bread from Zizzis sing his timeline about 3.55 p.m.
      Maybe they fed ducks at 1.45 with bread from home and 3.55 with Zizzis bread.
      Perhaps spies should think of some hook-up sites other than bodies of water.

    3. One part of the Sunday does not seem to be in dispute.
      The Duck Feed

      Seems to be a dispute as to when the duck feed that included three children happened. The Sun that was handed the story and staged photos with one boy and his parents implied that it took place shortly before the Skripal’s collapsed which was consistent with earlier reports of duck feeding that didn’t include children. If not for Rob talking to Mrs. Cooper, we here at the Blogmire would still be under the same impression. Even as bringing stale bread from home to feed ducks is a more common activity than tossing leftover garlic toast from a restaurant lunch is. The police conveniently leave this out of their timeline but they aren’t innocent of promulgating that after lunch duck feed. To what purpose?

  7. That snow in Wiltshire
    https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/16057914.live-snow-in-salisbury-weather-and-travel-updates-pictures-and-video/

    11.32

    If you are driving today in #Wiltshire, be aware of slush and ice, slow down and drive to the conditions. If you’re heading out on foot, wear appropriate footwear and take care. Some services are still affected by the weather. Updates: https://t.co/Uvr5GIBvn8
    — Wiltshire Council (@wiltscouncil) March 4, 2018

    Skripal lived in a cul-de-sac. Leaving the house he would have seen fresh footprints to and from the door knob, same as returning to the house.
    There weren’t that many visitors there, were there?

    1. Saturday March 3rd seemed to be a bad weather day which I believed Rob confirmed in an earlier post.

      Rus and Alex still made the Saturday journey however. The trains ran so road carnage either did not affect their plans or they didn’t care.

      Segei quite rightly would not trust his rear wheel drive BMW and got his mate (and Mo) to take him to LHR.

      They might have crossed paths twice that day.
      Sergei on the M3 and the Superagents on the train.
      Strange.

      1. Duncan – going over old ground, if Sergei had winter tyres, for a Russian that snow wouldn’t be a problem even in a rear wheel drive.
        In my opinion, Ross wanted to go on his own, Mo was jealous/nagging “why should you get HIS daughter” so they all ended up going. That ruined R&A plans to meet Sergei Saturday.

  8. Duncan posted this link in the previous thread :
    https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/16958629.wiltshire-police-advertise-for-new-chief-constable/?ref=mr&lp=2

    Kier Pritchard had his first day in job on March 5. And now, 7 month later, he quits.
    Is he tired of lying for Queen and Fatherland ?
    Or was he forced to go ? The article doesn´t mention his further plans.
    The media is not worth reporting – silence.

    Angus Macpherson said it may not be essential for candidates to relocate to the county, writing in his advert for the job: “I am happy to discuss whether you would need to move to live in Wiltshire to do the job effectively.”

    HÄ ? Police work from afar ? Never heard about that.
    It seems that the gray eminence Angus Macpherson wants to have carte blanche in the Skripal case.
    It’s rumbling at the base …

    1. Chief Constable Kier Pritchard, June 2018:
      ” “We would not have known from those first hours what we were dealing with. At that time we didn’t know, and why would they, if there was anything other than a medical incident, or something that was drug-related or something more sinister,” he said.
      CC Pritchard said DS Bailey was one of a team of officers who attended Mr Skripal’s home in Christie Miller Road (…) He said officers were looking for information (…)
      “That [information] could be a suicide note, it could be evidence of drugs, it could be evidence of some form of substance,” CC Pritchard added. ”
      https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/16270991.kier-pritchard-says-ds-nick-bailey-poisoned-at-skripal-house/

      Mark Urban, October 2018:
      “The wires had been buzzing at Wiltshire Police. They had called the number in the police computer and found out that Sergei Skripal was a former Russian spy who had been resettled in Britain.
      (…) Approaching the front door, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey extended a gloved hand to grasp the front door handle (…) What was he looking for? Signs that their house had been searched, perhaps, or maybe even the presence of a would-be assassin.”
      http://www.theblogmire.com/urbans-tale-clears-away-some-of-the-smoke-and-mirrors-in-salisbury/#comment-14713

      Too bad that Kier Pritchard won’t be around to say which version is true. His replacement was advertised the day before Mark Urban’s book was published.

    2. Only a bloody fool would accept that Poisoned Chalice

      Unfortunately there is no shortage of those in the senior ranks of British police officers

      One thing they need to sharpen up on though is they need better liars, much better liars.

    3. Some more oddities:

      Wiltshire Police reported that Pritchard was appointed Chief Constable in February 2018 – promoted from Asst Chief Constable –
      https://www.wiltshire.police.uk/article/1047/Chief-Constable-Kier-Pritchard

      He was to replace the prior Chief Constable, Mike Veale, who resigned in January but not scheduled to leave until March. (Similar to Met CT – Rowley submitted his retirement resignation in January with a March effective date, and he handled the Met CT first press briefing on the Salisbury Incident.)

      However, BBC reported on 1/29/18 that Pritchard had been appointed temporary Chief Constable and subsequent media reports referred to Pritchard as temporary Chief Constable. Was there some last step or sign-off required before he could officially have become Chief Constable?

      Sure smells like Angus Macpherson may be the real problem. He’s an elected official – Tory – and has no experience in policing or criminal justice. (He’s an accountant.)

      Not too difficult to see hints that WPD officers were being jacked around from on high over the Incident.

    4. Thanks for that link, Marie. So Pritchard went from being Temporary Chief Constable to Chief Constable at some unknown time. On the top of his twitter page, he dropped the ‘temporary’ from his title at some time between 23 March (archived on Wayback machine) and today when he simply calls himself “Chief Constable”.

      But the Police and Crime Commissioner Angus Macpherson suggests that Pritchard’s position was always only temporary:
      “I was very clear when Mr Pritchard was appointed temporary Chief Constable at the beginning of this year that for a permanent position there must be a fair and transparent process and we have started that today.

      The journalist writing that article also says “Kier Pritchard has been acting as temporary chief constable since March 4 (…)”
      https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/16958629.wiltshire-police-advertising-for-new-chief-constable/

      Was Pritchard just hyping up his own position, or was his position ever made permanent? There appears to be some confusion and contradictions about that, as well as about the date he was appointed. You would not normally expect that in a buraucratic hierarchical structure like a police force.

      1. This is rich:

        “I was very clear when Mr Pritchard was appointed temporary Chief Constable at the beginning of this year that for a permanent position there must be a fair and transparent process and we have started that today.

        fair and transparent when nothing from WPD has been transparent about its handling of the Incident.

        That February WPD press release was issued while Veale remained on the job; so, would be odd if Pritchard authorized its release. Otherwise, reports were consistent that Pritchard would be and as of 5 Mar was temporary Chief Constable. However, there also was no indication that the process to fill the job began in January with Veale’s resignation. Why would that only begin with Pritchard’s October resignation from his temporary job?

        It’s not unusual in organizations for an assistant … to be acting … or temporary .. when the slot above them becomes open. In the private sector, it’s not necessary to change the assistant’s title. The assistant may not want the job (I’ve been there) or she/he is known to lack some defined qualification for the job. However, in such instances, the search for a replacement is well advertised and/or well known within the organization. No indication that such a condition existed in this instance.

        Sounds to me as if Pitchard as an Assistant Chief Constable threw in the towel just as Chief Constable Veale did when he secured another Chief Constable position. In the US, top cops often resign or are fired — but there’s no mystery about the resignation/firing. Some are ‘good’ guys that walked into and couldn’t fix a corrupt/dysfunctional operation and some are part of the corruption/dysfunction. Not seeing either wrt WPD and Veale or Pritchard.

      1. He’d been named as temporary Chief Constable in late January. From then to 4 Mar he was an Asst Chief Constable that everyone knew would move into the Chief Constable job on a temporary basis when Veale officially left that week.

    6. The timing suggests that Pritchard was suddenly appointed because the Wiltshire Police needed a public face when the media arrived in Salisbury to cover the Skripal case. The WP need not have bothered, since the Met and Counter-terrorism police took over the investigation the day after Pritchard started his new job.

      1. I suppose the first line should have said that he suddenly started the job, after being named or appointed or whatever in February.

        1. No Brendan. Nothing sudden in this matter except for Veale submitting his resignation in January and Pritchard resigning in October. Veale gave them a customary six week notice (same as Rowley did as head of Met CT, also in January). Pritchard was quickly named as the one who would be temporary Chief Constable when Veale left in March. That officially occurred on 5 Mar. (Same day Basu stepped up as head of Met CT, but in that instance Rowley still handled the press briefing on either the 6th or 7th. Since then it’s been Basu’s show.) It did seem odd that Pritchard wasn’t named as Chief Constable on 5 Mar, and I can only assume that it was because Macpherson didn’t want him for the job; so, he delayed the decision.

          1. Pritchard’s “First day in the job” on 5 March still seems too much of a coincidence for me. Is there any confirmation that Veale finished on that day or even the day before?

            1. I ran this down a few months ago. Went far enough to conclude that there was no there there wrt Veale’s last day as WCC and Pritchard’s official first day a tWCC. So, I didn’t keep notes on this and my memory is limited. Much like the Met CT changing of the guard on 5 Mar. Both were fully disclosed in the media beginning in January.

              However, and I’m somewhat hesitant in stating this because I don’t want to contribute to more idle speculation, these scheduled changes would have been noted by a local person or person interested in perpetrating a nefarious deed during a police transition point when not fully up to speed was possible. Could have been helpful if there were a significant plot afoot and it was the deciding element in the go-date.

              I doubt that because Basu and Pritchard were internal promotions and therefore, there wouldn’t have been much, if any, internal chaos. It did appear to me that Veale is a police professional and not a Tory-HMG toady/flunkie. Unlike Macpherson. Perhaps Macpherson hoped that Pritchard would be more like himself and less like Veale, but he wouldn’t have been able to ascertain that until Pritchard was in the job.

  9. If the job of the ‘masked woman’ was as the bag carrier, what was the other report of the ‘masked man‘ all about?

    I have previously suggested that The Mill is where the Skripals disappeared. The official timeline is fake – the police changed it to hide the significance of The Mill. According to Greg Townsend, the police treated him like a ‘terrorist’ and they then spent weeks searching the car park behind The Mill. The only reason to search the car park is that the Skripals had been there. The inside of The Mill was not searched for over a week but outside, in the car park, something had happened. If the Skripals were not in the car park, it is the only place they had not been that was searched by police.

    Just before 3:30pm, the Skripals walked out of the front door of The Mill. They turned right and headed towards the fence that blocks off a passageway alongside the building. Usually the gate in the middle of the fence is closed and it looks like it must be opened from the rear as there do not seem to be any fittings on the front of it. The following image shows the gate open on 11 March:

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/11/11/4A15252600000578-5487305-image-a-6_1520767199992.jpg

    There is also video taken on 6 March which shows the gate open. That was the same day The Mill was closed by police:

    https://www.gettyimages.com/license/928358578

    You will also note there is a single CCTV camera (on the wall above the black umbrella) but that camera overlooks the garden and the view, close to the building, is significantly blocked by the umbrella – the umbrella is in exactly the same position on 6 March video.

    Thus if the Skripals turned right out of the front door, all they had to do was get through the fence and they would be in the yard/car park behind The Mill, where a waiting car could drive them away. It really was as simple as that. They drove away and HMG lost them.

    Why do I think they turned right out of the front door and not left – firstly, there is no easy route to the rear of The Mill by turning left and secondly, the police cordon at the front of The Mill was only imposed on 6 March and was lifted on the morning of 7 March. Lifting the cordon so quickly was unlikely if the police had thought the Skripals had turned left out of The Mill, back towards the shops.

    So how did the Skripals get through the fence? There had to be somebody on the other side. Do we have any clues as to who that might have been? Well there is one possibility: it turns out that there is someone we know about but have not seriously considered (because we didn’t know what he was doing) that fits this story very well.

    There were odd reports of a person in a black face mask, that didn’t seem to make much sense… but the fact that the story disappeared as quickly as it had appeared suggested to me that (once again) something significant was being hidden. The Mail on Sunday published the following on 10 March:

    “Meanwhile, police and volunteers from Citywatch, who sift through CCTV material, have been scouring footage for signs of an assailant. The Mail on Sunday has learned that officers are investigating claims that an ‘aggressive’ masked man was seen acting suspiciously in the area shortly before Mr Skripal and his daughter collapsed.
    A witness told detectives he saw a man with a black mask covering his nose and mouth acting suspiciously around 3pm last Sunday.
    At the time Mr Skripal and Yulia were thought to be in the Mill pub a few yards away. The man, who asked not to be named, told The Mail on Sunday he saw the man after he had been out for Sunday lunch with his partner and his parents across the street.
    He said: ‘We all left together at 3pm and we were walking back into the Maltings [the shopping centre where the Skripals collapsed] to go back to our car when we all saw this man looking very strange and suspicious walking towards us.
    ‘He had on black skinny jeans, a black hoodie pulled up over his head and he had this strange looking mask over his face. It had black with a white pattern on it. You could only see his dark eyes and forehead. He had a dark complexion. He looked threatening and aggressive and he was walking towards us with purpose.
    ‘He gave me a stern look as he passed us by the Works which is about 100 yards from the bench where they found the Russians.’
    The witness, who works as a pest controller, contacted police on Wednesday. He added: ‘I rang the police because it was niggling away at me that we had seen this suspicious man less than an hour before this man and his daughter were found on the bench. There was something not right about him. It wasn’t cold, I was out without a coat, so it didn’t make sense that he had his hood up and face covered.’
    Police contacted the man yesterday and said they would be back in touch to take a formal statement but declined to comment publicly.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5486163/Fears-Russian-spy-poisoned-bouquet-flowers.html
    PUBLISHED: 22:39 BST, 10 March 2018

    The EXACT same 356 words were published in a further DM article the following day.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5487305/Health-bosses-tell-500-people-wash-possessions.html
    PUBLISHED: 11:01 BST, 11 March 2018

    And a summary (with credit to the The Mail on Sunday) was published by The Sun on 12 March.
    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5789398/salisbury-nerve-agent-attack-woman-black-face-mask-police/
    12th March 2018, 11:46 pm

    There are a few things to unravel first.

    “…he saw the man after he had been out for Sunday lunch with his partner and his parents across the street.”

    Where was the witness coming from ‘across the street’? If he was with his parents, it is not likely it was a sandwich bar. If he was in the area of The Works, heading towards Sainsbury’s car park, there are several possible lunch venues that can be excluded because he would not have had to ‘cross’ any street to get where he was. One likely place that he might have been that was ‘across the street’ was the King’s Head Inn on Bridge Street – almost exactly where R&A were pictured in CCTV6. Somewhere you might have Sunday lunch with your partner and parents. If that is correct, then he had 2 possible routes to get to The Works, as shown in the following Google map:

    https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/The+King's+Head+Inn,+Bridge+Street,+Salisbury,+UK/The+Works,+The+Maltings,+31-32+Priory+Square,+Salisbury+SP1+1BD,+UK/@51.0691574,-1.7991489,220m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m15!4m14!1m5!1m1!1s0x4873ebf1cd73a82b:0x52f6468e3006efaf!2m2!1d-1.7981183!2d51.0685281!1m5!1m1!1s0x4873ebf04910b913:0x13a8237ab3d2a028!2m2!1d-1.7985973!2d51.0697866!3e2!5i1

    The blue dotted line across Bridge Street, down Malthouse Lane and into Priory Square is slightly shorter than the route over the bridge and past The Mill. I think this is the way they had walked because the witness also said:

    “We all left together at 3pm and we were walking back into the Maltings”

    If they had walked along the grey route (on the Google map) they had already been in The Maltings for most of the walk – and would not be going ‘back into’ the Maltings by The Works.

    So at approximately 3:03pm the witness was walking back INTO The Maltings, towards the car park, from Priory Square, as the masked man passed him… heading TOWARDS Priory Square. If the witness had walked along the grey route, past The Mill, the masked man would have passed him heading in a direction towards the bench (which would somewhat spoil this idea!) but I think from the description given this would be wrong.

    The man in the black mask was only 1 or 2 minutes walk from the rear of The Mill car park at that point – and he was heading in that direction. If that was his destination, he could have opened the gate any time after approximately 3:05pm – let’s say 3:10pm, when we know the Skripals were already inside The Mill.

    If the Skripals walked out of The Mill at 3:25pm, the masked man was there to let them through the fence. Once in the car, the Skripals deposited their IDs in the red bag and gave it to the masked woman, who had been waiting in the car. She left towards Pret and the masked man got into the car.

    The masked man was the Skripals minder. He had watched them enter The Mill and had then headed back through the Maltings, exiting at The Works on his way to the rear of The Mill.

    1. Paul, the discovery of the gate and the fact that it was open, is an interesting discovery.
      So there is actually an escape route to the backyard.
      The camera captures the gate, the black umbrella does not obscure this part.

      However, I don´t think that Yulia played this game.
      But it would be conceivable that one lured the Skripals to the backyard under a pretence.
      I consider such thoughts only when it was definitely proven that the Skripals were not on the bench.

      1. Liane, you keep saying that you do not accept that the Skripals were not on the bench but never offer any proof or alternative ideas. I fear we are not going to get any proof acceptable to you. What is your alternative? What evidence can we consider that points to the Skripals being on the bench?

        Also, any alternative theory needs to include the sighting of a man in a black mask at 3pm and a woman in a black mask at 3:40pm. In view of what happened that afternoon it is inconceivable (to me) that those people were not involved in what happened. An alternative theory also needs to explain why the car park of The Mill was of interest to the police.

        1. …Sunday afternoon, a lot of people around the bench. If Skrypali was not on bench – witnesses would have understood all the next day. It is logical that the organizers of the “poisoning” should eliminate all witnesses. But that’s absurd…. Julia certainly knows she was on the bench or not. Her silence suggests her complicity.

            1. Paul, so there are a dozen witnesses who know that there was no any Skripals on the bench, and these witnesses are still alive? I can’t believe this is happening.

              1. Iris, I am sorry to have to tell you this but the whole story is an absolute pack of lies. We have been lied to by everyone! HMG, The Met, SDH, OPCW, etc, etc. all lying.

                Do you really believe any nerve agent was used? It wasn’t!

                Compare:

                Salisbury 2018 – Novichok – Dead = 0; Injured = 0.
                Japan 1994 – Sarin – Dead = 8; Injured = 600+
                Japan 1995 – Sarin – Dead =12; Injured = 1,050+

                Where are all the dead and injured in Salisbury? Novichok is many times more lethal than sarin!

                It is all lies!

      2. This is the rear view that gives a better idea of the space beside the building:

        https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Living+Greens+Machine/@51.0694508,-1.7981184,54a,35y,193.44h,22.37t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x48738c5536009bb7:0xda3e080f25eaa06!2sSalisbury,+UK!3b1!8m2!3d51.068785!4d-1.794472!3m4!1s0x4873ebf04a69b3d9:0x850f37de5076169b!8m2!3d51.0692037!4d-1.7980094

        Also the fence is a recent addition. This is an image from 2015 before the fence was built:
        http://www.reidsengland.com/site/assets/files/7443/the-mill-ext.-toppic.jpg

    2. So how did the Skripals get through the fence? There had to be somebody on the other side. Do we have any clues as to who that might have been? Well there is one possibility: it turns out that there is someone we know about but have not seriously considered (because we didn’t know what he was doing) that fits this story very well.
      ——————————————————
      The wizard Merlin, I guess.

      1. @Daniel Rich

        The question is not: “will it happen again today and tomorrow”. The question is: “Will it ever stop?”

      1. From the description of the first witness (black with white pattern), I think it might have been a cyclists dust mask – they usually are designed to fit under the chin and also cover the nose.

  10. I’m so confused now that I’ve no idea who, if anyone, did what, if anything, to whom, if anyone. But I do know this: it may, or may not, have been done in Spielsbury

    The coincident drill thing still bothers me. Here’s an article covering some notable occasions where where terror drills went live. https://rense.com/general95/terrorll.html

    I remember a report years ago from the Philippines describing a movie shoot of a staged anti-US demonstration that turned into a real one (entirely understandable . . . couldn’t find a link though).

    1. I’m so confused now that I’ve no idea who, if anyone, did what, if anything, to whom, if anyone.
      —————————————————
      I understand. People are creative. Keep to Rob’s posts.

    2. @ martin,

      Your confusion is the TPTB’s goal. Lies, half-truths, distortions, misdirections, ‘experts,’ you name it, and they’ll dig into their stockpiles and throw it at ya. Their pockets have no depth, but their imagination tends to be rather shallow. I second Milda’s advice: keep an eye on web site’s like Rob’s. Here you’ll find people from all walks of life, who have at least two things in common:

      1) They prefer to live true lives.

      2) They know [instinctively/intellectually/or otherwise] they’re being lied to.

      These are the kid of people who, tirelessly, keep digging until the truth is discovered, no matter how much decomposed the poor thing might be, by the times that happens.

  12. Milda, thank you for your replies to my comments, yesterday and today. Remember what Urban said…
    Urban…..
    “They communicate with people via social media, e-mails. Some saw them. We know that Yulia’s friend from Russia visited her in June. So, the Skripals are seeing their friends,” Urban said, adding that it was wrong to think that the two were isolated from society. “They simply do not really want to see us, the journalists.” https://sputniknews.com/world/201810031068554416-skripal-new-book-life-after-poisoning/ How is it possible for Yulia to be in contact with so many people and yet not ask any of them for this most fundamental human right [to communicate with an independent lawyer] who could immediately take the matter up through the UK legal process. Something really stinks here.

    1. It is clear that Urban (like all of us) only reports by hearsay. The facts speak against the “extensive contact via social media”.
      Victoria has not heard from Yulia for weeks, let alone from Sergei. Although Yulia had promised her grandmother that Sergei would call her. That stinks to high heaven !

      1. Liane, two things:
        1) Urban probably felt that he had to say something to answer the people who are saying “she is being held against her will”, so he wrote something that ‘sounds reasonable’; and
        2) We have no idea what the truth is. They may be free to communicate or they might not be – the only thing we can be sure of is that there is a reason TPTB do not want us to know which it is.

      2. Paul, are you considering the possibility that Sergei calls his mother every day? Seriously?

          1. @

            Paul’s statement ‘… the only thing we can be sure of is that there is a reason TPTB do not want us to know which it is.” is unambiguous in the sense it leaves open all options. Unless we have 100% proof about the Skripal’s ability to communicate [freely and at will] with the outside world and move around at will, we can only speculate, assume and try to deduce what’s going on.

            This is what TPTB want, imo. Total confusion. A situation in which anything can go anywhere, except where TPTB don’t want it to be. The more covenment’s resistance in one direction [by TPTB] the more likely it’s the ‘right’ direction.

          2. Absolutely Liane. Victoria certainly knows. Urban is the sock puppet for MI5/6 and will publish any and every distraction available to his febrile imagination and as advised by his handlers.

            There is nothing confusing about this: Victoria (even though she is a woman) is a reliable evidence. /sarc. It is infuriating to see the Russian women ignored. There must be many other than mum and Victoria that could be asked or interviewed. Do the Russian lads have women friends? The Maxwell Smart cone of silence is certainly gender specific in this saga.

      3. Urban writes that Yulia and Sergey have contact with their friends and family precisely to convey that idea to the public . I don’t believe he is being truthful at all and the idea they can see who they please is preposterous. I also would not be surprised at seikg active social media accounts for both soon . After all , who would know are they true accounts or are they cohersed to write they’re fine . The possibilities are imense. Until I see them both talking freely to the press in a free environment or having coffee with friends i keep my view that both are captive , in effect abducted by intelligence services or “ abducted “ with their own consent . Free they are not and truthful urban and Harding are not .

        1. Can’t say much at the moment, but nobody here has mentioned the two Yulia Skripal Twitter accounts. One was a fake – a troll. The other was a lot more interesting – in Russian. I saved all the conversations before it closed. Did anyone else see it?

          1. @ miheila,

            No. I didn’t. But I also can’t read or write Russian. If it’s not too much work [or to ask], can you share it with me/us?

            I can use Yandex or Google to translate the texts.

            1. I’ll say more on this when I am able, but I suspect that account was created as disinformation – to make it appear that Yulya had internet access. It closed soon after her video appeared.

      4. Liane, I think Urban may be suffering from some sort of psychological disorder, in that because he met Sergei in 2017, he somehow mentally is continuing that physical relationship.
        So Urban tells us things which are not hearsay, they are in fact fantasy.
        His imagination tells us where Sergei is, thinks, acts, because Urban the author wants to make his book more credible.
        Most fiction writers do this, Urban is no different.

        “Sergei, sipping slowly from his favourite single malt, looks across at the Denver night sky. He remembers the steak pie with affection, which was his last meal at SDH before said his goodbyes to the staff nurse, he knew simply as “Wendy.”

        See, it’s easy, even I can do it.

        3. I’m starting to wonder if Mark Urban wrote the Steele dossier. He must have a dirty mind! Or was that your work, Duncan?

          1. @ Brendan,

            You mean steely-eyed Duncan, the prolific writer whose works are larger than life?

          2. I get the feeling that Urban is being told all this via a third party.

            It is not something he has gleaned from Mr Skripal but maybe a ” friend ” of Mr Skripal?

            Could be his neighbour or his alleged State protectors in my opinion.

          3. Cody Shearer is a more likely originator of the dossier. Sid Blumenthal may have participated in that or he may only have pitched it.

    2. It is Urban who says that Yulia is in contact with many people. I think it is a lie. Maybe (or not) Yulia is in contact with one or two of her friends, but surely those contacts are strictly monitored by her minders. Discussing the poisoning case and related matters is taboo.

  13. For those who claim that the red thing near the bench was the red bag of the CCTV blonde.

    Look at the CCTV screenshots. The red bag is of a rigid form. Look at the photo of the bench where something red is seen. This red thing is something soft, formless. It just can’t be the blonde’s bag. It might have been Yulia’s bag, provided that her bag was soft, or a scarf (if Yulia matched her bag with a red scarf), or something other soft (for instance, a shopping bag of red cloth or some crumpled packet.)

    1. That’s interesting. Can we identify possibilities for the brand of the bag from the CCTV image? It looks like faux leather, approx 45cm by 30cm (but not rectangular) with centrally placed loopy handles to me – but then I’m not very good with such things.

    2. Damp-Wet after snow-slush Bag now empty after being thrown-dropped down
      onto cold wet paving. Struggle with bag-now broken?

    3. The bag looks like this Burberry bag, but has a slightly longer handle.
      The woman carries the bag in her crook.
      There is no logo on the bag. The white that you sometimes see is just a reflection.
      https://ibb.co/npbQ8e

      1. Please do not forget this is not a Murder Mystery.

        The police have HD CCTV of the People on the bench, what they were wearing, hair colour, and what happened.

        There is no Mystery. It so known. It is recorded. It is a record of Fact.

        You are not allowed to see it because you are not worthy.

        1. The bag(s) are known about

          What was in them, where they came from,where they went.

          All this is known.

          1. Yes it is known – but they can NEVER share it with us for one very good reason.

            The biggest problem of this whole saga for TPTB is that we have seen the Market Walk CCTV. That was not supposed to happen! The local police were not in on it and on the Monday, the police knew what the bench couple looked like, found the CCTV images of them and released the images. Case closed! Except it was the wrong people and we all saw them!

            Now they can’t release any CCTV because the first thing we will all see is that Yulia has a large red bag – they can’t hide it!

            Two months after seeing the red bag, Mrs Cooper still remembered it! It was why Mr Francis went to the police to report what he had seen in Pret.

            It was supposed to be a signal but it just worked far too well.

            They can’t show any CCTV of the bench because it is the wrong people on it and they can’t show any CCTV of S&Y wandering around because we will all see the big red bag!

      2. It is similar to that bag Liane but it looks to me like the one in the CCTV has panels/vents at the ends – don’t quote me on that though because it is very hard to see much at all!

    4. The main thing about the blonde’s bag, apart from it being red and big, is that it is rigid. It just can’t turn into a soft bag or something other soft.

      1. How do you know that Milda? That is why I asked if we can try to identify the brand… stiff/soft/rigid/etc. is all just pure speculation.

        1. It is seen clearly that the blonde’s bag is rigid. If thrown on the floor, it will keep its form. It’s just obvious.

  14. Yulia Skripal must be a very confused person at this time, apparently 7 months of being propagandized by her minders [the security services, who only have her interests at heart, no seriously. Sarc]. Yulia has tremendous problems, not only with her affairs back home in Russia but her problems in interacting with UK security and how it impinges on her own rights.
    In such circumstances it is imperative she be afforded her right and the opportunity of being provided with independent legal advice and representation so that she can take properly informed decisions concerning her own welfare. Has she asked for this fundamental human right, if not, why not?

    1. A question to all commenters who live in Salisbury.

      Do many shops have security shutters in the Town Centre?

      The reason I ask is that insurance companies these days insist on shops having roller shutters otherwise they won’t insure your shop or goods.

      The two Russians on camera from the coin shop can be seen by the
      internal camera.

      If the shop had shutters surely they would be down on a Sunday ( closed all day ) but possibly open on Saturday whilst the proprieter went for a meal and a pint.

      If they were filmed on Sunday – how come the shutters weren’t down?

      That is – if the shop has shutters?

      Do any residents know the answer please?

    2. Whether Yulia asked for her rights or not, she is under control of her minders. They won’t allow any of her demands to get public, if fulfilling those demands can lead to disclosure.

      In fact, Yulia is imprisoned, though in a (hopefully) comfortable “safe house”. I feel deep sympathy for Yulia.

      1. But if Urban is correct, she has contact with her friends via email and social media, she even had a visit from a friend in June, so she is not exactly incommunicado .

        1. I don’t believe that. This contact would put an end to Stepan’s reputation in Russia. His mother holds high positions in the state apparatus.

          1. I don’t understand that. Can you say more please – why does it end Stepan’s reputation; and who exactly is his mother (we have different reports about her). Thanks

            1. He defended his thesis at MSU in 2014 “prospects of development of the market of business education.”https://www.mk.ru/politics/2018/04/08/podrobnosti-biografii-zagadochnogo-sputnika-yulii-skripal-ne-patriot-i-ne-geroy.html
              “Stepan’s mother-Tatyana Vasilyevna (she is 61 years old) — the employee of the Department relating to power structures. Merits of Tatyana Vasilyevna before the country are noted by the certificate of honor of the government in 2008. At that time, she headed the plant “Signal” of the Federal Agency for state reserves for the Central Federal district. And since 2014, she heads the Research and production Association “Institute of modern security problems”. This limited liability company with an authorized capital of 5 million rubles was established in 2014. Founder-mining and metallurgical company “Norilsk Nickel”. The main direction of the NGO-development in the field of corporate security systems, integrated technical control, as well as research in the field of profile. In the same structure, according to family friends, he worked and Stepan.”
              In such business structures, reliability and social status are mandatory.
              In my opinion, even to March 4, a close relative of spy Skripal is already a black spot in the biography. After all.
              “Stepan and Julia have been living together since 2013. They are very much closer on the basis of joint games in the console: in the last apartment, on Davydkovskaya street, where young people lived in one of the rooms, investigators found a huge plasma and heaped video game.”
              I wrote that Julia gives the impression impractical person. In the photo to the article you will see her house, look at the ground floor- there her 46 m2.
              “Bikeev “laying low”. Nobody saw him, he stopped communicating, didn’t answer calls and SMS. The last person who saw him is the foreman, who supervised the repairs on Davydkovskaya. The woman explained that Stepan has been acting strangely.”
              In my opinion, they are typical “mama’s boy” and “daddy’s daughter”.

              1. Thanks. One small point – you say Yulia and Stepan were together since 2013 – I thought Yulia was in the UK until 2014.

                As to the rest of it and Stepan’s mother – is that actually a private company or state backed? Is it the sort of enterprise that might be used as cover for ‘other’ things? ‘Security’ covers a very broad range that easily crosses the private and public sectors… would Stepan’s mother be considered as an ordinary ‘business-woman’ or as something else?

                Do you have any idea why Stepan ‘vanished’ after 4 March?

                1. If you say something the names of Vladimir Potanin, Oleg Deripaska, Roman Abramovich… 🙂 owners of Russia…
                  Official assets 16 457 000 000 US dollar
                  Maybe Stepan doesn’t want to flush his future down the toilet…. Why he need run away? But that’s my opinion.

          2. Iris, could you kindly do some research before making your assertions? Stepan’s mother Tatiana Vikeeva is the head of the Institute for Modern Security Problems, a subsidiary of the metal giant Norilsk Nickel. Stepan works at the same institute. Tatiana’s previous job was the head of the Kombinat Signal, a state-owned company in charge of warehousing state food reserves. So, Tatiana was a state employee with an important job, but it is not a “high position in the state apparatus.” Also, Yulia and Stepan were in a relationship for several years (three?). Tatiana might have disliked it, we do not know, but it is obvious that she did not stop Stepan dating Yulia.

                  1. @ Iris,

                    Al Gore is a Nam vet. As it turns out, he walked around in Vietnam for 6 months with a camera…

            2. Stepan’s mother went from running a state-owned food warehouse agency to “developing methods” to evaluate the efficacy of corporate security for a very large conglomerate (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/nilsy/profile/),  For example, “Economic efficiency of corporate security functions was a separate topic of discussion. Based on the methods developed by the Institute for Modern Security Challenges, the Company’s subsidiary, the total financial impact of Nornickel’s corporate security functions in 2017 is estimated at around RUB 1.5 bn.

              According to Mr Gasumyanov, the solutions of Nornickel and its institute can make for a robust methodological foundation for relevant business units and other Russian companies. “Corporate security exists so that ‘nothing happens’. Putting a price tag on the peace of mind and sustainable development is a challenging and interesting process, which we meticulously analyse and study in an effort to roll it out to the entire Nornickel Group.” We will be happy to share our knowledge and experience with our colleagues,” concluded Nornickel’s Vice President.” -https://www.nornickel.com/news-and-media/press-releases-and-news/nornickel-discusses-corporate-security-performance-in-2017/?redirect_url=/news-and-media/press-releases-and-news/

              I understand Iris’ frustration with people trying to minimize Stepan’s mother – the woman indeed has powerful professional connections. What she herself does is up in the air since Viktoria claimed, according to blogmire commenters providing her interview quotes on previous posts, she was in intelligence herself, but now it appears that she is, at least, a very high-level administrative type.

              But whatever she does, she currently has access to some of the most well-connected people in Russia and the global mining industry.

              An investment advisory description: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4146525-norilsk-nickel-wide-moat-miner-daring-investors

              And geopolitics may trump corporate battles: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nornickel-rusal-court/london-court-backs-deripaska-in-battle-of-russian-tycoons-idUSKBN1JN246

              And that is interesting because Deripaska, of course, came up in our (U.S.) Russia collusion scandal: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/us/politics/deripaska-ohr-steele-fbi.html

              1. Oh, and just to be clear: Deripaska is linked to Manafort who is linked to the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya who is linked to the prosecutor who just died in the helicopter crash as well as being on the opposite side of the Magnitsky Act fight from Browder . . . If something happened in Salisbury – whether poisoning or kidnapping – on second thought maybe whoever was behind the March 4 event is a billionaire . . .

              2. https://vz.ru/news/2018/3/14/912404.html
                This is where Viktoria was talking about the job of Stepan’s mother. Viktoria said: “Mother is a high-ranking employee of one of structures. For her, Yulia is the daughter of a traitor.”
                A structure in this context is a company or organization. A holding company, like Nornickel Group, perfectly fits the Russian term “structure” when it is applied to business. A ministry or another state agency also may be “structure” in Russian usage. Viktoria did not say “intelligence.” It is journos, especially those in British tabloids, who made up “intelligence.” I posted a link some time ago to a UK newspaper story where Stepan was “a secret service agent working for Putin.”

                As for minimizing Stepan’s mother, yes, it would be better to “minimize” her, as well as what Yulia sold and bought in Moscow and whether she was practical or not. It is distraction from the poisoning case. “Back to basics,” – said Duncan in a comment above and I agree.

                1. Not if she is the link with personal knowledge of Yulia’s visit to her father who, if he was involved in the dossier, pissed off one of the billionaires duking it out with a fellow billionaire (Potanin/Abramovich v. Deripaska).

                  1. Because of the 2016 Russian interference, Deripaska was “most at risk” for being a sanctioned oligarch as of fall, 2017: https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/the-oligarchs-are-next-russian-businessmen-prepare-for-us-sanctions-59391 Stepan’s mother would have been a link to Skripal if the accusations that Deripaska has engaged in conspiracy to murder others is true. That may have been why Skripal was so nervous before March 4 . . . and why his disappearance, along with Yulia, was necessary.

              3. @Milda and Zee Piers – Deripaska has not only links to Manafort, but to Steele, too :

                Quote : Jones’s name being dropped as a point-of-contact for Steele in leaked encrypted text messages to Warner, the vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, was a flashing red spotlight. Those messages, which were leaked to Fox News, reveal a long-running conversation between Warner and Adam Waldman, a DC lawyer and registered foreign agent for Oleg Deripaska.
                During the course of the interaction between Warner and Waldman, which included encrypted messages, phone calls, and private, in-person meetings, Waldman offered Warner access not just to Steele but also Julian Assange.
                As strange as it is for Waldman, a Russian oligarch’s foreign agent, to be the official cutout for a U.S. senator and the now-reclusive author of a bombshell document that touched off an investigation of a sitting president, it is stranger still that Jones was also offered to Warner as a point of contact for Steele.
                “Chris Steele asked me to call you,” Waldman wrote to Warner on March 16, 2017. That text touched off a back-and-forth conversation about how Warner could get access to Steele, a key witness in an ongoing congressional investigation. According to Waldman, Steele demanded a bipartisan letter from Warner and Burr requesting that he present himself for questioning.
                “I spoke w Steele,” Waldman wrote on April 25, 2017. “He repeated the same position which is that he wants to be helpful but is fearful of the triumvirate of cost, time suck and reputation.”
                “He asked me what your concern was about a letter first and I explained it but he would still like as a first protective step from you and [Sen. Richard] Burr asking him and his partner to assist w the investigation by answering questions,” Waldman added. “He said he will also speak w Dan Jones whom he says is talking to you.”
                “I pointed out there is no privilege in that discussion although Dan [Jones] is a good guy and very trustworthy guy. I encouraged him again to engage with you for the sake of the truth and of vindication of the dossier,” he wrote.
                “Gotta tell u makes no sense he won’t do a call first tell him call will only be ten minutes,” Warner wrote.
                “I can’t get him to do a call first,” Waldman responded. “He said Dan Jones is coming to see you. I suggest you explain to Dan why a call is the necessary first step rather than a letter from your perspective.”
                Grassley sent a formal letter earlier this month to Paul Hauser, a British national who reportedly serves as Deripaska’s attorney, asking whether Hauser had ever hired or otherwise worked with Steele on Deripaska’s behalf.
                “Have you ever hired or otherwise worked with Mr. Christopher Steele, Orbis Business Intelligence Limited, Orbis Business International Limited, Walsingham Training Limited, or Walsingham Partners Limited?” Grassley asked. “If so, when, and what was the nature of the arrangement?”
                http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/is-a-former-feinstein-staffer-running-fusion-gpss-post-election-russia-dossier-operation/

                Steele’s relationship with Deripaska has been one of the more bizarre aspects of the dossier saga, mainly because it raises the possibility that the Putin-connected businessman was a source for the salacious document.
                http://dailycaller.com/2018/08/09/christopher-steele-deripaska-bruce-ohr/

                1. Yes, that’ information is in the NY Times article. My point was that Deripaska is not only an oligarch but is caught up in the fight about who controls the U.S. and its foreign policy powers. That Stepan’s mother works in a pivotal position for the conglomerate that he is fighting about is a tangible link.

        2. Yulia allegedly met in London her close Russian friend called Gulnara. She was interviewed and exonerated by Scotland Yard after she brought a package of buckwheat from Russia to London around the time the Skripals were poisoned.

  15. Could all different hair colour’s been another type code-signal
    to whoever?
    This is a very long shot but could DS.Bailey have been disguised
    as Female in Market Walk footage. I Know it sounds daft but…..?

    Why is that Couple looking at-directly at Snap-Fit Camera,as if
    look here We are Folks?

    Wigs-Change of jackets in bags maybe?

  16. Here is a timeline how the door handle story was invented :

    On March 7 Mark Urban wrote on Twitter :
    This evening @metpoliceuk said they believed a nerve agent had been used on the Skripals – a police officer who found them is also seriously ill.
    It is evident that they did not want to attack Skripal in his home, maybe assuming it had MI6 tech surveillance. He didn’t have a job, routine. That may have meant attackers needed to do pattern of life surveillance on Skripal & this may be traceable.“
    https://mobile.twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/971453394635370496

    Note : “It is evident that they did not want to attack Skripal in his home.” !!!!!!

    On March 8 they discovered the BMW at Ashley Wood Recovery at Churchfields.
    Only then they found the parking ticket inside with the stamp 1:40.

    Quote : EMERGENCY services are investigating a burgundy-coloured BMW at a garage in Salisbury. A team is getting dressed into grey protective suits and it appears they are preparing to examine the BMW 3 Series – the same model of car driven by Mr Skripal, according to his neighbours.
    A major incident unit is among a number of police and ambulance vehicles at the scene at Ashley Wood Recovery on Churchfields industrial estate.
    Two ambulances, three police vans and one police car are also present.
    http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/16074569.Major_incident_unit_at_garage_in_Salisbury/

    On March 9 they towed away a Ashley Wood Recovery truck that allegedly moved Sergei´s BMW.

    On March 12 Police cordoned off parts Sainsbury’s car park and the ticket machine.
    Theresa May made a statement in Parliament. She said: “It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. It is part of a group of nerve agents known as Novichok.”

    On March 13 the 1:40 arrival at Sainsbury’s car park was first mentioned :
    Quote : At approximately 13:40hrs on Sunday, 4 March, Sergei and Yulia arrived in Sainsbury’s upper level car park in the Maltings.
    Neil Basu asked the public for help :
    Quote : “In particular, we are appealing for anyone who saw the Skripals or their car, a red BMW with the registration plate HD09 WAO, between approximately 13:00hrs and 13:45hrs on Sunday, 4 March in the Salisbury area to contact police.”
    http://archive.is/RcvtG#selection-263.0-381.50

    Same day the first rumors about the car door handle :
    Quote : Whitehall sources last night [March 12] said Mr Skripal was poisoned when he touched the door handle of his car, which had been smeared with a deadly nerve agent.
    Counter-terrorism police tonight said there was a missing 40 minutes in the whereabouts of the former spy and his daughter Yulia in the car.
    Detectives said the pair arrived in the city at about 1.40pm but officers want CCTV from 1pm.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5495379/Was-Russian-spy-poisoned-CAR-Police-issue-fresh-appeal.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

    Quote DorsetEye on March 15 :
    But the real question, says the lady in the shop, is ‘What about Skripal’s car?’ a red BMW series 3. Why was it taking so long for the police to find it? Surely they would look in the Sainsbury’s car park first? They cordoned off the car park, but not until 8 days after the poisoning. Later they came back and cordoned off the ticket machine.
    It is known Skripal’s car entered the car park at about 1:40 pm on March 4th. When was it taken to the Ashley Wood Recovery Garage, and by whom? And indeed, why, unless to get it out of the way?
    Why did ‘incident response units’ examine a red BMW at the Garage on Thursday March 8th, remove an Ashley Wood recovery van from Winterslow village on Monday 12th, return to the Garage on Tuesday 13th, remove another recovery van from a Dorset town on Thursday March 14th and only then on Friday, 12 whole days after the incident, it is officially identified as Skripal’s car, and the Journal reports that it is being removed from Ashley Wood Recovery Garage, with the national media limping in a day later.
    12 days. If this nerve agent is so very dangerous why is there so little to show for so much activity, and so many delays in dealing with it? Doesn’t it look like an exercise in propaganda?
    http://www.dorseteye.com/north/articles/salisbury-is-open#sthash.LN4kGgeI.uxfs

    On March 15 DailyMail published the CCTV of Skripal´s car at Devizes Inn pub at 13:32:22 :
    Quote : By March 8, it was said detectives had moved away from the theory that the nerve agent was sprayed directly at Skripal, a source told MailOnline.
    Meanwhile new footage has emerged of Sergei Skripal’s BMW being driven towards the centre of Salisbury on the day the double agent was poisoned.
    CCTV at the Devizes Inn pub in the city captured Skripal driving to the supermarket which has now been cordoned off by counter-terror police, who are desperately trying to piece together his movements.
    In the images, Skripal and his daughter Yulia are seen going towards the city centre at 1.35pm on March 4 in a maroon BMW 3-Series. The five-door car drives past the Devizes Inn pub followed by a red Ford Fiesta.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5508633/Police-fear-131-people-came-contact-Salisbury-nerve-agent.html

    Note : The DailyMail link now is misleading, because it was updated several times. I quoted the version of March 15 !

    On March 16 the Mirror published the CCTV of Skripal´s car opposite №10 India Avenue :
    Quote : Haunting CCTV footage has emerged today of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia driving into Salisbury just hours before being found poisoned.
    It show the Russian exile’s BMW, which is the centre of the investigation, on a camera close to his home at 1.33pm on March 4.
    The CCTV footage, which shows the time as 14:55 is 1hr 22mins ahead of time.
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/haunting-cctv-shows-ex-spy-12201157

    On March 16 Sergei´s car was brought to Porton Down :
    Quote : Sergei Skripal’s red BMW 3 series has been at Ashley Wood Recovery on Churchfields industrial estate since the attack which left Mr Skripal and his daughter in intensive care.
    Now a large military loader has arrived at the scene carrying a red steel container which will house the contaminated vehicle.
    http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/16092793.Military_remove_Sergei_Skripal_s_car/

    On March 17 the new timeline was born officially :
    Quote : Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said: “We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia’s movements but we need to be clearer around their exact movements on the morning of the incident.
    We believe that at around 9.15am on Sunday, 4 March, Sergei’s car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre.
    We need to establish Sergei and Yulia’s movements during the morning, before they headed to the town centre.”
    Police have today released the following updated timeline of events (all times approximate):
    14.40hrs on Saturday 3 March: Yulia arrives at Heathrow Airport on a flight from Russia.
    09.15hrs on Sunday, 4 March: Sergei’s car is seen in the area of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road.
    13.30hrs: Sergei’s car is seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre.
    13:40hrs: Sergei and Yulia arrive in Sainsbury’s upper level car park at the Maltings. At some time after this, they go to the Bishops Mill Pub in the town centre.
    14.20hrs: They dine at Zizzi Restaurant.
    15:35hrs: They leave Zizzi Restaurant.
    16.15hrs: Emergency services receive a report from a member of the public and police arrive at the scene within minutes, where they find Sergei and Yulia extremely ill on a park bench near the restaurant.
    http://news.met.police.uk/news/renewed-appeal-for-information-from-anyone-who-saw-salisbury-victims-car-298912

    On March 19 another Ashley Wood truck was removed. Did they first towed away the wrong car ?

    Quote : The military has removed a breakdown truck parked in Gillingham that was used to move the car of the poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
    The military vehicles who carried the recovery were escorted from the Porton Down research centre in Wiltshire by officers from the Metropolitan Police. It was not immediately clear whether some of the people at the scene wearing pale grey biohazard suits were also from Porton Down.
    Meanwhile the driver, who asked not to be identified, told Gillingham & Shaftesbury News:
    ‘I’m fine, I’ve been checked up in hospital and all is fine, I’m not worried.’
    Asked about the incident he said: ‘I was just doing my job.’ But he said he had been asked not to say any more about it.
    It is understood the truck had been parked in Hyde Road since last Friday and before that had been used as usual by the driver.
    It is believed that this recovery truck was the truck used to remove the former spy’s red BMW car that was left at Sainsbury’s car park in Salisbury at around 1.40pm on Sunday, 4 March, the day of the attack.
    https://www.gillingham-news.co.uk/news/army-called-gillingham-remove-recovery-truck-linked-salisbury-nerve-agent-attack/

    On March 22 the OPCW inspectors were ordered where to swab and (with a checklist on the back) they…
    Quote : … took swabs from door handles inside and outside the house, along with swabs from a keyboard and other objects.
    They have also visited the Mill pub, where the Skripals enjoyed a drink shortly before they collapsed, and the Porton Down chemical weapons research centre to take samples of the nerve agent gathered by police from locations in Salisbury in order to carry out their own analysis.
    Detectives are trying to established whether the nerve agent which left the Skripals fighting for their lives was inserted into Col Skripal’s car or unwittingly brought from Russia to Britain by Yulia in her suitcase, possibly secreted in a present or item of clothing.
    http://archive.is/SCP58#selection-2543.0-2609.268

    On March 24 the door handle story was born (if anyone find an earlier mention, please give the link).
    Quote : Spy’s DOOR is ground zero: Police suspect chemical used to poison Sergei Skripal was smeared on handle
    Investigators believe the white double-glazed uPVC entrance was “ground zero” – the point of attack in a murder attempt on the former Russian military intelligence officer and his daughter Yulia.
    Senior Whitehall staff have seen evidence which shows Russians have researched administering poisons via door handles.
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/spys-door-ground-zero-police-12248036

    On March 28 the door handle was officially confirmed by Deputy assistant commissioner Dean Haydon :
    “At this point in our investigation, we believe the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent from their front door. We are therefore focusing much of our efforts in and around their address.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/28/skripals-poisoned-from-front-door-of-salisbury-home-police-say

    1. Well done Liane! That really lays bare a tale of lies and gross incompetence.

      Urban’s tweet is also very telling but what on earth did he mean by:
      “This evening @metpoliceuk said they believed a nerve agent had been used on the Skripals…”

      Rowley’s press briefing was on Wednesday morning not Wednesday evening.

    2. Interestig comments to Urban’s tweet of 7 March (thanks, Liane!):
      https://mobile.twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/971453394635370496

      Sarah Rosemary@SarahRosemary3

      Mark, any idea why Radio4 news on the hour, have started to call Skripal a “double-agent” as opposed to all other sources calling him a “former agent?” Have had it on the background for several hrs, wondering why the sudden switch.

      Mark Urban@MarkUrban01
      No idea Sarah – when anyone asks me I discourage them from using ‘double agent’ …but a lot of people don’t ask me!

      Sarah Rosemary@SarahRosemary3
      Thanks Mark. Your insights on Newsnight are always great or” crunchy” as they call it these days. R4 news giving audience the impression that he was still operational.
      —————————————
      This is, Urban knew that Skripal was no longer operational. (Telling old stories of GRU life do not count.)

    3. Great work, Liane. The police were jumping from one theory to another until they finally settled on the (house) door handle. Once they came to that conclusion, Sergei’s car was completely forgotten.

      And why pay any attention to the car anyway when no Novichok was found in it (at least not in any reports I’ve read)?

      But that’s the weird thing – Novichok was detected where the Skripals were before AND after they drove into town, but not in the car itself.

      You would expect some to be found in the car if Sergei and Yulia had just received a near-fatal dose at the house – literally seconds before they both opened the doors of the car, and Sergei grabbed the steering wheel. Furthermore, any Novichok in the car was much less exposed to the environment than the house front door, where the highest levels were detected by the OPCW about two weeks later.

      However the police did find some Novichok nerve agent on the table at Zizzi. Unforfortunately the OPCW didn’t get a chance to perform any tests, because “The table, along with other items, has been removed and destroyed”, according to the BBC.

      This investigation seems to be suffering from a shortage of forensic evidence, apart from Sergei’s front door.

      1. Brendan, agree, but

        However the police did find some Novichok nerve agent on the table at Zizzi.

        did the police actually state that? Or like the bench, did they remove it and by saying it had to be destroyed merely implied that it was contaminated with nerve agent? An easy way to push the false nerve agent narrative. The public (much less the media) ignores the fact that hard surfaces like a table and bench can be cleaned with baby wipes. But so contaminated that they had to be destroyed sends the very scary message about the deadliness of the unknown substance. (Same PR bs used in the great WMD hoax — “mushroom cloud.”)

    4. Liane, part of your quote from the Mirror article on 24 March:
      “Senior Whitehall staff have seen evidence which shows Russians have researched administering poisons via door handles.”

      Then it wasn’t just the door handle theory that was first revealed on that day (four days before the official announcement). The “door handle manual” also saw the light of day in that article, nearly three weeks before it was mentioned by the national security adviser Mark Sedwill .

      He didn’t actually mention a manual but you can imagine that from what he wrote on 13 April – about Russia’s “investigation of ways of delivering nerve agents, including by application to door handles.” The Mirror must have got a very early exclusive, unless there are any other reports of that alleged nerve agent programme.

      To sum it up, a large part of the official narrative was completed by 24 March.

  17. Question to the Salisbury residents :
    How fast will a car be towed when the parking time is exceeded ?

    Sergei´s BMW could have been towed away by an Ashley Wood Recovery Service Vehicle after it overstayed in the Sainsbury’s Car Park.
    It´s possible that the authorities were not aware of this fact in the first place.
    It may be that the police have the arrival of the BMW NOT on CCTV.
    That could be the reason, why the arrival time 1:40pm was announced so late. Because they found the parking ticket in the car at Ashley Woods.

    I´m interested in this question, because the door handle story could only be placed after they had found and secured the BMW ! Then they were free to claim that Novichok was found in the car.

    1. Had the same question. Hope somebody can answer it.

      However, as the police had Skripal’s name and address shortly after the Incident, they would also have had access to his vehicle registration information. The police also know what towing companies and lots are used by the various parking enforcement operations. Thus, locating Skripal’s car would only have taken them a few minutes ONCE they decided to look for it. Thus, it’s reasonable to conclude that only after TPTB decided that it would be a ‘nerve agent’ did they bother to check on his car. That was reportedly on Mar 8, but they weren’t exactly speedy in testing his car for ‘nerve agent’ and let spurious reports about the door handle, etc. to hit the news.

      As with other aspects of this case, when they dropped a line of inquiry for lack of evidence, they haven’t reported that. Cemetery closed from 8 Mar to 21 Mar — and we’re supposed to assume what? Testing done and no ‘nerve agent’ found? The police appealed for information about the Skripals on Sunday morning — have said nothing about what they found. Settling on the front door handle as the poison site , they ditched the car door handle without comment. Odd because if it were on the front door handle, it would also be on at least one of the car door handles and in the passenger compartment as well. Guess the public is expected to be too stupid to note that inconsistency. (Did PD draw the line at issuing a false report that the car was contaminated and send the car off to a burial site?)

  18. I think it is quite possible that the reason Mr Francis visited the police on Wednesday 7 March was that he had seen the same red bag (in the CCTV released on Tuesday 6 March) that he had seen being carried by the masked woman in Pret.

    If the Skripals left The Mill just before 3:30pm and got into a waiting vehicle in the rear car park, their IDs, keys, mobiles etc. needed to get to the patsies somehow – obviously somebody had to deliver them. Was the masked woman the ‘bag carrier’?

    From The Mill pub to Pret a Manger (31 New Canal) is a 5 minute walk. A further 5 minutes to buy something and the masked woman with the large coloured bag would be leaving Pret at 3:40pm – just as Mr Francis said.

    From the Pret shop to Market Place is a 3 minute walk. Leaving the Pret shop at 3:40pm, the masked woman could have been there by 3:43pm and handed over the bag to the bench couple.

    Did the Skripals put their IDs, house and car keys, phones, etc, into the red bag that we know Yulia was carrying and hand it to the masked woman… who then delivered it to the bench couple, somewhere near Market Place, at approximately 3:45pm? Two minutes later, the bench couple were seen on the SnapFitness CCTV.

    We know from Freya Church that at 4:04pm, the bench couple were still in the earlier stages of the after effects; nobody was yet vomiting and she said it looked like they had been there “for some time”. The ‘attack’ was probably scheduled for 4pm so the masked woman knew she had time to go via Pret and still be in good time to hand over the bag.

    The diversion via Prêt took her less than 100 yards away from the shortest route from The Mill to Market Place and may indicate that she was a local, or at least knew her way around Salisbury and was probably not a Russian tourist. In fact the bench couple were a bit early – they had to wait ten minutes before anything happened but once they had the red bag, with the Skripals’ IDs, they were ready to head off towards the bench and wait there, while they possibly put the IDs and keys in their pockets.

    This is the timeline I propose:

    3:30 Skripals leave The Mill and put IDs into Yulia’s red bag – handed to masked woman.
    3:35 Masked woman arrives at Pret.
    3:40 Masked woman leaves Pret and heads to Market Place.
    3:43 Masked woman arrives at Market Place and passes the red bag to bench couple.
    3:47 Bench couple seen on SnapFitness CCTV.
    4:00 Bench couple ‘attacked’.

    1. Are We100% sure Yulia’s handbag is-was red? What I seen she travelled-arrived
      with a white style handbag.
      Red handbag could have been the signal-code. Red handbag could have been in
      Yulia’s luggage or already at 47 CMR?

      Not doubting

        1. Ok-Nice One! Wondering if Red Handbag was the signal setup by MI56 or
          Whoever over what was going to happen on Sunday 04-03?

      2. I didn’t think you were doubting! And yes I agree ‘red bag’ was a signal. I believe it was intended to be a signal at the bench, so that whoever sprayed the couple sitting at the bench, got the right people.

        At the planning stage they could not have known which bench would be available on the day, so they needed to have a way of ensuring they didn’t spray the wrong people – which would have been rather embarrassing.

        A large red bag would have served that purpose well.

        1. Thank You! Will have to excuse me for missing things. Recovering from Stroke and
          cant always keep up to speed! Good-Bad days at moment?

          Yes it quiet possible red handbag was a signal of some type to whoever.
          Mille Pub was I sure where situation unfolded.
          Wasn’t doubting you just confused. Apologise!

          1. @Mark, I am really sorry to hear about your stroke and I sincerely hope that you make a speedy recovery. Great to see that you are using the Blogmire for some therapy! Very good luck and best wishes to you.

            1. Many Thanks Paul! Yes site keeping things going and active brain power.

              CCTV from Jenny’s Market Walk-Camera006. Footage shows someone
              walking in dark clothing carrying bags-large? Could be homeless person
              before dog walker-other people.

              When Police Car drives through Market Walk similar looking person
              running otherway without bags-large.

              Many Thanks

              1. The thing that confuses me most about that video is why we ever got it? It doesn’t show the Skripals or the couple with the red bag, so what was the idea behind releasing it?

                As for who the ‘bag man’ or the ‘runner’ or ‘man lurking in shadows’ might be – I don’t have a clue!

                1. Yes-Good Point! Could they have all been confusion tactics by Whoever
                  to confuse situation in front of CCTV cameras?

                  This is a possibility with MI56 involvement knowing lots of CCTV in area
                  but not all working as I believe? [convenient at crucial time]

                  1. lol! I think we are on the same wavelength Mark!

                    I suspect it was a clumsy attempt to muddy the water after the complete ‘howler’ of releasing the ‘red bag couple’ CCTV. The spooks thought if they released some more CCTV showing a couple that looked more like the Skripals, we would be distracted by it. They threw in the cop car and paramedic running for good measure to give it some ‘authenticity’.

                    It didn’t work though ‘cos they are not the smartest bunch….

                  2. Mark and Paul – I think it was mostly to establish the Market Walk – where the Skripals did NOT walk.

  19. The Russian Defense Ministry is accusing the United States of killing dozens of Georgians with a biological weapon after disguising it as drug research. Documents recorded the deaths of 73 people over a short period of time, indicating a test of “a highly toxic chemical or biological agents with high lethality rate.”

    According to RT, the question of what really might have taken place at the secretive United States-sponsored research facility hosted by Russia’s southern neighbor Georgia was raised by the Russian military on Thursday after they studied files published online by a former Georgian minister. Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops from radiological, chemical and biological weapons said that it was not drug research, but a chemical or biological weapon that killed the 73 Georgians.

    http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/russian-military-us-killed-dozens-by-bioweapon-disguised-as-drug-research_10042018

    1. the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research near the Georgian capital Tbilisi,

      Bad enough the US public buildings are named for Senators. Wonder how many buildings/centers outside the US get named for Senators (presumably the one that secured the financing for the construction and operation because that’s the sort of effort constituents expect from their Senators).

      Wouldn’t be surprising if this operation was concocting some nasty chem or bio weapons, but the USA will have made sure it has plausible deniability.

  20. I was thinking if it was a takedown of Sergei for being a triple-agent that G-WLTS can be explained.
    It went to Distillery Farm – with its discreet landing site – to pick someone up who would be flown in to make a positive visual ID of Sergei and Yulia.

    Still reading the book – no mention of the helicopter.
    Also says Senior Intensive Care Specialist rang the ward the next day and asked a nurse what was going on. Now I am certain an ICU has senior staff on duty 24/7 it is just daft to think nurses would be running it during the night.
    Then they think it might be poison and hose down hospital.
    BUT fire men in hazmat suits were cleaning up Avon Playground on Sunday evening. So whoever made that decision did not inform the hospital of the hazard.

  21. There’s soon to be a concert in Salisbury, titled From Russia with Love to be held in Saint Martin’s Church, according to a Daily Mail article. The concert will feature piano works of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich. Posters promoting the concert are emblazoned with Russia’s flag and a big love heart. Are you one of the organisers, Rob? I would love to go, but living here in New Zealand it’s a bit too far to travel. Hope you get a large, enthusiastic audience. We need more of this sort of things to combat the lies and Russophobic nonsense.

  23. 1) Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat, Who is He? Everything You Need to Know… – Link to Graham Phillips

    Excerpt: “In 2016, I’ll be returning to my country of the UK, and there’s a man I’d certainly like to meet for an interview. While I was working on the scene from the war in Eliot Higgins 2Donbass, Eliot Higgins, of Bellingcat, was the man sitting on a sofa taking, and manipulating, YouTube videos (including my own) of Donbass, MH17, Syria, using them to disseminate misinformation, lies, to the world.”

    *******

    2) MI5 can authorise agents to commit crimes, tribunal told – Link to The Irish Times

    Excerpt: “policy under review.

    “In the discharge of their function to protect national security, the Security Service has a long standing policy for their agent handlers to agree to agents participating in crime, in circumstances where it is considered such involvement is necessary and proportionate in providing or maintaining access to intelligence that would allow the disruption of more serious crimes or threats to national security,” Mr Cameron said.”

    1. Like the British monarch (due to being legally, but absurdly, described as the ‘fount of law and honour’), MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have always been officially immune to criminal prosecutions. They are not accountable to parliament nor to the people, and yet Britain quaintly, but disingenuously, claims to be a democracy – ruled by the will of the people. Codswallop ! It is not, never has been, and is fast becoming a totalitarian state.

      TPTB invoke a nebulous ‘national interest’ to justify their crimes (most of which never become publicly known anyway) – but who defines this ‘national interest’ ? Not the people; they do ! And they don’t even tell us what that phrase meansin any particular context – because it’s a ‘secret’! And guess who defines what should be kept secret. They do, because it’s in the ‘national interest’ to do so.

      This kafkaesque, circular logic can be compared to a team of career burglar saying, “We have a legal right to burgle because it’s in our interests to do so – and to hide the evidence. Sorry, but we can’t elaborate… can’t give away secrets… Oh, and it’s in our interests not to justify the need for secrecy. Just believe us, it’s necessary !”.

      The simple, gullible people are being conned over such ideas as ‘the rule of law’, ‘all are equal before the law’, ‘innocent until proved guilty’, Britain being the ‘cradle of democracy’, etc. just as they’re being conned over Sergei Skripal, Lockerbie, MH17, Hilda Murrell, the Birmingham 6 stitch-up, the Guildford 4 stitch-up, Mountbatten, British ‘Gladio’, Susanne Dando, Rudolf Hess, Dr Kelly, torture and rendition, destabilisation policies, WMD, Libya, Gareth Williams, Airey Neave, Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Mossadeq, Sukharno, and many, many more state-endorsed crimes. When will the people ever wake up to the truth – that their MSM-conditioned apathy is being exploited to commit atrocities at home and all over the world ?

      1. @ miheila,

        Q; When will the people ever wake up to the truth?

        R: The following is based upon my observations [no science].

        When I compare random comments on various web sites/forums and compare those to the ones I red over a decade ago, I do see a significant change in more people waking up and see what TPTB really stand for and do.

        I can’t blame people who work two shifts a day, to make ends meet or who live one paycheck away from poverty, for not having time to be concerned and worried about the rest of the world.

        I do blame those who’re complacent and prefer the status quo to remain as it is, coz it’s the only thing they know.

        To be honest with you, it took me quite some time to pull my own head out of ‘mon cul’ [pardon my French].

        1. Some people have an acquired taste for tonsils, Daniel. You wouldn’t have been alone.

          I feel very alone sometimes.

    2. ‘The security service’s lawyers said to answer such questions of law would reveal the facts of conduct they wish to keep secret.’ (from Irish times)

      Hmm.

      1. @ Sc,

        Remarks like those are on par with “We gotta burn down the village in order to save it, sir!”

  24. The plot of story is appearing to be far more simple than I had previously thought.

    Sergei had been frightened out of his wits by his minders and agreed to disappear.

    His minders had decided to lay the blame for the false Golden Shower Dossier source on Sergei

    Steel > Miller > Urban > Sergei

    Sergei wanted to say goodbye to his daughter and let her have something.

    What happened in that hour or so around the bench, helicopter, hospital was the key.

    Sergei and Yulia were separated at that point.

    When Yulia, as it turns out, was in hospital (not on the bench) Sergei was long gone.

    Mr Slane’s rude word filter prevents me expressing my feelings.

    1. @ Peter Beswick,

      Q; Mr Slane’s rude word filter prevents me expressing my feelings.

      R; I heard several ‘Bleeps’ nonetheless…

        1. Autumn was well and truly upon us as I bimbled back to the common room swaddled in the dank but not unpleasant mist that had descended.

          I was feeling quite pleased with myself having solved another mystery and thought a snifter was in order.

          I was greeted by the last soul on earth that I would have chosen to encounter in that self satisfied moment. He was the only one in the Com, I hadn’t expected to see any one at that hour.

          “Told you you so Bezzers!” he squawked, in that ludicrous fashion he developed from undeserved celebrity.

          I cannot tell you precisely what happened next but as I was the only reliable witness I will tell you that Ockham has been taken to the San in some discomfort. Matron tells me he is in quite a bit of distress but bearing up, she asked if I could gather his things, his wash bag, pj’s, razor and stuff. I said I would but I couldn’t promise to locate his razor, she gave me a unhelpful stare.

          1. @ Peter Beswick,

            I thought I dove into the first chapter of an unread book, when I read through the first few paragraphs of your mini-opus.

            Awesome. Well done. My compliments.

  25. Let’s see if this works [as the covenment is trying to lay it on me]

    “Rape, your honor? That’s impossible, because I assessed with high confidence the lady wanted to have intercourse with me…”

    *******

    On Thursday, the UK Foreign Office stated that London had assessed “with high confidence” that the Russian military intelligence service was “almost certainly”…

    I need a [morally adjustable and flexible] barf bag. Help!

  26. For those who claim that Yulia planned to disappear.

    You forgot that Yulia had a dog in Moscow.
    https://www.mk.ru/politics/2018/03/16/semyu-sergeya-skripalya-razdirali-skandaly-v-nikh-zameshan-boyfrend-yulii.html
    “Девушка ездила на паркетнике «Форд Куга», у нее была беспородная собака, которую она очень любила. По словам соседей, к Юле часто приезжал и оставался её молодой человек.
    [Yulia] had Ford Kuga and a mongrel, whom she loved very much. According to neighbors, Yulia’s boyfried often visited and stayed with her.”

    From other news stories it is known that the name of Yulia’s dog was Noir and that she placed him at a pet hotel for the time of her trip to Britain. Also, Yulia mentioned her dog in the conversation with Viktoria in early July.

    Imagine that Yulia indeed planned to disappear. What would she do about her dear dog? One option, she would have found a new, reliable home for him, before she departed for London. But it would have been natural if she had taken Noir with her. See
    https://petstory.ru/knowledge/dogs/dog-care/vyvezti-sobaku-za-granitsu/
    It is in Russian, but the pictures are clear: the rules for taking a dog abroad by plane. It takes a few things to do (microchipping, vaccination, international vet passport and certificate), but it is doable and not such a big problem for a loving dog owner.

    1. @ Milda,

      I thought traveling with a pet would be a pain in the neck, but you’re right. It’s almost a piece of cake nowadays. Here’s Pet Travel – Link to Pet Travel

    2. Julia did not plan to disappear in March of course. She came to her father with a small suitcase. Her plans were to consult her father about her future. The main problem for immigrants – a residence permit, work, housing, security. She wanted to ask her father if he had finished his business in intelligence perhaps. What are the prospects for her fiancé in Britain. Transportation favorite dog is the least problem. It is important that Julia and her fiancé had no sense to hold on to life in Russia.

          1. lol! That depends on your point of view… I am sure they were also offered Spanish passports if thet had wanted them. I don’t think the problems you mentioned would have been a problem for the Skripals.

            1. Victoria said that perhaps Julia was pregnant and wanted to consult with her father about her future. Her apartment Scam does not speak of her as an independent practical person. Until 2014, Russia was not pressured by sanctions, and many people had illusions about the beautiful future.

          2. Iris, sorry, you obviously do not know much about life in Moscow.
            People in Moscow are not poor paupers as UK propaganda is portraying them to be, I know, I have friends and relatives in Russia. People live comfortably and travel abroad a lot , 2-3 times a year to Europe – its not unusual .
            I saw pictures of Sergey’s house in UK inside before they disappeared from Yulia’s VK page , sorry, but according to Moscow standards – its poverty. Tiny rooms, an old woolen blanket on a oldbed, old furniture… Yulia could stay in UK a few years before, but she chose to go back to Moscow.

            1. Elena, I live all my life in Moscow…Julia sold her nice apartment and bought another in the slum. I gave links below in the comments.

      2. Iris, again, my question: Are you a friend of Yulia? Did she tell you what she and her fiance had planned or wanted?

          1. Viktoria did not say that Yulia was pregnant. She said that one of the two rooms in Yulia’s flat was meant to be a child’s room, in the future. Journos’ headlines over those words were misleading. But Viktoria or other cousin also said that Yulia planned to sell this flat, to add money from another source and to buy a new, better flat. So, all sorts of info. And none of these versions corroborates you fantasies.

            1. I wrote to you that Julia is an extremely impractical person. Your comment proves it too. Julia had a big nice apartment, but she couldn’t use it wisely. She just threw away what her family had left her. Now this whole conversation doesn’t make sense. In Russia Julia will not return for many reasons, she is now a pawn in the game of britain intelligence.

              1. Now this whole conversation doesn’t make sense.
                ————————————
                Exactly. Whatever Yulia sold and bought in Moscow has nothing to do with the poisoning case.

      3. Sorry, Iris, but where this assertion came from?
        It was clearly stated by people close to her that Yulia was planing a family, preparing a nursery in a flat she was renovating and was making plans with her fiancee/partner Stepan Vikeev, whom she obviously loved… & she also loved her dog. The alleged poisoning ruined her plans . she lost her partner, her plans to ever return home and her dog. She was the connection between Sergey and home, somebody from UK made it certain that Sergey would lose the connection to home. IMO, this was as good as kidnapping, when she became brainwashed by Mi6 after the alleged poisoning that Russia wanted to kill her.

        1. Judging by the fact that no one spoke in defense of Julia’s interests, except Victoria, Julia Skripal had no close people. We haven’t seen her fiancé, friends, colleagues, anyone. Julia talked to Victoria as a non-close person too.

    3. The issue is not so much what Yulia planned, the issue is what it cost Sergej Skripal to be reunited with his family and what it cost him to have his children travel to and from Russia.
      Maybe nothing. Maybe a balancing act that got stuck in the new cold war.

      1. First, there are families that have both dogs and cats, who somehow adapt to each other or even make friends, sometimes.
        Second, even if Yulia had decided to leave her dog in Moscow because of Sergei’s cats, she would have certainly arranged a new home for him before leaving Moscow in order to “disappear” in the UK. Leaving the dog in a pet hotel for two weeks is not really different from abandoning him in the street. The difference is two weeks. What next? Life of a stray dog or, with luck, some new, unknown owners. Of course, it was not an option for Yulia, who loved her dog very much.

        1. What did happen to the dog when the 2 weeks expired? And why 2 weeks – was she expecting to stay in the UK for 2 weeks? I don’t think we have heard how long her trip was supposed to last.

          1. Victoria wanted to take out the dog out of the hotel for Pets, but the owner not given it. It is noteworthy that no one else took the Julia`s dog.

            1. How do we know that it ever went to the dog hotel? What if Yulia knew where she was going and had the dog sent straight there instead? The ‘dog hotel’ was just a cover story perhaps? What has happened to the dog since – if it has never been heard of since, it might make the idea that Yulia had it sent somewhere else more likely.

                1. Thanks agin. That is all rather curious… the article is dated 19 April and it seems like Yulia was free to use the phone whenever she wanted. Also that would be 6 weeks after Yulia left Moscow, so who had been paying for the dog to stay in the kennel during that period?

                  I think there is a LOT we are not being told – this must have been organised somehow, it didn’t just ‘happen’.

                  If Yulia really had been in a coma from 4 to 24 March… who was there to look after the dog? How could Stepan’s mother have known where the dog was? Why would she even have thought about it?

                  This is not what it seems. A plan must have already been in place to care for the dog.

              2. https://www.mk.ru/politics/2018/03/25/otravlenie-sergeya-skripalya-my-nashli-strannogo-boyfrenda-yulii.html
                Звонила из Подольска – там до 18 марта сдавала любимого пса по кличке Нуар в кинологический центр.
                Yulia’s friend told MK journalists that Yulia called her on 2 March from Podolsk (a town near Moscow) where she placed her loved dog named Noir in a cynology centre up to 18 March.
                In this article, MK journalists changed Stepan’s name to Stanislav (Stas) for privacy reasons (in case you will Google-translate and be confused).
                If of interest, MK posted a photograph of Noir in this article. Looks smart, like many mongrels.

                1. Even this article says:
                  “And since 2014, she heads a certain NGO with a registered capital of 5 million rubles. …. We do not undertake to assert, but it is very likely that the enterprise is closely connected with the security forces.”

      2. Ive got two cats and a German Shepherd. All live a good happy life together.
        Cats are the Boss though?

  27. Another thing that has been hidden…. until now!

    On 12 March The DM published the following:

    “A masked woman was seen acting suspiciously in Salisbury an hour before the Skripals were found collapsed, police have been told.
    The dark-haired woman was spotted wearing a black face mask as she left a Pret a Manger, a three-minute walk from where Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were later found convulsing and vomiting.
    At the time the pair were thought to be in the Mill pub a few yards away.
    .
    .
    The masked woman spotted on Sunday had been carrying a large bag, according to Mark Francis, a car dealer, who reported the incident to police on Wednesday.
    Mr Francis said the mask could have been used to protect the identity of an assassin.
    Counter-terror police have not yet released images of any potential suspects despite claims the centre of the city is covered by a new high-definition CCTV system.
    Mr Francis said he initially thought nothing of the black mask, which is of the type that became a familiar sight after the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) in 2002.
    But after it was revealed that nerve agents were used in the assassination attempt, he reported what he had seen.
    Mr Francis, 50, said: ‘We were in the town centre in Pret a Manger. We were in there at 3.35pm and I was sitting by the door and this lady walked out at 3.40pm.
    ‘She was wearing a Sars mask, a black Sars mask tucked around her chin and a bag in her hand.
    ‘It was really odd as you don’t often see someone wearing a Sars mask in Salisbury. We don’t get smog or pollution. When it became a chemical attack it sounded more likely that it could be significant.
    ‘She had dark hair, a single woman, but I didn’t think she was obviously Asian.’”
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5492733/Suspicious-masked-woman-spotted-Salisbury-spy-collapsed.html
    PUBLISHED: 22:23 BST, 12 March 2018

    Extracts of the DM article also appeared in The Mirror:
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/odd-woman-wearing-black-surgical-12176198
    23:55, 12 MAR 2018

    The Sun:
    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5789398/salisbury-nerve-agent-attack-woman-black-face-mask-police/
    12th March 2018, 11:46 pm

    And The Daily Record:
    https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/crime/witnesses-saw-woman-wearing-surgical-12176790
    11:02, 13 MAR 2018

    The interesting point about this report is the reference to a ‘large bag’.

    There were 2 sightings of a person wearing a face mask, the other report was of a masked man spotted near to The Works in The Maltings at 3pm. We have a good description of that person but there is no mention of a ‘large bag’ – or of any bag.

    Mr Francis gave a second interview to a Spanish newspaper:

    Mark Francis, who runs a car dealership in a business park, was the first to report his presence to the police, which has not given the track too much credibility at the moment. “In Salisbury we have sometimes seen Asian tourists wearing white masks, especially after bird flu,” says Francis. “But what caught my attention was the color and the bag, it was the first thing I thought about when I found out what happened.”
    http://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2018/03/15/5aa9488746163f38298b4594.html
    MAR 15 2018 03:05

    So suddenly, the bag itself seems to have been significant for Mr Francis – not that you would have guessed that from the DM article. The DM article itself was updated at 00:53 BST, 13 March 2018 but the original version was not archived.

    All is not lost, however, because the DM uses Sole Syndication to syndicate its articles all over the world and the original version of the story was taken by 2 newspapers in Vietnam. They translated the article, took the bits they wanted and republished the story.

    “Mark Francis, a car dealer in the area, said to the police that the woman was seen wearing a surgical mask – a very common type of post-SARS pandemic – and carrying a large bag. He said he did not initially notice the mask worn by the woman. However, after the news that former Russian agents could be poisoned with neurotoxins, he remembers the details.
    “Then we were at the center of the Pret a Manger.” At 3:35 am, I sat by the door and saw the woman walk past at 3.40 am wearing a mask against SARS and holding a colored bag It’s strange because I rarely see someone wearing this mask in Salisbury, where there is not much smoke, no pollution, after the news that this could be a poison attack. Chemistry, things seem more logical. ”
    “She has black hair, she goes alone, but I do not think she is Asian,” she added.!
    https://dantri.com.vn/the-gioi/anh-truy-tim-nguoi-phu-nu-kha-nghi-trong-vu-cuu-diep-vien-nga-nghi-bi-dau-doc-20180313101720616.htm
    Tuesday, 13/03/2018 – 10:33 (03:33 GMT)

    “A black masked woman was seen suspiciously in Salisbury, England, about an hour before the father of the former Russian second lieutenant Sergei Skripal fainted on March 4.
    On March 12, investigative sources revealed, a suspicious black-haired woman wearing a black mask when leaving Pret a Manger, Salisbury about 1 hour before the Skripals father saw seizures, vomiting and any province personnel on March 4 outside a shopping center.
    Mark Francis, a car dealer in the area, told police that the woman wore a surgical mask – a type of postmortem hepatitis near the SARS – and carried a large bag. He disclosed, first not paying attention to the mask that this woman wears. However, after appearing to report that the former Russian agent is likely to be poisoned by neurotoxins, he remembers the details.

    “At that time we were at the center of the Pret a Manger.” At 15:35, I sat by the door and saw the woman walk past at 1540. She wore a mask of SARS and carried a colored bag. It’s strange because I rarely see someone wearing this mask in Salisbury, where there is not much smoke, no pollution, after the news came out that this could be a substance attack. Toxicology, things seem more logical. ”
    “She has black hair, going alone, but I do not think she is Asian,” the witness added”
    http://www.doisongphapluat.com/tin-the-gioi/anh-truy-tim-nu-nghi-pham-trong-vu-cuu-diep-vien-nga-nghi-bi-dau-doc-a222374.html
    Tuesday, 13/03/2018 | 14:32 (07:32 GMT)

    By the time these 2 newspapers had done their translating and editorial work, they were clearly not too worried about the DM’s update and we can now see that what the DM removed in the update is that the bag was in fact a large ‘coloured’ bag – which both of the Vietnamese papers felt was important enough to mention. I wonder who asked the DM to remove that fact?

    There is another thing that is odd. Not only does the DM article downplay the bag, it takes great pains to link the decision of Mr Francis to visit the police on Wednesday, with the news that a ‘nerve agent’ was involved. The first mention of ‘nerve agent’ was in a press announcement from Scotland Yard’s assistant chief commissioner Mark Rowley … on the morning of Wednesday 7 March. So it is possible that Mr Francis did hear of the alleged use of a nerve agent before he visited the police but that story did not hit the newspapers until later on Wednesday. On Wednesday 7 March, the mention of a nerve agent was not the main story – all the papers were looking at who Sergei Skripal was, the COBRA meeting and the fact that the CCTV from Market Walk was apparently not the Skripals. The following are the earliest times I can find mention of ‘nerve agent’ in various newspapers:

    Metro Wednesday 7 Mar 2018 5:50 pm
    Independent Wednesday 7 March 2018 18:00
    Guardian 8 Mar 2018 07.21 GMT
    FT MARCH 7, 2018 8:58pm
    Express 18:58, Wed, Mar 7, 2018
    Mirror 22:40, 7 MAR 2018
    The Sun 7th March 2018, 6:40 pm

    Only the Mail Online was running a story about Rowley’s press statement. So Mr Francis was very quick off the mark if the news of a possible nerve agent was what made him think he should visit the police on Wednesday (although what use a face mask might be against a nerve agent is unclear).

    If Mr Francis was keeping up with this story, however, one things he had certainly seen was the video of the couple in Market Walk, with a large red bag, which was released in the morning of Tuesday 6 March – the day before Mr Francis visited the police.

    It is also clear that Mr Francis initially thought little of the mask, just something to hide identity but as Mr Francis told el Mundo:

    “But what caught my attention was the colour and the bag, it was the first thing I thought about when I found out what happened.”

    El Mundo also said: “the police, which has not given too much credibility at the moment” – this is wrong. The police took this very seriously and among the more than 400 people they interviewed, were the staff in Pret, however, like everything else in the case that is important, we have not been told anything. In fact the ‘masked person’ has not been mentioned since – which probably means it is VERY important.

    I contacted Mr Francis and asked him what colour was the ‘large bag’ – he did not give me an answer.

    What are the odds that:
    – Yulia had a red bag
    – The masked woman in Pret had a red bag
    – The CCTV woman had a red bag
    – A red bag was left on the ground by the bench

    1. Paul, did Mr Francis say WHY he didn´t want to give you an answer ?
      Did the police told him so ?

      1. I called his place of work but he was busy with a client. They gave me his email address and I sent an email minutes later but he did not reply. I only asked him about the bag, nothing else.

    2. Has anyone talked to Freya about the people on the bench? I see she hasn’t posted on her Facebook in a long time…We can wander a long time in the dark, if we do not know exactly what people were on the bench…

    3. I’m not sure if it is of any relevance, but the Odstock Burns Unit is near SDH. This woman and, indeed, the masked man, could have been wearing masks as a result of severe facial burn injuries, to aid the healing process. Just a guess. I believe they are worn for a considerable length of time (ie months)/years.

  28. Thought

    Is it mere ‘coincidence’ to see this swell in unified [FUKZUS] attacks on Russia [and it seems everything/anything Russian’s ‘fair’ game at the moment] over the past few weeks [and to be continued into the future], after the downing of the Russian IL-20 and the ramping up of Syrian air defenses?

    FUKZUS = France, UK, Zionists [too many times left out of the equation], US.

  29. Mark Urban claims three things about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey:

    1) He was poisoned
    2) He was the first to enter Skripal’s house
    3) He identified Skripal at the bench, allegedly by an ID found in Skripal’s pocket. (See this extract from Urban’s book.)

    Others here have suggested that DSB was part of Skripal’s ‘Team’ — “the officers from MI5 and MI6 who looked after his welfare.” If so, all three points cannot be true. He would not need Skripal’s ID to identify him. But he might falsely claim that someone else was Skripal.

    Here is a scenario: Skripal’s team had a pre-planned and well rehearsed “exit strategy” in case Skripal would try to defect to Russia. The plan involved disappearing Skripal under the cover of an assassination attempt by Russia. The preferred method: poisoning with the help of lookalike decoys.

    Petrov and Boshirov showed up and exchanged documents with Skripal. The ‘Team’ immediately moved into action. The Skripals were whisked away in a helicopter. Two decoys were brought to the bench. Novichok was planted on doorknobs and bottles. May immediately ‘knew’ it was Russia!

    There seems to be only one independent witness to the whole case, Freya Church. She claims that the couple on the bench was the same two people as on the CCTV video from the Market Walk. We now know that the two people were not the Skripals.

    1. “We now know that the two people were not the Skripals.”

      Petri, unfortunately we can not say this with certainty. Witness reports are not reliable.
      To move forward with our speculation what really happened it is of most importance to definitely know WHO WAS THE COUPLE ON THE BENCH.
      Why are all the witnesses not allowed to speak again ?

      Urban tries to explain Baileys actions in a way, MI5/6 told him to do.
      It all is most obvious not the truth. That´s why he had to disappear.
      I have the theory that Bailey in some way bungled a MI5/6 action.
      But to find out what it was, we have to know the identity of the couple on the bench, too.

      I have another theory – but that would be a long post…
      In my theory it were indeed the Skripals on the bench.

      1. With respect Liane, it isn’t just one eye-witness, it was several and they can’t all be wrong – and in fact they agree with each other. I think Freya in particular was a very good witness, she gave several interviews and was extremely consistent. The other witness who was very clear was Cain Prince – he said “the police said Mr Skripal was wearing a green coat” and we know that the Times said that the man in the CCTV (which is too poor quality for us to see) was wearing a green coat.

        It would be wonderful if we could see the CCTV of the bench but that is not going to happen, so we have to go with what we have got. We have more evidence of who was on the bench than any other aspect of this case and it all says that the couple on the bench were the couple in the CCTV.

        There is simply no evidence during the first week that says the Skripals were on the bench.

    2. Petri, that is pretty much what I figure. One thing in Urban’s storyline above makes no sense. He claims DSB radioed HQ after getting Sergei’s ID and Sergei had a “Don’t Stop” marker on the PNC.
      Well, Mark, how would that work? He already is stopped at that stage otherwise how would the marker be accessed by the police?
      I think MI5 carry a shield (like US cops) to flash if needed. Sergei would have had one.

      1. Paul, you will need to help me with the maths.
        Three nerds, a PC and Google can outperform 250 elite Counter Terror sleuths?
        What about the facial recognition squad.
        Were they called “The Rememberers”?

        I have forgotten.

        2. @ Duncan,

          Q; What about the facial recognition squad. Were they called “The Rememberers”? I have forgotten.

          R: Oh, man. Remarks like this should come with a stern warning to put down any and all liquid beverages before reading them.

          That was a really good laugh. Thank you!

    2. Why not let Bellingcat speak in front of the UK Parliament?
      Then hopefully, the last dork would recognize how the cat jumps.
      How long do the “investigators” want to be humiliated?
      The intelligence agencies say: Okay, you can not find any evidence against the perpetrators we named – then we let our secret weapon off the leash.

  31. https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201810051068634152-urban-skripal-harding-miller/

    This is funny. Sputnik meets Harding and Urban.

    I got the book. I still think CIA/MI6 got played. Why would Russia hand over deeply embedded intelligence officers, men who had betrayed their country to the US/UK, for deep sleepers who never managed to do anything but sleep?
    It looks like Anna Chapman had never even been a spy but had offered to help the FSB (who were actually FBI).
    My theory is the novichok story is payback for the deep penetration by Russian intelligence of MI6 by Skripal. And the D-Notices are to protect blushes not for secrecy.

  33. Sorry, have not been following this story for several months however as far as I am aware no friend or relative or independent lawyer [she sure needs one] has been contacted since the furtive cell phone contact between Yulia and Victoria months ago. The Metropolitan Police told me Yulia has access to communications??? If that is the case why don’t those friends and relatives come forward and prove that the Met are telling the truth. Or is Urban lying, or just passing information on from the Police since he has not seen either Skripals since 2017? Urban said this…
    “They communicate with people via social media, e-mails. Some saw them. We know that Yulia’s friend from Russia visited her in June. So, the Skripals are seeing their friends,” Urban said, adding that it was wrong to think that the two were isolated from society. “They simply do not really want to see us, the journalists.” https://sputniknews.com/world/201810031068554416-skripal-new-book-life-after-poisoning/ Did Yulia’s friend actually see her?

    1. I think british intelligence had a full dossier on the P&B before March 4. Gives information gradually through the garbage-media to hide truly information channel.

  35. Read the links and you will understand that MI5/6 would not even be punished if they poisoned the Skripals for some reason.

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/02/mi5-agents-are-allowed-to-commit-in-uk-government-reveals

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/mi5-can-authorise-agents-to-commit-crimes-tribunal-told-1.3651806

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/04/mi5-sought-immunity-for-agents-criminal-acts-tribunal-told

    https://twitter.com/alextomo/status/1047894823775166469

    Another “perfume bottle” discovered ?

    Quote : AN investigation has been launched after two workers at a Norfolk poultry processing factory died of suspected chemical poisoning.
    There were initial indications of a possible chemical spill at the scene.
    The two men were pest controllers working as subcontractors at Banham Poultry’s factory in the Norfolk town of Attleborough.
    They were found at 1.10am this morning close to the factory.
    Emergency services were called, but the men could not be saved.
    One of the victims was in his thirties and the other in his forties.
    An Eastern Ambulance Service spokesman said that two ambulances, a rapid response vehicle, three hazardous area response teams and an air ambulance were sent to the factory.
    “Despite the best efforts of all involved, two men died at the scene,” he said.
    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/investigation-launched-deaths-norfolk-poultry-plant

    1. Thanks Liane,
      The two men who died might have been exposed to leaking refrigerant gas, even though they probably were spraying with some other pesticide/herbicide.

      Regarding the MI5/6 “permission to commit a crime” I would suppose that if no crime was reported or recorded as a crime, then no charges would be filed.
      In the UK this happens frequently when the CPS have a think, or follow a command such that:

      “The Crown does not believe that it would be in the public interest to go forward with a prosecution.
      The attorney general (did you see him as Maybot’s warm up?) agrees that the likelihood of a conviction is less than the threshold mandated,,,,,”

      And so it goes.

    3. Thanks, Jim. We only read about the death, but no follow up.
      Or does everyone here knows what caused all the death ?
      Another example is the young man found dead in John Baker house.
      It was never mentioned what the coroner found out.

  36. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6240165/Top-Russian-law-official-dies-mysterious-helicopter-crash-hours-four-GRU-spies-outed.html

    Coincidentally, Karapetyan had been in charge of the Russian criminal investigations into the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March.

    He also led the investigation into the deaths of Putin foe Boris Berezovsky, and dissident Alexander Litvinenko – which both took place on UK soil.
    …
    It has today been claimed that ‘his death will resolve a number of very painful issues’ in the Russian government.

    An anonymous insider posted on a channel on the popular Telegram messaging app called NeZygar that Karapetyan’s death ‘will stop leaks of highly confidential information to the West’.

    The insider claimed it would specifically prevent leaks to the secret services of Britain, the US and Switzerland, and stop attacks on Putin’s security council chief Nikolai Patrushev.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/world/europe/spy-russia-britain-putin.html

    LONDON — Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian spy targeted in a nerve agent attack this spring, fed Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service information about a 1990s-era corruption scheme that reached all the way up to Nikolai P. Patrushev, a top Russian intelligence chief and close ally of Vladimir V. Putin, a new book contends.

    Mr. Skripal said this in interviews last year with Mark Urban, the BBC’s diplomatic and defense editor, who was researching a book about post-Cold War espionage.

    The information on high-level graft was sensitive, Mr. Skripal said. A naval officer who worked in Russia’s military intelligence service alongside Mr. Skripal, who like him had been caught passing information to Western security services, was found dead in 2004, apparently strangled, in a military hospital after an interrogation by Russian intelligence agents, Mr. Skripal said.

    1. GRU against FSB?

      GRU following the same mafia Britain should have protected Skripals against?

      Usually agencies like FSB-CIA-MI6 do the criminal stuff which other agencies try to cover up.

      MI6/CIA with FSB in support of “Russian” mafia?

      2. The whole Patrushev stuff is bogus obviously. Patrushev is a hardliner engaged on the highest level of the Russian side of the “New Cold War” and he would not transfer money to Western Countries where he must know he will not be safe.
        It looks though as if the Russian guy responsible for British and Russian legal cooperation has just died.

        It is safe to assume that the new cold war is fought via mafia, bankers and disinformation.

  37. No Visa for Victoria-Family. They give Visa to A&R…Known GU Agents as we led to
    believe?
    Setting Tourists Up on Days-Dates in question. Very Cleaver MI56!
    Thing Is Guys You Got Timestamps Wrong….Haha

    1. Anonymous. These two, Rus and Alex cannot be tourists. I think if you are believing that their trip was NOT some sort of mission which involved Sergei, then I have to wonder.

      The short trip, two visits to Salisbury, the expense etc.
      Not even Rob would spend his time doing that, and he lives in the town.
      I think Blogmirers have to accept that there was some sort of involvement in a meeting/delivery/pick up with the two superagents and one or both Skripals.
      One would hope that they are simply free agents working for the Rusian mafia or some billionaire with a grudge.
      If indeed they are still active GRU or FSB, then standards must really have fallen post USSR.

      1. Lots of possibilities.
        Like their trip involved contact with British Secret Service? Recruitment? Why did Russia out them in this unfriendly way?

      2. I try to keep an open mind about R&A but it is difficult.
        – If they are GU then they are brilliant at hiding it with all their antics.
        – Why did The Met do such a poor job of putting together a story (faking the timestamps at Gatwick??)
        – Rob now has a 30 minute ‘window of opportunity’ but that also assumes the Wilton Rd timestamp is correct – which it probably isn’t unless R&A are Olympic sprinters
        – we seem to be trying to find ‘something for them to do’ – it is all speculation. Do we really think Sergei was involved with the Russain Mafia as well as everything else?

        The only reason we even consider R&A is because The Met has highlighted them… without that, they were never needed in the story and we know that what The Met says they were doing is nonsense.

        Concerning 2 visits to Salisbury – I still think that sounds more like someone who found they couldn’t do what they wanted to on Saturday and went back on Sunday to try again but had not expected to have needed to do that. If they had known they needed to be there both days, I really would have thought they would stay locally – much cheaper. A reconnaisance visit makes no sense at all. Reconnoitering what?

        I just have no idea what they could have been there for. If Sergei was planning to vanish on Sunday, surely anything important would have been better organised.

      3. Any meeting agents with Mr. Skripal would be safer and easier in London.
        I will note that Mr. Skripal hardly wanted to return to Russia. He’d be out of business here. He wouldn’t live as comfortably as in England. His words about the desire to return Home to Russia are more like a legend. His nature is adventurism and murky business. Julia’s intentions to live in Russia are also doubtful. She is very silly losted the family estate. Sold a good expensive apartment, and bought a very bad, in an old low-quality house in the basement floor. She’s an impractical person. All her life she enjoyed the patronage of her father. She had a fiancé, and she was probably pregnant. I think she wanted to settle in Britain. With his extensive information, he would not have been released to Russia.Nevertheless, special emphasis is on the fact that Mr. Skripal wants to return to Russia. Why?

        1. Julia’s intentions to live in Russia are also doubtful.
          ———————————–

          Never underestimate the desire of some Russians to get out of Russia, over the hill where the grass is greener.

          1. Julia was out of Russia. She returned. She has stated she wants to return in the future even now.
            I can’t make my mind up about Skripal being such a valuable target. It must have been his memory back to the 1990’s and his ability to remember stuff in court.

            1. She has stated she wants to return in the future even now.
              ———————————-

              Take it with a grain of salt. When do you expect she will be returning? I suspect never.

              1. She said this in a statement that was awkward for the official narrative that Russia poisoned them.
                There must have been some give and take for her to say that she would not talk to the Russian embassy.
                I guess she is trying to save her freedom of movement between the two countries and her contact with her father.
                Urban’s book was not in Skripal’s interest. I doubt MI6 will let Skripal talk.

                1. @ Iris, Sibiriak, anidea,

                  Would whomever holds Sergei Skripal, let him go, walk free and talk free?

                  I wouldn’t be surprised to read he ‘passed’ away after a ‘struggle’ to stay alive, but… blah, blah, blah… Have to respect the dead and their wishes… Private/secret burial… and the ‘problem’ is solved.

                  I have this dark feeling we [the public] will never see Sergei Skripal again [and thi is one of those times I hope I’m utterly wrong].

            2. Julia was out of Russia. She returned.

              She had at some point, perhaps, to make a permanent decision. I can’t rule out the possibility. It’s all speculative, either way.

        2. Can’t agree. Yulia sold the family flat and bought a cheaper one for her own rationale, she wanted to get money for some purpose. Her new apartment is not in basement, but on the ground floor. She got renovation started there. She is very fond of her dog Noir, whom she left in a pet hotel for a short period of time (up to two weeks). She had a fiance in Moscow. How can this lead to a conclusion that she wanted to settle in Britain? She lived in Britain for some time (about two years? I do not remember), but left for Moscow.

          1. Julia is doing repairs because she thinks it makes her apartment easier to sell. To live on the ground floor of an old panel house is possible only from complete despair. This is certainly not the level of Julia. Her work colleague at PepsiCo sold her this illiquid. In addition, I’m not saying that Julia was going to emigrate in March. No, she was traveling light. She wanted to check with her father. Of course, she needed guarantees a residence permit, housing and a good job for her fiancé.

                2. Sorry, Iris, my friends do not want to leave Moscow, though they had the opportunities to do so, life is not unstable in Russia .
                  Its not a bad life, thugh sanctions are making it worse than it could have been.
                  Sorry, I do not know where did you get the idea that everyone wants to move to UK?
                  Only super rich want because they have stolen too much money and afraid that the state will find out

                  There is a great cultural life in Russia, people usually not only going overseas but also to art exhibits, theaters ( pensioners are given tickets for free) , there is a lot to do in Moscow, not only 24 hours working shops, bars & restaurants… It a different atmosphere to a small provincial Salisbury where Skripal was telling the same jokes every time …
                  When I lived there, I remember gatherings at friends homes when the conversations flowing from Chagall to Kafka.. Yulia will miss Moscow…

                  1. Everything in Russia is unstable. Your deposits can reset at any time – in the last 4 years, the Central Bank of Russia has bankrupted several hundred banks. Yours accumulated money is lost from bank cards and from bank safes. You have a lot of chances to lose your property because of the arbitrariness of state power or scams. The crime rate is very high, the police close investigations whenever possible. The judicial system is completely corrupt. The state has reduced all its social functions. And I’m not talking about the difficult economic situation.

        3. Iris – R&A went to Waterloo on Friday. I think Sergei was to meet them there but snow prevented train from Salisbury.
          Saturday they were trying to meet him but he was obliged to go to Heathrow to get Yulia. Mo maybe complained why should Ross go alone when it was Sergei’s daughter? So the three ended up going.
          As soon as they dropped money/travel docs/communication equipment in bin in bread wrapper on Sunday they were off.

      4. Thanks Duncan and the thing is that they did that Skripal meeting brazenly and returned home. Not one law officer tapped them on the shoulder anywhere at any time. By God those Russians are smart.

      1. Plods treating Job as easy overtime! Not doing Job. Them three[3]detectors
        on windowsill sniffing for CW residue.

        1. Unrelated to that, as the plod were looking for nerve agents, (of course) there are even handheld units to see if blood is showing acetylcholinesterase levels of concern.

          https://www.securetec.net/en/rapid-test-determination-cholinesterase

          At 40% of expected levels, (or lower) the diagnosis would be pesticide or nerve agent poisoning.
          SDH would have kit like this, ( they are after all, on PD’s door step) to immediately make a diagnosis on Sunday night on admission.
          They would also know that Sergie and Yulia ingesting pesticides was highly unlikely.
          Therefore by 7pm at the latest on Sunday, March 4th, an organophosphate compound be suspected.

  40. Retired U.S. General Wesley Clark 2007 interview

    Because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

    So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

  43. Col-Mustard Gas,Professor Green with wet greens.
    Miss Scarlett with GRU Door Knob Manuel-In Library?

  44. So Russian spies are caught… spying. I would suggest that the reason that they wanted to spy on the OPCW was that they were not being given access to any of the information from Salisbury by either the UK or the OPCW – despite being members of the latter organisation. So that wanted to find out what was being kept from them.
    The reason that the laptop revealed that they were trying to spy on the Malaysian Attorney General was that they were being denied access to the MH-17 investigations although Ukraine was taking part so… they wanted to know what was being kept from them.
    The fact that they were travelling on diplomatic passports suggests that this was an officially sanctioned action but clearly with no intention of being caught but with immunity were they to be tracked by Dutch intelligence services (which they were).
    What they did not do travel on civilian Russian passports and walk around in broad daylight in front of CCTV cameras….

    1. The hack was on 10 April, the OPCW summary on the Salisbury samples (which did not disclose the name of the nerve agent) was released on 12 April, and on 14 April Lavrov revealed that Russian intel had obtained a copy of the report sent to OPCW from the Spiez lab.

      The operation to crack the OPCW wifi was so obvious – four men arriving on diplomatic passports to be met by an embassy official, booking into the hotel next to OPCW with a parked car containing a wifi monitoring kit – that it’s almost as if they wanted to be caught. It’s possible that this was a diversion to protect a human source at OPCW or in the Spiez lab.

        1. Thanks for the correction about the date of the hack. However this strengthens the case that the wifi hack may have been a deception to protect a human source as there is now only one day between the hack and Lavrov’s interview

          The OPCW Technical Assistance Visit was from 21 to 23 March. As Porton Down had identified the nerve agent within a week, the Spiez lab shouldn’t have needed much longer than this to get a report back to OPCW. For the Russians (whose only information about what nerve agent had been used came from Boris Johnson having let slip that it was A-234), the report contained two surprising bits of information: one of the blood samples contained BZ (they didn’t realize that this was a control) , and another contained intact A-234 20 days after poisoning, which is hard to explain other than by spiking of the sample.

          Before the Russians could exploit the Spiez lab report, they would have needed to set up something that looked like a hacking operation to protect their source. Once the wifi hackers were apprehended on 13 April, Lavrov was free to talk about the report on 14 April.

          1. I don’t have a link for this, but I read at the time that the BZ “control” sample was degraded, while the “actual” agent sample was found to be of exceptional purity. It struck me as somewhat illogical.
            While we’re on the subject of Spiez Lab, I remember that soon after this alleged leak they also, like the UK Foreign Office and more recently the Defence Minister, posted then deleted a tweet.

    2. Their stay was official.

      https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/dutch-police-works-together-with-russia-s-fsb-despite-political-tensions~b2181b38/

      Dutch police works together with Russia’s FSB, despite political tensions

      Ministry and intel service concerned about cooperation

      Despite political tensions with Russia, the annexation of Crimea and the shooting down of flight MH17, the Dutch police service appears to be working closely together with the Russian security service FSB. Since 2009, FSB agents have been visiting the Netherlands, where they have also been meeting with officials of the FBI.

      They are trying to blow up global cooperation with these adolescent spy games.

  45. The facts are simple to understand but troubling to see, many just cannot bring themselves to see them.

    The US assisted by the UK and others have for the best part of 20 years destroyed the independent Middle East.

    One Sovereign State after another obliterated.

    There is no doubt that the region now needs rebuilding, re-structuring, redesigning.

    The wealth and power potential under those sands is still immense, not just world influencing but of world changing potential.

    So who is going to plan and project manage the redesign?

    The Local’s said “it’s up to us” but no one takes them seriously.

    The US has said “we will do it, we are the only power on earth equipped to perform the task”

    But Russia said “No”

    The UN said ………. nothing.

    Will the US allow Russia an equal partner seat at on the Planning Committee? Along with China and others with an interest and something to offer (as opposed to a shopping list of what to take)

    Well that is what is going to be decided it the next few weeks.

    A new Middle East of tremendous prosperity and influence that benefits the people who live there and the world they interact with?

    Or are we going to see human life on earth destroyed?

    That answer will be settled by the US, no one else. It would mean abandoning the investments it has made since before 911 but if I were making that decision I would have a good long think about what I want but more importantly, what is achievable, and what the consequences of the wrong decisions will mean.

    1. Thank you Peter Beswick, from my position I can see clearly that the planet will be toast very soon so if we let the locals extract their oil and gas slowly by asserting “its up to us” it will make no difference to the global outcome. On the other hand if the nuclear states in the middle east and elsewhere start their desperately desired war then we might see a nuclear winter for one year or two which would put an end to global warming for a few decades.

      Neither scenario appears pleasant but the latter may be more survivable than the former. At around 2 degrees C global warming the mammals will be eradicated. That will certainly put an end to the global belligerance we witness today.

  46. This Russian Prosecutor involved in the Skripal case just died in a helicopter crash
    https://en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/prosecutor-general-s-office-called-attempt-on-berezovsky-sham/
    The British authorities believe that the killer of Boris Berezovsky, Alexander Litvinenko and Sergey Skripal was a native of Kazakhstan, Vladimir Terlyuk. Since 2003, Britain through threats and bribes has tried to force Terlyuk to confess that he is a member of the Russian special services, who was instructed to kill Berezovsky.
    ???

  47. So the push is on.

    Syria was never the target. It was a pawn.

    The Strategy for securing the control of ME oil and gas; supplies, receipts, dependencies and therefore the political institutions that administer them (the ME States); whilst establishing Israel as a central cog in the administrative process and expanding its Sovereign territory, is very much alive.

    The tactic of using the Syrian Pawn is lost, the pawn is now out of play.

    And the final assault on the king pin defender has begun. Iran.

    Trump stated his aims in last weeks address to the UN. Putin responded by moving batteries of Air defences into the region, China has made significant military adjustments, the press has been silenced with anti Russian Hysteria and Free Voice Blogs Neutralised.

    We are in the End Game

    1. “Every solution to the humanitarian crisis in Syria must also include a strategy to address the brutal regime that has fueled and financed it: the corrupt dictatorship in Iran.

      Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death, and destruction. They do not respect their neighbors or borders, or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond.

      The Iranian people are rightly outraged that their leaders have embezzled billions of dollars from Iran’s treasury, seized valuable portions of the economy, and looted the people’s religious endowments, all to line their own pockets and send their proxies to wage war. Not good.

      Iran’s neighbors have paid a heavy toll for the region’s [regime’s] agenda of aggression and expansion. That is why so many countries in the Middle East strongly supported my decision to withdraw the United States from the horrible 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal and re-impose nuclear sanctions.

      The Iran deal was a windfall for Iran’s leaders. In the years since the deal was reached, Iran’s military budget grew nearly 40 percent. The dictatorship used the funds to build nuclear-capable missiles, increase internal repression, finance terrorism, and fund havoc and slaughter in Syria and Yemen.

      The United States has launched a campaign of economic pressure to deny the regime the funds it needs to advance its bloody agenda. Last month, we began re-imposing hard-hitting nuclear sanctions that had been lifted under the Iran deal. Additional sanctions will resume November 5th, and more will follow. And we’re working with countries that import Iranian crude oil to cut their purchases substantially.

      We cannot allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons. We cannot allow a regime that chants “Death to America,” and that threatens Israel with annihilation, to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth. Just can’t do it.
      We ask all nations to isolate Iran’s regime as long as its aggression continues. And we ask all nations to support Iran’s people as they struggle to reclaim their religious and righteous destiny.”

      https://www.vox.com/2018/9/25/17901082/trump-un-2018-speech-full-text

      2. The US has a problem with the Iranian sanctions though… Iran knows who got the ‘spare cash’ from Obama’s deal with Iran – it wasn’t $400m in cash… it was $1.7bn in cash! Several planes were used to ship the money on pallets but one of the planes didn’t reach Iran, it landed in Switzerland and a helicopter was the used to move the cash to various European locations, where various people got their cut.

        This is why the EU is trying ‘so hard’ to keep the Iran deal together and is now even progressing with an alternative payment system to avoid using SWIFT. Watch which European leaders are keenest to keep the Iran deal together…

  48. All this CCTV in U.K. and Met or any Police Force can not use it..Police Appealing
    For Witnesses?
    Met lose Battle With Knife Crime….In Capital-London?
    Terrorist Attack…Appealing For Witnesses?

    Very Selective In What They Use Off CCTV.

    Who Policing CCTV……Delete!

  49. Illegal Workers? Sunday afternoon in Sleepy Salisbury-Shops closing early
    Sunday trading hours. Total Hogwash-BS!

    Will Met Police be conducting enquiry into own Officers Actions into Dawn Sturgess
    death for failing to clean-up after very expensive clean-up?

    This is if not Murder at least Manslaughter. Will another Police Force look into this?

  50. …The house in Christie Miller Road had been bought for Skripal, in his own name, in 2011 for £260,000.

    …Once she was in Salisbury they could use her phone to locate her father swiftly and precisely.

    …At the end of 2010, a few months after he arrived in Britain, the Skripals had seen in the New Year together via Skype; Sergei and Liudmila in Salisbury, Yelena, Valery, and his daughter in Yaroslavl. It brought them comfort as they adapted to life apart. Sergei kept up the regular phone calls to his mother but did not, following her accident, use the video feature of Skype. ???

    …I got the impression that the ones he was closest to were ‘Team’, said without the article, those from the intelligence agencies looking after his welfare. He was evidently in regular contact with them, and had a special MOBILE phone that went direct to their duty officer.

    …As I knew from arranging meetings with him, Sergei did not usually carry a mobile phone – he told me once that he had one but that it was pay-as- you-go and he couldn’t be bothered to top it up.

    …There is a special section within MI6, Agent Resettlement, or AR, that looks after the service’s old Joes. MI5 are also involved with the protective security aspects of this, it’s a joint operation. The agencies’ bosses have learned over the years that looking after old assets is vital to the credibility of their operations – and indeed an important element of getting new people to spy for them.

    …So had the car been contaminated and if so when? Appealing for public help on 13 March, the police tried to pin down where it had been in the hour before the car park in Salisbury. They were having problems tracking the Skripals’ movements.

    …Yulia had either left hers at home that morning or switched it off, perhaps to avoid roaming charges.

    1. Hello Anonymous,
      it´s great that you post parts of the book here !
      I have two different versions, which one is in the book ? Here :

      “The people closest to him [Sergei] were probably what he called his ‘Team’ — the officers from MI5 and MI6 who looked after his welfare. He spoke about them with affection and had a special mobile phone that went directly to their duty officer.”

      „…I got the impression that the ones he was closest to were ‘Team’, said without the article, those from the intelligence agencies looking after his welfare. He was evidently in regular contact with them, and had a special MOBILE phone that went direct to their duty officer.“

  51. In the Western propaganda narrative, the seemingly implausible bungling, incompetent conduct of Petrov and Boshiriov in official Salisbury story is now rationalized and normalized by the bungling, incompetent actions of supposed GRU agents in the OPCW hacking case.
    ——————————————————————

    String of own goals by Russian spies exposes a strange sloppiness

    The secretive, daring GRU seems to have lost its way in the age of internet search

    It must go down as one of the most embarrassing months ever for Russia’s military intelligence.

    In the 30 days since Theresa May revealed the cover identities of the Salisbury poison suspects, the secretive GRU (now GU) has been publicly exposed by rival intelligence agencies and online sleuths, with an assist from Russia’s own president.

    Despite attempts to stonewall public inquiry, the GRU’s dissection has been clinical. The agency has always had a reputation for daring, bolstered by its affiliation with special forces commando units and agents who have seen live combat.

    But in dispatching agents to the Netherlands who could, just using Google, be easily exposed as graduates of an elite GRU academy, the agency appears reckless and absurdly sloppy […]

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/05/string-of-own-goals-by-russian-gru-spies-reveals-new-trend-of-sloppiness

    1. This is getting worse everyday but now no care at all is taken to disguise the “ it appears “ – possible attack “ . It’s so tiresome that energy now fails me to even debunk it properly . But I do blame the remaining western international community for staying silent on this and make no official comment stating this is nonsense and giving the US, U.K. France and Dutch the warning they deserve .

      We now came to a point that Russia is called a pariah state within a nato context and no western state intervenes to state this is totally out of order . No matter how logically and evidentially Russia defends itself nobody comes to do the decent thing and say: utter nonsense stop the fake anti Russia propaganda and provide clear evidence to your claims publicly and immediately .

      1. Please don’t give it up-get tired! This is what HMG want.Have you noticed when
        story dies down We hit with another revelation.

        They running scared because of People like us…Not taking BS!
        Yes hard work but don’t stop!

      2. @ Isa,

        I second Mark’s words.

        Keep on going. You’re not alone. Our respective governments will not stand next to Russia, but individuals like Mark and myself [and I’m sure countless others] stand shoulder to shoulder with you and your countrywo/men.

      3. From all corners of our magnificent planet, we stand in solidarity with you Isa. We know the state is out of control, we understand its fear mongering crime, we heal its divisive attacks on society. The state and its shamefull apologists and agents are a blight on humanity and throughout history have been resisted, destroyed and replaced with a community of humane people. We are in that process of replacement now.

      4. Thank you all for the incentive not to quit. Appreciated. Somedays the avalanche of spin is so overwhelming it makes one despair.

        Although I must correct something as it seems some are under the impression I am a Russian citizen and I don’t want to mislead anyone even inadvertently. I’m Portuguese .

        Let’s keep up the good work. No Pasaran.

        1. @ ia,

          Solidarity is a universal concept without boundaries and rules. TPTB try their best to destroy its fabric, but fail to do so.

    2. This is now beyond silly – stories for the extremely gullible.

      “…investigators believe that the group, allegedly involved in the cyberattack on the OPCW and the 2016 hack of the US Democratic Party emails, may also be responsible for stealing the diplomatic report, the media claimed.”
      https://sputniknews.com/world/201810051068619032-russia-hackers-documents/

      Western MSM now seems to be just throwing as much mud as they can, regardless of whether it is remotely credible of not. The fact that they once again toss in the ludicrously stupid 2016 Clinton emails being a case in point. We know that Seth Rich downloaded the emails onto a USB thumb drive and gave it to Craig Murray who then delivered it to Assange.

      No wonder the MSM is dying – they have done it to themselves.

      1. They know Salisbury-Amesbury a total Disaster and We don’t believe.
        Every new bizarre idea HMG spew out We destroy it!

        In Desperation they just chucking everything at it now in hope that
        something will stick!

        Not On Our Watch-Shoulder To Shoulder,Keep That Pressure On!

    4. Hello Sibirak, I too, wonder about the Russians and Putin.
      The two agents in Salisbury were clearly up to something, and Putin seemed quite assured in “suggesting” that Rus and Alex present themselves to the media.
      I know we might not be at the endgame, but it is reported that the Russian public, (or possibly the ones the West have interviewed) are treating their own “secret service” with ridicule.
      I can’t think of how this ends with Putin telling the West “I told you so” based on current data.
      Within the Blogmire most of us believe that two events took place in Salisbury.
      A move (handover/swap/dossier/cash) by one group followed by a reaction to that move by UK agencies, then the cover up, etc.

      I would like to hear from our Russian Blogmirers where this is headed.
      If Putin announced that Rus and Alex were now ( and were in March )Russian mafia, and not state operatives, that would still make his regime look bad, in that they had lost control.
      If it is all about control, then Putin needs to get a grip.

      1. Russian intelligence is not what they were in the USSR….they are only interested in monetary compensation. I don’t know if you can believe me.

  52. Early on Wednesday 7 March, a group of senior ministers and officials made their way to the Cabinet Office on Whitehall. They processed through the high security entry system, juggling cups of coffee, passes, and briefing papers, and down to the basement and Cobra. The government’s emergency committee is one at the same time a group, a place, and an acronym: Cabinet Office Briefing Room ‘A’. In its modern form it is a windowless place, electronically swept to prevent bugging, and plugged into a wide range of communications equipment including secure phones and video-teleconferencing facilities.

    Around thirty people arrived that morning to find Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, and a couple of officials waiting. Tall, precise in manner, and already well briefed, she would be chairing the session. Among the others filing in were Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, and two dozen other ministers and officials.

    None of them harboured any doubt that Russia was responsible for what had happened in Salisbury.

        1. On Wednesday, the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom said it believed the book was used to replace Skripal’s testimony in the poisoning case.

          People from Salisbury should sue for the damages and get his testimony.

        2. Quote Sputnik link : “I saw him last in July 2017, and spoke to him by phone in August of the same year… I have left him many messages but he hasn’t got back to me. So no I’m not I’m not in contact with him now. He’s been dealing with some really difficult times, it’s understandable,” Urban said.

          Quote : “Sergei Skripal went for a week to Switzerland in the summer of 2017. He wanted to meet representatives of the Swiss secret service, as he told BBC journalist Mark Urban.
          Mark Urban could not tell where the ex-Russian spy had stayed or whom he had met.
          https://www.tdg.ch/suisse/Serguei-Skripal-a-voyage-en-Suisse-a-l-ete-2017/story/22723118

          Alexander died July 18, 2017. I don´t know how the urn came to the UK and when the funeral was. But I suspect that Yulia was at the Salisbury funeral.
          Surely they also talked about Sergei’s future plans.
          Sergei didn´t want any more contact with Urban.
          Did he also want to refrain from the services of the MI6?
          Should Yulia prepare everything for his return to Russia?
          What made Yulia so sure that the UK Victoria would not get a visa?
          Did she know that her plans had been discovered?

          1. The ‘visa’ part of the phone call:

            Viktoria: Look, if tomorrow I get a (British) visa, I will come to you on Monday.
            Yulia: Vika, no one will give you the visa.
            Viktoria: Well, I thought so too. Oh well.

            Does that make any sense at all? No protest from Viktoria? How did Yulia know Viktoria would not get a visa? Why did Viktoria not think she would get one and just accepts it with ‘Oh well’?

            Answer: because they both knew that Yulia was not in the UK.

            1. Julia is in a very nervous state, something distracts her greatly during this phone conversation. Victoria herself doesn’t want to go to Britain, so she respond – do not give visa and good.
              Then Victoria told me that calls from Yulia has been with UK telephone numbers.

              1. Iris, how do you know it was a UK phone number? I have not seen that anywhere but we must also be careful about drawing conclusions from that as it is not proof of where the call was made from. You can buy ‘local numbers’ anywhere in the world for pretty much any country that makes it ‘look’ like a local call.

            2. Indeed Paul,
              Having said that, if Viktoria had applied, ( I know reports say it was declined, but that would only be true if she had made a formal application) then the UK would be under a bit of pressure to do something.
              A relative seeking to see and speak to family members would get universal sympathy.

              If Yulia’s words are correctly translated then I need to ponder the curtness of her rebuke.

              “No one” rather than “They will not”
              “No one” implies there are a range of people/places were visas can be given out.

              1. I think that is the ‘King James’ version of the translation Duncan – maybe a Russian speaker could confirm?

                1. correctly – “No one will give you a visa.” In Russian say when mean not specifically someone…

          2. Did Urban betray Sergei to his chums in british ‘intelligence’ ? After all Urban was mapping Sergei’s entire life and those discussions can be revealing of the present and future intentions.

      2. He only wants money in his wallet. Don’t Buy! Going on about Skripal
        and what he did-didn’t do.

        What Urban doing worse. Taking money for nothing and his cheques
        are free……Criminal With HMG Backing!

        We would all be locked-up for less.

  53. It is not possible someone not to have seen something and the house of MI6 agent not to have cameras. Also how poisoners knew that Skripal will come back at the house? Why they have acted in daylight?

    It is hard to believe that smearing the door handle have been done by these two guys without having any special equipment just going around the town with one of most dangerous nevrotoxins. None services – neither Russion, British or others will plan this so poorly (with exception of Ukrainian maybe). So there is not a single evidence that B&P smeared the Novichok on the front door and that Skripals have returned to the house after 12:30. Someone pointed as evidence that no Novichok have been found on Ludmila grave? This have proved that Skripal have been poisoned later after allegedly B&P have smeared the poison? But Skripal will not leave traces with just staying in the cemetery or walking. It is another smokescreen. Police must have the means to say this with sure when Novichok have been smeared on the handle. actually it was not even certain that Skripal and Yulia have been at the graveyard. What they have been doing for more than 3 hours?

    If facts are separated from obvious distractions like this Chepigs story and the recent Holland story of Russian agents, the main question pops up – what is trying to hide the police about Skripal house? What have been found there?An

  54. This documentary might be of interest in the wider scheme of unfolding events:

    Diplomatic Viruses – Link to DILYANA.bg

    Excerpt: “The US Embassy to Tbilisi transports frozen human blood and pathogens as diplomatic cargo. Internal documents, leaked to me by Georgian insiders, implicate US scientists in the transportation of and experimenting on pathogens under diplomatic cover. According to these documents, Pentagon scientists have been deployed to the Republic of Georgia and have been given diplomatic immunity to research deadly diseases and biting insects at the Lugar Center – the Pentagon biolaboratory in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi. The military facility is just one of the many Pentagon biolaboratories in 25 countries across the world.”

    1. Salisbury attack reveals $70 million Pentagon program at Porton Down – Link to Dilyana.BG

      Excerpt: “Information obtained from the US federal contracts registry reveals that the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has funded a number of military projects performed at the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), or Porton Down, over the last decade. Among them: experimental respiratory infection of non-human primates (marmosets) with Anthrax, Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Western equine encephalitis virus, and Eastern equine encephalitis virus.”

  55. Could this Orwellian project be connected with the USAF collecting DNA from ethnic Russians ?

    https://www.rt.com/usa/440367-darpa-insect-allies-bioweapon/

    “The dispute over Insect Allies comes as Russia has raised concerns about a US biological research facility in Tbilisi, Georgia. A former government minister has recently published online some 100,000 pages of documents about the facility.

    The Russian military is now looking into the outbreaks of African swine fever since 2007 that originated in Georgia and spread into Russia, Europe and China”.

    ““The infection strain in the samples collected from animals killed by the disease in those nations was identical to the Georgia-2007 strain,” Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops from radiological, chemical and biological weapons, said on Thursday.

    The Pentagon, however, rejected Moscow’s concerns as part of “a Russian disinformation campaign directed against the West.”

    “For some obscure reason, a US Air Force contract in July 2017 sought samples of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and synovial fluid from Russian subjects who ‘must be Caucasian.’ It also sought information on the donor’s sex, age, ethnicity, weight, height and medical history, and specifically disqualified tissue samples from Ukraine”.

    Before I read the above paragraph, I’d already typed my introductory sentence. A VERY disturbing development…

    1. @ miheila,

      Q; The Pentagon, however, rejected Moscow’s concerns as part of “a Russian disinformation campaign directed against the West.”

      R; I’m not a religious person, but let’s assume Jesus returns and turns out to be Russian. He will be asked to proof it’s really him and walk over water. When he obliges, western media headlines will scream, “Russian Jesus can”t even swim!!!“

  56. A public that can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction is left to interpret reality through illusion. Random facts or obscure bits of data and trivia are used either to bolster illusion and give it credibility, or discarded if they interfere with the message…

    When opinions cannot be distinguished from facts, when there is no universal standard to determine truth in law, in science, in scholarship, or in reporting the events of the day, when the most valued skill is the ability to entertain, the world becomes a place where lies become true, where people can believe what they want to believe. This is the real danger of pseudo-events and pseudo-events are far more pernicious than stereotypes. They do not explain reality, as stereotypes attempt to, but replace reality. Pseudo-events redefine reality by the parameters set by their creators. These creators, who make massive profits selling illusions, have a vested interest in maintaining the power structures they control.

    – Hedges, Chris (2009). “Empire of Illusion”, Nation Books, New York, NY, 2009, page 51

    1. A public that can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction…
      ———————————————————-

      I wonder about the “can no longer” part. Has there ever been an educated, critical-thinking public with full access to all necessary information?

      1. No. But in the information age this has become critical. Should people use the tools they have got and learn how to get real information there is trouble.

        Humans are wired in a way though that they need someone to tell them stories to make sense of the world.

        Borishov and Petrov standing near Skripals house is automatically construed to mean they are related with Skripal’s case. Because these are the two facts we know and connect. But we don’t know what else went on in Salisbury on that day.

  57. Who bought Little Gavin that Chemistry Set. Stink bombs I can understand
    but Novichok?

    If this gets out I will never be able to show my face at Bingo again!

  58. CCTV

    I’ve always been against the use of CCTV. Besides when it’s operated by men who spy on women [bird eye’s view + zooming in], the Skripal case now proofs, beyond any reasonable doubt, how utterly useless the entire CCTV scam actually is.

    Timestamps

    I’ve 18 year old clock, that runs on batteries. Whenever a certain satellite passes overhead, its time is adjusted to the exact correct one. CCTV is advertised as a means to help and ‘protect’ citizens. In court cases [when so many CTTV timestamps are supposedly way off] the footage is/becomes useless in a judicial sense.

    So, again, why is the UK smothered by/in CCTVs, while in actuality, their useless and intrusive pieces of junk, as, again, the Skripal case proofs, beyond any reasonable doubt, the uselessness of CCTV cameras.

    2. CCTV is the physical manifestation par excellence of the ‘big-brother’, distrustful, paranoid dystopian society the West has created for itself. They took much longer to catch on in Eastern Europe, where their concentration is still very much lower than in Britain. Surprisingly, the USA only comes second in the CCTV league. It’s a very British addiction. It may be due to the unquestioning compliance to authority that seems to pervade British society so much.

      If the technology exists (whatever it is) it will be exploited for good or bad – if too few of us complain. CCTV has become a massive lucrative industry, and once this happens there’s no stopping it. The protection myth, ever drummed into us, is sold. By the way, I’ve seen the zoom capacity of the official/police cameras, and found it disturbingly impressive. I also know that on all-male shifts, boredom is alleviated by zooming on young females in the street or even into bedroom windows – a macho, voyeuristic culture that has pervaded police forces for many years. They very rarely get caught, for their is no-one to effectively police them.

      Horrible inventions !

      1. @ miheila,

        I read somewhere that an estimated 70+% of CCTV cameras in shopping malls and supermarkets are used for focusing on and following women who wander around.

        There are between 4 million and 5.9 million CCTV surveillance cameras in the UK [nice discrepancy variable there of 50%]. Are they tax-payer funded? If so, why isn’t there a humongous outcry in the UK?

        Or is, as you say, the vast majority just complacent?

      2. Just like very expensive Police Helicopter having a Jolly time on a
        nice day over peoples gardens!

      3. It helped cut the police force. It is the usual McKinsey strategy, replace people by machines.

        It is a real pain though when your identity is mistaken.

  59. Do we have some original quotes on this?
    https://sputniknews.com/world/201810041068594851-skripal-refused-move-us/
    “The Skripal Files,” written by Mark Urban on the basis of his 2017 interview with Sergei Skripal who was poisoned in Salisbury in March, alleged that the ex-GRU colonel and his daughter Yulia had been offered to move to the United States or another English-speaking country, where they would live under new identities. However, neither Sergei, nor Yulia had supported the proposal.
    Urban suggested that Skripal would not return to his Salisbury house, and added that the ex-intelligence officer and Yulia were living under the protection of the UK authorities, who allegedly felt guilty for failing to protect them from poisoning; but that couldn’t last forever, therefore the issue of where they would live would inevitably arise.
    The authorities, he claimed, didn’t want to face the risk of public accusations and lawsuits; neither did they want the Skripal family to face media scrutiny. The BBC journalist further suggested that if Skripal’s case fell within a witness protection program, he would have to disappear.
    According to Urban, both Sergei and Yulia keep in touch with their friends, have access to television, Internet, and phone, and mainly communicate with people via e-mails and social media. Their whereabouts, however, remain unknown.

    1. “…alleged that the ex-GRU colonel and his daughter Yulia had been offered to move to the United States or another English-speaking country, where they would live under new identities. However, neither Sergei, nor Yulia had supported the proposal”.

      No evidence. When exactly ? How would he know ? He hasn’t spoken to them. Would intell services tell him ? Even if they had done, could they be believed ? No.

      Urban suggested that Skripal would not return to his Salisbury house, and added that the ex-intelligence officer and Yulia were living under the protection of the UK authorities…”

      It is obvious that he wouldn’t be returning. (For one thing, imagine the neighbours’ gossip!). There is no evidence that they are living under such protection, or even that they are together, or even that they are both still alive.

      “…who allegedly felt guilty for failing to protect them from poisoning…”
      Nonsense. There’s no evidence to suggest that they were poisoned (and a lot suggesting otherwise). UK authorities never feel guilty, but they always fear embarrassment at being exposed for the liars they are. To prevent such exposure they’ll stop at nothing.

      “…but that couldn’t last forever, therefore the issue of where they would live would inevitably arise”.

      True. I suspect that whoever is holding them is trying to reach some kind of agreement via back channels. If it fails, they may resort to drastic measures. It may already have failed. We would not be told.

      “The authorities, he claimed, didn’t want to face the risk of public accusations and lawsuits; neither did they want the Skripal family to face media scrutiny”.

      Obviously, but most of all they fear embarrassment at at a failed illegal operation.

      “The BBC journalist further suggested that if Skripal’s case fell within a witness protection programme, he would have to disappear”.

      He has alrady disappeared; they both have.

      ‘Witness protection programme’ ! Irrelevant in this kind of case, it would be an MI5 protection process; local police forces would play no part, and wouldn’t even be told. The situation would only be flagged to them if police contact occurred in the usual run of policing work, e.g. a burglary at their home. In such cases they would be instructed to contact MI5 immediately, and secure the situation before taking any further action.

      “According to Urban, both Sergei and Yulia keep in touch with their friends, have access to television, Internet, and phone, and mainly communicate with people via e-mails and social media”.

      Rubbish ! How does he know ? He could have been told, or not told, anything.

      On the most important points, his book is mere speculation. It has two aims: to furthur vilify Russia, and to make a lot of money for the author. The truth would get in way of his vested interests …and a ‘good story’.

      1. @Mihaila

        There was this article in April :

        “Sergei and Yulia Skripal will be offered new identities and a new life in America in an attempt to protect them from further murder attempts.

        Intelligence officials at MI6 have had discussions with their counterparts in the CIA about resettling the victims of the Salisbury poisoning. “They will be offered new identities,” a senior Whitehall figure said.”

        https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sergei-and-yulia-skripal-offered-new-identities-with-cia-help-ztf896rnj

        1. Yes, Chris, I remember reading that claim by the anonymous ‘senior Whitehall figure’. I didn’t believe it then, and I still don’t. UKG was taken by surprise when MI5/6’s little plan backfired, so they allegedly came out with that statement. I suppose that they had to say something and it sounds plausible enough for the people to believe it. It also conveniently added to the myth of a poison attack by Russia.

          1. Totally agree. That was just to make it look like the UK was in control – which it wasn’t. If Sergei was involved with the dossier, the last place Treasonous May would want Sergei was in the US.

  60. I agree with Isa, Anidea , Sibiriak about the sickening latest anti-Russia scandal hitting the air waves, with Western countries chanting in unison. The Dutch story about hacking an OPCW lab is absurd, why wait 6 months to release such ‘hot’ info, when they are happy enough to invent damaging stories? This year, Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra resigned in February after admitting he had lied about attending a meeting in 2006 at which he said Russian President Vladimir Putin had outlined a strategy for building a greater Russia. This lie over 12 years from 2006 was a useful stick to beat President Putin and Russia with and suited NATO’s drum on the need to “contain Russia.” More weapons for the war machines.

    The latest round of condemning Russia is a sick DISTRACTION from the many REAL crimes against humanity perpetrated and still being committed by the West, mainly UK, US, France. They have never been held accountable for their hideous, illegal wars on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, that have killed millions directly, and millions more through destroyed infrastructure caused by heavy bombing campaigns. And of course millions of refugees have fled from destroyed cities. What misery they have incurred, and how can the be held accountable and liable for war damage and reconstruction? Nicholas J.S. Davies has done excellent work in comprehensive studies on how many have been killed in the wars. His last report is titled How Many Millions have been killed in America’s post—9-11 Wars? Part 3, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen. He estimates 6 million have died directly in violent deaths from the wars, this doesn’t including deaths after the bombings. An Amnesty International report gives harrowing details on the allies bombing of Raqqua in Syria in 2017 which they describe as a war crime that needs investigating.

    The latest round condemning Russia is a sick DISTRACTION from the many REAL crimes against humanity perpetrated by the West, mainly US,UK France. They have never been held accountable for their hideous wars on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia that have killed millions directly and milliions more via destroyed infrastructure caused by bombing campaigns. And millions have had to flee destroyed cities. What misery incurred and how can they be held accountable and held liable for war damage and reconstruction? Nicholas J.S. Davies has done excellent work in comprehensive studies on how many have been killed in the wars. His latest report titled, How Many Millions have been killed in America’s post-9-11 wars? Part 3 Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen estimated 6 million died directly in violent deaths, this excludes those after the bombings. An Amnesty Intl reort gives harrowing details on the allies bombing of Raqqua in Syria in 2017, they describe this as a war crime that needs investigating.

    1. @ Kay Weir,

      This is one of those message s missing from Fake Stream Media:

      “A shocking report released Monday by the Abdullah Al-Hourani Center for Studies found that Israeli forces killed 23 Palestinian protesters in Gaza, including seven children, in September, along with three people in the West Bank. The IDF also wounded an astonishing 2,300 Palestinians that month in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem, the vast majority, 2,014 of them, in Gaza.”

      https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201810041068571416-Social-Media-Exposes-Israeli-Lies-Palestine/

      As you can see, a Russian web site mentions it.

      The Russia basing has reached a scale I find difficult to phantom. It’s baseless and totally dishonest. As a westerner, I’m deeply ashamed by governments pretending to represent me, but act like a bunch of demented schlemiels I can’t distance myself far enough from.

      To all Russian visitors and commenter, please accept my apologies for what’s coming out of anything Western [that’s negative about Russia without merit].

      1. Ah, but Russia upset ‘somebody’s’ plan in Syria and it is an existential threat to them. They would rather start WW3 and try to get Greater Israel back on track (the Qatari pipeline was always a ruse to give us another reason for US involvement in Syria – never the main reason – “Look! A squirrel!”) But they are going to have to get used to the idea that they have lost…

  61. I agree with Isa, Anidea , Sibiriak about the sickening latest anti-Russia scandal hitting the air waves, with Western countries chanting in unison. The Dutch story about hacking an OPCW lab is absurd, why would they wait 6 months to release such ‘hot’ info, when they are happy enough to invent damaging stories? This year, Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra resigned in February after admitting he had lied about attending a meeting in 2006 at which he said Russian President Vladimir Putin had outlined a strategy for building a greater Russia. This lie over 12 years from 2006 was a useful stick to beat President Putin and Russia with and suited NATO’s drum on the need to “contain Russia.” More weapons for the war machines.

    The latest round of condemning Russia is a sick DISTRACTION from the many REAL crimes against humanity perpetrated and still being committed by the West, mainly UK, US, France. They have never been held accountable for their hideous, illegal wars on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, that have killed millions directly, and millions more through destroyed infrastructure caused by heavy bombing campaigns. And of course millions of refugees have fled from destroyed cities. What misery they have incurred, and how can the be held accountable and liable for war damage and reconstruction? Nicholas J.S. Davies has done excellent work in comprehensive studies on how many have been killed in the wars. His last report is titled How Many Millions have been killed in America’s post—9-11 Wars? Part 3, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen. He estimates 6 million have died directly in violent deaths from the wars, this doesn’t including deaths after the bombings. An Amnesty International report gives harrowing details on the allies bombing of Raqqua in Syria in 2017 which they describe as a war crime that needs investigating.

  62. SERGEI SKRIPAL´S HOUSE

    I would like to give an overview of the property Christie Miller Road 47.

    1) Aerial view of house and garden
    https://ibb.co/f3iX1z

    2) Street side of the house from April 2009.
    Sergei has just changed the front door and set a new chimney.
    https://ibb.co/kQxs1z

    3) The new front door.
    I strongly suspect that there are two entrance doors – a double door system, that the cats can not run away.
    I see no way Yulia could have touched the door handle.
    Imagine they are coming home. The one with the key (Sergei) opens the door. Yulia goes in and waits for Sergei to shut the door. Then she opens the second door. Poison only on Sergei´s hand.
    Poison would be found at every place touched by Sergei inside the house.
    Now leaving the house : Both go into the lock, then Sergei opens the outer door, lets Yulia pass and locks the door. Again poison only on Sergei´s hand.
    Even if Sergei would have touched Yulia, her dose would have been much smaller.
    The door handle narrative is BULLSH.T.
    https://ibb.co/cPUcZK

    4) Garden side of the house from April 2009.
    IF Bailey entered the house from behind, he must have used the patio door. The shed door has no entrance into the house.
    https://ibb.co/nKvHZK

    5) Aerial view of house and garden
    You can see the British flag in the window. I suspect that this is a corridor window. Sergei probably did not want to be seen when walking through the house.
    https://ibb.co/d7g21z

    6) Aerial view of house and garden
    At the back you can see the small alley, which continues behind the hedge and leads to the road.
    https://ibb.co/gMDqMz

    7) Aerial view of the garden and the small alley
    You also see the small path that goes around the house. A small wall separates path and lawn. The lawn is about 40cm higher and rises towards the fence.
    https://ibb.co/n2o1Te

    1. Hi Laine, According to rightmove.co.uk 47 Christie Miller Road Salisbury was last sold on August 12 2011 for £260,000, (to MI6?).

      4 BEDROOM DETACHED HOUSE
      Sold Subject to Contract – by FOX & SONS, SALISBURY
      22 FT Lounge
      Cloakroom
      New Bathroom Suite
      Off Road Parking
      Three/Four Bedrooms
      Two/Three Reception Rooms
      Vacant Possession

      Here is the link with some inside the house pics, possibly from 2011.

      https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=33184319&sale=76489110&country=england

      Perhaps someone could phone Fox and Sons and ask them who bought it? lol

      1. Iris,
        Even before I read it, this is what I thought:

        “Marilyn Justice
        ‏ @mkj1951
        Sep 12
        Replying to @_MrsV_

        Or were they burning something they didn’t want anyone to see? ”

        There must have been a lot to burn ! 🙂
        I wonder who paid the fuel bill…

    1. It is very hard to see except in that still shot. Is it on the woman’s right shoulder and the red bag on her left? There is a reason that she might have 2 bags… one isn’t hers, she is just carrying it.

      Can we all decide what is going on in the video? Are they walking hand in hand?

      Also can we look at images of the clean-up – the red bag is on the ground but is the brown bag anywhere to be seen?

      I always thought it was odd that ‘personal possessions’ would be left behind. They should travel in the ambulance with the patient. Did the brown bag go with the woman but the red got left behind because ‘someone’ knew it was not her bag?

      1. Can I just add that, if the above is correct, it means somebody at the bench was in on the plan.

        Do we know how long the ‘ebola nurse’ or ‘doctor’ (or anyone else) stayed at the bench?

      2. In a photo taken at time-Picture of a Police Officer with back to camera-crouching down.
        Red Handbag on floor with a Brown Gag {looks like large paper type-carrier}
        Caption to photo states Officer places handbag into evidence bag-words to that effect?

        Think photo had been taken from Sainsbury’s? was a First Responder Car parked to
        left of shot.

        Hope this helps….

          1. Morning Paul-Yes that’s the picture! One I seen was Daily Express of same
            picture but zoomed in. Bags on floor had been circled in red.

            1. Check sway of jackets-coats! Trouser line of Male. Top corner of Bag
              obscuring fingers of Males Left Hand.
              Smudge of Left Hand due to freezing frame. Not holding hands.

              Daily Express clamed evidence minutes after. Daily Mail claim
              Police evidence bag later? [Covering Evidence?]

              1. I have watched the video too many times(!!) and I still can’t make it out properly.

                In this video, you can go through frame by frame:
                https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-43302013/russian-spy-cctv-footage-in-sergei-skripal-investigation

                – He is swinging his hands
                – we don’t see her right hand
                – at 1 sec her right foot is forward but we don’t see a bag
                – … not sure

                Watch the dark area of the floor they walk past – the ‘brown bag’ is exactly where that mark is.

          1. Hello Hame-Yes I see what you are saying.Check top corner of alleged
            brown paper bag. It obscuring left two figure’s of Male.
            Check sway of jackets-over coats.
            As they walk alleged Brown Bag is between due to sway of long jacket-over coat.

            Holding hands. Think it just way footage been stopped and we got some smudge
            over play?

            I can see a Brown{Paper Bag-Type} but I could be wrong?

            Many Thanks

  64. Irony international presents –

    2018 ANNUAL LECTURE – KLEPTOCRACY: LONDON AND ITS ENABLING ROLE IN SPREADING GLOBAL CORRUPTION

    This year marks the 25th Anniversary of Transparency International. In that time, corruption has been placed firmly on the international agenda but remains a major global menace. A key player in the fight back is Bill Browder, the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, US legislation authorising the government to sanction human rights offenders, freeze their assets and ban them from entering the country. He continues to campaign for the introduction of similar legislation worldwide and is also the author of RED NOTICE, which chronicles Russian corruption.

    http://www.transparency.org.uk/events/annuallecture2018/#.W7ZZ7UnTU0M

    We live in very strange times.

  65. What did the Newsnight programme say about when SDH identified ‘nerve agent’ poisoning?

    This is what The Sun reported on Tuesday evening at 10:31 pm:

    “Preliminary toxicology tests by military scientists at secret research centre Porton Down ruled out nuclear material or a nerve agent.”
    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5742716/spy-chiefs-say-russia-is-prime-suspect-for-sergei-skripal-attack-using-a-poison-so-rare-spy-boffins-havent-found-it/

    Anerve agent was first confirmed on the morning of Wednesday 7 March:

    “This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by administration of a nerve agent,” London Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley told reporters.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-russia/britain-says-former-russian-spy-poisoned-with-nerve-agent-idUSKCN1GJ0SX

    So what exactly was SDH treating the ‘Skripals’ for on 4, 5 & 6 March?

    1. Generic, put in artificial coma, make sure they breathe …
      Main point, they did not protect themselves and nothing happened.
      According to the hospital things changed when Sergeant Bailey came in.

      1. But if PD had ‘ruled out’ a nerve agent on Tuesday 6 March, I wonder when it got ruled back in again…

        1. Boris Johnson seems to have pushed the “Russia did it” line starting March 6.
          https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sergei-skripal-poisoning-live-updates-latest-russia-spy-mi6-wiltshire-zizzi-police-investigation-a8241971.html
          Theresa May seems to have held out till March 12
          https://www.rt.com/uk/421102-may-russia-blame-attack-skripal/
          ‘Say something’: May ‘under incredible pressure’ from colleagues to blame Russia in ex-spy poisoning
          On Monday, May effectively pinned the blame on Moscow for poisoning former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter with “a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia.” While the Prime Minister didn’t mince words in her accusations, she still left a loophole for a potential backtrack, using words like “it appears” and “highly likely” that the Russian state was responsible for the attacks.

          This first public attribution of blame is May’s way of strengthening her political profile and of appeasing hawks within her own party, rather than being a reflection of the government’s genuine belief, broadcaster and journalist Jon Gaunt told RT.

    2. The Sun report is worth a discussion.
      I have no doubt that a acetylcholinesterase assay would have been undertaken by PD as a matter of course on Sunday night. Especially if to “Chemical weapons/warfare excercise clinicians” just happened at SDH that evening.
      However, we cannot rely on “Sun sources”.

    3. Paul, the Sun link is very interesting.
      It is their reporting style to get people at the scene.
      You will know that it was an earlier article updated, but that at least means they followed up on their first report.
      Fellow Blogmirers, worth a read.

      “Preliminary toxicology tests by military scientists at secret research centre Porton Down ruled out nuclear material or a nerve agent.”
      https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5742716/spy-chiefs-say-russia-is-prime-suspect-for-sergei-skripal-attack-using-a-poison-so-rare-spy-boffins-havent-found-it/

        1. Thanks Paul. I’d not seen that before. Extremely interesting. If it’s true, it would seem to bang yet another nail in the coffin for the official story. Is there any way that we can verify the report (worth contacting the journalist)?

          Rob

          1. I noticed the journalist is Tom Newton Dunn – he is one of their most senior reporters… I don’t want to go too far but I doubt he would want to attach his name to something that was fabricated – he doesn’t need to. Apart from that I have no more idea than anyone else where it came from or whether it is true.

            I wil check if The Times said anything – they often pick up the ‘better’ bits from the Sun. Will report back if I find anything.

            1. The Sun is the only source but they seem to have liked the line. It also got used here at mid-day on 7 March:

              https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5747565/dramatic-moment-russian-spys-daughter-was-airlifted-to-hospital-after-pair-were-poisoned-in-salisbury/

              and also here in the early afternoon of 7 March:

              https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5748503/cops-paramedics-escort-women-flats-next-zizzi-russian-spy-poison/

              The last one now looks odd! It was published on 7 March but then update to include:
              “Police say they were deliberately targeted with a rare nerve agent” but they didn’t remove the former words…

              It appears in several other places, mostly overseas, but they all take their story from the Sun.

              1. Paul.

                Good stuff.
                We may be hitting our collective heads on the media wall.
                I know three of the Sun reporters including one who paid me a fee. (Different story but only last year.)
                Skripal saga seems to be “hands off” and follow the Novichok gang byline since March 10th.
                On this story, two Sun chaps interviewed Aiden’s parents.
                As we know, this segment could be/is huge.
                From the Sun, including one of the sub editors : No interest.

              2. Rob, Just thinking about it, there is one extremely odd property about what The Sun said – it happens to be true.

                Furthermore it is supported by Dr Davies letter to the Times (which has still not been ‘corrected’) in which he said:
                “…may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only been ever been three patients with significant poisoning.”

                It is a pity he didn’t tell us what the three patients had actually been poisoned with, if it wasn’t a nerve agent.

            2. Does anyone know if Tom Newton Dunn has established sources more within one HMG department/agency than another, aka beat? Similar to a few US reporters such as Sy Hersh who we doesn’t have sources in the FBI/DOJ or CIA.

    4. Another interesting information in the SUN link :
      „The PM summoned the heads of MI5 and MI6 to No10 for an emergency briefing of her National Security Council yesterday afternoon.
      Intelligence chiefs putting Kremlin agents firmly in the crosshairs as they delivered their initial assessment to Mrs May.
      No other organisation in the world has the technical ability to devise sophisticated poisons, the capability to deliver it, and the motive to kill Colonel Skripal, they found.“

      MI5/6 was running the whole game around Skripal from day one. BJ and TM followed their advice.

    5. Another thing to throw in the hopper. Spire FM 10 Mar 8:21 or 11 Mar 9:46 PM. Text exactly as reported:

      Sergei and Yulia Skripal and now said to be in a serious condition’ in hospital. Until now they had both been described as ‘critical’.

      How was their condition described in the court filing?

  66. Look who is joining the club:

    https://en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/turkish-journalists-believe-chepiga-boshirov-participated-in-liquidation-of-chechen-terrorist/

    “Turkish journalists noted the resemblance of the GRU colonel Anatoly Chepiga with Andrey Sholkhov, who could have participated in the operation to eliminate the field commander of Chechen militants in Istanbul, Abdulvahid Edelgiriyev. Sholkhov’s face was caught on a city surveillance camera, Haber Turk writes. ”

    I don’t detect the resemblance, maybe they are just following the NATO call to denounce Russia.

  67. Is anyone else having trouble posting today? Earlier this morning my comment disappeared into the deep blue yonder, now I am getting WordPress notice (no Error code). I’m wondering if it is the content of my comment.

    2. @ Kit,

      Go back one page [after you’ve added a comment and it disappeared].

      If it was a fresh entry [not a reply to another comment], scroll all the way down the page, until you reach the comment section and your comment should be there. Copy your message and refresh the page. Again, scroll all the way down, paste your message and ‘Post Comment.’ That should do the trick.

      If it was a reply to a commenter, press CMD + F on a Mac or Ctrl + F on a PC. Let’s say you replied to me. After you pressed those two keys a box will appear, either at the top or bottom of the page. It will highlight all my entries. Use the left and right arrows to move back and forth until you’ve found the entry you replied to. Press reply and your old message is still there. Copy message. Refresh page and repeat the above.

      Find my name + entry, press reply, paste message, post comment and you’re done.

      Hope this helps.

      1. Add: type my name in the box ‘Daniel’ or if there are more than one Daniels, type ‘Daniel Rich’ and you’ll get to the right person. If you’re looking for your own, just type ‘Kit’ in the box and you’ll find your current 3 entries.

  68. Because HMG don’t want us to know the truth about what happened, there are a few of us that think that is a bit rude so we have tried to make sense of it ourselves. There is a murder to solve after all and they don’t want to solve it (they don’t us to solve it either).

    And whilst we have been distracted we do have quite a few of the pieces and we know some of the pieces that don’t belong in the puzzle

    We have very little CCTV evidence of what happened and who was involved between the duck feeding (1:45 possibly 1:15) and ambulances and helicopter leaving the scene (c 5:10).

    So may I suggest a group project of putting together the actual time line that follows logic and evidence instead of the official narrative and lies. Obviously we don’t have the CCTV from the Council, Shops & Businesses (except gym & Jenny’s), The Mill, Zizzi and Police / Paramedic Body Cams.

    [Rob could this possibly be a side post project, not for general comments but for time and location specific to the Maltings area between the ducks and ambulances departing?]

    What seems to be likely is stuff happened to somebody at these times and locations. It seems “official” time line is not true. But there a lots of witnesses (in the gym & Jenny’s CCTV alone) + staff & customers at The Mill & Zizzis, sadly none of them want the break their silence.

    c 2 – 2:50 Zizzi
    c 3 – 3:50 The Mill
    c 4 – 5:10 Bench

    (this is v approx and does not rule out two visits to The Mill, or a visit to shops or somewhere else – eg Cote Brasserie but its a good base line). Early reports appear the most reliable.

    Bench witnesses

    Freya Church, Jamie Paine, Georgia Pridham, “Two police officers helped the pair before emergency services were called at 4.15pm.”, Graham Mulcock, Paramedics, Destiny Reynolds, Security Guard, “people had umbrellas and were putting them over them”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5470455/How-poisoned-spy-plot-unfolded-Salisbury.html

    PUBLISHED: 22:58, 6 March 2018 | UPDATED: 08:05, 7 March 2018

    Doctor & Nurse

    https://nypost.com/2018/03/08/cops-now-probing-deaths-of-poisoned-ex-russian-spys-wife-and-son/

    8th March

    ………

    Ollie Field

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/russian-spy-sergei-skripal-and-daughter-poisoned-by-very-rare-toxic-substance-a3783861.html

    Wednesday 7 March 2018 12:27

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sergei-skripal-poisoning-latest-russian-spy-daughter-substance-police-investigation-home-secretary-a8243746.html

    Wednesday 7 March 2018 13:02

    Doctor Involved and Type of Nerve Agent Identified

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43326734

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-confirm-21-people-been-12153536

    8 March 2018

    ………..

    Timed CCTV (NB Timings may not be accurate)

    Jenny’s

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5767001/cctv-video-ex-russian-spy-sergei-skripal-daughter-yulia-walking-mystery-woman-before-poisoned/

    https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article12157185.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Skripal-CCTV.jpg

    https://twitter.com/nmsonline/status/972190389665968128/video/1
    (NB: 9 secs – 11secs as police car passes – Hooded character leaving the scene closest to Jenny’s Restaurant, another on the other side hiding from police car. Snap Fitness CCTV would have picked up deatail but we have not been shown these nor the footage from the 2 CCTV cameras situated at each end of Market Walk)

    Snap Fitness (incl Freya Church leaving work)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKRd40pQ0lU

    1. Suspicious man hiding his face from police car in Twitter CCTV clip above from 9 secs to 31 secs end

      is stood here

      https://www.google.com/maps/@51.0696713,-1.7970297,3a,75y,35.7h,80.11t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sn5VGD6JliToD747m71OYwA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

      (Google Street View, man facing library window (nothing to see), you can pan around the view, turn around, walk, zoom.)

      He will have been caught on the Council cctv’s at one end of Market Walk or the other (or both)

      He is most likely caught on the police car camera and the running paramedic’s body cams. The police should know who he was

      Why has he been ignored?

      Details to look at;

      The Lies

      The Ommisions

      The Evidence

      The Facts

      1. That is the couple you are supposed to be thinking about but I think there is some confusion over the date of the DM article – it was from 15 March, not today:
        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5503151/Police-probing-Russians-caught-CCTV-Skripal-poisoning.html

        The same story was published the same day in the Express:
        https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/932047/Sergei-Yulia-Skripal-police-hunt-mystery-couple-seen-near-before-nerve-agent-attack

        Just a smoke screen to try to get you to forget that the CCTV couple had been called the Skripals 9 days earlier. Didn’t work though because it was a stupid idea.

      2. Good photo of Red Bag pair with the 2nd Bag, confirming Freya’s account of “Bags” which they had put down.

        Also confirms Yulia’ hair colour.

        Then compare and contrast Freya’s and Ollie’s description of the female on the bench.

        1. But hang on a sec, that 2nd bag comes and goes.

          No surprise it’s a Salisbury Bag .

          Of which Mr Slane’s Acceptable Word Filter forbids me to mention what it’s full of.

  69. Iris: The shocking and unprecedented statement from Theresa May in Parliament March 14 and the expulsion of 23 russian diplomats should have at least some REAL grounds and facts?
    ——————————————–

    Yes. May’s mendacious propaganda and bellicose actions are grounded in the FACT that the British state, along with certain other states, is relentlessly pursuing an anti-Russian Cold War 2.0 agenda.

    1. Peter,
      Thursday, October 4th. The 7 month anniversary.
      You just can’t make it up, it’s a plot the keystone cops would reject as impossible.
      “It’s them” !!!
      At last, the fast moving team wants to identify people who are believed to be Russian. Must be smart cameras to detect nationality.

    2. Russian lovers teleported from the Market street directly to Russia… Because no one was tracing them by the cctv.

    3. That story was put out by the Red Tops – The Express did a similar piece. It was intended to get us to ‘forget’ that the CCTV couple were mistaken for the Skripals.

      “Look into my eyes… you are feeling very sleepy…. look into my eyes…”
      “You remember that article about 2 people in Market Walk with a red bag?… it wasn’t what you remember…. they were lovers… not the Skripals…. and certainly nowhere near any benches…. they are police suspects.”
      “When I count to 3 you will wake up and will only remember the new version.”
      “1… 2….3” “Do you feel better now?”

    1. It’s Little Gavin. He was allowed out and now he needs to make the April non news story a BIG news story. As usual, no MSM questions as to why 4 people would travel to Holland to hack a computer in Switzerland.

      Possibly “The Cloud” Wifi speed allows better hacking in your favourite coffee shop, and of course Cannabis is legal there.
      That must be it.

      1. They had also been to Switzerland. It was a team sent to hack into the Wifi, which means they needed to be in proximity.

        Seems logical, and I cannot see any conspiracy here.

        The Russians, like us, do bad s**t. These ones got caught.

          1. That’s been solved. Spiez laboratory indeed found BZ but they found the substance “identified by Porton Down”, too. OPCW said BZ was the control sample. They do indeed have this process of two samples one being the control sample on their website.

        2. So why were they not arrested and charged? A public trial would have gone a long way to persuade the public that Russia is up to no good. As it is, we are now back in the game of allegation and counter allegation and a public that remains sceptical of everything.

          1. I agree Eagle. It’s like the “GRU are not incompetent but deliberately slapdash as a message” meme.
            If Ruslan and Alex had been shot dead like the IRA were in Gibraltar they might rethink the sloppy methodology.

        4. I agree, they did bad stuff and got caught.
          In April, it would have made a better news story.
          A lot more current, with Salisbury and Amesbury more active in the minds of the public.
          But here we are on October 4th.
          All of the outlets had this story many week ago.
          Where is the boy Gavin?
          This old story is leading the news.

          The same theme with the Mail now reporting as Peter pointed out with the “mysterious couple…”
          It took 7 months, but at last we have the 4 member team, with the obligatory mysterious blonde lady.
          No doubt a smoker. (Unfiltered)
          Next up: they were seen in a Romanian registered Mercedes in Salisbury on Sunday morning, March 4th.

          1. In April, it would have made a better news story.
            ——————————-

            On the other hand, the timing helps with the production of a never-ending flow of anti-Russia headlines.

            1. Yes, CBS was yakking about the DOJ indicting 7 “GRU agents” this morning for hacking the aNti-doping agencies and -apropos of nothing – a PA nuclear agency “in retaliation” for banning Russia from sports following the doping allegations. And last week, those following entertainment news were treated to articles about Russian trolls’ attacking Star Wars/The Last Jedi. No target is too small for Russia, apparently.

    2. More anti Russia rethoric to a majorly stupidified public that believes erveything they are told, especially now after 2 years or more of Anti Russia propaganda .

      It is rather sickening to watch.

      1. I’m not sure that people do believe all of it. It’s all a bit unconvincing and exaggerated. Anti Russia hype is popular on media and social media but that can be misleading. However, the government doesn’t listen to ordinary people that much. Only for voting purposes. Views of citizens are far from views of establishment on most of our more military and warlike areas. And the economy. And Fracking vs windfarms …. and more …… I think.

      2. The problem is isa, that some people believe NOTHING they are told.

        So everything is a false flag, a conspiracy.

        So the Russians literally cannot have done a bad thing ever apparently.

        That’s almost as much whitewashing as the narrative you claim the government are using to whitewash, just the other way around.

        1. I haven’t come across those people! If someone thought any country could do no wrong I’d imagine they were not a real person. One of these bots you hear so much about. I agree it’s not great when you have to take official information with deep caution, but this was the effect of Iraq dossier and special rendition …. when the public (and parliament) were simply told lies. Consequences.

        2. That is the intention of the information war. Not to convince people of one version but to make them believe nothing at all. It renders people powerless.

          No one was held responsible for the killing that followed the “weapons of mass destruction” hoax, the profits for the people who participated was huge. Bush even joked about it at the White House Correspondent dinner.

          People have to hold their representatives accountable for the lies.

          1. That is the intention of the information war. Not to convince people of one version but to make them believe nothing at all.
            —————————————————-

            I don’t think so. The intention is to demonize Russia. And it seems to be working well enough.

            1. And Russia hits back, how?

              It is like negative election campaigns, the goal is not so much to convince people of your candidate but make people disgust their candidate.

              In the end hardly anybody votes because of disgust all around.

        3. The problem is isa, that some people believe NOTHING they are told.
          —————————————-

          A very small problem, in the scheme of things.

        4. I’m not saying that but I can indeed distinguish s good bit of propaganda and governments spin when I see it and read in depth about issues . The current anti Russia campaign is nonsensical . It serves western geo politics . I’m not saying Russia is perfect , no country is but no country beats the US and U.K. governments in coups and regime changes . I sos don’t do conspiracy theories daily shocker . Everything I believe is happening or not as we are told is based on checking facts and impossibilities within their context .

        5. I’m not saying that but I can indeed distinguish s good bit of propaganda and governments spin when I see it and read in depth about issues . The current anti Russia campaign is nonsensical . It serves western geo politics . I’m not saying Russia is perfect , no country is but no country beats the US and U.K. governments in coups and regime changes . I sos don’t do conspiracy theories daily shocker . Everything I believe is happening or not as we are told is based on checking facts and impossibilities within their context .

          As for the OPCW , a hired hacker would do that . No need to send people on diplomatic passports leaving a trail to the Kremlin everywhere . Good timing to issue such a statement on the Dutch part though , in a NATO meeting abd with coordinated USA sanction on Russian athletes . Losing geo political strategy to Eurasia is killing the US and allies . Let’s wait for the FISA to be declassified and the day Browder loses his protection or the day the government changes in the Ukraine . Then we will have a clear picture .

    3. I also can’t see why Russia would need to hack the OPCW. As a full member they are entitled to see everything, so it really does not make any sense.

      1. “I also can’t see why Russia would need to hack the OPCW. ”

        Apparently when a state calls on the OPCW they can exclude other countries from the full report. I am wondering if the UK excluded everybody else 🙂

        People are giving their ideas about the Russian Tourists but I haven’t seen much mention of this which is much more concrete.
        The Amesbury OPCW report says the bottle found at Charlie’s house contained 97-98% pure agent which is the same chemical found in the Skripal incident. If this was a proper Sarin style nerve agent then anybody who touched it would be dead within minutes. If it got smeared around Salisbury or Amesbury people would have been dropping like flies. What is this agent? All the OPCW say is “The toxic chemical compound, which displays the toxic properties of a nerve agent”. So it appears to be a weak acetylcholinesterase inhibitor but not a dangerous nerve agent. So baby wipes probably are effective!

        https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/S_series/2018/en/s-1671-2018_e_.pdf

        1. They did. And they asked the governments who got the full OPCW report to keep it secret to their parliament.

  72. Thanks to Anonymous for posting, and Paul helping me find this.

    This, I feel is important, as Urban seems to feel that he has to write enough fiction to justify what happened to DSB.
    Remember, this all happened at Sunday 4pm onwards.
    Just when we thought UK Police forces were cutting back.

    From the book:

    Someone is looking through the two patients’ pockets for identification. A couple of CID officers, plainclothes people, have come over to the bench, having been nearby on an investigation of local businesses using illegal labour. It doesn’t take them long to find ID: they are Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The Ops room radios back to the officer on the scene: Sergei Skripal has a ‘Don’t Stop’ flag on the Police National Computer. On screen there is a note beside his listing and a number to ring. It’s a rare thing, that Don’t Stop, and the few officers on duty in Salisbury that afternoon, seven or eight of them, all take notice when they hear it over the radio.

    The wires had been buzzing at Wiltshire Police. They had called the number in the police computer and found out that Sergei Skripal was a former Russian spy who had been resettled in Britain. More officers were summoned to Salisbury. The police sent somebody up to the hospital to see what more they could learn. Could the two people have been poisoned? Clearly, that was a possibility. The two CID officers meanwhile went to Skripal’s house on Christie Miller Road. Approaching the front door, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey extended a gloved hand to grasp the front door handle – always worth a try. It wouldn’t open so he went around to the back of the property, where he managed to gain entry. What was he looking for? Signs that their house had been searched, perhaps, or maybe even the presence of a would-be assassin. Everything seemed to be in order.

    The Skripals had been hooked up to the full battery of life-support systems within an hour of the call to the emergency services operator coming – and of course had medical help for most of that time, the so-called ‘golden hour’. They had been given a chance of survival. As a member of the hospital team said to me, ‘Imagine if the timings had been a little different and they’d fallen ill at home, the odds are they would have died very quickly.’

    1. What utter nonsense.

      Kim Jong brother diesd within 10 minutes with VX despite being given atropine in the airport.

      In retrospect I do wonder now who ordered that kiling. I would not be too quick now to blame Kim Jong. In fact the two girls that wiped his face with the poison seem more and more to me like the equivalent of Charlie and Dawn. Used.

      Police in the area Checking for ilegals working on a Sunday afternoon after all the snow? Unlikely and furthermore generally specialised border and immigration police and subcontracted GPS staff carries out that type of activity. The police then searching the pockets as well? unlikely.

      This is all crazy and people are buying it.

  73. “The people closest to him [Sergei] were probably what he called his ‘Team’ — the officers from MI5 and MI6 who looked after his welfare. He spoke about them with affection and had a special mobile phone that went directly to their duty officer.”

    Awesome spot Rob. I had not seen that yet.

    So perhaps that is the other phone Cassidy referred to?

    Also, it suddenly adds weight to the DS Bailey was assigned theory I for one assumed from the moment we were told he entered his home.

    Bailey was the assigned officer that weekend.

  74. The British state disappear Sergei and Yulia Skripal and no one seems at all concerned. If two British people had been disappeared by the Russian state, I am sure the British political media elite would be jumping up and down with moral indignation and demanding the disappeared be produced forthwith. Yet not a word about Sergei and Yulia.

    1. I agree completely! Very worrying. I guess most likely they’ve washed their hands of Sergei but Yulia is a Russian citizen.

      Also not allowing family to visit. And that court approval to take blood samples as they couldn’t find any family. When they must have known about the family in great depth.

      1. You have 2 choices:
        1) The UK has wilfully failed to comply with its obligations under international treaties and has not allowed Consular access to the Skripals; or
        2) The UK was unable to grant Consular access because the Skripals were not under the control of HMG.

        Hint: the answer is 2.

        1. Yes, Paul. What i’ve been thinking for a long time. The question is who IS holding them? …that’s if they’re together.

          1. I think Sergei chose who he was going to go with (and decided it wasn’t going to be the UK – which is why we now get all the lies) and he and Yulia are safe and together… I also think we will be hearing from Sergei again but not just yet.

            1. @ miheila & Paul,

              Thinking back [Yulia’s Reuter interview}.

              Why was it shot in the open? Why not in a room with the blinds closed?

              From a psychological pov, I associated ‘outside’ with the ability to move around and about at will, freely.

              I think that’s one of the reason the interview was not shot inside a room/house, to prevent me, as a viewer, from associating Yulia’s appearance with ‘being locked up.’

              What legal options does Russia have to force access to its citizens [as the UK covenment isn’t coming forward and present either Sergei or Yulia]?

              The feeling of ‘being played,’ was there from day 1. It never faded. In fact it only grew stronger.

              1. I don’t believe that the message was intended for us – the video makes no sense! Why did they do it? The video came out of the blue, no pre-announcement, just thrown into the news cycle.

                The message of the video was intended for HMG – “we will go along with your lies… but only so far, so be careful! We can bring you down any time we chose.”

                The role of the UK and Australia in trying to take down Trump is about to be revealed – May is Cabal and has a great deal to be worried about.

        2. That would explain the rather sudden change from nearly dead to nearly recovered after the phone call. Not in control of the story.

          1. There have been a lot of clues:
            – Why were the police not waiting at their bedsides to get statements? SDH said they were controlling what Yulia got to hear. WTF?
            – Yulia’s video statement was hopeless for HMG and was done by Reuters not the BBC (why was it even done?)
            – Yulia’s phone call came less than a week after we were told they were ‘vegetables’
            – etc.

            Just keep watching – HMG is not controlling the show

      2. I don’t think a cousin/niece counts. Not about taking decisions when you are incapacitated. The 90 year old mother would count but dubious how much she registers.

        It is quite possible that the people who planned this waited for Yulia so no family would be able to interfere.

    2. Steve,

      Recently we had the tragic deaths of two Brits on holiday in Egypt.
      The hotel claiming that they both succumbed to death by E Coli poisoning.
      Have you seen much recent outrage/reports/facts since then?

      There is always the fog of “ongoing, active investigation….”

      Just like the contaminated blood debacle, Hillsborough, Birmingham 6, etc.

  75. Well on the 4th of March the Information Pool was fairly Clear

    And with the right glasses you could make out a good deal of the detail in it

    Albeit that wasn’t much first hand detail there in the first place

    But what there was, was enough to cause concern.

    So some buckets of mud were added. Yet occasionally some nuggets would float to the surface. So the Council were brought in to empty their Septic Tank Slurry Carts and emptied all their recent collections into the Pool.

    This gave the great advantage of further screening the contents of the Pool but it also made it unpleasant to go near. But miraculously Useful Information kept popping up to the surface and seemed undaunted by the new Environment.

    So the Urban Deconstruction Concrete Mixers were called, one after another, days on end, an endless queue of thick lumpy stuff that sets hard after only a few minutes of use.

    The Information Pool would be capped, have no doubt about that.

    But the Planners were possibly the worst bunch of anything that had ever been bunched together before in the history of bunching and they had not taken account of the Substrate, which leaks like a sieve, and the more concrete placed on the Source the more the Information is pushed out the sides.

    We now know far more than was ever intended just because of the attempts to block us seeing it.

  76. So had the car been contaminated and if so when? Appealing for public help on 13 March, the police tried to pin down where it had been in the hour before the car park in Salisbury. They were having problems tracking the Skripals’ movements. As I knew from arranging meetings with him, Sergei did not usually carry a mobile phone – he told me once that he had one but that it was pay-as you- go and he couldn’t be bothered to top it up. Yulia had either left hers at home that morning or switched it off, perhaps to avoid roaming charges.

    It became clear to police that the Skripals went out that Sunday morning to visit Liudmila’s and Sasha’s graves at the London Road cemetery, came home briefly and then went out again at about 13.00. In as much as Sergei had a regular ‘pattern of life’, a Sunday-morning visit to the London Road cemetery was often part of it. So had the poison been delivered while he was out by somebody who knew he would not be back for a while? Or maybe during the night, after Yulia had arrived but before they went out? The absence of contamination at the cemetery gave some weight to the idea that the Novichok was placed while they were there, not before.

    By around three weeks after the attack, suspicions were finally focused on the front door. At Porton, the technicians running items and swabs through the GC/MS equipment reached an important conclusion; concentrations of A234 were significantly higher on the front-door handle than anywhere else. It was ‘ground zero’. When tests for contamination on Ross Cassidy’s Isuzu pick-up, used to collect Yulia from the airport, were negative they realized they need look no further back.

  77. One of the important discoveries made by UK agencies as they investigated the Salisbury affair was one, presumably by the electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ, that the Russians had hacked into Yulia’s email account in 2013. They traced it forensically back to a server linked to Russian intelligence. If they already knew the ‘where’, Skripal’s home in Christie Miller Road, reading emails might have suggested a ‘when’ in the targeting plan. Yulia’s email hack was one of several signs British intelligence had discovered that the Russian services were tracking the Skripals – other details remain classified but were evidently part of the case that Cabinet ministers and allies had found convincing several days after the attack.

    There were other curious, circumstantial signs. Making the 2014 Mole in the Aquarium documentary, thirty-seven minutes no less, relied on FSB assistance, with two of its officers interviewed in the piece. And in February 2018, weeks before the attack, a nationalist Russian YouTube channel that often featured espionage themes uploaded two videos about Skripal’s treason. No point dispatching someone the Russian public had forgotten about. If the motive in attacking Skripal was therefore a combination of sending a message, the continuing campaign against traitors, and simple opportunism in that he was an easier target than some others, what about its timing?

    The use of a nerve agent on British streets just a few weeks before presidential elections was claimed to be significant by both believers and sceptics. Putin has suggested that such timing, just before he was voted in for a third term, would be illogically reckless. His enemies in the West, though, argue, much like Hoffman’s ‘trail of breadcrumbs’ concept, that the idea was to demonstrate the president’s power and impunity, perhaps even deliberately stimulating Western reactions that could be framed as Russophobia at a time when Putin’s political machine feared electoral apathy.

    The view in Vauxhall Cross seems to have been that the timing was conditioned by tactical factors rather than strategic ones. One former officer told me laconically, ‘I don’t find the timing at all odd – they do not operate according to British civil service priorities.’

    From the outset, they regarded Yulia’s flight from Moscow to London on 3 March as key. Those planning the operation could have learned of her intention to travel some time in advance by intercepting her communications with her father. If they’d gained a few weeks’ warning, this could have prompted them to put other elements of the plan into place – critically, obtaining the poison and getting it into the UK. Once she was in Salisbury they could use her phone to locate her father swiftly and precisely. In this scheme the timing, and indeed the whole plan, is entirely about operational factors, a view that fits with the chilling view of Russian actions expressed to me by a senior Whitehall figure: ‘You kill traitors like you brush your teeth. It wasn’t a political matter, it was an operational matter.’

    1. As if Russia, like UK and US don’t monitor who are buying flight tickets. There was no need to hack Yulia’s email.
      And if tracing his movements was essential via her phone (presumably a HMG explanation for the phones being off) why did the operation go ahead with whereabouts unknown? Give me strength!

    2. What this proves is that there might have been people in Russia who supported the plot.
      I guess Urban, MI6 et al are part of a “national era” if something like that ever existed. I think this only exists for sheep herded by a sheep dog. Political factions have always been transnational.
      I assume Khordorkovsky has inherited the Berezovsky/Glushkov/Yelzin network of Western shell companies. Litvinenko went to Israel before his death to make a pitch to Yukos.
      From 1999
      https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/russian-bank-scandal-purge-against-yeltins-allies
      Yeltsin’s tenure, and that of his self-serving supporters, is nearly at an end. The question is, is Putin the end or the interim? Is he Lenin or Kerensky? Putin and his backers do not represent the farthest possible reaction of Russian politics. They understand the need for continued economic and political engagement with the West, albeit under significantly less self-debasing terms. If the purge now under way gets out of hand, Putin and his backers could fall victim to a still more reactionary force. If Putin turns out to be Kerensky, who will be Lenin?
      The farthest possible reaction would be – politically – Russian nationalists or – economically – Communists.
      Khodorkovsky’s network of media companies and ngo’s is active in Russia, I suppose “Insider Russia” following Cepiga and cooperating with Bellingcat is part of it. Putin seems to accept them as some kind of managed opposition and an economic bridge to Europe.
      The right wing nationalist part is the one teaming up with Trump, US Republicans and Brexit. Like Maria Butyna. Or fighting taking over Crimea and parts of Ukraine. And presumably – as in the US – representing the military industrial complex.
      https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/maria-butina-flip-722203/
      The “Russian scare” tries to sort this all back into national labels.
      Putin has been mediating between the factions, trying to control corruption, billionaires and mafia. Problem is that this is done on a personal level, not an institutional level.
      To cut this short there are several different types of Russians and not all of them represent the Russian state.
      Theresa May initially accused Putin to have instigated the crime himself or to have lost control of his security services.
      There are a lot more stripes than that and they are not exclusively Russian.

  78. Just a couple of things to point out Rob. Just because MI6 paid for the house, that doesn’t mean they own. In fact, I believe the records indicate Sergei is the named owner. Also, I noticed you mentioned that Sergei and Yulia both had to touch the door handle – not true. They found the highest traces of novichok on Sergei’s right hand, the highest on Yulia’s left – so Sergei shut the door then they held hands, no need for Yulia to touch the door handle directly.

    1. Phil,

      I don’t think it is meant or implied that MI6 are the literal owners.
      The title is more than likely in Sergei’s name, but some secret slush fund money, from the general UK intelligence budget will have paid for it.
      If you, like me, are a UK tax payer, then we paid for it.

      1. Has anyone checked the land registry? It will list the legal owner and any declared beneficial owners, plus those who hold charges over the property, plus covenants.

    2. And the garlic bread that comes bite sized on a platter without knives and forks? Sergei ate his with his left hand and Yulia with her right? Otherwise they would ingest “novichok”. C’mon Phill.

      1. I don’t understand what you’re getting at. I’m talking about how it got from the door handle to both of their hands – something that some people think requires both of them to touch the door handle. It doesn’t. It only requires one (possibly Sergei as it was his house). How it then gets spread from their hands to garlic bread, ducks, steering wheel, the red bag, etc is irrelevant to how they got it on their hands in the first place.

    3. Have you got a link for this claim? I somehow find it unlikely as both must have washed/wiped their hands several times in the restaurant/pub and the hospital assumed fentanyl poisoning at the start. So their skin will not have been checked many days and wipes later.
      They also did not transfer the poison to the hospital staff which is odd if it could still be found on their skin.

      1. The BBC first reported it on Thurs 29th March – here’s a link to the transcripts of the news broadcast – https://archive.org/details/BBCNEWS_20180329_190000_BBC_News

        And here is alink the NY Times article, reporting that the BBC said “Mr. Skripal had apparently touched the nerve agent with his right hand, while his daughter did so with her left hand.” – https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/world/europe/britain-yulia-skripal-hospital.html

        I think the theory is that it was a small amount that got absorbed into the skin. Enough to posion them but not enough to transfer anywhere else after initial contact.

        My point was that they don’t both need to touch the door handle to be contaminated, only one of them needs to touch the handle and then they held hands.

  79. A few ITV page [d.d. 11-03-2018]

    They fell ill [no mention of murder attempt or Novichokolate]

    “To ensure the safety of those areas…” Really?

    *******

    Russian spy attack: Diners urged to wash possessions as ‘precautionary’ measure

    “Traces of the nerve agent were reportedly found on and around the table where the pair ate at Zizzi, but Scotland Yard, which is running the investigation, would neither confirm nor deny the report.” – They don’t want to lie now, do they?

    *******

    REPORT: The latest from Salisbury exactly a week after the Skripals were found slumped on a bench

    Watch Richard Slee reports from Salisbury: and be astounded to hear the gray masses with not one iota to worry [skip to the 1:40 mark to get there].

    Wash off military nerve grade chemicals with soap or wipes… [blink, blink, blink]

  80. Have Gov’t explained how two ‘known’ Russian spooks were allowed to drift through Gatwick security with quantity of nerve agent in their back pack, commit this heinous crime and then leave unhindered?

  81. The Porton experts knew that if the basic detection equipment couldn’t produce results, they would have to send items or swabs back to their labs several miles to the north. There they could be subjected to the dual process of gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (often shortened to GC/MS by the chemical warfare experts), using large lab machines that can’t be shifted to the locations being investigated. The first stage of this analysis involves burning a sample and studying the flame produced, and the second weighing the atoms of the residue. Each test took time and there was a small number of testing rigs: that produced a major bottleneck as samples started coming in from all over the city.

    The GC/MS at Porton Down did though begin pointing the scientists towards an answer, and it was Novichok. That word, unknown to almost everyone outside the chemical-weapons community, was soon to be on people’s lips the world over. Many different compounds had been researched and tested during the dying days of the USSR’s chemical-weapons research programme – in fact the
    dissident scientist who wrote about them in the mid-1990s suggested that there were actually up to a hundred different Novichok formulas, and to confuse matters further some Russian scientists referred to them by different names.

    However, the picture was not as complicated as it at first seemed. Only three of these compounds had been developed to the point where they could be weaponized – used to fill bombs or shells. There was A230, which was designed for use in very cold climates and specifically requested by the Soviet Army because its existing agents solidified in such conditions, rendering them ineffective. Then there was A232, which one might term the main Novichok agent. Designed as a VX replacement, it could be made from precursor chemicals that were not on the list of substances regulated by the Chemical Weapons Convention. This offered Russia a ready-made solution should the day come when it wanted to break out of the disarmament treaties. It was a way of retaining a dormant capability that the Russian state had pledged to give up.

    Designed to fall from an exploding munition in a fine mist of droplets that could be inhaled or absorbed through the skin, A232 was created with a chemical signature that is almost impossible to detect with standard NATO equipment. The successful German intelligence operation had by 1998 however brought some A232 to the West, so Porton Down had examined actual samples and retained all the reference data. Alas, it was not the substance coming back from Salisbury. This left one more ‘production’ standard Novichok, A234.

    This last formula had the advantage that it could be produced as a solid, then ground into powder. In some situations that could be used, for example via ventilation systems, to get A234 inhaled by the victim, in others it might be produced as a very viscose liquid. If this suggested some obvious possibilities as a poison for assassinations, that hypothesis fitted neatly with intelligence MI6 had received in the late 2000s, suggesting Russia had retained some small stocks of this agent for precisely this purpose.

      1. And the garlic bread that comes bite sized on a platter without knives and forks? Sergei ate his with his left hand and Yulia with her right? Otherwise they would ingest “novichok”. C’mon Phill.

        2. And if the UK is similar to the US, you’re in violation of Fair Use limitations. Doesn’t matter if you’ve copy and pasted them into one comment space or multiple spaces.

          By ignoring Fair Use, you’re putting The Blogmire into potential legal jeopardy. That’s something that others here don’t want to do.

          If I were Rob, I’d delete all your “chunks of Urban’s book” comments.

    2. Anonymous.
      You are getting your separation and detection techniques mixed up.
      Flame Ionisation Detection, usually shortened to FID, combined with Mass Spectrometry is no longer a common technique.
      If you are “studying” the flame produced, then this is not gas chromatography.
      Atomic Absorption or Atomic Emission Spectroscopy, (not spectrometry) would be techniques used to “study” absorption and emission excitation wavelengths..
      These are tools employed for inorganic analyses.
      If there was a compound that might contain for example, Antimony or Bismuth, then AA (Atomic absorption) or AE (Atomic Emission) techniques.
      These older instruments are good for determining metals but not organic molecules.
      They have been replaced by AED (Atomic Emission Detection) but again that is for inorganic analysis.

      In summary, PD have not shortage of any kit, and have a very expensive range of all manner of detectors.
      In your piece “standard NATO equipment” I assume means battlefield kit worn by soldiers.

    3. The Novichok A230, A232, A234 stuff can be found via Google, some Hungarians wrote a lot on it before the Salisbury scare.
      Above sounds like an excerpt from Urban’s book.
      It does not explain why Gary Aitkenhead, the head of Porton Down, did not mention A234 which is the chemical name, but said Novichok which is the Soviet project name, and why he had to say or of that family which makes only sense in chemistry and the family of A234 are organophosphates which include stuff like pesticides.

    4. “This last formula had the advantage that it could be produced as a solid, then ground into powder. In some situations that could be used, for example via ventilation systems, to get A234 inhaled by the victim”

      Does not compute! According to the OPCW summary of the Amesbury incident.

      “During the second deployment, the team collected a sample of the contents of a small bottle that the police seized as a suspect item from the house of Charles Rowley in Amesbury.
      The results of the analysis of this environmental sample conducted by OPCW Designated Laboratories show that the sample consists of the toxic chemical at a concentration of 97-98%…
      The toxic chemical compound, which displays the toxic properties of a nerve agent, is the same toxic chemical that was found in the biomedical and environmental samples relating to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Mr Nicholas Bailey on 4 March 2018 in
      Salisbury”
      https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/S_series/2018/en/s-1671-2018_e_.pdf

      The least dangerous nerve agent ever, even though it apparently killed one person. How can a solid of 97% purity be a liquid? How did Charlie survive spilling this almost pure “nerve agent”?

      The illogic continues.

  82. My God. Two CID officers investigating “illegal labour”!! No way would they do that. That is UK Border Force territory. Obviously they were tailing Sergei.
    And they went to the house to grab whatever Sergei’s spy ring had got from Porton Down.
    In the early pics from above it is evident the garden has been dug up.

    1. That must be right – but 2? Not just Bailey? And in plain clothes… so where was the webcam? Did Bailey do a quick change at 16:30 back into uniform and dash to CMR webcam at the ready?

      “…he went around to the back of the property, where he managed to gain entry” – did Sergei only have a back door key on his key ring?

      1. Paul,

        Where did the “back door” reference come from? Who posted that? Your point about the body cam of course refers the Wiltshire Police leaders “reviewing the search” at Sergei’s house which was the team who arrived after DSB’s 5pm visit.
        However, your point about the likelihood of a plain clothes DSB at 5pm even having a body cam is a good one.
        I had a quick read on my phone but don’t see the post about “2” and the back door.
        Thanks.

          1. Thanks Paul.

            I read that section.
            Rob, should elevate this piece of fiction, as I suspect a few other will be like me and have lost it in the deluge of book extracts.
            Urban either knows, or he is making it up. If he is making it up, then it is following the fairy story.
            Urban had to write something that kept the plausibility of the door hand, but then added another officer to keep DSB’s activities legitimate.
            At no time did the WPD describe two officers.
            Their lie was always DSB and a team (with cameras switched on) were involved in a Sunday evening search.
            There own report had a disconnect between DSBs visit to look for a suicide note, drug paraphernalia at 5pm, then a second visit with the “team” and Bailey part of the team.
            Under what set of circumstances would DSB go to the station or home to change, because a body camera was needed?

            Plain clothes officers do not carry body cams.
            There is a nugget here that needs Liane and the full Blogmirer team involved.

            1. I am sure there are several nuggets in Urban’s book – things they let slip through the net. As Patrick pointed out, the idea that 2 plain clothes CID officers are looking for ‘illegals’ on a Sunday afternoon is already preposterous.

              I am sure that Peter was right when he said that the ‘cement topping’ they are trying to apply will push some sludge out below, that they thought they had buried.

            2. Duncan, later I will post some pictures of the backside of the house (have to prepare it).
              For the body cam : Pritchard was a little bit vague about that.
              It could be that it were the emergency service that had a body cam at the bench – NOT Bailey.
              That he was in plain clothes was mentioned before by some sources (need to find the links).
              Pritchard claimed that a body cam was used, when a team of officers entered Skripals house.
              Either Pritchard lied about that, or it happened later – AFTER Bailey entered the house ALONE.
              The story of a Bailey team came late. In the early media coverage he was always alone.
              It is VERY telling that they needed to change the story !

  83. Thanks Rob for continuing to question the official, implausible Skripals poisoning official story, honing in on pertinent points. It really helps and creates a community in the push-back against chaos, and totalitarianism they are bringing about. As you indicate, truth doesn’t seem to matter to officials. What to do about this? They just keep on producing rabbits out of an endless store.

    More allegation rabbits against Russia are being manufactured thick and fast by PM May’s Russophobic government. The latest being: UK to Create 2,000-Strong Cyberforce to Counter ‘Russia Threats,’ AND ‘UK Unveils Strategy to Defend Arctic in light of Alleged Russian Threat’.

    Power mongers in the UK (and US-France), used to getting their way by aggressive military attacks, are doubtless furious with Moscow for sending its S-300 air defense system to Syria, which they did because of the treacherous behaviour of Israel and France which recently killed several Russian soldiers who were legitimately defending Syrians. This air defense system doubtless gives the 3 gangster countries in Syria cause for pause in their habitual threats to bomb Syria or any country, whenever they want. But the dangers of wider world war are more obvious now. What about building voices, a vast choir of voices against the wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc?

    And for those who might appreciate some fresh air on Russia, beyond manic Russophobic views, a very informative and gripping read is a book published in 2017 by Australian author, and former career diplomat Tony Kevin. He was a diplomat in the Australian Embassy in Moscow during the Cold War, and has written a fascinating book ‘Return to Moscow,’ UWA Publishing 2017. It’s a source of much useful information, including other books to read on Russia.

    1. I would appreciate a response from participants TheBlogMire. I have doubts. The door handle is not smeared with poison. The probability of an attack on a bench in park on Sunday afternoon on 2 people – is negligible, and the official version does not. Therefore the Novichok wasn’t. The shocking and unprecedented statement from Theresa May in Parliament March 14 and the expulsion of 23 russian diplomats should have at least some REAL grounds and facts? Now the real fact is only a persons of P&B, which everybody have seen, heard, and now it is known that Bashirov – Chepiga, colonel, Hero of Russia. Incidentally still one the reference on source (the last photo) http://dvoku.mil.ru/Multimedia/photo/list/46564/ I make only one conclusion – that Theresa May had the full dossier on the P&B on March 14. Otherwise, I see no reason for her courage in Parlament.

      1. It is very easy to explain – May was just lying (it’s what she does – but not very well).

        There never was any Novichok – that is a lie.

        There never was any ‘nerve agent’ – that is a lie.

        The official story is all lies.

        1. There are 2 fundamental points. Why did the P&B end up in Salisbury on March 4? Their presence simply cannot be a coincidence. So-it was a meeting with Skripal? 1. Why Skripal met with agents not in London, because it was safer for everyone and easier. Why agents drove themselves in Salisbury. 2. Could British intelligence to organize false poisoning by not preparing a full necessary set – the murder weapon and players – beforehand.
          Or it was an improvisation by British intelligence, with extraordinary luck on russian special agents. Or there was a preliminary organization, and with the participation of Mr. Skripal.

          1. Why can it not be a coincidence? As soon as you say that, you have to find some ‘reason’ connected with the Skripals – a blind alley in my opinion.

            If they knew they were going to be in Salisbury on Saturday AND Sunday, then why not use a hotel in Salisbury for Saturday night? I think they did not know they would be going twice so booked their hotel in London. On Sunday afternoon, they must have departed Salisbury, then gone back to London (to collect the bags we see on the Heathrow CCTV) and then gone to Heathrow. What a waste of time and effort! Stay in Salisbury Saturday night and go straight to the airport on Sunday afternoon.

            The way they behaved seems to me to fit much better with tourist than with assassin/agent.

            1. You correctly wrote about the bags – after arrival they added a backpack and a suitcase on wheels. They were shopping in London (“poshopitsya”). Why russian agents can’t go shopping? Они приезжали в Лондон год назад! There was nothing to do in Salisbury night and night. 2. Perhaps they were unsure of the plan to visit Salisbury on Sunday, they was waiting for order.

                1. Iris, My point is that I do not assume R&A MUST be GU or agents, simply because they visited Salisbury. It is the job of the police to prove they were assassins and they have not done this.

                  The only FACT that has emerged from the whole R&A story is that the police doctored the photos of R&A arriving at Gatwick – so we now know that the police are lying and nothing they say can be trusted. Once a liar, always a liar.

                  1. You think that R&A are a casual tourists without theirs past… i see…
                    Small question – car Vauxhall Corsa number ky67fnk was a parked before the house Mr Skripal. I see it on google 3D and on the photo of the house after the “poisoning”. Is it possible to get information about this car?

                    1. I think they could very well be tourists – I don’t know anything about their past that I trust. Regarding the car, sorry no idea.

              2. @Iris – I think they had the suitcase on arrival. In the Gatwick image, CCTV 1, it appears Petrov is pushing it with his left hand. You’re right about the backpack – it’s not seen until Sunday, along with Petrov’s other winter jacket and both men’s different shoes/boots.

          2. Iris, I had posted this on the previous Blog chapter, just before Rob opened up this new one.

            On March 3rd, two significant events occurred.
            Yulia arrived from Moscow, and Rus and Alex made their first of two trips to Salisbury.
            Recent media speculation imply that Rus and Alex were GRU Superagents, but it is possible they were working for:
            The Russian State
            Or not The Russian State
            However, I believe that quite naturally, they were only in Salisbury because that is where Sergei lived.
            Why that particular weekend? Because Yulia was in town. (Conversely, it is quite possible that Yulia arrived because Rus and Alex were in town.)
            On the Sunday, some sort of exchange/interaction took place between both parties. This encounter was NOT an attack.
            The event needed Sergei, as of course the other could have met up in Russia at any time. Or rather, something that Sergei had, or something that needed to be delivered to Sergei.
            Well, if it was simply a delivery to Sergei, then the item could have been carried by Yulia, as of course the item would be subject to the same security checks during Rus and Alex’s excellent adventure.
            So, it is far more likely that Sergei was giving, rather than receiving.
            In my opinion, this transfer happened during the duck feed. Sergei parked his BMW at the pre-arranged place, probably in a camera blind spot at Sainsbury’s.
            Alex and Rus got what the came for and strolled back to LHR for the flight home.
            As all this was happening, DS Bailey was a surprised observer.
            He told his people around 1:30pm that a deal was going down. This gave PD/MI5 etc a couple of hours to burn their asset (Sergei) and make it look as though Russia had committed a treacherous deal on UK soil.
            Sergei later in the afternoon realised that he was compromised. He had handed the dossier over, Bailey had seen this, and Sergei became agitated at the Mill Pub when he understood the implications for Yulia too.

      2. “The shocking and unprecedented statement from Theresa May in Parliament March 14 and the expulsion of 23 russian diplomats should have at least some REAL grounds and facts?”

        It is curious that they were sure it was the Russians so early on. As I have low opinion of MPs I wouldn’t be surprised if it was jumping the gun but it does have the feel that they knew a lot more.
        My guess is they knew about P&B from very early on, but it took a few months to trawl through all the CCTV to give us something to see. Still it seems they sat on the information for months until it was released on the day parliament reopened.

        I would like to say that there is a connection between P&B and the Skripals, say a meeting or drop-off. But that would be pure speculation.

      3. SKRIPAL CONFESSED?
        How did Theresa May immediately know that the GRU was involved?
        (I posted this a week ago, but I am posting it again as it answers your question.)

        It took two months for British police to track down Petrov and Boshirov from the video tapes, yet May was immediately accusing Russia and the GRU with 100% confidence. Why? She must have had some other evidence of Russian involvement. What?

        There is a simple answer: SKRIPAL CONFESSED!

        This scenario assumes that the two people at the bench were not the Skripals, but the people seen on the Market Walk CCTV video, as testified by Freya Church. The fake chemical attack could be part of Exercise Toxic Dagger.

        What really happened was that Skripal met with Petrov and Boshirov i.e. GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga to arrange his return to Russia and maybe exchange information on his role in the Steele Dossier. Putin would need to send a decorated Hero of the Russian Federation to convince Skripal that the offer was serious.

        P.S. – I no longer think Boshirov is Chepiga. The Bellingcat material is a forgery. The passport photo of the young Chepiga is actually a photo of the young Boshirov.

    2. I just read ‘the shoemaker and his daughter’ by Conor o’clery, fascinating account of a normal family living in Soviet Union then Russia and coping with all the upheavals.

    1. I did. However, a presentation would be more coherent if I could nail down when Gavin Williamson made his first comment (possibly a tweet) about the Salisbury Incident. On the 5th March he aggressively responded to Putin’s new defence program. At approximately 1:00 pm on the 6th from the floor of Parliament, Boris Johnson initiated his suspicion of a Russia/Putin link to the Salisbury incident. Formally, Williamson didn’t follow Johnson’s lead until the 15th.

      iirc Amber Rudd, then Home Secretary, also said something circumspect on the 6th. (Why was she out on April 29 and Johnson out July 9? Probably not related to the Incident, but don’t want to rule anything out.)

      1. Dealing with the last part first (because it is easiest): Rudd resigned over Windrush:

        “Amber Rudd has resigned as home secretary, saying she “inadvertently misled” MPs over targets for removing illegal immigrants.
        The Windrush scandal had heaped pressure on Ms Rudd, who faced renewed criticism after saying she did not know about Home Office removals targets.”

        This was a scandal that really belonged to Theresa May (it happened on her watch as Home Sec) but Rudd took the fall (that’s how May operates).

        Johnson officially resigned over May’s Chequer’s plan for Brexit… but in my view he waited too long to do it. It was not an honourable resignation and he took the excuse of resigning rather than resigning on principle. I think he knew that the Skripal saga was a shambles and he wanted to try to distance himself from it. If he ever wants to be party leader he couldn’t stay in May’s cabinet anyway – so he ran when the chance (and excuse) came. That’s my view anyway.

        1. IOW, a possible secondary consideration for both was not wanting to end up as the fall guy for a HMG foul up over the Incident.

          But it’s the first part that I’m more interested in. Politically, who was in the lead wrt to the Incident? Williamson or Johnson?

          1. It was more a matter for the Home Sec (Rudd) less to do with defense.

            This is the first thing I can see Williamson said about it (on Monday 5 March):
            Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson yesterday told the Commons that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “hostile intent” towards Britain, adding: “We have to wake up to the threat and we have to respond to it.”
            https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/sergei-skripal-police-scour-former-russian-spys-home-after-poison-plot-in-salisbury-a3782251.html

            1. Yes, Williamson’s belligerent anti-Russia 5 March speech was widely reported. This is the same twerp that tweeted on 9/26:

              “The true identity of one of the Salisbury suspects has been revealed to be a Russian Colonel. I want to thank all the people who are working so tirelessly on this case,” Williamson tweeted on Wednesday evening.

              Praising Bellingcrap for goodness sake. He deleted it twenty minutes later, but that was long enough for Reuters to approvingly cite it.

              Okay, this twerp who jumps on a Bellingcrap report remained mum on Skripal/Russia/Salisbury Incident until the 15th? That doesn’t fit his MO.

              I’m beginning to suspect that we all made an initial error with this assumption:

              It was more a matter for the Home Sec (Rudd) less to do with defense.

              The heavy lifting in public was carried by SDH/WPD/Met CT and MPs, primarily Johnson and May. With the Major Incident declaration, we could read a certain level of panic among officials/authorities, but not those specifically feeling under threat. Resolving that fear was a principle focus over the next few days. It was separate and distinct from the HMG Russia/Putin/assassins brouhaha which continued on after the original panic had been cleared. That’s why Skripal’s car wasn’t impounded and taken for testing until a week later. Whereas the cemetery was closed on the 8th.

              1. It was supposed to be a political act – but it went very wrong.

                If it had been a genuine attack on British soil, the HS (Rudd) would take the lead – which is what they tried to pretend.

                But this one had gone wrong – there never was an attack and they lost the people they were trying to ‘disappear’ so MI5/6 were the main planners after the event – it was no longer a purely political event. The narrative was devised by the SIS and HMG went along with their proposal – which was a seriously bad idea because it was all stupid and they have never been able to bring it under control.

                1. You’re conceptually locked into:

                  It was supposed to be a political act – but it went very wrong.

                  Thus, you reject any of the alleged myriad of facts that don’t fit with your concept and accept some of what strikes me as spurious, false facts, or somebody’s idle speculation because they do fit (or sort of fit if they’re modified).

                  Concede that some of the speculation is intriguing, but can’t dismiss that all the speculative narratives are very complicated and require many actors performing their roles with a minimal level of competence, each of those narratives appeal to a specific political persuasion, and all the narratives begin with a pre-incident plot (Russia/Putin, HMG/USG/MI5-6/CIA/Steele/Miller, and generic ‘false flag’ that some people see in every negative event). Each of them also includes a certain level of implausibility.

                  As I gave serious consideration of all of them, I kept coming back to the original scene – a public bench on a drizzly and cool Sunday afternoon with two people ‘out-of-it’ that within ten minutes descended into two people in serious physical distress. In general, a similar scene is commonplace these days. In one way or another, none of the speculative narratives (including HMG’s) fit. The range of possible narratives that do fit remain exactly what they were from the beginning: accidental contact/ingestion of an unknown poisonous substance, seafood poisoning, and attempted suicide or suicide/murder. Nothing that has subsequently been revealed refutes any of those three possibilities.

                  1. You said:
                    “Thus, you reject any of the alleged myriad of facts…”

                    Please identify a single FACT that I have rejected.

                    Seafood poisoning?? So quickly and simultaneously?

                    Suicide?? Sergei was afraid someone was trying to kill him and Yulia wanted to get married and have a family – why is suicide a possibility?

  86. Has anyone seen evidence wrt the following claims:

    “In the early 1990s Skripal was recruited by an MI6 agent Pablo Miller, whom the British media declined to name. Miller was an MI6 agent in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Miller’s main task was recruiting Russians to provide information about their country to the British. An interesting fact, possibly coincidental, was that the MI6 officer under diplomatic cover in Moscow at this time was Christopher Steele. Steele was later to become better known as the principal author of the infamous Trump dossier. When Steele returned to London, he ran MI6’s Russia desk between the 2006 and 2009. The information that Skripal disclosed would have been given to Steele, first in Moscow and later in London.”

    In many cases there are references to UK newspapers [but who believes a word they print?]

  87. Russia finds Briton allegedly tried to recruit spy

    August 15, 2007

    The Jerusalem Post

    *******

    “The Federal Security Service on Wednesday said a Briton previously alleged to have recruited Russians as spies was involved in recruiting Vyacheslav Zharko, whose case is the latest espionage dispute between the two countries. The service, known by its Russian acronym FSB, in June announced that Zharko had reported being recruited by MI6, the British foreign intelligence agency, and it has opened a criminal investigation into the case. On Wednesday, an FSB duty officer confirmed news agency reports that Zharko had recognized Pablo Miller as his recruiter. Miller allegedly was involved in the case of Defense Ministry Colonel Sergei Skripal, who last year was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for spying for Britain, according to Russian news agency reports. The reports were confirmed by the duty officer, who declined to be identified and who did not give further details.”

    The rest is behind a pay-wall @ https://www.jpost.com/International/Russia-finds-Briton-allegedly-tried-to-recruit-spy

  88. Someone is looking through the two patients’ pockets for identification. A couple of CID officers, plainclothes people, have come over to the bench, having been nearby on an investigation of local businesses using illegal labour. It doesn’t take them long to find ID: they are Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The Ops room radios back to the officer on the scene: Sergei Skripal has a ‘Don’t Stop’ flag on the Police National Computer. On screen there is a note beside his listing and a number to ring. It’s a rare thing, that Don’t Stop, and the few officers on duty in Salisbury that afternoon, seven or eight of them, all take notice when they hear it over the radio.

    The wires had been buzzing at Wiltshire Police. They had called the number in the police computer and found out that Sergei Skripal was a former Russian spy who had been resettled in Britain. More officers were summoned to Salisbury. The police sent somebody up to the hospital to see what more they could learn. Could the two people have been poisoned? Clearly, that was a possibility. The two CID officers meanwhile went to Skripal’s house on Christie Miller Road. Approaching the front door, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey extended a gloved hand to grasp the front door handle – always worth a try. It wouldn’t open so he went around to the back of the property, where he managed to gain entry. What was he looking for? Signs that their house had been searched, perhaps, or maybe even the presence of a would-be assassin. Everything seemed to be in order.

    The Skripals had been hooked up to the full battery of life-support systems within an hour of the call to the emergency services operator coming – and of course had medical help for most of that time, the so-called ‘golden hour’. They had been given a chance of survival. As a member of the hospital team said to me, ‘Imagine if the timings had been a little different and they’d fallen ill at home, the odds are they would have died very quickly.’

    1. My God. Two CID officers investigating “illegal labour”!! No way would they do that. That is UK Border Force territory. Obviously they were tailing Sergei.
      And they went to the house to grab whatever Sergei’s spy ring had got from Porton Down.
      In the early pics from above it is evident the garden has been dug up.

    2. A desperate MI6 try to explain Bailey´s presence.
      What a bunch of sh.t !
      IT WILL BACKFIRE !

      So, Bailey entered via the back door… could not open the front door, despite having the key…

    3. So why did the papers initially identify Sergei Skripal but said they did not know who the young woman was?
      I think Urban is just lazy and writing fiction.

  89. SUNDAY 4 MARCH
    It is mid-winter in Salisbury. There are patches of snow in the city centre following heavy falls a few days earlier. A man in his sixties is walking from Zizzi’s restaurant towards the Maltings. It’s a short journey, around the corner and, briefly, through an arcade to the open area beside the Avon where on sunny summer days people come to loll by the waterside. It takes about one minute, even moving slowly. Alongside him walks another person. She’s wrapped up against the cold but you can see it’s a young woman. Maybe she is having some concerns. He had become irate in the restaurant, raising his voice at the staff, complaining loudly as the time came to pay the bill. They make their way to a bench. It is not the kind of day when you would normally sit and watch the waterfowl gliding by, it’s far too cold for one thing. But anyhow, they’ve brought some bread to feed
    the ducks.

    As she sits beside him, for anything up to twenty minutes he complains of feeling worse and worse, her concerns are mounting. He is sweating profusely, he cannot see properly, his world is darkening as his pupils become tiny. The man looks skyward, trying to see the light. Now she is feeling terrible also. Passers-by gaze at them. Probably junkies. An odd couple, old man and young woman, but you sometimes see these unlikely pairings when they’re pooling funds, searching for a hit. Someone walking by can’t help but giggle as she sees him almost clawing at the sky with his hand. What are they like, these druggies?!

    Moments later, she has keeled over, her head coming to rest on his lap. He is still upright on the bench, but losing consciousness. There are other passers-by now, and they are more worried. Maybe they’ve overdosed? Someone decides to call an ambulance.

    Among the first to approach them, checking they are OK, is an army nurse.

    Another woman comes over, a local doctor. Being professionals they are deferred to by the rest of the little group that has gathered beside the bench, and they are immediately concerned by what they see. Both of the people on the bench are sweating heavily, and have lost control of their bodily functions. It’s hard to find a pulse because they’re so weak. They are becoming pale, life is draining away because they’re not breathing. It’s just a matter of minutes now until hypoxia, brain damage due to lack of oxygen, starts. It may already have begun. Minutes, luckily, is all it takes the first ambulance crew to arrive, hot-foot from the Odstock Road station on the southern outskirts of Salisbury. As they hit the road, sirens blaring, a couple of police officers have arrived at the bench. It’s only four minutes after the call to the emergency services. Moments later the paramedics are there also, and get to work, quickly joining the medical passersby in giving breathing assistance to the two junkies on the bench.

    1. I take it these are verbatim from the book?
      So The Mill has been ditched.
      The problematic duck bread has come from Zizzis (not eaten despite being so hungry you are shouting for service).
      The boys have disappeared.
      Yulia is compos mentis for 20 minutes, speaks English, but doesn’t go into Gregg’s and ask for help.
      “Luckily” doctors, paramedics, police, air ambulance, are hanging on a hook (thanks Theresa May for you investment in public services).
      What twaddle.

      1. @ Patrick Mahony,

        I hope there aren’t any serious side-effects when exposed to such high levels of mind-pollution…

      2. Also remember how there just happened to be experts in chemical weapons at Salisbury Hospital that Sunday afternoon too. Amazing how everyone necessary just happened to be nearby, or were waiting like coiled springs ready to act isn’t it?

    2. “A man in his sixties is walking from Zizzi’s restaurant towards the Maltings. It’s a short journey, around the corner and, briefly, through an arcade to the open area beside the Avon where on sunny summer days people come to loll by the waterside. It takes about one minute, even moving slowly.
      But anyhow, they’ve brought some bread to feed the ducks.”

      Urban is lying through his teeth – and we know it.
      The duck feeding was BEFORE Zizzi.
      The Skripals didn´t take the way through Market Walk – not on the CCTVs of Snap Fitness and Jenny´s restaurant !

      1. Liane, give him a break — he got one thing right:

        It is not the kind of day when you would normally sit and watch the waterfowl gliding by, it’s far too cold for one thing.

        For another thing, the bench would have been damp from the fog/intermittent drizzle. So, the most logical and compelling reason they sat on the bench is that one or both of them were unable to continue their walk. Of course, that opens the question of why neither made any attempt to call for help.

  90. Some years after he settled in Salisbury, and very much to Sergei’s delight, Richard Bagnall [Pablo Miller] had got in touch. Richard had taken his old agent to the Army v. Navy rugby match at Twickenham, and they met up several times after that. He was not part of Team, and indeed had retired from the service by this point. It seems quite possible that under the old maxim that intelligence officers never quite leave, Richard had gone along with a general effort to gee Sergei up. Certainly the former GRU colonel regarded their relationship as a social one, a measure of the former MI6 man’s diligence about pastoral care in a relationship that had, after all, lasted decades.

    Of the theories that would later emerge that Sergei was involved in active intelligence work or had contributed to the notorious Donald Trump dossier compiled by former SIS officer Christopher Steele, there was no indication.

    Skripal did sometimes travel up to London for the day and occasionally MI6 made use of his services. The office had given him a similar package to previous defectors like Oleg Gordievsky, Vladimir Kuzichkin, and Vladimir Rezun. In return for a service payment they would sometimes sing for their supper. Gordievsky, an old MI6 hand once told me, had been ‘produced as one of the after-dinner entertainments’. This might take the form of speaking to a training course or conference because after all, in Skripal’s case how many former GRU colonels had many of these people ever met?

    As far as I could establish, Skripal’s work had involved talking to some military audiences, possibly to new trainees at the Fort, and to a few friendly intelligence services. In this sense he acted as a consultant about how the GRU might approach a problem or gave insights into its historical operations, say in another European country. But he did not have the energy or time to engage as energetically as Alexander Litvinenko did with the Spanish authorities in the
    year before his death.

    Nevertheless, the use of Skripal as an authority on the GRU, giving occasional assistance to friendly agencies, might have been seen in Moscow as a sort of re-entry into the world of espionage, something that sat ill with his pardon of 2010.

    1. Thanks Anonymous. More dissembling from Urban. Pablo Miller lives or lived in Salisbury. The idea he and protégé didn’t meet for a long while is preposterous. In fact he is the connection between Urban and Skripal.
      I still say a strong possibility is Miller was being run by Sergei. The Novichuckle Brothers went there with cash for them. Miller could be Market Walk man. He could be the one taken away in G-WLTS. Nobody will question his disappearance, mentioning his name is taboo.

  91. The house in Christie Miller Road had been bought for Skripal, in his own name, in 2011 for £260,000. The MI6 investment in bricks and mortar thus dwarfed what he had earned in his career as an agent. Welcome to Britain. The FSB had emptied his bank accounts at the time of his arrest but he may have had a little cash squirrelled away in Spain. The Skripals sold their dacha also to help with the costs of a new life in Britain. The UK government would also be paying him money from time to time.

    Although he was on friendly terms with the neighbours, particularly Ross and Mo Cassidy, I got the impression that the ones he was closest to were ‘Team’, said without the article, those from the intelligence agencies looking after his welfare. He was evidently in regular contact with them, and had a special mobile phone that went direct to their duty officer. There is a special section within MI6, Agent Resettlement, or AR, that looks after the service’s old Joes. MI5 are also involved with the protective security aspects of this, it’s a joint operation. The agencies’ bosses have learned over the years that looking after old assets is vital to the credibility of their operations – and indeed an important element of getting new people to spy for them. Sergei spoke about ‘Team’ with a good deal of affection, mentioning recent visits, and using a few of their first names. He implied that he had made them aware of my visit and this was no more than common sense, given that allowing someone alone into his home carried an element of risk.

  92. “It was almost as if he and Yulia had set out to choose an anonymous location, an archetype of middle England. The British intelligence people guiding her house-hunting may also have liked Christie Miller Road because the dwellings there were built as houses for the police. Although the Wiltshire force disposed of them, among residents of this cul de sac there are apparently still quite a few retired officers.”

    June 2017 –
    “Sergei and I had already met somewhere else and had a long talk about his life. We had spoken subsequently by phone and he had agreed I should come to his home for a proper working session of half a day, with notebook, to drill down into his experiences. So I was in a state of some excitement when I reached Christie Miller Road. Driving up towards the end of the cul de sac, scanning the houses for numbers, I couldn’t spot his, 47. My momentary confusion ended when he emerged from his front door, directing me with military-style hand signals to park right outside the entrance.”

    1. Well that is interesting – “…still quite a few retired officers” – how many of them have CCTV?

      Not only is it inconceivable that the Skripal house itself would not be fully protected, the whole neighbourhood was filled with ex-cops! Probably the safest street in Salisbury.

      R&A must have been picked up on 20 CCTV cameras as they strolled down CMR – never mind the one on the Skripal house. The Met must be knee deep in CCTV of R&A on CMR!

      Small note to those looking for the CCTV camera on #47 – the cameras can be very small. Some people chose an easily visible system with large cameras but others prefer a concealed system which uses ‘bullet cameras’ – these can be hidden anywhere.

  93. Aren’t there public real property records in the UK? Of course, MI6 would never appear as the owner of a residence; it’s ownership would be masked in some way. However, how does an agency of HMG have any legal right to own any real property in its own right and separate from HMG?

    Why did all the UK media report that Skripal bought his house in Jan 2012? Who supplied them with that information?

    I’ll accept that if HMG owned the house and it was under MI6 management that there would have been multiple security features, including CCTV cameras. Thus, Met CT has some explaining to do about this matter.

    What I can’t accept is that Skripal was both an active MI6 asset and adopted the Kremlin line on many matters. Would MI6 have ignored that? Used an asset dropping hints that he could be a triple-agent?

    1. @ Marie,

      Q: Thus, Met CT has some explaining to do about this matter.

      R: You’re absolutely right, but who’s going to keep t heir shivering feet to the fire? What covenments [TM elenora] agencies are held accountable for their [mis]deeds?

      Not before long and Sergei is turned into a quintuple agent [along the line of: missile, anti-missile, anti-anti-missile, anti-anti-anti-missile, anti-anti-anti-anti-missile].

      1. Not before long and Sergei is turned into a quintuple agent

        Daniel, difficult not to go there from Urban’s tale. It’s either that or MI6 is totally oblivious to a not well-disguised triple-agent under its control. (Personally, I think Sergei as an active Mi6 asset after the spy swap is not credible.)

  94. Wilderness of mirrors: MI6, the Cold War, spies and traitors from Gordievsky to Skripal – Link to Russia Today

    Excerpt: “The Russians smell of urine and alcohol – “so Russian.” The British spies are aristocrats who presumably never micturate nor drink. The Russians have no culture, the British excuse their mistakes in Latin: “Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus” (even Homer nods). The Russians are fixated with the pornographic literature that is available in the West (gay porn in the case of Gordievsky), while the British are as straight as a die (or a Guy Burgess).”

  95. A last thought before bed

    How many of the employees is the Security Services, in London, Gloucester and elsewhere are happy with what is going on? (or even know / think they know what is going on).

    I would guess 5, tops 7 percent perhaps.

    The rest will be thinking what the hell? What are the lunatics going to think of tomorrow?

    Now don’t get me wrong, I am not sympathetic per se to the 95%, I think they are picked to do the job because they are odd.

    They have, almost without exception, crippling (in normal circumstances) personality disorders, their egos are fed in lieu or a higher income and their self worth is ……. well estimable (extremely high)

    But this farm of nut jobs are unsettled.

    That is cause of the problems the 5% are having and it will get worse.

    But let it be known ……. The Damage That Has Been Done By May And Her Jack Boots Cannot Be Undone.

    Just Saying, G’night

  96. This is what I would’ve done if I were Sergei:

    Get myself at least 1 Bullmastiff
    Install CCTV [back, front and sides]
    Install flood lights
    Install motion sensors
    Get a bunch of cackling geese

    What does Sergei have, in reality [according to the British covenment – TM elenora]?

    2 cats
    2 guinea pigs
    1 goldfish and
    1 rabbit.

    Especially because Sergei had been caught being a spy, I’d expected him to be much more vigilant.

    1. Change name

      Go Ex Directory

      Tick the I don’t want you telling anybody about me box on the census

      Or his Tweedy minder could have done that for him

      Sergei wasn’t hiding from anyone, he joked with the local cabbies that he was a Russian spy (must be his Russian sense of humour)

    2. You should never have just one goldfish

      If you do they get depressed

      And if they get depressed they just swim around aimlessly

      1. @ Peter Beswick ,

        If Sergei did joke about being a spy, he [obviously] wasn’t hiding anything. Although not hiding and being protective of oneself, are separate ways of going about life itself, imo.

        Has anyone living in/or near Salisbury been able to check Sergei’s abode for signs of cameras and other protective measures?

        The British covenment [TM elenora] would never let a spy sit in a covenment provided/sponsored house, without keeping a very tight eye on said individual.

        1. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5471795/Kremlin-double-agent-boasted-taxi-drivers-Im-Russian-spy.html

          A covert camera within the property would not deter anybody.

          If they were there Skripal might not have been aware of them.

          If he had one I guess it / they were on the inside of windows looking out.

          His Cyber Security prowess intrigues me. But being in the trade so to speak he would know where and when he was like to be safe to talk / do stuff.

          Would Urban be given Carte Blanche to interview Sergei on his past dealings with Mi6?

          No

          Would any journalist be given permission to interview Sergei on his “former” career?

          No

          Skripal’s life was private for a reason; he scratched his bottom and an alarm went off in Cheltenham.

          But when it is all made up and everyone knows it and no one cares, nothing needs to make sense.

          1. @ Peter Beswick,

            Q: But when it is all made up and everyone knows it and no one cares, nothing needs to make sense.

            R: Very true. I would add two elements though – those who’re in power [and are driving the ‘vehicle’] and those entities who’re supposed to hold the ‘drivers’ accountable for their acts [or lack thereof].

            I’m convinced, most people who visit The Blogmire do care about events in life making sense. They do so, because of their own sense of decency and their believe in truth over trash.

            Even those who only lurk here.

            1. If they can make sense of it they are going to care, I grant you that.

              But can you make sense of it?

              I can’t.

              1. @ Peter Beswick,

                Every time I try to make sense out of nonsense, I autosense it’s all quite senseless to look for subsense, especially when I detect traces of missense in what is supposed to be commonsense and am thus overwhelmed by a feeling of multisense.

                Can I apply for a covenment [TM elenora] job now?

                1. @Daniel Rich – never mind the application, you’re just the type of person we’re looking for, here in government-land – you’re hired straight away. Just one question, do you want to work for the UK, US, or EU?

                  1. @ DavidC,

                    Well, I’m in it for the big guns and heard the covenments’ troughs are filled to the rafters with all sorts of goodies, so, I’ll opt for the triple crown of working for TPTB.

          2. Interesting that there seems to be a CCTV camera on the front of the house, on Google streetview of 47 Christie Miller Dr, dated 2009, pre-Skripal. It was probably just one of the ones for normal neighbourhood surveillance that are everywhere in Britain.
            Then there is what must be a fairly recent photo of Sergei and Yulia in front of the house; there seems to be a smaller, more discreet camera at the top, near the drainpipe:
            http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/09/13/4A09873700000578-5481219-image-a-55_1520600783974.jpg
            And now in this photo, hi-res, when the investigation is underway, obviously taken after the previous photo, voila, no camera!:
            https://media3.s-nbcnews.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Video/201803/tdy_cobiella_180329.jpg

            1. It seems that both that camera, and the vertical aerial on the right-hand gable were removed soon after 4th March (we discussed that aerial’s disappearnce in an earlier thread). They were probably MI5/police property, which suggests that TPTB knew then that Sergei would never be returning, and I suppose that by removing them, they removed trade-marks of ‘safe-house’.

            2. There is no camera in that first photo you posted. I think what you belive is a camera is the shadow of the drainpipe.

              1. I’m not very smart in such matters, so I need some explanation here. What Roberto thinks is a camera, is that the black spot on the left side of the drainpipe (first picture) ? Then I wonder if it can be the shadow of the drainpipe, because other shadows (bush, photographer) seem differently orientated to me.

                1. That’s what I thought he was refering too as well. If it is that black area at the top of the drainpipe that Roberto is talking about, that is 100% the shadow of the drainpipe. The angle of the other shadows (bush, photographer etc) do match up with the drainpipe shadow. If you look at the 2nd picture Roberto linked to, the drainpipe comes out (towards the viewer) and then up but the shadow in the 1st picture is at an almost perfect right angle, suggesting the sun is fairly high in the sky – which the other shadows suggest too.

                  More importantly though, what the hell is Yulia wearing in that photo?!?!

            3. Amazing on google streetview how open Skripals house was, the culprits would have had to walk down that road in full view of multiple houses, in broad daylight. Amazing they weren’t spotted, or picked on on any CCTV isn’t it?

            4. That’s not a recent photo. it wouldn’t have been take before 1/12 or after 10/12. That’s Luidmila with Yulia and Sergei. The day was warm enough for Sergei to wear a short-sleeved t-shirt but cool enough for the women to wear sweaters. April-May or September.

    3. Maybe the rabbit descended from the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog and had nasty, big, pointy teeth!

      Joking aside, Skripal’s house seems to oddly lack any visible security devices.

      @Rob – the latest time for when the door handle could be treated is much earlier than 13:30, since the police give a time of 13:03 for the photo of the men at Fisherton Road. Even at a Rob-pace, they would’ve had to leave the house by about 12:45 to get to where they were captured by CCTV.

        1. Didn’t the local curtain twitchers or should I say neighbourhood watch not notice anything suspicious especially during the time of the beast from the east. Even as known visitor to a friend’s address you will have the curtains going

    4. Unless he knew or falsley believed he was guaranteed a much higher level of security….which has failed. Or realised he was worthless and dispensable or pretended to be so and lack of security apparently was cover for his believed indespensability.

  97. Beside the Blogmire being a website brimming with information, it’s also educational. I learned a lot of new, British slang words. So, when I read [1st paragraph] ‘There’s enough smokes and mirrors…’ I thought ‘smokes’ must be a British variation on something I’m unaware of. Perhaps shady back rooms and cigarettes?

    Or is it just a typo [There’s enough smoke and mirrors]?

    [4th paragraph] “…they have been able to able to come up…’ I’m sure this is a typo.

    Can anyone help me out?

    Thanks in advance.

    1. Daniel,

      You caught me there. Forgive me – I was writing the piece on the train home tonight, and for some reason not easily explicable I stuck an s on the end of smoke. Definitely smoke and mirrors, not smokes and mirrors.

      All changed 😉

      Rob

      1. @ Rob,

        When my copy editor hands me back a manuscript, I’m ashamed at the many mistakes I’ve missed [many of them blatantly obvious]. But as a team, the only goal is to make things work and move forward toward the truth.

  98. It is possible that Urban tries to remake Skripal into a Russian spy to diminish the failure of MI6.
    If Skripal was a valuable asset the failure was huge.

    Putin has just reconverted Skripal into a British agent.
    I agree with Peter Beswick. Skripal was a side effect but not the reason for this incident. The reason was the Novichok scare.

    2. @ anidea,

      Q: It is possible that Urban tries to remake Skripal into a Russian spy to diminish the failure of MI6.

      R: there’s an elaborate cover up going on, that’s for sure. Because of that, all options as to the why of it all, are wide open [within the borders of logic, evidence and proof, of course].

      Who benefits the most from the case?

      Most certainly not H.E. Mr. V.V. Putin or Russia.

      So, who…?

        1. @ anidea,

          The way the US covenment’s cracking up its delivery of weaponry to the Ukraine, it looks like the Syrian plan died in its shell [after the IL-20 murder].

  99. Brilliant post, Rob. I’m sure by tomorrow the press will be asking the said pertinent questions which they haven’t been asking?

  100. How was Sergei watching Russian TV? I was looking on Google Maps – no sign of a big satellite dish.
    One thing I did notice was there seems to be a lane at the back of his house that runs eventually to Highbury Avenue. Surely two Spetsnaz assassins could have got into his garden or house from that lane. Maybe they should check the back door.

      1. Is it not region blocked like the BBC? @Daniel Rich
        And that wasn’t the main point. Apparently the two CID men went to the back of the house and gained access easily. But the Spetsnaz didn’t think of going down the lane at the back, climbing the fence and slitting Sergei’s throat.

        1. @ Patrick Mahony,

          But when there are no Spetsnaz to begin with [in he lane/path behind Sergei’s house], where could they be?

          Russia?

  101. Viktoria Skripal asked a very valid question yesterday when she asked about the contractual arrangements between Sergei and Urban. Urban has published many never before seen pictures of Sergei – why does he have them and is he entitled to publish them?

    Urban has previously said that the book was going to be about ‘cold war espionange’ but he changed direction after the 4 March incident and it became a book about Sergei Skripal. Hmm… ok, but why did he speak with Sergei about all the personal stuff then? All the excerpts so far published tell Sergei’s life story – was Urban ever going to be able to use this material… until Sergei disappeared? If it was not origionally intended for publication, why did he spend so much time discussing it all with Sergei? Why has he got all the pictures to go with it? Surely it should all have been ‘cloak and dagger’ stuff with nothing that could link back to Sergei Skripal…. an active MI6 asset!

    Was Urban really going to write a book that gave such easily identifiable details of Sergei Skripal? Including all his more recent ‘business’ trips? If not, then why has Urban got Sergei’s life story?

    I am sure that HMG is delighted to have such a helpful book being published round about now but for anybody else living under MI5/6 protection, it must be rather troubling.

    How has Urban managed to get so much information and pictures that until 4 March he could not possibly have published?

    1. I think this is what troubles me most about the whole sorry affair.

      Sergei will emerge from his convalescence and get a taxi home and he will be greeted with a pile of rubble.

      All his connections, photos and memories, pyjamas gone

      But don’t be so glum Serge, buy a Daily Mail with Special Pull Out and Save Exclusive and you will find you entire photo album has been preserved

      1. Urban didn’t get all this detail from Sergei did he? Somebody gave Urban Sergei’s file and told him to write a book and whoever that was must have been quite senior in SIS… who presumably would have been able to arrange for Urban to meet Sergei… if the UK had Sergei.

        This book must have official blessing or there would be no way Urban could publish it.

        Sergei’s life story, with senior SIS input and an official blessing but NO interview with Sergei… what does that tell us?

        1. @ Paul: Agree completely that Urban had to have official authorization. Rob has yet again pointed out the sheer incompetence of our (Western) “intelligence” agencies by pointing out the three embarrassing options – incompetence for two, propagandizing its own taxpayers whom they’re supposed to protect for the third. And plumping for one of the first two – because of the incompetence factor – is Urban, inadvertently revealing it.

    2. Dear Paul,

      You might be pleasantly surprised to know that the BBC journalist Mark Urban and Sergei Skripal’s recruiter / handler Pablo Miller were in the same tank regiment together in the British Army.

      Now you have to ask if Miller or someone else linked to either Miller, Skripal or both of them might have had anything to do with Urban getting clearance to get so much information and pictures.

      1. I think this book is just propaganda – somebody (not Urban) wanted it to be written.

        The book must be an MI5/6 project and I am sure we will all find out what it is they want us to think quite soon.

        The one thing that has amazed me about the whole Skripal affair is how truly stupid these SIS types are. I am shocked at how their arrogance shines through in everything they do – they think we are stupid but the laugh really is on them.

      2. The book fulfills three purposes:
        1) It makes Sergei unsympathetic in the eyes of all those who are not Russian nationalists.
        2) It stamps Sergei as a traitor to Putin’s closest confidants. Urban (MI6) wants to prevent him from ever returning to Russia.
        3) Also for Yulia after all the “revelations” it will be hard to live in Russia.

        The book practically forces the Skripals to comply with the terms of the MI6.

    3. I cannot imagine the book being great for sales….cos what happens from now is interesting….for them to reappear….will there be a trial of sorts against Russia…”.my life as a traitorous spy is over” lecture tour…..or a book where the actual truth is revealed to be written by Craig Mureay and off-guardian and Rob Slane in partnership with GRU….

  103. “The first comes from the British Government, who have declared the Russian State to be responsible for an attempted assassination of Mr Skripal”

    I don’t believe that is the claim HMG are saying that Putin acted with such wanton abandon that Yulia could have been put in the helicopter and the pilot overcome and crashed into the hospital, or Porton Down or an Ammo Dump.

    And the two poison recepticals (the one used and the still on its wrapper) could have found by school children and taken them to Show and Tell days at school.

    HMG is saying most of Wiltshire and parts of Hampshire (and a bit of Dorset) could have been entirely wiped out.

    That’s not the same as just whacking a Has Been Spook.

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