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    Luke the spook screams about Navalnychok Archived Message

    Posted by Raskolnikov on September 3, 2020, 6:45 am

    https://www.dumptheguardian.com/world/2020/sep/02/using-novichok-against-navalny-is-a-russian-message-of-menace

    Using novichok against Navalny is a Russian message of menace

    World leaders can be in little doubt: the evidence leads directly to Moscow and Putin

    Lying, corrupted, chinless wanker.

    The debate over what precisely happened to Alexei Navalny has raged for almost two weeks. Some facts are agreed. The Russian opposition leader drank a cup of tea at Tomsk airport and then collapsed on a flight back to Moscow. After cursory treatment in a Russian hospital, he was flown to Berlin. Since then German doctors have been treating him in the Charité hospital, where he remains in a medically induced coma.

    Far murkier is the question of who poisoned Navalny and why. On Wednesday the German government provided a pretty big clue when it revealed Navalny was poisoned with novichok. This is the substance used in 2018 against Sergei and Yulia Skripal. It was smeared on the front door of Skripal’s Salisbury home. Novichok also killed Dawn Sturgess, a Wiltshire woman who unknowingly sprayed it on her wrists.

    Berlin said samples taken from Navalny contained traces of poison from the novichok group of chemicals. The conclusion was “beyond doubt” and Navalny’s poisoning a “startling event”, it said. It asked the Russian government for urgent clarification. Though Angela Merkel didn’t quite say it, western leaders can now be in little doubt: the evidence leads directly to Moscow and its secret spy agencies. And to Vladimir Putin’s own door.

    Some poisons can be bought in shops. But not novichok, which Soviet scientists developed during the cold war in closed laboratories. It is the prerogative of one state only: Russia. Over the past decade Moscow has produced and stockpiled small quantities, western intelligence agencies believe. Putin is closely involved, they add. Special units developed innovative ways to deliver it, including smearing it on door handles.

    The two assassins who brought novichok to Salisbury – Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga – were colonels in the GRU, Russia’s powerful military intelligence outfit. They were part of a roving team of undercover killers, based in France and Switzerland, tasked to carry out special operations from behind “enemy lines”. Most are now presumed to have returned home after their covers and names were blown.

    It is unclear if the GRU was behind the Navalny plot or if this could have been the work of the FSB, Russia’s domestic spy agency, which Putin ran before he became prime minister and president. Either way, the choice of poison is no accident. It is a calling card – less of a hint and more of a flashing neon sign. By using novichok, Moscow delivers a message of menace and contempt, demonstrative in nature and aimed both at the west and at the president’s hard-pressed domestic critics.

    As Ivan Zhdanov, a Navalny aide, tweeted on Wednesday: “Only a government can do this.” Russian state media has floated a series of implausible explanations for Navalny’s sudden illness. (They include pancreatitis and a bad energy drink.) The Kremlin insists there is nothing to investigate. And yet these official denials are done with a wink and smirk. The subtext is clear: that traitors who oppose state power can expect unusual punishment.

    Poisoned tea is a hallmark of the Putin regime, and the KGB before it. In 2006 Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun – two killers sent by Moscow to London – put radioactive polonium into the tea of the dissident Alexander Litvinenko. A public inquiry heard evidence that an operation of this kind required top-level sign off. No one else would take the risk. It concluded that Putin had “probably” approved it, together with his FSB spy chief.

    Much about this latest poisoning remains unknown. The biggest mystery: why now? Navalny is a longstanding critic of Kremlin corruption. His targets have included oligarchs, the former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov. Navalny has been arrested on multiple occasions, and even attacked. But putting novichok in his tea goes a step further. The operation was clearly meant to kill or maim him.

    One theory is that Putin has been spooked by recent protests, both in neighbouring Belarus and in Russia’s far east, where locals have been protesting for weeks in the city of Khabarovsk against the dismissal of a popular mayor. Putin is determined to avoid the mass demonstrations seen in Minsk against his neighbour Alexander Lukashenko. By removing the country’s foremost opposition leader, this scenario becomes less likely.

    According to David Clark, a former special adviser to the late UK foreign secretary Robin Cook, international politics may also play a role. The Kremlin expects Donald Trump to win November’s US presidential election. At the same time, Clark suggests, Putin is aware that a Joe Biden presidency would mean a different and more aggressive policy towards Moscow. He characterises the Russian regime as simultaneously cocky and insecure.

    Trump’s obsequious behaviour towards Putin has been the one consistent theme in a White House otherwise known for its chaos and dysfunction. Last time round, Trump reportedly told Theresa May that he was doubtful the Russians had poisoned Skripal. Few expect the president to condemn what happened to Navalny – or to echo Merkel, who on Wednesday bluntly described it as a crime. She called for a united response from Nato and world leaders.

    Putin may have calculated that he can ride out outrage from the Europeans, as he did in both the Skripal and Litvinenko cases, Clark said. He added: “Putin thinks that after 12 months all these politicians will be wibbling on about the need to normalise relations again. He believes western politics is no different from Russian politics. And that democracy, civility and liberalism is just a hypocritical facade, and that power wins.”

    One other unresolved question is why Moscow granted permission for Navalny to be treated abroad, knowing that sooner or later the novichok inside his body would be detected. Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday that German scientists had consulted with their British colleagues at Porton Down, the government science facility near Salisbury, which first identified the nerve agent used against the Skripals. The logical conclusion: Moscow wants the world to know.

    Navalny’s prospects are unclear. German doctors say they do not yet know what the long-term prognosis is, or whether he has suffered permanent physical damage. The Kremlin is likely to anticipate that its most formidable political enemy is likely to stay abroad, leaving them to continue its repressive activities. Navalny’s friends say this is not the case. When and if he recovers, they expect him to return to Russia and to resume his efforts to bring down the Putin regime.

    His friends point out that, as the country’s most high-profile activist, Navalny was under surveillance during his recent visit to Siberia when he fell ill. The FSB knew whom he was meeting. They would have tracked the dramatic events surrounding his poisoning closely. None of the evidence will still exist. But Putin and a few close aides must know what happened. The use of novichok means that we know too, even if the details remain secret.

    I honestly can't be bothered to take this utter shit apart but just check out those two bolded bits. A brief recap of the Skripal fable along with long debunked door nob spraying.

    Then there's this triumvirate of toss:

    It is the prerogative of one state only: Russia. Over the past decade Moscow has produced and stockpiled small quantities, western intelligence agencies believe. Putin is closely involved, they add. Special units developed innovative ways to deliver it, including smearing it on door handles.

    I love the "Putin is closely involved, they add" almost as if they were dictating this garbage down the phone to him. What an utterly transparent tool.

    Message Thread:

    • Luke the spook screams about Navalnychok - Raskolnikov September 3, 2020, 6:45 am