The Newcomer

September 26, 2018 8:23 AM

A Spy Story: Sergei Skripal Was a Little Fish. He Had a Big Enemy.
Russian spy: What happened to Sergei and Yulia Skripal?

WHO DID IT?
Planes, trains and fake names: the trail left by Skripal suspects

Skripal Suspects Confirmed as GRU Operatives: Prior European Operations Disclosed

How badly did Russia’s interview with the Skripal poisoning suspects backfire?

UK charges two Russians over Salisbury poisoning of Skripals

Nerve agent used on Skripals 'same one that killed Dawn Sturgess'.

WHY SKRIPAL?
Inside the Poisoning of a Russian Double Agent
Why did Russia poison one of its ex-spies in Britain? - "Several theories have emerged to explain Moscow’s actions. Here’s a summary of available theories, which also involves my research on Russian and Soviet disinformation techniques."

PATTERN OF ASSASSINATIONS
A Brief History of Attempted Russian Assassinations by Poison

The Killers of Kiev

Not that the city offered any guarantees of safety. On its surface, Kiev exudes the elegant charm of places like Prague and Budapest. But to residents who occupy a certain substratum of the population—Russian émigrés who've run afoul of the Kremlin, say, or outspoken journalists, or politicians who've developed inconvenient consciences—life in Kiev can be a daily exercise in fear. For people like Amina and Adam, every grocery run, every drive, every encounter with a stranger is a leap into the unknown. Beneath a veneer of high Slavic culture and modern sophistication, the city has, for many, become something darker than it appears: a gangland metropolis. In just the past year, half a dozen enemies of Putin's regime have been killed or grievously injured in Kiev in a rash of bombings and shootings—outbreaks of chaos and violence that have cast an eerie pall over the city.

We Now Know More About the Apparent Poisoning of the Pussy Riot Member Pyotr Verzilov

An Enemy of the Kremlin Dies in London - "Who killed Alexander Perepilichny?"

Poison in The System [FIRST IN A SERIES]

Former MI6, counterterror, and police officials expressed disbelief at the refusal by the British authorities to countenance a full murder investigation into Perepilichnyy’s death. “It’s so obvious that it’s an assassination,” said Chris Phillips, the former head of Britain’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office. “There’s no way it wasn’t a hit. It’s ridiculous.” A former Scotland Yard commander said the police position was “very worrying”. And at the inquest last week, the most senior officer at the scene of Perepilichnyy's death, who has since retired, contradicted the official police line and said he now believes the "the death is suspicious".

Across the Atlantic, five current high-ranking US intelligence officials have warned that Britain is failing to get to grips with the increased threat from an emboldened Russia – and three of them have taken the extraordinary step of chastising British law enforcement. “The Kremlin has aggressively stepped up its efforts to eliminate and silence its enemies abroad over the past couple of years – particularly in Britain,” one senior US spy told BuzzFeed News. A second serving intelligence official said the “incompetent” British police “should have to answer for their actions and be held accountable” for shutting down any investigation into Perepilichnyy’s death.

WHY POISON?
Ex-Russian Chemical Weapons Specialist: Moscow Was Sure No One Would Find Poison
‘It’s got me’: the lonely death of the Soviet scientist poisoned by novichok

“Circles appeared before my eyes: red and orange. A ringing in my ears, I caught my breath. And a sense of fear: like something was about to happen,” Andrei Zheleznyakov told the now-defunct newspaper Novoye Vremya, describing the 1987 weapons lab incident that exposed him to a nerve agent that would eventually kill him. “I sat down on a chair and told the guys: ‘It’s got me.’”

By 1992, when the interview was published, the nerve agent had gutted Zheleznyakov’s central nervous system. Less than a year later he was dead, after battling cirrhosis, toxic hepatitis, nerve damage and epilepsy.

Why the Kremlin likes using poison

Poisons are versatile and flexible. They suit Russia’s newly redeveloped forms of aggressive, covert warfare. They can be ambiguous. A shooting leaves intent and very possibly evidence, but poisoning may leave no trace. How many people has the Russian state killed in the UK in recent years? No one is quite sure, but rumours abound. How better to create an air of menace around the Kremlin. Was Col. Skripal poisoned? Maybe, maybe not. Was 44-year-old Russian whistleblower Alexander Perepilichnyy murdered in Surry in 2012? What about a dozen other killings which have taken place? We don’t know and for whatever reason, the police and government have appeared disinclined to investigate.

WHAT IS NOVICHOK?
Novichok agents are reportedly a class of chemical weapons designed by the Soviet Union to circumvent the Chemical Weapons Convention, be easier and safer to handle, and defeat standard protective gear. What We Know About Novichok. Like other "humanicides," novichok agents are acetylcholinesterase inhibitors

Secret trial shows risks of nerve agent theft in post-Soviet chaos: experts
British military scientists can't prove that the nerve agent used to poison Sergei Skripal was made in Russia
The Whistleblower

UK's claims questioned: doubts voiced about source of Salisbury novichok

posted by the man of twists and turns (15 comments total)

Gangster’s paradise: how organised crime took over Russia

Do the gangsters run Russia? No, of course not, and I have met many determined, dedicated Russian police officers and judges committed to the struggle against them. However, many businesses and politicians use methods that owe more to the underworld than to legal practice. The state hires hackers and arms gangsters to fight its wars (and there remain suggestions that criminals were used as agents in the attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal in Salisbury this month). You can hear vor songs and vor slang on the streets. Even Putin uses it from time to time, to reassert his streetwise credentials. Perhaps the real question is nothow far the state has managed to tame the gangsters, but how far the values and practices of the vory have come to shape modern Russia.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:23 AM on September 26, 2018 [7 favorites]

Reminder:

The United Kingdom is an ally of the United States.

A state-executed murder of any person on British soil is an act of war against Britain.

And therefore an act of war against the United States of America.

Any aid and comfort provided to an entity acting in this way, if done by a US citizen, is capital treason.
posted by ocschwar at 8:37 AM on September 26, 2018 [13 favorites]

A state-executed murder of any person on British soil is an act of war against Britain.

This is debatable. The Skripal case probably doesn't rise to the level of an armed attack, which is what the UN considers to be the line after which you can invoke self defense.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:08 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thanks so much for posting this. I've gone down a rabbit hole of past and present Russian mafia (and/or former KGB, current security, 'legit' political figures, etc) figures and activities in the past month or so and whenever I try to speak to anyone about it, I sound mildly certifiable (who doesn't enjoy a fevered conspiracy rant with side dishes of money laundering and Donald Trump?) so while reading through these links and talking to people about it won't make me sound less insane, I will *feel* less insane, and that will be an improvement.

Once you start digging, it gets real creepy, real fast.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 9:34 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

More on armed attacks and the law of war with respect to the Skripal case
posted by BungaDunga at 9:41 AM on September 26, 2018

Why aren't UK authorities investigating these suspicious deaths, and why aren't UK journalists asking why UK authorities aren't investigating these suspicious deaths?
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:10 AM on September 26, 2018

Why aren't UK authorities investigating these suspicious deaths

Because the last time they identified Russia as causing suspicious deaths in the UK it became a huge diplomatic controversy, and they don't want to do that again unless they're forced to. Or so said Buzzfeed in that deep dive they did a few years ago.
posted by suelac at 11:59 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

BellingCat believes they have identified one of the Skripal GRU agents as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga:

Bellingcat has been able to confirm the actual identity of one of the two officers. The suspect using the cover identity of “Ruslan Boshirov” is in fact Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a highly decorated GRU officer bestowed with Russia’s highest state award, Hero of the Russian Federation. Following Bellingcat’s own identification, multiple sources familiar with the person and/or the investigation have confirmed the suspect’s identity.

This finding eliminates any remaining doubt that the two suspects in the Novichok poisonings were in fact Russian officers operating on a clandestine government mission.

posted by pharm at 12:36 PM on September 26, 2018 [4 favorites]

I thought this bit of Bellingcat's report was really interesting:

To validate the hypothesis that Chepiga is Skripal poisoning suspect “Boshirov,” Bellingcat and The Insider obtained extracts from the passport file of Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga – the man born on 5th April 1979 – from two separate sources with access to databases dated prior to 2014.

Wow, they have access to the Russian passport database! But they can only access stuff before 2014? It must be a copy smuggled out by a dissident or ... what happened in 2014?

Oh.

I'm not surprised Putin is really p***ed off about Ukraine. Western intelligence services must basically have everything.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:38 PM on September 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

runcipleshaw: Why aren't UK authorities investigating these suspicious deaths, and why aren't UK journalists asking why UK authorities aren't investigating these suspicious deaths?

Not sure if you're asking the question in jest or not. Skripal has been a major news story in the UK for months. Police investigating, politicians talking about it. Diplomats being expelled.

The Guardian: Russian spy poisoning: Theresa May issues ultimatum to Moscow - 13/Mar/2018
posted by memebake at 3:55 PM on September 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Reminder:

The United Kingdom is an ally of the United States.

A state-executed murder of any person on British soil is an act of war against Britain.

And therefore an act of war against the United States of America.

Any aid and comfort provided to an entity acting in this way, if done by a US citizen, is capital treason.


Please don't do this. It's a nonsense legally and useless politically. I get that none of us here like Trump but you haven't got him on some technicality his supporters had overlooked.

And having lived through the cold war I guarantee you declaring other people traitors, let alone threatening people with the death penalty, ends up going way better for the xenophobic right than it ever will for a generally cosmopolitan left.
posted by mark k at 8:20 PM on September 26, 2018 [9 favorites]

Any aid and comfort provided to an entity acting in this way, if done by a US citizen, is capital treason.

Aiding The Enemy, actually, but the same thing. It is exceedingly hard to prove actual treason under the US Constitution, unless, of course, the accused has a habit of monologuing like a not particularly bright comic-book villain.
posted by acb at 4:27 AM on September 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Why aren't UK authorities investigating these suspicious deaths, and why aren't UK journalists asking why UK authorities aren't investigating these suspicious deaths?

Because they're mostly Russian ex spies? Russia dealing with Russians who betrayed Russia isn't high on the list of things UK politicians are asked about on the doorstep and the Russian's do at least appear to be trying to be discreet. People aren't being bundled into vans in the dead of night or shot in broad daylight like the Israelis do. So long as they're not impacting regular people's safety most people don't care.
posted by Damienmce at 6:39 AM on September 27, 2018

Damienmce, are you living in the UK? Because I am, and the Skripal poisoning was the biggest news story in the country this March, Russia were immediately identified as the likely culprits, and the subsequent death of Dawn Sturgess was also a huge story. The various ins-and-outs have been discussed at length in the media and in parliament. Where are you all getting the idea from that this passed un-noticed?
posted by memebake at 2:42 AM on October 1, 2018

New from BellingCat: a detailed history of the second Skripal suspect.

Incomplete border crossing data obtained by Bellingcat shows that in the period 2010-2013 Mishkin travelled — under his undercover persona of Petrov — multiple times to Ukraine

I think Jo in Australia is on point.
posted by pharm at 8:20 AM on October 10, 2018 [1 favorite]