Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium link

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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 07, 2018 2:42 pm

Russian ex-spy and daughter were attacked with nerve agent, U.K. police say

By Associated Press
Russian ex-spy and daughter were attacked with nerve agent, U.K. police say
A police tent covers the spot in Salisbury, England, where former Russian spy double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found unconscious. (Frank Augstein / Associated Press)
A Russian ex-spy and his daughter were attacked with a nerve agent in a targeted murder attempt and now are fighting for their lives in an English hospital, British police said Wednesday.

Sergei Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were found unconscious on a bench in the southwest England city of Salisbury on Sunday, triggering a police investigation led by counterterrorism detectives. Baffled police initially said the pair had come into contact with an unknown substance.

"Having established that a nerve agent is the cause of the symptoms leading us to treat this as attempted murder, I can also confirm that we believe that the two people who became unwell were targeted specifically," Metropolitan Police counterterrorism Chief Mark Rowley said.

Rowley said a police officer who treated the pair at the scene was in serious condition.



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Rowley didn't say what nerve agent was suspected in the attack on Skripal, a former Russian agent who served jail time in his homeland for spying for Britain.

Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said there was a low risk to the public.

Police and forensics officers continued to scour several sites in and around the cathedral city Wednesday, three days after the attack. Police kept residents away from an Italian restaurant and a pub in the city, and cordoned off part of a business park about nine miles away near the ancient stone monument of Stonehenge. Detectives appealed for information from anyone who visited either the Zizzi restaurant or the Bishop's Mill pub in Salisbury on Sunday.

A policeman stands outside the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury, England, on March 7, 2018. (Andrew Matthews / Associated Press)
Bemused residents saw their usually placid town, famed for its 13th-century Gothic cathedral, turned into the center of a criminal probe with Cold War echoes.

With nerves still on edge, ambulances and emergency vehicles rushed to a building beside the Zizzi restaurant, which remains cordoned off. Witness Toni Walker said emergency services escorted two women from the building. Police and ambulance services declined to comment, and it wasn't immediately clear whether the incident had anything to do with the ongoing investigation.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd chaired a meeting of the government's emergency committee, known as Cobra, to discuss the investigation, which is now in the hands of counterterrorism police.

"We need to keep a cool head and make sure we collect all the evidence we can," Rudd said. "And then we need to decide what action to take."

Moscow accused Britain of using the case to fuel an "anti-Russian campaign" and further strain ties with Britain.

"What happened to Skripal has been immediately used to further incite an anti-Russian campaign in Western media," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Skripal, a former colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence service, was convicted in 2006 of spying for Britain and imprisoned. He was freed in 2010 as part of a widely publicized spy swap in which the U.S. agreed to hand over 10 members of a Russian sleeper cell found operating in America in return for four Russians convicted of spying for the West.

He and his daughter were found collapsed on a bench near a shopping mall Sunday in Salisbury, 90 miles southwest of London. Police think they were exposed to a substance, and a British military research facility is thought to be conducting tests to determine what it is.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told lawmakers Tuesday that if Moscow is shown to have been involved in the Skripal case, the government would act — possibly downgrading England's participation in this year's soccer World Cup in Russia.

While police say they are keeping an open mind about the case, it has reminded Britain of the 2006 poisoning of former spy Alexander Litvinenko.

A British inquiry into his death found that Russian agents poisoned him by lacing his tea with radioactive polonium-210 and that the killing was probably approved by President Vladimir Putin. Russia has denied any involvement in Litvinenko's death, and this week said it wasn't involved in Skripal's collapse.

Litvinenko's widow, Marina, wrote Wednesday in the Times of London that her husband's case made clear to Britain's emergency services that they need to act quickly when "someone suddenly falls mysteriously ill."

"I am happy my story has raised awareness about the potential danger posed by Moscow, and this could help to save somebody's life," she wrote in an opinion piece.
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-form ... story.html
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 07, 2018 9:34 pm

Poisoned Russian spy Sergei Skripal was close to consultant who was linked to the Trump dossier

25
Sergei Skripal, left, and Christopher Steele, right, who compiled the notorious dossier on President Trump that detailed his allegedly corrupt dealings with Vladimir Putin

Robert Mendick, chief reporter Hayley Dixon Patrick Sawer, senior reporter
7 MARCH 2018 • 10:24PM
A security consultant who has worked for the company that compiled the controversial dossier on Donald Trump was close to the Russian double agent poisoned last weekend, it has been claimed.

The consultant, who The Telegraph is declining to identify, lived close to Col Skripal and is understood to have known him for some time.

Col Skripal, who is in intensive care and fighting for his life after an assassination attempt on Sunday, was recruited by MI6 when he worked for the British embassy in Estonia, according to the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency.

The Telegraph understands that Col Skripal moved to Salisbury in 2010 in a spy swap and became close to a security consultant employed by Christopher...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/0 ... nt-linked/


The ex-Kremlin spy apparently poisoned in Britain has links to the man who wrote the explosive Trump-Russia dossier

Mar. 6, 2018, 11:38 AM 12,357

Footage of Sergei Skripal's 2006 trial, obtained by Sky News.
Sky News
Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy at the centre of an apparent attempted assassination plot in Britain, had links to Christopher Steele.
Skripal passed intelligence to British officials at the same time Steele became MI6's Kremlin specialist.
But experts think Skripal's sudden illness is unrelated to his connection to Steele, who penned the explosive dossier on US President Donald Trump's Russia connections.
The ex-Kremlin spy found unconscious on a bench in Britain almost certainly has links to Christopher Steele, the man who penned the explosive Russia dossier on US President Donald Trump, experts told Business Insider.

Sergei Skripal, who is critically ill in hospital after being exposed to a mystery substance on Sunday, turned double agent in 1995 when he was recruited by the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

Skripal passed information to MI6 agents between 1995 and December 2004, when he was arrested. That was the verdict of a Moscow military court, which sentenced him to 13 years in prison for spying for Britain.

Skripal's time handing intelligence to Britain overlapped with Steele's meteoric rise at MI6, where he became the agency's preeminent expert on Russia. Steele was posted to Moscow for three years from 1990, working undercover as a British diplomat. After returning to London, he continued to work on Russia and "moved in a small world of Kremlin specialists," according to The Guardian. By 2006, he was head of MI6's Russia desk.

"It is beyond doubt that he would have known Steele and Steele would have known him," said Professor Anthony Glees, the director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham.

Jonathan Eyal, international director at think-tank the Royal United Services Institute, agreed that "it is likely" Steele and Skripal were linked. But he told Business Insider it was a "good headline" rather than information of any significance.

If Russia was to blame for Skripal's sudden illness it is not likely to be connected to Steele, Eyal said.

He said Vladimir Putin's regime would only have attempted an assassination if they had evidence that Skripal was still revealing state secrets or information on Kremlin operatives. "The idea that they would do it for fun or anything less serious is to be discounted," he added.

Russia specialist Glees also did not draw any particular significance from the connection, but did offer this theory: Trump supporters in Russia could have taken matters into their own hands in an attempt to embarrass Steele.

"If Steele was running Skripal in Russia, then it [an assassination attempt] could be a way of getting back at him. It could have come from Trump's Russian chums in America," he speculated.

Steele had an intricate web of Kremlin associates, and he used these contacts to compile his bombshell allegations against Trump. His 35-page report described Trump as engaging in compromising activities in Russia and his campaign officials coordinating with Kremlin operatives during his presidential campaign.

There is no suggestion either way that Skripal was one of Steele's sources, but it is likely that the two men would have been aware of each other's work.
http://www.businessinsider.com/sergei-s ... ele-2018-3
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 08, 2018 6:51 am

Telegraph News
Spy poisoning: 'Russia attempting to push Britain around', Gavin Williamson says

8 MARCH 2018 • 10:34AM
Britain must put up a stronger front against Russian military aggression, the Defence Secretary has said as he warned that "we are being pushed around" by the Kremlin.

As suspicions deepen over Russia's potential involvement in the poisoning of a former double agent, Sergei Skripal, Gavin Williamson said that Vladimir Putin's regime posed an "ever-greater threat".

His warning comes after a police officer poisoned by a "very rare" nerve agent in Salisbury while going to the aid of Mr Skripal and his daughter was said to be "talking and engaging" in hospital, according to the Home Secretary.

The targets of the attempted murder - Mr Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia - remain in a serious condition in intensive care, Amber Rudd added. They are understood to both be in comas.

Ms Rudd, who is is expected to make a statement in the Commons about the incident on Thursday, said she is "more optimistic" for the unnamed police officer. He was among the first to go to the aid of the pair, who were found slumped on a bench on Sunday afternoon.

The disclosure of the officer’s poisoning will add to growing pressure on the Government to take a hardline 
approach against Russia if state involvement is confirmed.

Emergency workers wear protective equipment in Salisbury at one of the scenes of investigation of the nerve agent attack

Listing examples of Russian aggression in eastern Europe and its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, Mr Williamson added that there was an urgent need to counter the Kremlin's "increasingly aggressive stance".

"Russia's changing the way they actually fight and raise the level of conflict," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "We are seeing this in the north Atlantic as well - the amount of submarines that are operating, there's a 10-fold increase in the last seven years.

"Russia's being assertive, Russia's being more aggressive, and we have to change the way that we deal with it because we can't be in a situation in these areas of conflict where we are being pushed around by another nation."

While Mr Williamson refused to say if he held Russia responsible for the attack in Salisbury, he described the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter as "absolutely disgusting".

Police on Wednesday said government scientists had identified the nerve agent used by would-be assassins at a shopping arcade in the Wiltshire city centre. The chemical used is "likely to be rarer than Sarin or VX nerve agents", a source told the BBC.

Sergei and Yulia Skripal remain in a serious condition in intensive care after being poisoned in Salisbury

Ms Rudd said more details about the nerve agent would not yet be made public, but told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was "very rare".

Poisoned police officer 'talking and engaging'

The poisoned police officer was initially treated in hospital as a precaution and then discharged, but his condition deteriorated and he was readmitted on Tuesday and taken into intensive care.

On Thursday morning, Ms Rudd disclosed that the officer is no longer critically ill.

She told ITV's Good Morning Britain: "I've spoken to Mark Rowley this morning. The two targets are still in very serious condition, the policeman is talking and is engaging so I'm more optimistic for him, but it's too early to say. This is a nerve agent, we are still treating it as very serious."

Asked if she was hopeful for the police officer, she said: "Indeed, hopeful, but it's still very serious." She added: "He is not in intensive care, but it's a serious situation."

Investigators at the back of Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury
Investigators continue to work at ones of the scenes in Salisbury on Wednesday CREDIT: PAUL GROVER FOR THE TELEGRAPH
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, earlier described the events as “very troubling”. He said: “If this does turn out to be in any way the result of hostile activity by another government, or directed, led, by another government, then the people of this country can be absolutely sure that the UK will respond robustly.”

Ms Rudd declined to say whether she regarded Russia as responsible for the Salisbury attack, but said the Government will put a plan in place to respond when the culprit is identified.

Zizzi
Investigators outside the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury, where the pair are believed to have dined before falling ill CREDIT: EDDIE MULHOLLAND FOR THE TELEGRAPH
"When we have all the evidence of what took place, we will - if it is appropriate - attribute it to somebody," the Home Secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"If that is the case then we will have a plan in place. We need to be very methodical, keep a cool head and be based on the facts, not rumour."

Video: Sergei Skripal days before he was poisoned


New CCTV footage emerges of Russian ex-spy
h
Ms Rudd added: "Let me be clear, we are absolutely robust about any crimes committed on these streets of the UK. There is nothing soft about the UK's response to any sort of state activity in this country.

"You may not hear about it all, but when we do see that there is action to be taken, we will take it."

Nerve agent 'rarer than Sarin or VX'

Hundreds of detectives, forensic officers and analysts are working on the case, which has drawn comparisons to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko on British soil in 2006.

A key focus will be working to uncover the origin of the nerve agent.

The BBC reported that a source familiar with the investigation said it was "likely to be rarer than Sarin or VX nerve agents".

Nerve agents, which are chemical weapons, have been used in assassinations and attacks in war zones in recent years.

Kim Jong-un's half-brother Kim Jong-nam was killed at an international airport in Malaysia last year in an attack using a nerve agent known as VX.

Another well-known nerve agent, Sarin gas, killed more than 90 people in a rebel-held area in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, drawing international condemnation of the Bashar Assad regime.


Access to such toxins are tightly regulated, meaning the Salisbury plot would have taken considerable planning to execute.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of Britain's Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, told The Times: "This is not the stuff you can knock up in your back shed.

"It is quite challenging to make. The inference is that this has probably come from a major laboratory, probably state-run."

Police: Spy and daughter 'targeted specifically'

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the head of counter-terrorism policing, revealed on Wednesday that the incident was being treated as attempted murder and the pair had been "targeted specifically".

He declined to specify the nerve agent or how it was administered.

Mr Rowley said: "Having established that a nerve agent was the cause of the symptoms, leading us to treat this as attempted murder, I can also confirm that we believe the two people who originally became unwell were targeted specifically.

"Our role now of course is to establish who is behind this and why they carried out this act."

Video: Mark Rowley's statement outside Scotland Yard


Police officer hospitalised as Scotland Yard reveals nerve agent was used in Russian spy case
h
Mr Rowley reiterated his appeal for anyone who was in Salisbury city centre on Sunday to come forward to help with the "missing pieces" in the case.

Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the incident posed a "low risk" to the public and advised that all the sites the pair were known to have visited had been "secured".


Russia denies responsibility for Salisbury attack

Russia has denied responsibility for the attack, which comes seven years after Mr Skripal was released from the country as part of a spy swap with the US.

He had been convicted in his home country in 2006 for passing state secrets to MI6.


The investigation has triggered a diplomatic row and prompted crisis talks in Whitehall, but Ms Rudd said police must respond to "evidence, not to rumour".
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/0 ... rve-agent/


NERVE AGENT
Vladimir Putin’s Re-Election Strategy: Nukes and Assassins
Emboldened by Trump’s weak response, Putin and his cronies are saying: ‘You know we did it, and you know and we know you’re not going to do anything about it.’

AMY KNIGHT
03.08.18 5:15 AM ET
Now that British police have announced that Sunday’s poisoning in Salisbury of a former Russian intelligence officer turned MI6 asset, Col. Sergei Skripal, “is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by administration of a nerve agent,” Kremlin involvement in the crime seems almost certain. But what was the motivation, aside from reminding Russian spies what could happen to them if they betrayed their country?

It is significant that the poisoning occurred just two weeks before Russia’s presidential elections, with Putin displaying hyped-up belligerence toward the West.

In an address last week to Russia’s Federal Assembly, Putin bragged about Russia’s new nuclear missiles, which he claimed could evade anti-missile defenses and deal a devastating blow to the United States.

And on Monday, Putin gave a rousing speech to officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB), praising them for their success in thwarting foreign espionage plots and reminding them that “the life, rights and security of our citizens must be steadfastly protected from both domestic and foreign threats, from any efforts to hinder us in solving the tasks of our country’s strategic development.”

This iron-fisted image is Putin’s strong card with the increasingly nationalistic, patriotic Russian electorate, who are fed a steady diet of anti-Western propaganda on state-controlled television. Putin of course will win the presidential election, but the Kremlin may be worried that the turnout will be low because of Aleksei Navalny’s vigorous campaign for a boycott of the elections. (Navalny is barred from participating.)

If Russians think that the Kremlin has stood up to the West by killing a Russian traitor, so much the better. And judging from their favorable reaction to the 2006 poisoning in London of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, this week’s attempted killing in Britain could give Putin’s candidacy some much-needed enthusiasm.


As British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson suggested Monday, the attack on Skripal has clear parallels with the Litvinenko murder. Both Litvinenko and Skripal had been officers in the Russian security services (Skripal served in the Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU) and both were later granted asylum in the U.K., where they cooperated with Britain’s MI6.

Litvinenko had received numerous death threats before he was murdered, while Skripal reportedly told police recently that his life had been threatened. Litvinenko died after sipping tea laced with lethal radioactive polonium at the Pine Bar of London’s Millenium Hotel. Skripal and his grown daughter Yulia, who also fell victim, had drinks at a local pub in Salisbury before collapsing later on a bench on a shopping street. In both cases, it appears the poisons were those manufactured at special government laboratories and thus extremely difficult to obtain.

Skripal, age 66, had worked for the GRU for most of his career. After retiring in 1999 with the rank of colonel, he took up a position with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he remained until 2003. The next year Skripal was arrested by the FSB for treason. He pleaded guilty, admitting that in 1995 he had begun working with British intelligence and provided them with names of undercover GRU agents in exchange for $100,000. By his own acknowledgement, he continued to work for the British even after he left the GRU.

Skripal’s espionage was reportedly so damaging to the GRU that he was compared to infamous Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU officer who was charged with treason for collaborating with the British and the Americans and shot in 1963.

In 2006, Skripal was sentenced to 13 years in a strict regime labor camp, but he was released in 2010 as part of a swap for 10 Russians who were under arrest for espionage in the United States.

Interestingly, retired FSB Maj. Gen. Alexander Mikhailov, a member of the Russian Intelligence and Defense Policy Committee, claimed that Skripal was suffering from a persecution complex and self-injected too many sedatives: “I believe that this is a maniac syndrome that he’s been suffering from. After immigrating, he’s constantly looked back, worried that somebody could hit him on the head. To calm down he overdosed on sedatives,” the general told the RIA news agency.

How would Mikhailov know details about Skripal’s state of mind? Was this just speculation? Or did he blurt out something he shouldn’t have? There’s a hint here that the Russians had had Skripal under surveillance for a while and might have tried to kill him any time, but they chose now.

Russian law today does not permit the death penalty, even for treason. But, as Russian political commentator Anton Orekh observes: “We are ruled by Chekists, and they have their own code of honor.” (He is referring to the name of the original Soviet secret police that has been used for a century now as the organization changed names and initials to become the Soviet KGB and now the Russian FSB.) “It is better," Orekh says, "to be a real enemy of the regime, a fighter for democracy, than a defector and a traitor to the [Chekist] corporation. The corporation does not forget such things and avenges them whenever possible.”

In 2006, the Russian parliament passed a law that basically authorized the FSB to hunt down and kill Russian enemies abroad. This paved the way for accused FSB assassins Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun to murder Litvinenko, who had become one of Putin’s fiercest critics. And there may have been other murders as well. Sergei Tretyakov, the former deputy chief of station for the Russian foreign intelligence service (SVR) in New York, defected to the U.S. in 2000. His sudden death in 2010 of a reported heart attack at age 53 was viewed as suspicious by many spy watchers.

British authorities are now likely to review 14 suspicious cases. As the BBC reports, the Skripal incident has revived allegations that several deaths "amount to a pattern of state-sponsored murder on British streets," although previously found to have been "heart attacks, suicides, accidents, and death by natural causes."

One victim, banker Alexander Perepilichnyyy, eventually was found to have traces of a rare plant toxin in his system. Another, oligargh Boris Berezovksky, was found hanged and deemed a suicide, but the marks on his neck suggested he may have been strangled by someone else.

The BBC lists as other cases: "Gareth Williams, the so-called 'spy in the bag,' whose badly decomposed body was found locked inside a holdall in his bath; Dr. Matthew Puncher, a British scientist involved in the Litvinenko case who was found in his kitchen with multiple stab wounds from two separate knives; and Scot Young, a business associate of Berezovsky, who was found impaled on railings outside his London flat after falling from a fourth-floor window."

British police have said that they found no evidence of Russian involvement in any of those cases, apart from Litvinenko.

In Soviet KGB days Russian spies who defected to the West generally were allowed to live out their lives in peace as an implicit agreement between Russian and Western spy services. Under Putin, the FSB, an independent agency whose main job is domestic counterintelligence, is used to mete out the Kremlin’s vengeance against them. As Putin himself warned when speaking about the spy swap that freed Skripal in 2010: “Traitors always come to a bad end.”

In Litvinenko’s case, the apparent plan was to have him die without anyone discovering the polonium in his body. But Litvinenko, who was exceptionally fit, lived longer than expected. This gave specialists time finally, on the day he died in 2006, to discover that the substance was polonium, a rare radioactive substance that is produced at only one Russian plant, heavily guarded by the FSB.

“The Skripal poisoning has revived allegations that several deaths amount to a pattern of state-sponsored murder on British streets.”
A subsequent, exhaustive British High Court inquiry concluded in January 2016 that Lugovoy and Kovtun had administered the poison to Litvinenko and that the FSB operation was “probably” approved by the then-FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev and “also President Putin.”

The word “probably” said a lot. Although everyone knew that such an audacious crime on British soil would not have been committed without authorization from Putin and his FSB chief, there was no smoking gun and never would be. Thus, the British response to the inquiry’s findings was a half-hearted gesture: an announcement that the assets of Lugovoy and Kovtun in Britain, which in all probability did not exist, had been frozen.

The British foreign policy group Chatham House predicted: “A weak response or one consisting only of words will merely encourage Russia [to believe] that these acts go unpunished. British and Russian citizens alike who have offended President Putin should therefore continue to live in fear in London.” As the Skripal case suggests, this prediction was accurate.

At home in Russia, Litvinenko’s killers were celebrated. In March 2015, just as the ongoing British Litvinenko inquiry was citing repeated evidence of Lugovoy’s guilt, Putin granted him an award for “services to the fatherland.” A Russian journalist observed at the time: “Public opinion in Russia is the complete opposite of that in Britain. The view here is that these guys [Lugovoy and Kovtun] are heroes because they punished a traitor.”

“Traitors always come to a bad end.”
— Vladimir Putin, speaking about 2010 spy swap that freed Col. Skripal
The Guardian stated the obvious in this latest case: “The biggest question about Sergei Skripal’s suspected poisoning is the timing. Skripal had spent several years in a Russian jail after being convicted of espionage and had presumably been thoroughly debriefed by his former spy bosses. If the Russian security services had wanted him to have an ‘accident’ during those years it would have been very easy to organise.”

But the Kremlin’s apparent goal was not just to kill Skripal or warn potential traitors of the fate that could befall them; it was also to send a message to the West and to the Russian people before the election. As Orekh puts it: “Putin can show videos of superweapons, and they can pour polonium or fentanyl on someone. These are just different parts of the overall plan. And if this is somehow connected with the elections, it is only because it shows that there are tough guys in power here and they will not give up that power for anything.”

Emboldened by the Trump administration’s lack of response to Russia’s aggressive interference in the U.S. presidential elections, and Trump’s repeated denials, in the face of vast evidence, that Putin orchestrates killings of his political opponents, Putin and his Kremlin cronies are telling the West: “You know we did it, and you know and we know you’re not going to do anything about it.”

Interviewed yesterday about the Skripal poisoning on radio Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow), Litvinenko’s killer Lugovoy, since 2007 a prominent member of the Russian parliament, summed up bluntly the Kremlin’s in-your-face attitude: “Something constantly happens to Russian citizens who either run away from Russian justice, or for some reason choose for themselves a way of life they call a change of their Motherland. So the more Britain accepts on its territory every good-for-nothing, every scum from all over the world, the more problems they will have.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/vladimir- ... -assassins
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:23 pm

21 people have been treated following Russia spy poisoning, police say

Chris BaynesThursday 8 March 2018 19:10 GMT
A total of 21 people have received medical treatment after falling ill following the poisoning of Russian spy Sergei Skripal, police have said.

Kier Pritchard, temporary Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police, said number of people were taken to hospital after exposure to the nerve agent which has left Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia fighting for life.

Several police officers are among those who have been treated, he said.

He told Sky News: “We’ve had multiple officers involved. There’s been around 21 people including the main two index patients – the man and the woman that were located a bench.

“A number of those have been through the hospital treatment process. They’re having blood tests, they’ve having treatment in terms of support and advice provided.”

His remarks are the first public disclosure of further victims beyond the Skripals and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, a Wiltshire Police officer who was among the first to give help to the spy.

Mr Skripal, 66, and his daughter, 33, remain critically ill in intensive care after they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury in Sunday. Detectives believe they were targeted in an assassination attempt.

Mr Bailey is the only police officer who remains in hospital in connection to the poisoning, said Mr Pritchard, who said it was too soon to say if he would make a full recovery.

The Chief Constable said: “He’s well, he’s sat up. He is not the Nick that I know but of course he’s receiving a high level of treatment. He’s very anxious, he’s very concerned. He did his very best on that night.”

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said earlier on Thursday: “The officer was one of the first responders on Sunday, acting selflessly to help others. The latest update from the hospital is that the officer remains serious but stable and is conscious, talking and engaging.”

More follows…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 46566.html


Who poisoned ex-Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter?

British officials say a 'very rare' nerve agent used to poison former Russian spy and his daughter.

08 Mar 2018 19:15 GMT
A "very rare" nerve agent". That is what the UK's interior minister says was used to poison a former Russian spy and his daughter.

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a park bench in the British city of Salisbury on Sunday.

It follows several other mysterious deaths of Russians in the UK over the past few years.

Some had defected to Britain and had made allegations against President Vladimir Putin or his country's security services.

Those accusations often involved political assassinations, killings of civilians in bombings and running multi-million-dollar corruption rackets.

So, what will be the implications of this latest attack? And what steps will Britain take to prevent such killings in the future?
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/in ... 51310.html


Yulia Skripal: from suburban Moscow life to nerve agent mystery

The Moscow estate where the Skripals lived is a long way from Wiltshire – and some locals are tight-lipped about their former neighbours

Marc BennettsLast modified on Thu 8 Mar 2018 12.44 EST
The Moscow estate where the Skripals lived is a long way from Wiltshire – and some locals are tight-lipped about their former neighbours

The skyline of the west Moscow housing estate where Yulia Skripal grew up is a long way from the green fields and quiet streets of Salisbury, where she remains critically ill in hospital after she and her father, Sergei, were targeted with a nerve agent.

The Skripals lived in an apartment in a 17-floor Soviet-era residential tower constructed out of prefabricated concrete blocks in the Krylatskoye district, a few stops from the end of the metro line. There are over 1,000 flats in the building, with lists of tenants’ public utilities debts pinned up by the lifts. Just around the corner is the school that Yulia attended from the age of six to 16.

Krylatskoye is a typical Moscow district, and by all accounts the family lived modestly. But reminders of wealth and influence are all around. Visible from the local children’s playground are the soaring towers of Moscow City, the Russian capital’s financial centre. On a nearby busy three-lane road, buses shuttle to and from some of Moscow’s most expensive addresses, including the Rublyovka residential area, home to some of the city’s wealthiest residents.

The Moscow housing estate where Yulia Skripal grew up.
The Moscow housing estate where Yulia Skripal grew up. Photograph: Marc Bennetts/the Guardian
Sergei Skripal spent much of his adult life here, marrying a local woman, Lyudmila, and raising two children. It is unclear if Yulia even knew that her father was a colonel in Russian military intelligence: she would have been just 15 when he retired and went to work in the foreign ministry. Those who knew him say Sergei was a friendly man, who was always welcoming when Yulia’s friends visited the family home.

Through conversations with Yulia’s friends, the Guardian has been able to put together a picture of an intelligent young woman, fluent in English and Spanish as well as Russian, whose comfortable life in Moscow was destroyed when her father was jailed on charges of spying for MI6.

Born in 1984, Yulia spent some of her early childhood in Malta, before starting at school in Moscow in 1990, as the Soviet system began to crumble. If she was aware of her father’s profession, she didn’t let on, friends say.

Irina Petrova, who has known Yulia most of her life, recalls teenage years filled with study and music. “Yulia didn’t say anything at all about her father’s work when we were young. We were just studying and hanging out. Her parents were often at their dacha, and we used to meet at her house a lot when they were away. She loved the Backstreet Boys and Five. After that, Yulia got into Goth, and went around dressed all in black for a while.”

A top student both at school and later at the Russian State University for the Humanities, where she studied geography, Yulia Skripal was 20 when her father was arrested in December 2004. In August 2006, he was sentenced to 13 years in jail and sent to a penal colony in Mordovia, more than 300 miles south-east of Moscow. His imprisonment reportedly put the family into financial difficulties.

“We were all totally shocked when her father was jailed,” said Petrova. “These were very tough years for Yulia. She was deeply affected by her father’s sentence.”

After university, Yulia went to work at Nike’s Moscow branch, leaving in 2010, after Sergei was released from prison as part of a high-profile prisoner swap involving 10 deep-cover sleeper agents planted in the US by Moscow, including Anna Chapman, a diplomat’s daughter. After serving five and a half years of his sentence, Sergei was plucked from prison and flown to Britain to start a new life. His family soon joined him.

Yulia appeared to love life in England, posting a photograph of Salisbury cathedral to her Facebook page. A video on one of her social media accounts shows the family’s back garden in Salisbury. “Little rascal,” Yulia says, as a squirrel munches on primroses in the well-cared-for flowerbed. She passed her driving test while in England and bought a car. She worked for a while at the Holiday Inn in Southampton, where she appears to have been popular with her colleagues.

Quick guide
How hard is it to make a nerve agent?

“She took to England like a fish to water. Yulia isn’t a typical Russian. She reminds me more of an Englishwoman or an American. Always smiling and waving. Her mother was the same. She was always in a good mood. Never discussed any problems,” said Petrova.

The family was hit by tragedy in 2012, when Yulia’s mother, Lyudmila, died in England of cancer. Last year, her older brother, Alexander, died of liver failure while on holiday in St Petersburg at the age of 43. He was buried in Salisbury, near his mother. The BBC cited relatives who say the circumstances of his death were suspicious. Yulia removed family photographs from her social media account last year, according to friends. It remains unclear why. She returned to Russia in 2014, but continued to visit England often.

Specialist officers in protective suits secure the police forensic tent covering the bench where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found critically
Specialist officers in protective suits secure the police forensic tent covering the bench where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found critically ill. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
At Krylatskoye, locals were tight-lipped about their former neighbours. Some claimed not to have heard about the Skripals’ poisoning, while others simply declined to comment.

“After we heard the news about what had happened, we were all hoping that it wasn’t our friend, Yulia,” said Petrova. “She is completely innocent of anything and she has her whole life ahead of her. I’m praying that she and her father survive this.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... nt-mystery



Sergei Skripal and the 14 deaths under scrutiny

By Joel Gunter BBC News

Image
Former Russian Agent Poisoned In London: Alexander Litvinenko is pictured at the Intensive Care Unit , ICU of University College Hospital, UCHGetty Images
Alexander Litvinenko lies in a hospital bed in London, shortly before his death in 2006
When Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, collapsed suddenly on Sunday in the sleepy cathedral city of Salisbury, there were unavoidable echoes of a messy, high-profile death in London a little over a decade before.

In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian agent, was rushed to hospital after collapsing in London. As the world watched, a rare and highly radioactive isotope destroyed Litvinenko's organs one by one, and he died three weeks later.

A British public inquiry found that the former Russian agent had ingested Polonium 210, and that his assassination was likely ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Skripal, 66, who was imprisoned in Russia for working for British intelligence and later came to the UK as part of a spy swap, is currently in critical condition, along with his 33-year-old daughter who was also taken ill. Authorities say they are trying to determine if he was poisoned.

Russia has denied any involvement, but the case has put renewed scrutiny on a string of deaths in the UK in the past two decades. The chair of the home affairs select committee, Yvette Cooper MP, wrote to Home Secretary Amber Rudd on Tuesday calling for a review of 14 other cases.

Those cases were variously found to have been heart attacks, suicides, accidents, and deaths by natural causes, but some allege that they amount to a pattern of state-sponsored murder on British streets.

Heartbreak grass

Security guard Neil St Clair-Ford was driving through Weybridge in Surrey in November 2012 when he saw something lying in the road ahead of him. He pulled over and found Alexander Perepilichnyy, an exiled Russian banker, in the foetal position, pale, cold, and displaying "very faint" signs of life.

Mr St Clair-Ford called a local former Navy colleague, Liam Walsh, to help administer first aid. Mr Walsh told an inquest that Perepilichnyy vomited "greeny-yellow" bile during mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with a strange taste, like "licking a battery".

Perepilichnyy was born in Ukraine and made his fortune as a financier in Russia, allegedly helping government-connected Russians launder money. In 2010 he fled to Britain and began to co-operate with British authorities. He collapsed during a run near his home, the day he returned from a short trip to Paris.
Image
Undated family handout photo of Alexander PerepilichnyyPA
An expert botanist said tests suggested the presence of a rare plant toxin in Perepilichnyy's stomach
Initial toxicology tests on Perepilichnyy's body revealed nothing suspicious and police said they had no evidence of foul play. But later tests performed by an expert botanist at Kew Gardens suggested the presence of a rare and deadly plant toxin in Perepilichnyy's stomach.

Gelsemium, a flowering plant native to China and South East Asia, is known as "heartbreak grass", because its leaves, if swallowed, cause cardiac arrest. Further tests of the compound found in Perepilichnyy could not definitively identify it as gelsemium, and an inquest into his death was suspended last year pending yet more tests. The inquest resumes next month.

US intelligence sources told the BBC in 2016 that they believed Perepilichnyy was murdered. An extensive investigation by Buzzfeed News claimed that the businessman was one of at least 14 deaths in the UK that US officials suspected were connected to Russia.

'The highest level of risk'

The following year, 2013, Boris Berezovsky, a one-time oligarch and close friend of Vladimir Putin, was found hanged in his bathroom. All the evidence seemed to point to a suicide. He had been suffering from depression and was in debt. According to police there was no sign of a struggle. A Home Office pathologist concluded that his injuries were consistent with hanging.

But he had also made himself a sworn enemy of Mr Putin, having fled Russia for exile in Britain and fiercely criticised the regime from afar.

Berezovsky's family arranged for an asphyxiation expert to examine photographs of his body. Dr Bernd Brinkmann testified that the ligature mark on Berezovsky's neck did not share the typical V-shape created by a hanging, and instead suggested strangling. The dead man also had a broken rib and a cut on the back of his head. It was enough to persuade the coroner to record an open verdict.
Image
File photo dated 13/10/11of Boris BerezovskyPA
Boris Berezovsky was found hanged in a bathroom at home in 2013
"Anyone Putin deems to have betrayed Russia is at the highest level of risk," said Bill Browder, a former Moscow-based financier who led a campaign to impose sanctions on top Russian officials accused of corruption - sanctions that enraged Mr Putin.

"And Russia can get away with brazenness in the UK because there have never been any consequences to Russian assassinations here," he said. "The British government either ignores the crimes completely, as they did in the Perepilichnyy case, or they recognise the crime and don't do anything about it."

Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said any evidence of Russian involvement with Mr Skripal's condition would be dealt with "appropriately and robustly".

"I say to governments around the world that no attempt to take innocent life on UK soil will go unsanctioned or unpunished," he said.

Presentational grey line
How will experts know if ex-spy was poisoned?
The 'quintessentially English' home of a Russian spy
Skripal case highlights UK's Russia dilemma
Presentational grey line
Among the other deaths flagged to the home secretary on Tuesday are those of Gareth Williams, the so-called "spy in the bag", whose badly decomposed body was found locked inside a holdall in his bath; Dr Matthew Puncher, a British scientist involved in the Litvinenko case who was found in his kitchen with multiple stab wounds from two separate knives; and Scot Young, a business associate of Berezovsky, who was found impaled on railings outside his London flat after falling from a fourth-floor window.

Williams' death was ruled to be "probably an accident" and Puncher's and Young's both suicides, and British police say they have found no evidence of Russian involvement in any of the cases barring Litvinenko's.

"British police are under no sort of political pressure whatsoever," Tony Brenton, the British ambassador to Moscow at the time of Litvinenko's death, told the BBC. "If they had found evidence of Russian involvement in those cases, we would have followed it up."

But the UK government has faced criticism over a perceived lack of action. In the wake of Litvinenko's death, the UK tried and failed to extradite two Russian agents alleged to have carried out the hit. Instead, several Russian diplomats were expelled, provoking a tit for tat response from Russia.
Image
A still image taken from an undated video shows Sergei SkripalReuters
A video still shows Sergei Skripal being detained by Russian security services in 2004
The problem facing the UK government now, said Mr Brenton, is that ministers have already levied significant sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine and Syria, and diplomatic relations are already very poor.

"If it is proven that this was an attack with Russian state involvement we will of course do something, there will be lots of anger and probably more sanctions. But we have already used up an awful lot of our ammunition. The locker is quite bare," he said.

In a statement, the Russian embassy in London said: "Media reports create an impression of a planned operation by the Russian special services, which is completely untrue."

In Salisbury, counter-terror police have taken over the investigation. The park bench where Mr Skripal collapsed has been cordoned off and a restaurant where he ate lunch has been temporarily closed.

If it turns out to have been a Russian attack, part of the purpose will have been to warn those in Russia against betrayal, and those in exile that they are never safe, said Mr Browder. "It sends a message to the rank and file that terrible things can befall you and your family," he said.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43 ... ow_twitter


Russian spy: Military deployed after poisoning
s
About 180 military personnel have been deployed to Salisbury to help in the investigation into the attempted murder of an ex-Russian spy and his daughter.

They will include Royal Marines and military personnel who have specialist training in chemical warfare and decontamination, the BBC understands.

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed on Sunday afternoon after being exposed to a nerve agent.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has described the attack as "outrageous".

The military personnel are experts in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear warfare.

Russian spy: What we know so far
What are nerve agents?
State TV anchor warns 'traitors'
The Metropolitan Police said the counter-terrorism unit has requested the military's assistance "to remove a number of vehicles and objects from the scene", including ambulances that may have been contaminated while assisting the victims.

The public should not be alarmed and there is no evidence to suggest a wide public health risk at this time, the police added.

Valery Morozov, a Russian exile, told BBC News that Mr Skripal was working in cyber security.

The former Russian military security colonel and his daughter remain in a critical condition at Salisbury District Hospital.

Det Sgt Nick Bailey - who attended the scene on Sunday - is conscious but "very anxious" about being exposed to a nerve agent.

Director of nursing Lorna Wilkinson said Mr Bailey was in a serious but stable condition.

Yulia Skripal and Sergei SkripalRex Features
Former Russian military security colonel Sergei Skripal, right, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious in Salisbury on Sunday
Specialist investigators wearing protective suits have been seen examining the bench that Mr Skripal and his daughter collapsed on.

Mr Skripal's house and his car have also been cordoned off.

It is known that Mr Skripal and his daughter had visited the Mill pub and Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon, before they were found near the Maltings shopping centre.

Ms Rudd visited some of the sites cordoned off by counter-terrorism police in Salisbury on Friday.

She also visited Salisbury District Hospital where Mr Skripal, his daughter, and Mr Bailey are being treated.

The home secretary, who met Mr Bailey in hospital, would not give any further details of the nerve agent used or how it was administered.


Amber Rudd praises Salisbury police response
The graves of Mr Skripal's wife and son at a Salisbury cemetery have also been taped off.

Mr Skripal, 66, was convicted by the Russian government of passing secrets to MI6, but given refuge in the UK in 2010 as part of a "spy swap".

Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Blair said the "extraordinary attack in Salisbury" is a good reason to investigate whether there is a pattern of former British intelligence collaborators dying in the UK.

Former First Sea Lord and security minister Lord West said: "If it is a nation which has done it, it is completely unacceptable. It's almost like an act of war.

"To actually allow something like a nerve agent to be used in another country for some reason is outrageous."

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has denied his country's involvement in the attempted murder of the ex-spy.


BBC Rewind looks back at cases of high profile Russians targeted on foreign soil
The attempted murder of Mr Skripal has drawn comparisons to the 2006 assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, who ingested the rare and highly radioactive Polonium 210 in London.

On Tuesday Labour MP Yvette Cooper asked the home secretary to review 14 other deaths that had not been treated as suspicious by UK police, but have reportedly been identified by US intelligence sources as being connected to the Russian state.

Ms Rudd has refused to speculate on whether the Russian state might have been involved in the attack, saying the police investigation should be based on "facts, not rumour".
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43344725
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Mar 11, 2018 7:22 am

Nerve agent used to 'poison' Russian spy Sergei Skripal found at Zizzi

1 hour ago
ES News Email

Police have discovered traces of the nerve agent used against the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the restaurant where they ate before they were found collapsed on a bench.

During an ongoing forensic examination, the substance was found at Zizzi in Salisbury.

The pair are currently in critical condition in hospital.

No-one else who was at the restaurant at the time is thought to be at risk, nor has it been suggested that their fellow diners had anything to do with the suspected attack, the BBC reported.

Amber Rudd confirms Sergei Skripal and daughter remain in critical condition
Zizzi is one of five sites that are currently being scoured for evidence by police.

Other areas that are under investigation are Mr Skripal’s home, the Mill pub which was visited by the Skripals, the bench where the father and daughter were found and the cemetery where Mr Skripal’s wife and son are buried.

A police vehicle near the Zizzi restaurant which has been cordoned off by police in Salisbury (EPA)
Armed forces personnel were assisting the police with the probe for the third day on Sunday.

Soldiers were seen at the South Western Ambulance Service station on Saturday as a vehicle was winched on to the back of an Army low-loader and taken away.

It comes as Home Secretary Amber Rudd said police investigating the suspected nerve agent attack in Salisbury have identified more than 240 witnesses and 200 pieces of evidence.

There was further police activity at the London Road cemetery on Saturday, where officers in hazmat suits had removed items and covered his son's memorial stone with a forensic tent.

Police cordoned off the memorial stone of Mr Skripal's son (PA)
Scotland Yard said no exhumations had taken place.

Speaking following a meeting of the government's Cobra emergencies committee, Ms Rudd said there were more than 250 officers from eight out of 11 of the country's counter-terrorism units involved in the investigation.

She said: "I want to stress that they are proceeding with speed and professionalism. We are putting in enormous resources to ensure that they have all the support that they need to do that."

Ms Rudd said it was still too early to say who was responsible for the attack.

Yulia Scripal: The former Russian spy's daughter may have been poisoned over an anti-Vladimir Putin social media post (Facebook)
She said: "This investigation is focused on making sure that we keep people safe and also that we collect all the evidence so that when it comes to attribution (of the attack) we will be absolutely clear where it should be," she said.

"The police have said that if anybody thinks they have any additional information they would welcome them coming forward.

"There is also substantial amounts of CCTV they have to go through. This is a painstaking, detailed investigation and the police need to be given the space and time to get on with it."

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia are still fighting for their lives after being exposed to a toxic substance in the Wiltshire city.

Mr Bailey, who was part of the initial response by authorities, also remains in hospital, although he released a statement thanking people for their support.

Double agent: Sergei Skripal was found unconscious in Salisbury, where he has been living a quiet retirement
The statement read: "Nick would like us to say on his behalf that he and his family are hugely grateful for all the messages of support from the public, and colleagues from the police family. People have been so kind and he has expressed that he will never forget that kindness.

"He also wishes to say that he was part of a group of officers and other emergency service colleagues who dealt with the initial incident.

"He wants to say that he does not consider himself a 'hero', he states he was merely doing his job - a job he loves and is immensely proud of - just like all of his other dedicated colleagues do, day in day out, in order to protect the public and keep people safe.

"He would like to thank everyone once again for all of their kind thoughts and best wishes, they are truly appreciated.

"He asks respectfully that the media allow his family privacy at this difficult time."

Sergei Skripal: What we know so far
Police said 21 people had been seen for medical treatment since the incident.

The figure includes members of the public and emergency staff, some of whom have had blood tests as well as receiving support and advice.

The attack is being treated as attempted murder.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/nerv ... 86846.html




Russian spy latest: Britain to raise Sergei Skripal poisoning case with Nato allies

Adam LusherSaturday 10 March 2018 19:25 GMT
Development comes as Home Secretary Amber Rudd reveals the investigation now involves more than 250 counter terrorism police officers.

Britain is to discuss the poisoning of Sergei Skripal with its Nato allies, British Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood has said Getty
Britain is to raise the Sergei Skripal poisoning case with its Nato allies, a defence minister has revealed.

With military chemical weapons experts now investigating the suspected nerve agent attack and Home Secretary Amber Rudd chairing an emergency Cobra meeting on Saturday afternoon, Tobias Ellwood said the Government intended to discuss the case at Nato level.

“We mustn’t get ahead of ourselves, but we must have a robust response and it’s something that we’ll be discussing with our Nato partners,” the defence minister said.

“Some big questions arise, as to how do you stand up to a clandestine and sinister attack deliberately done to play havoc in our society?”

His firm line appeared to be backed by the security minister Ben Wallace, who mentioned Britain’s “powerful allies” as he said the Government was ready to respond with “the full force of the United Kingdom’s resources” once investigators had established who was behind the attack.

Mr Wallace told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Once we have established the facts and the attribution, the Government and law enforcement and others will respond appropriately.

“We will respond with the full force of the United Kingdom’s resources if that is the appropriate and proportionate thing to do.”

“There are lots of things that the United Kingdom can do,” Mr Wallace added. “It is a powerful country with a powerful economy, powerful allies, powerful military and powerful other capabilities – and we shall look at all those.”

Sergei Skripal: Forensic police inspect cemetery in Salisbury in connection with Russian spy poisoning case
After Saturday’s Cobra meeting, Ms Rudd revealed that the investigation of the suspected nerve agent attack on Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia had now become a massive operation involving more than 250 counter terrorism police officers.

Investigators have now identified over 240 witnesses and are looking at more than 200 pieces of evidence.

Mr Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter remain seriously ill in hospital. Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, one of the first to come to their assistance when they collapsed on Sunday, is also still in hospital.

He was, however, able to release a statement via Wiltshire Police on Saturday, saying he was not a hero and had only been doing his job.

The mention of Nato suggests a potential further hardening of Government attitudes towards Russia, from a point where tensions were already high even before the events in Salisbury.

On Monday, hours before it became clear that Mr Skripal had been poisoned, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was telling MPs: “Vladimir Putin has made it quite clear that he has hostile intent towards this country. We have to wake up to that threat and we have to respond to it.”

If the investigation does prove Russian state involvement, the Government will face intense pressure to produce a strong response.

It has already been accused of emboldening Russia with a “weak” reaction to the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, who had radioactive polonium slipped into his tea at a London hotel in 2006.

In 2016 a public inquiry found there was a “strong probability” that Mr Litvinenko’s killers were acting on behalf of the Russian secret service in an operation “probably approved” by Mr Putin.

Theresa May, then the Home Secretary, told MPs she would be seeking European arrest warrants for the two suspected killers, and said there would be a Treasury freeze on the pair’s assets.

UK news in pictures

She added that the UK had been “leading” on EU sanctions that were already in place against Russia as a result of the Ukraine crisis.

But she and then Prime Minister David Cameron were accused of going soft on Moscow and taking only symbolic action. The inquiry reported a month after Mr Cameron and Mr Putin had pledged to “work together” to defeat Isis in Syria.

Some MPs and Mr Litvinenko’s widow Marina had been calling for the expulsion of all Russian security service officers from Britain, for action against “dirty money” invested in London and for Britain to reconsider its involvement in the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

At the time, Ms Litvinenko’s lawyer Ben Emmerson said Government inaction would be “craven”.

After Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned, Bill Browder, a British businessman who has campaigned to expose high-level corruption in Russia, told MPs: “The consequences of the Litvinenko inquiry were laughably inadequate, and have basically given the Russian government and Putin a green light to do more hits on UK soil.”

A similar argument was advanced by Tory MP John Whittingdale, the former Culture Secretary, who told Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Tuesday that it was “two years since the public inquiry concluded that President Putin almost certainly approved the murder of Mr Litvinenko.”

“Is it not therefore clear,” Mr Whittingdale demanded, “that existing sanctions are failing to deter Russia, possibly even from carrying out further assassinations on British soil, and that the time has come to impose far tougher sanctions against targeted individuals associated with President Putin’s regime?”

In reply, Mr Johnson said: “If the suspicions of members on all sides of this House are indeed confirmed, then that is going to have to be one of the options we look at.”

It is unclear what collective action – if any – Nato might take if investigators were able to confirm widespread suspicions that Russia is behind the poisoning of Mr Skripal and his daughter.

The first time that Nato invoked the collective defence principle enshrined in Article 5 of its founding treaty was in response to the 9/11 terror attacks in the US.

Nato also announced collective defence measures in 2014 in response to what was seen as Russia’s annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine.

The measures adopted consisted largely of increased military presences and shows of strength. Nato increased its presence in the south east of the alliance area, which is centred on a multinational brigade in Romania.

The alliance also stepped up its policing of airspace over the Black Sea and bolstered the defences of eastern European Nato members by deploying multinational battalions in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

yuliaskripal.jpg
Yulia Skripal and her father were found unconscious on a Salisbury park bench (Yulia Skripal/Facebook)
Russia has vehemently denied involvement in the nerve agent attack and accused British politicians of engaging in “pure propaganda”.

Security officials, however, have said the specific chemical used would have been difficult to obtain and could only have come from a state run or state-licensed laboratory.

This, though, does not rule out the possibility of freelance action by aggrieved Russian agents still bitter at the way Mr Skripal betrayed his comrades by passing on the identities of operatives to the British.

A senior British diplomat who had served in Moscow told The Independent: “Skripal was an MI6 agent who was highly successful and who passed on the identities of Russian spies, supposedly in return for money. So he had betrayed lots of his comrades, he had made lots of enemies. Maybe this was payback.”

It has been reported that Mr Skripal, codenamed “Forthwith” by his British handlers, was even able to hand over the entire telephone directory of the GRU, Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency.

It was said the double agent spent nearly ten years handing over secrets after MI6 first made contact with him when he was spying for Russia in Spain in July 1995.

MI6 reportedly ended up buying Mr Skripal a timeshare holiday home near Malaga, and his case officer would allegedly fly out to see him, paying between $5,000 and $6,000 in cash at the end of every visit.

But in December 2004 Mr Skripal was arrested by the Russians. He was jailed for treason in 2006 but freed in 2010, in what is thought to have been the biggest spy swap since the Cold War.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 49771.html


If the case against Russia is proved, charge Putin with the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal


Simon TisdallSat 10 Mar 2018 16.01 EST
The Salisbury poisoning is a brazen attack on a sovereign country and cannot go unpunished

Military personnel in protective suits
Military personnel wearing protective suits cover two ambulances with tarpaulin. Photograph: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images
The attempted murder of Sergei Skripal has shed uncomfortable light on Britain’s vulnerability to foreign threats, some potentially emanating from foreign governments, against its sovereignty, security, citizens’ safety and laws.

The brazen nature and public execution of the plot to kill Skripal is disturbing for many reasons. It suggests respect for Britain, its values and its law enforcement capabilities is so diminished that it is seen as an easy venue for score-settling.

Or was the plot intended, at least in part, to deliberately discredit and humiliate the British government? A handful of countries might have cause to do that. But only one or two possess the rare nerve agent, the sheer malice and the ruthless audacity evident in this case.

In 1850 Lord Palmerston, then foreign secretary, stood before the House of Commons and enunciated the principle of universal protection for British citizens everywhere, in the teeth of continental and Ottoman absolutism.

“As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say civis Romanus sum [I am a Roman citizen]; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong,” he said.

Nowadays not only is Britain incapable of protecting its citizens abroad – just look at the shameful case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, unjustly jailed in Tehran – it also struggles to protect British citizens on home soil, including foreign nationals taking refuge here. One cause of vulnerability is the widely held perception that Britain is little more than a US satrapy, faithfully following Washington’s lead. When politicians extol the “special relationship”, they compound the damage to Britain’s reputation as an independent actor. Even so, don’t look for help from Donald Trump.

In dealing with modern-day authoritarian regimes, Britain is at an even greater disadvantage. At least the US broadly shares its democratic values. Chinese and Russian leaders suffer no such constraints. Today Xi Jinping will be consecrated de facto president for life. Vladimir Putin, in effect, already holds that position in Russia. Such unchecked power affords enormous freedom of action that British politicians lack.

Past British bluster and prevarication weaken this country’s hand. After Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian defector, was murdered in London in 2006, politicians such as Theresa May, then home secretary, failed forcefully to pursue the state-sponsored Russian perpetrators, even after their identity was known.

The people who attacked Skripal may calculate the response now will be similarly weak-kneed. They may also assume that, as with Litvinenko, Britain will again feebly shy away from open confrontation and hope the problem fades from view.

May says that if Russia is proved culpable in Salisbury, “full-spectrum” counter-measures will be applied. But she is badly short of ammo. Diplomatic expulsions are a two-edged sword. Sanctions are already being applied, related to Ukraine, without much effect.

Further action of that kind can only happen via the EU, where May is busy burning bridges. To pretend that bad feeling caused by Brexit will have no impact on future European cooperation in such cases is delusional. May could appeal to the UN. But there she faces a Russian veto.

Targeting financial dealings, including alleged money laundering, might be a more promising avenue. But if the Kremlin really is to blame for this latest outrage, the best response is also the simplest: charge Putin with attempted murder.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... ted-murder
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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Mar 13, 2018 11:48 am

Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov found dead at his London home
Close friend of late oligarch Boris Berezovsky claimed political asylum in UK after being convicted of fraud

Luke Harding
Tue 13 Mar 2018 11.12 EDT Last modified on Tue 13 Mar 2018 11.46 EDT

Nikolai Glushkov
Nikolai Glushkov, 68, was discovered by his family and friends on Monday night. Photograph: Facebook
A Russian exile who was close friends with the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been found dead in his London home, according to friends.

Nikolai Glushkov was discovered by his family and friends late on Monday night, aged 68. The cause of death is not yet clear. One of his friends, the newspaper editor Damian Kudryavtsev, posted the news on his Facebook page.

In the 1990s, Glushkov worked for the state airline Aeroflot and Berezovsky’s LogoVAZ car company. In 1999, as Berezovsky fell out with Vladimir Putin and fled to the UK, Glushkov was charged with money laundering and fraud. He spent five years in jail and was freed in 2004.

In recent years, Glushkov had lived in London, where he received political asylum. In 2011, he gave evidence at the court case brought by Berezovsky against his fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich, who remained on good terms with the Kremlin.

Glushkov told the court he had effectively been taken “hostage” by Putin’s administration, which was pressuring Berezovsky to sell his TV station ORT.

Berezovsky accused Abramovich of cheating him out of $5bn (£3.2bn) and claimed they had been partners in the 1990s in an oil firm, Sibneft. Abramovich denied this. The judge, Mrs Justice Gloster, rejected the claim and described Berezovsky as “deliberately dishonest”.

Glushkov was deeply unhappy with the judgment and launched a formal appeal. Meanwhile, Berezovsky disappeared from public life. In March 2013, he was found dead at his ex-wife’s home in Berkshire. Police believe he committed suicide. His friends were not so certain, with a coroner recording an open verdict.

Speaking to the Guardian Glushkov said he was extremely sceptical that Berezovsky who was found hanged in a bathroom had died of natural causes. “I’m definite Boris was killed. I have quite different information from what is being published in the media,” he said.

He noted that a large number of Russian exiles including Berezovsky, and Berezovsky’s close friend Alexander Litvinenko, had died under mysterious circumstances. “Boris was strangled. Either he did it himself or with the help of someone. [But] I don’t believe it was suicide,” Glushkov said.

He added: “Too many deaths [of Russian exiles] have been happening.”

Glushkov continued to investigate the circumstances surrounding Berezovsky’s death for some months. In 2013 he emailed a friend: “I have a lot of new facts that are of great interest.” He also admitted that he had fallen out with Berezovsky

Glushkov has two grown up children, Natasha and Dima, and an ex-wife who lives in Moscow. It is understood that he had split in recent years from a partner.

In 2017, during a trial in absentia in Russia, Glushkov was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing $123m from the company.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... ssion=true
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby Jerky » Tue Mar 13, 2018 12:49 pm

durrr YOU WARMONGER!!!

Just kidding, SLAD. Thank you for this excellent cross-section of material, as always.

J.
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 14, 2018 12:09 pm

A neighbour of a Russian businessman found dead in London told today how he had witnessed “suspicious” activity outside his home.

Counter-terrorism police are investigating the “unexplained” death of Nikolai Glushkov, 68, who was discovered collapsed at his terraced house in New Malden by his daughter Natalia on Monday night.

A Russian newspaper reported a friend of Mr Glushkov saying that there were “strangulation” marks on his neck and it was not clear if it was murder or suicide.

Mr Glushkov was a former employee and close friend of oligarch Boris Berezovsky, an outspoken Kremlin critic, who was found dead at his home near Ascot in 2013 with a scarf around his neck. A coroner recorded an open verdict.

Glushkov, a former senior Russian executive linked to late Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky was found dead in unexplained circumstances (AFP/Getty Images)

Today a neighbour of Mr Glushkov said people in expensive “supercars” had visited the house in recent months.

Glushkov was found collapsed at his New Maldon home by his daughter Natalia
The resident, 35, who did not wanted to be named, said: “There was something strange about the number of supercars pulling up outside the house.

There was a Ferrari and a Lamborghini I believe. One of the cars was yellow and really stuck out. Houses in the road are about £500,000 and people do not have supercars like that. It was all very strange, I am going to report it to the police. The activity was unusual. It makes you wonder if it was connected with what had happened. I was suspicious.”


The address in New Malden which has been sealed-off by police after Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov was found dead (PA)
Mr Glushkov lived alone in Clarence Drive with a cat and dog. Russian sources in London said he had “no guard, no servants”, according to Russian newspaper Kommersant.

“Allegedly, his daughter who came to visit discovered traces of strangulation on her father’s body,” reported the newspaper,

Mr Glushkov was director of Russian state airline Aeroflot in the Nineties and a close friend of Mr Berezovsky. However, when the billionaire fell out with President Putin in 1999, Mr Glushkov was charged with defrauding Aeroflot and jailed for five years.

After being released he fled to Britbut faced fresh charges of fraud in 2010. He was sentenced to eight years in his absence last year. Mr Glushkov, who feared he was on a Kremlin hit list, was also linked to Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy assassinated in London in 2006 as well as Andrei Lugovoi, the Russian MP believed to have carried out the killing.

Scotland Yard said Mr Glushkov’s death was not being linked to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury. The counter-terrorism command unit was leading the investigation into the death “as a precaution”.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/stra ... 89721.html
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 15, 2018 1:59 pm

Russian businessman appears on TV as bodyguards glower in background, to claim he is in line to be killed

Jon SharmanThursday 15 March 2018 13:58 GMT
A Russian businessman has appeared on television apparently flanked by bodyguards and claimed he fears for his safety following the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal.

Sergei Kapchuk, a former regional deputy in Sverdlovsk, claimed he was in line to be killed, as two men in dark suits and sunglasses glowered in the background.

Mr Kapchuk appears on a Russian embassy list of people wanted for alleged crimes in Russia and he suggested that others – unnamed UK media agencies – considered it a “death row list”.

In an interview with the TV Rain channel, he referenced the death of Nikolai Glushkov in New Malden, south-west London. Police are treating the death of Mr Glushkov, an associate of leading Vladimir Putin critic Boris Berezovsky, as unexplained.

“Nikolai Glushkov was the first one to be assassinated and I will be the 12th, sorry 11th now. I am not happy about it”, Mr Kapchuk said.

Mr Kapchuk goes by the name Windsor in the UK, according to news reports from 2017, and his Facebook profile lists him as director general of Royal Apartments, a short-let company based in Chelsea.

On Companies House he is listed as the director of three more firms based at the same address plus one in Kensington.

Last year, the Russian embassy in London published the names of 22 people it said were fugitives from justice in their home country.

Skripal attack aftermath – in pictures

Mr Kapchuk was charged with “large-scale fraud in collusion through abuse of power” under Article 159 of Russia’s criminal code, it said. Mr Glushkov also appeared on the list, charged with embezzlement.

But Mr Kapchuck told TV Rain his “personal file” had been deleted from Interpol’s database and that “furthermore my data files were deleted from all ‘criminal wanted’ lists from all over the world”.

There was no evidence he had committed wrongdoing, he said, but added the Russian embassy had declined to remove him from the list.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 57216.html
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 16, 2018 10:03 am

Nikolai Glushkov: Russian exile murdered at London home by 'compression to neck', police say

Friday 16 March 2018 15:59 GMT
An exiled Russian diplomat was murdered at his London home, police have said.

Nikolai Glushkov was found dead in New Malden on Monday.

He was a friend of other Russian exiles linked to Alexander Litvinenko, but police say there is no evidence of a link between his death and the nerve agent attack in Salisbury.

More follows…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... ce=Twitter


Police launch murder inquiry over death of Nikolai Glushkov


Met announces move after pathologist’s report on death of Russian exile in London this week

Robert BoothFri 16 Mar 2018 12.00 EDT
Police have launched a murder investigation into the death of the Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov.

Scotland Yard announced the move after receiving a pathologist’s report that gave the cause of death as compression to the neck.

The Met police’s counter-terrorism command, which has led the investigation from the outset, was retaining its lead role in the investigation “because of the associations Mr Glushkov is believed to have had”, the force said.

“At this stage there is nothing to suggest any link to the attempted murders in Salisbury, nor any evidence that he was poisoned,” the police said in a statement.

Police were called by the London ambulance service at 22.46pm on Monday after Glushkov was found dead at his home in New Malden, south-west London.

A special postmortem began on Thursday.

At the time of his death, Glushkov, 68, was about to defend a claim against him by Aeroflot at the commercial court in London, where he was accused by the Russian authorities of fraud.

In 2017, during a trial in absentia in Russia, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for stealing $123m from the airline, which then pursued the case in London. Glushkov failed to show up at court in central London on Monday and his body was discovered that evening.

In a statement the Met said detectives “are retaining an open mind and are appealing for any information that will assist the investigation”. Officers want to hear from anyone who may have seen or heard anything suspicious at or near his home in Clarence Avenue between Sunday 11 March and Monday 12 March.

In the 1990s Glushkov was a director of the state airline and of Boris Berezovsky’s LogoVaz car company. In 1999, as Berezovsky fell out with Vladimir Putin and fled to the UK, Glushkov was charged with money laundering and fraud. He spent five years in jail and was freed in 2004. Fearing further arrest, he fled to the UK and was granted political asylum.

In 2011 he gave evidence in a court case brought by Berezovsky against his fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich, who remained on good terms with the Kremlin. Glushkov told the court he had effectively been taken hostage by Putin’s administration, which wanted to pressure Berezovsky to sell his stake in the TV station ORT.

In March 2013 Berezovsky was found dead at his ex-wife’s home in Berkshire. Police said they believed he had killed himself but a coroner recorded an open verdict.

Speaking to the Guardian in 2013, Glushkov said he did not believe Berezovsky took his own life. “I’m definite Boris was killed. I have quite different information from what is being published in the media,” he said.

He noted that a large number of Russian exiles, including Berezovsky and Alexander Litvinenko, had died under mysterious circumstances. “Boris was strangled. Either he did it himself or with the help of someone. [But] I don’t believe it was suicide,” Glushkov said. “Too many deaths [of Russian émigrés] have been happening.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... i-glushkov






Russian exile's death in London is suspicious, friends claim

Nikolai Glushkov said to have been in ‘a perfect mood’ before he was found dead at his home

Luke Harding
Wed 14 Mar 2018 14.53 EDT Last modified on Wed 14 Mar 2018 18.00 EDT

Friends of the Russian exile found dead in his London home on Monday said they believed his death to be suspicious, adding that he had shown no signs of depression in recent months and was “in a perfect mood”.

Nikolai Glushkov’s body was found by his daughter Natalya at his house in New Malden, Kingston upon Thames. There were signs of “suffocation”, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported. Glushkov, 68, lived alone.

Counter-terrorism police are leading the investigation into his death because of Glushkov’s association with the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who died in 2013. The Metropolitan police say there is currently no evidence to suggest a link between Glushkov’s case and the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

Glushkov was a prominent opponent of the Kremlin. He spent five years in jail in Russia before escaping to the UK in 2004. He was a director of Aeroflot, the state airline, and worked closely with Berezovsky in the 1980s and 90s.

At the time of his death, Glushkov was about to defend a claim against him by Aeroflot at the commercial court in London, where he was accused by the Russian authorities of fraud. One friend, who declined to be named, said he had spent months preparing for the case.

He failed to show up for a hearing on Monday morning. “He was eager to win,” the friend said. “He had been getting ready for this for months.” The friend said she had visited him in December in hospital, soon before he had an operation on his foot, and spoke to him afterwards on the phone.

Nikolai Glushkov pictured in Moscow in 2000. He escaped to the UK in 2004. Photograph: Pavel Smertin/AP
“He was in a good mood all the time. There was nothing about him which suggested depression or unhappiness. He was in perfect spirits,” the friend said.

Alex Goldfarb, who knew Glushkov, said he thought his death was highly suspicious. “I think it’s fairly clear it wasn’t an accident or disease. It’s either suicide or strangulation, like with Boris [Berezovsky],” Goldfarb said.

Berezovsky was found hanged at his ex-wife’s home in Berkshire. Glushkov refused to believe that his friend had killed himself, telling the Guardian at the time: “I don’t believe it was suicide. Too many deaths [of Russian emigres] have been happening.”

Goldfarb said Russia’s spy agencies had held a grudge against Glushkov since the 1990s, after he stopped them from using Aeroflot as a network for money laundering and special operations. “There was a history. They considered him to be an enemy,” Goldfarb said. “They have a long memory.”

Glushkov was part of Berezovsky’s circle of London exiles, most of whom are now dead. He knew Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed in 2006 by two Kremlin assassins using a radioactive cup of tea.

In recent years, Glushkov was on friendly terms with his London neighbours, who saw him hobbling on crutches or with a walking stick after his operation. He had a dog and a cat. His daughter Natalya lives in the UK, while his ex-wife and son, Dima, are based in Moscow. He was granted political asylum in 2010.

In 2011 he gave evidence in a court case brought by Berezovsky against fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich, who is on good terms with Vladimir Putin. Berezovsky lost. Glushkov was unhappy with the judgment and launched a formal appeal, citing bias.

In 2013 he noted that a large number of Russian exiles had died under mysterious circumstances. He was practically the last one left, he told friends.

The Met said on Tuesday the next of kin had been informed. “Whilst we believe we know the identity of the deceased, formal identification is yet to take place,” the force said. “The death is currently being treated as unexplained.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... ends-claim
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 16, 2018 6:24 pm


Polly Sigh

If he was murdered [chances are he was], Nikolai Glushkov will be the 9th member of Putin critic Boris Berezovsky's inner circle to be assassinated on British soil by Russian security services.
Police launch murder inquiry over Nikolai Glushkov's death after pathologist concluded he was likely strangled. On the day Glushkov's body was found in his London home, he was due in court in a dispute with the Russian government.


Image
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2008: Was Patarkatsishvili the victim of a KGB murder? Hours before his death, he was w/ friends Boris Berezovsky & Nikolai Glushkov. All 3 exiled Putin critics knew the suspected murderer of their friend, ex-RU spy Litvinenko.
Now all 3 are dead.
Image
Image
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If he was murdered [chances are he was], Nikolai Glushkov will be the 9th member of Putin critic Boris Berezovsky's inner circle to be assassinated on British soil by Russian security services.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 30, 2018 10:16 am

Russian ex-spy Boris Karpichkov told NBC News he learned that he and Sergei Skripal were on a Kremlin hit list just weeks before Skripal was attacked with a nerve agent.

Karpichkov said the hit list included other ex-KGB agents and Christopher Steele.


Russian ex-spy says he was on Kremlin 'hit list' along with poisoned Skripal
Image
"Something is probably going to happen," Boris Karpichkov says his old friend told him. "It's very serious, and you are not alone."

by Richard Engel and Kennett Werner / Mar.29.2018 / 5:07 PM ET / Updated Mar.30.2018 / 7:20 AM ET / Source: Reuters

A newspaper article in the Evening Moscow reports Boris Karpichov's defection.
LONDON — The former Russian double agent got a terrifying message on his birthday: He was on a Kremlin hit list along with Sergei Skripal, another ex-spy who weeks later was poisoned with a nerve agent in a case Britain blames on Vladimir Putin's government.

"Be careful, look around, something is probably going to happen,'" the former agent, Boris Karpichkov, says an old friend told him on the telephone in mid-February. "It's very serious, and you are not alone."

Boris Karpichkov. NBC News
Among the names on the list was that of Skripal, whom Karpichkov didn't know at the time but whose poisoning alongside his daughter, Yulia, on March 4 on British soil inflamed tensions between the Kremlin and the West and triggered international condemnation. The two are in a hospital in Britain, where Skripal is in critical condition. Yulia is "improving rapidly" and is no longer in critical condition, the hospital treating the pair said Thursday.

Also on the Kremlin's list, he says, were several other ex-KGB agents, as well as Christopher Steele, author of a 35-page dossier alleging collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Bill Browder, the driving force behind a set of U.S. sanctions against Russian individuals known as the Magnitsky Act, was there as well, he adds.

Karpichkov, 59, says that at first he thought the call was a joke rather than a threat — typically dark Russian humor. But Skripal's poisoning has put him on high alert. “Trademark FSB,” he says, referring to Russia’s security agency, the Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB. NBC News interviewed Karpichkov over the weekend at a rented studio in London; he refused to say where he lives in the U.K.

Putin has denied Russian involvement in the Skripal case, calling the allegations “nonsense.”

What began as a spat between London and Moscow has snowballed into a chorus of international criticism of the Kremlin, with a series of governments ejecting dozens of Russian diplomats.

On Monday, the U.S. announced that it was expelling 60 Russians, which followed the U.K.'s decision to kick out 23. Russia’s foreign minister said on Thursday that Moscow would expel the same number of diplomats from each nation that has expelled Russian diplomats.

Image

Boris Karpichkov's KGB identification. Courtesy Of Boris Karpichkov
Karpichkov believes that the attack, if not directly approved by Putin, was at least authorized at the highest levels of the FSB. It was a “very planned, organized and performed operation,” he said.

The Skripals' poisoning, with the nerve agent Novichok, has sent chills through the large Russian expatriate community in the U.K. Defectors and Kremlin critics are particularly rattled.

Skripal isn’t the only former Russian spy to be poisoned in the U.K.: In November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, an FSB officer-turned-dissident, died in a London hospital after drinking a cup of tea laced with polonium-210, a highly radioactive substance. An inquiry by British investigators concluded that his death was the work of the Russian state and was probably greenlighted by Putin himself.

Karpichkov was one of two former double agents who spoke with NBC News about their anxieties in the wake of the Skripal poisoning.

Victor Makarov, another former KGB agent, fears for his safety but lives in a much less guarded way than Karpichkov.



'Definitely Russians' carried out U.K. nerve agent attack, says former KGB spy
02:03
He invited NBC News to his small apartment in a public housing block in the sleepy northern England town of Haltwhistle. He considers the watchful neighbors and tight-knit community his best defense against any attempt on his life by Russian agents.

“If any stranger appears, he will be immediately seen, believe me,” says the 63-year-old. “I have two people on my side: God and the local community.”

Makarov now lives a modest life on a state pension equivalent to around $1,124 per month, but once seemed destined for greater things. He overlapped with Putin at an academy for aspiring KGB agents, although he has no memory of the future Russian president, he says.

Upon graduating, Makarov worked as a Greek-to-Russian translator in Soviet intelligence. He grew disenchanted with Soviet foreign policy after the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and repression in Poland.

“My defection was caused by the fact that I realized I was doing the wrong things, serving this regime,” he says.

Victor Marakov in a naval uniform as a young man. Courtesy Of Victor Makarov
He approached a British spy in Moscow through an intermediary and, over a two-year period, passed information to U.K. intelligence. Makarov was eventually caught, arrested and sentenced to 10 years in a forced labor camp. His sentence was cut in half after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he was freed in February 1992.

After his release, Makarov approached a British official in Latvia, who facilitated his defection to the U.K.

Makarov, now a British citizen, believes that Putin, resentful toward the West for “being ignored,” simply wants to be reckoned with. He “adores brinkmanship and intimidation,” Makarov says.

“Brinkmanship is dangerous by definition."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russ ... ng-n860641
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 07, 2018 5:40 pm

Murder suspect attended Arsenal match after Alexander Litvinenko poisoning

Andrei Lugovoi went to the match at the Emirates Stadium, according to an inquiry into Litvinenko’s death.

Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in 2006

March 16 2018


The last meeting between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow was attended by the man suspected of the murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.



An inquiry into the 43-year-old’s poisoning with the radioactive substance polonium-210 revealed that Andrei Lugovoi met Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel in London along with fellow suspect Dmitri Kovtun on November 1 of that year, and hours later went to the match at the Emirates Stadium.

Traces of polonium-210 were discovered at the stadium, and other venues around London that Lugovoi, Kovtun and Litvinenko were thought to have visited, the inquiry heard.

Litvinenko told a retired Metropolitan Police officer in hospital prior to his death that he drank tea from a silver teapot in the presence of Lugovoi, but it was “nearly cold” and he did not like the taste so only took three or four sips.

“When I left the hotel I was thinking there is something strange,” Mr Litvinenko told police before his death on November 23, 2006.

“I had been feeling all the time I knew that they (Lugovoi and Kovtun) wanted to kill me.”
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/spor ... 12171.html



Sarah Rainsford

On the sofa of a state tv chat show tonight: niece of Sergei Skripal, Victoria, alongside the two men suspected of poisoning Litvinenko - Lugovoi and Kovtun.

Image
https://twitter.com/sarahrainsford



_________________


Before his death, Glushkov warned that a close friend of his had been murdered, and that he would be next.

Russian dissident Nikolai Glushkov may have let killer in home
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/niko ... -hb8tvl9r3


Whoever murdered the Putin critic who warned he was on a Russian hit list didn't break in, and didn't use poison

Kieran Corcoran
Mar. 19, 2018, 8:39 AM 3,432

Nikolai Glushkov, pictured in Russia in 2000. Pavel Smertin/Kommersant Photo via AP
Nikolai Glushkov was found dead at his home in London last week, and police believe he was murdered.
Glushkov had warned for years that he was being targeted by the Russian state.
In an update on the case, police said nobody broke into his home.
His death came shortly after spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned in Salisbury.

Whoever is behind the murder of a prominent Russian exile, who believed he was on a Kremlin hit list, managed to get inside his home without breaking in, police believe.

Nikolai Glushkov, 68, was found dead at home last week at his home in southwest London, and officers are now hunting for the culprits. His official cause of death is "compression to the neck."

Before his death, Glushkov warned that a close friend of his had been murdered, and that he would be next.

In a Monday morning update on the investigation, the Metropolitan Police said they examined Glushkov's house and found no signs of forced entry.

Police outside Glushkov's house in southwest London. Matt Dunham/AP
They also believe that no noxious substances were used in the attack on him, in contrast to former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who was poisoned the previous week in Salisbury with a military-grade nerve agent.

The Sun newspaper reported that Glushkov was found hanging by the neck in at home in an apparent set-up. Unnamed sources told the newspaper that they believe Glushkov was hanged after death in an effort to make it look like suicide.

Glushkov had long believed he was being targeted by the Russian government, and told The Guardian newspaper in 2013 that he believed he was on a Kremlin hit list.
http://www.businessinsider.com/nikolai- ... say-2018-3
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Apr 07, 2018 8:57 pm

The arrest warrants follow a major, multi-stage investigation by prosecutors and Spain’s intelligence services into Russian mafia activity. Russian criminals began using Spain as a base of operations back in the mid-1990s. They laundered profits from illegal activities in Russia and invested them in Spanish real estate.

In 2004 Spanish prosecutors created a formal strategy to “behead” the Russian mafia. The Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, an expert on Russian organised crime, helped the police investigation. It was Litvinenko who, according to US diplomats, coined the phrase “mafia state”.

A public inquiry last year into Litvinenko’s murder heard that he was due to give evidence to Spanish prosecutors. A week before the meeting in 2006 he was murdered in London with radioactive polonium.




Spain issues arrest warrants for Russian officials close to Putin

Move by Spanish national court judge follows decade-long investigation into the activities of the Russian mafia

Luke Harding
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 16.59 EST

Spain has issued arrest warrants for senior Russian government officials close to Vladimir Putin following a decade-long investigation into the activities of the Russian mafia.

A Spanish national court judge is seeking to arrest 12 people allegedly linked to Russian gangsters operating in Spain. They include Vladislav Reznik, a prominent MP for Putin’s ruling United Russia party, and Reznik’s wife Diana Gindin.

Also sought are Nikolai Aulov, the deputy head of Russia’s federal narcotics service and Igor Sobelevsky, the former deputy head of the the prosecutor general’s investigative committee, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported. Most of those wanted by Spain are believed to be in Russia.

The high-placed officials are thought to have helped one of Russia’s best-known mafia groups, the Tambov gang, infiltrate state structures, police, port authorities and private banks and corporations. The Tambov and Malyshev gangs, which made their names smuggling heroin in St Petersburg when Putin was deputy mayor in the 1990s, allegedly laundered money through Spanish real estate.

They are also accused of murder, extortion and drugs and weapons trafficking. The arrest warrants were issued in January but only became public this week.

The Spanish prosecutor’s moves bolster longstanding allegations that the Russian government is a mafia state involved in corruption and organised crime. The reputed head of the Tambov gang, Gennady Petrov, has previously been tied to several of Putin’s closest allies.

In 1998-99 he was a co-owner of Bank Rossiya, along with several men who have homes with Putin in the Ozero dacha compound near St Petersburg.

In 2014 the US sanctioned Bank Rossiya, describing it as the “personal bank for senior (Russian) officials.” Last month the Panama Papers revealed that managers at Bank Rossiya transferred at least $1bn to offshore firms linked to Sergei Roldugin, a professional musician and Putin’s best friend. Roldugin owns 3.2% of the bank.

“The criminal organisation headed by Petrov managed to achieve a clear penetration of the state structures of his country, not only with the lawmaker Reznik but with several ministers,” the Spanish prosecutor’s report said.

In particular, Petrov allegedly paid investigative committee deputy head Sobolevsky’s personal expenses and presented him with gifts in exchange for information about police actions against his gang. The Spanish court has reissued 2012 warrants for Petrov, his wife, and a supposed member of the Malyshev gang.

The arrest warrants follow a major, multi-stage investigation by prosecutors and Spain’s intelligence services into Russian mafia activity. Russian criminals began using Spain as a base of operations back in the mid-1990s. They laundered profits from illegal activities in Russia and invested them in Spanish real estate.

In 2004 Spanish prosecutors created a formal strategy to “behead” the Russian mafia. The Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, an expert on Russian organised crime, helped the police investigation. It was Litvinenko who, according to US diplomats, coined the phrase “mafia state”.

A public inquiry last year into Litvinenko’s murder heard that he was due to give evidence to Spanish prosecutors. A week before the meeting in 2006 he was murdered in London with radioactive polonium.

Other senior Russian government officials not so far indicted feature in Spanish court papers.

They include Russia’s deputy prime minister, Dmitry Kozak, former prime minister Viktor Zubkov, and former defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov, Zubkov’s son-in-law. Also mentioned is Leonid Reiman, a former communications minister. All are close to Putin.

The most intriguing name is that of Aulov. The Spanish police collected thousands of hours of intercept material during their inquiry including 78 phone calls between Aulov and Petrov. Shortly before he was killed, Litvinenko wrote an unflattering report about Viktor Ivanov, Aulov’s boss. An inquiry chaired by Sir Robert Owen found last year that the report had fallen into the Kremlin’s hands and may have contributed to Litvinenko’s murder.

It is highly unlikely the Kremlin will allow the extradition of any of the wanted Russians to Spain. Russia’s constitution forbids the extradition of its citizens. Putin has refused to extradite to the UK Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun – the two men found by the public inquiry to have poisoned Litvinenko.

The Spanish prosecutor alleges that Reznik helped secure government positions inside Russia for the mafia’s preferred candidates. One of them was Alexander Bastrykin, the boss of Russia’s powerful investigative committee. In return, it is alleged, the mafia rewarded Reznik with money and property. Reznik denies wrongdoing and says his friendship with Petrov is purely social.

Prosecutors have put out a warrant for Reznik through Interpol, a move that Reznik’s lawyer said had been appealed. The federal narcotics service called the decision to arrest Aulov part of “a political hit job to discredit Russian officials”, RIA Novosti reported.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... e-to-putin



Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:43 am

The Secret Lover Of An "Assassinated" Russian Whistleblower Will Testify At His Inquest After BuzzFeed News Tracked Her Down
https://www.buzzfeed.com/janebradley/al ... .lyvxwvXQg


Litvinenko killer link to death of Alexander Perepilichnyy
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/litv ... -pxqdbhw8h


The mysterious 2012 death of a Russian businessman is now being investigated as an 'assassination' by French police
http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-b ... ion-2018-3


Russian whistleblower linked to Litvinenko poisoning prime suspect, court told
http://www.bicesteradvertiser.net/news/ ... ourt-told/


RUSSIAN DEATH MYSTERY Russian whistleblower Alexander Perepilichnyy ‘repeatedly vomited after dinner with his mistress the night before his death’
Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, fell ill after visiting Buddha Bar in Paris with his 28-year-old model girlfriend, Elmira Medynska
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6027502/r ... his-death/


Russian whistleblower was nervous in days before death, inquest hears
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... uest-hears


Perepilichnyy, the Whistleblower Who Helped Spur U.S. Magnitsky Act, Was Too Afraid to Return to Russia
http://www.newsweek.com/russian-corrupt ... ife-878986


Russian whistleblower allegedly poisoned in Surrey was being pursued by assassin of Litvinenko, court hears
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/0 ... -assassin/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

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