A retired Russian military intelligence officer has fallen ill in England after exposure to an unknown substance. Does that sound familiar?
A man identified by local news reports as a retired Russian military intelligence officer who once spied for Britain is critically ill at a British hospital, and the authorities were investigating his "exposure to an unknown substance."
According to several reports, the man, found unconscious on a bench in the city of Salisbury, is Sergei V. Skripal, 66. He was once jailed by Moscow, then settled in Britain after an exchange of spies between the United States and Russia in 2010.
The British police have not publicly identified the man in the hospital or a 33-year-old woman who fell sick with him at a shopping mall called the Maltings.
The authorities have, however, released enough detail about what they called a "major incident" to draw some comparisons, however premature, to the case of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who was poisoned in London in 2006.
Related Stories
Police Say Nerve Agent Was Used in Attempt to Kill Sergei Skripal
Police say that they have identified a specific nerve agent as being used in an attempt to kill a Russian who once spied for the UK. They have not named the nerve agent that was used. Officers who responded to the scene have also been hospitalized:
A nerve agent was used to try to murder a former Russian spy and his daughter, police have said. Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found unconscious in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon and remain critically ill. A police officer who was the first to attend the scene is now in a serious condition in hospital, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said.
[...] Mr Rowley, head of Counter Terrorism Policing, said government scientists had identified the agent used, but would not make that information public at this stage. "This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder, by administration of a nerve agent," he said. "Having established that a nerve agent is the cause of the symptoms... I can also confirm that we believe that the two people who became unwell were targeted specifically."
[...] Two other police officers who attended the scene were treated in hospital for minor symptoms, before they were given the all clear. It is understood their symptoms included itchy eyes and wheezing.
The UK says that a Soviet-developed Novichok nerve agent was used against Sergei Skripal, his daughter, and bystanders, and has given Russia "until midnight tonight" to explain how it came to be used:
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Tuesday that Russia has "until midnight tonight" to explain how a lethal Novichok nerve agent that was developed in Russia came to be used on U.K. soil. Johnson said Britain is preparing to take "commensurate but robust" action.
Reiterating British Prime Minister Theresa May's statement that it was "highly likely" Russia was to blame for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, Johnson said, "the use of this nerve agent would represent the first use of nerve agents on the continent of Europe since the Second World War."
Meanwhile, police are probing the death of a Russian exile living in London:
Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian exile who was a close friend of a noted critic of President Vladimir Putin, has died from an "unexplained" cause in London, police say. The Metropolitan Police says that its counter-terrorism unit is handling the case "because of associations that the man is believed to have had."
Glushkov, 68, was a close friend of former Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a prominent critic of the Kremlin who was found dead in 2013. At the time, an inquiry found he had hanged himself — but Glushkov publicly disputed the idea that his friend and former business ally would have killed himself.
As British media began reporting Glushkov's death, the police issued a statement saying, "An investigation is underway following the death of a man in his 60s in Kingston borough."
Previously: Former Russian Spy Exposed to "Unknown Substance" in Salisbury, England
Use of Nerve Agent Confirmed in Skripal Assassination Attempt
A woman who lived a short distance from where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent has died. Prime Minister Theresa May is "appalled and shocked" by the death:
Police have launched a murder inquiry after a woman exposed to nerve agent Novichok in Wiltshire died. Dawn Sturgess, 44, died in hospital on Sunday evening after falling critically ill on 30 June. Charlie Rowley, 45, who was also exposed to the nerve agent in Amesbury, remains critically ill in hospital.
[...] Officers are still trying to work out how Ms Sturgess and Mr Rowley were exposed to the nerve agent although tests have confirmed they touched a contaminated item with their hands.
[...] Mrs May sent her "thoughts and condolences" and said officials are "working urgently to establish the facts". She said: "The government is committed to providing full support to the local community as it deals with this tragedy." British diplomat Julian King, the European Commissioner responsible for the EU's security union, said: "Those behind this are murderers."
[...] The working hypothesis is that the pair became contaminated after touching a poison container left over from the March attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The death of Dawn Sturgess, a British citizen on British soil, now changes the investigation to a murder inquiry, with all the diplomatic and security ramifications that carries. Britain has been blaming Moscow for the original attack in March, saying there is no plausible alternative to the Kremlin having ordered the assassination attempt. Russia has denied any involvement, suggesting instead this was the action of a weak British government looking to undermine the success of the current World Cup being hosted by Russia.
Here's something from the other side.
Previously: Former Russian Spy Exposed to "Unknown Substance" in Salisbury, England
Use of Nerve Agent Confirmed in Skripal Assassination Attempt
UK Gives Russia Until Midnight to Explain Use of Novichok Nerve Agent
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @11:44AM (2 children)
Just ass king.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:30PM
Everytime the UK brexits from something.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:39PM
Apparently quite often https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/06/poisoned-umbrellas-and-polonium-russian-linked-uk-deaths [theguardian.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:36PM
Ulysses: When I was a soldier, my fingers were frost-bitten. Since then, when I get cold there is a pain.
Edward Wilson: Maybe you shouldn't live in Russia.
(Score: -1, Troll) by cocaine overdose on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:46PM (16 children)
England sure is getting a lot of poisoned Russian spies. Where are the Russian Poisoned American Russian spies? And the Russian Poisoned Chinese Russian Spies? What about Russian Poisoned Ukranian Russian Spies? Knowing England's history in WWII, it looks like MI6 has learned well from Churchill and American Universities. They're now crying rape after engaging in consensual homosexual intercourse, but not getting a reach-around from Russian poisoned Russian spies.
Or they weren't told not to drink the tap water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @01:09PM (4 children)
OTOH finding somebody in UK is easier.
I agree with you, this does not seem the right moment for russkies to take revenge on a minor defector. Being chess playing russkies, though, means that being too obvious is their alibi for performing obvious things, so I would say p=.5
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday March 06 2018, @06:30PM (3 children)
If the minor unimportant guy is worth poisoning, there must be a reason why.
Why would someone take out such an unimportant pawn?
(and don't say to make more space on the bored)
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hartree on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:38PM (1 child)
It may be a reminder to the other Russian expats living in the UK that the Russian government still can get to them, so they better stay quiet.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:57PM
. . . or realize there is a price to pay for not being quiet but being known for speaking out.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Tuesday March 06 2018, @08:00PM
Reportedly, there were 300 people on the spy list that he sold to MI6 for $100,000. They are probably tough people who have many tough friends some of which are quite rich. Any one of them could execute the revenge. Seems to me more likely scenario than an "official" order.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Funny) by VLM on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:01PM (4 children)
Likely something like Antifa-UK doesn't think retired Russian spies are left wing enough. A commie in the 70s is a fascist today, and all that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Revek on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:35PM (3 children)
Its funny how much power you attribute to the anti fa movement. I see them much as I see trumps chumps. Largely under educated and completely impotent.
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(Score: 2, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:01PM
We're having so many problems with our Alt-left and with Black Identity Extremists, the BIE. Look at what they did at my inauguration. Look at what they did in Charlottesville. And it's very easy to get Viagra these days. Very easy. You know about Viagra, right?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 06 2018, @08:43PM (1 child)
The only modifier I didn't get was funny, which was what I was aiming for, oh well. Modern leftists have no sense of humor. No, I don't seriously think UK-antifa is assassinating retired USSR spies for not being far enough left, but it sounded funny to me at a moment of low caffeine intake.
(Score: 2) by number6x on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:03PM
It was funny, but in a dry, British-humour kind of way.
Too subtle for the people with mod points
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:22PM (4 children)
UK and London in particular are top destinations for Russian expats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_the_United_Kingdom [wikipedia.org]
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10330921/Meet-the-Russians-People-think-Im-here-to-marry-a-rich-foreigner.html [telegraph.co.uk]
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/may/09/rich-russians-buying-london-property-real-estate [theguardian.com]
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppzydk/russians-in-v13n4 [vice.com]
Maybe also see BBC's Rich, Russian and Living in London.
As for the poisonings, it may be easier for Russians to get that stuff into the UK instead of say, the U.S. But it remains to be seen whether something as exotic as polonium was used on this guy.
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(Score: 0, Troll) by cocaine overdose on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:05PM (2 children)
I can attest to this. Londongrad is to Russians what America is to Americans, from all of the opinions I've heard.
On the poisonings, I also agree. It came to mind that the UK is much closer to Russia than the US, and may be easier to "sneak" -- or waltz in, looking at their travel policies -- in illicit activities. The bigger problem here, is that these poisonings are like a proto-"Russia rigged the elections." The validity is in question, because of the very overt bias. There is little to be surmised from this, besides maybe someone somewhere wants it to look like Russia is poisoning spies. Much less if these poisonings happened at all or that the UK didn't poison these agents themselves. Not without a very lucrative "keep your mouth shut" deal, of course.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 06 2018, @08:04PM (1 child)
Litvinenko was a particular brazen killing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko [wikipedia.org]
There's a bit of Occam's razor involved here. Russia has shown itself to assassinate certain Russians within and outside its borders, especially critics of Putin (not sure if that applies to this man, although by spying for a foreign power might be the one worse thing you can do). I guess we'll know more once it's announced what substance was used in this case.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by cocaine overdose on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:12PM
Yes, and that's what strikes me as off. One off-hand theory is that Kovton and Lugovoy were unsuspecting vectors, and not the masterminds, or even pawns, of the assassination. That is, after you throw out much of that Wikipedia page, because the sources are not good. There are numerous (~21) references to BBC. Those referenced articles themselves, have no references. The same for the Telegraph articles (~10), one important one being the waiter's (Norberto Andrade) first-hand account. His words: "when I was delivering gin and tonic to the table, I was obstructed. I couldn't see what was happening, but it seemed very deliberate to create a distraction. It made it difficult to put the drink down." Despite the lack of objective substance -- as Andrade himself seems to be the victim of memory bias/contamination, speaking of "I think the polonium was sprayed into the teapot. There was contamination found on the picture," which makes it seem like he's rationalized his memories to be inline with the current media -- this story was repeated by almost all major news agencies at that time. The referenced article did not have any substantive explanations or references.
The same can be said for the medical evidence, of which I have yet to find any references for. I'm not specialized in the specifics needed to discern whether he was poisoned by Po-210, but I can see nothing but hearsay in the Wikipedia article. A reference, even if in unintelligible jargon, of testing methods and results would be better than quoting a book by two KGB dissidents. For the health references, it's all news sources. 11 articles from the Guardian, 3 from CNN, and many from smaller groups. Hell, just about the entire "Polonium Trial" section is from a memoir -- by Litvineko and another Putin dissident.
There are no official sources with evidence, it's all just one big hallway with people yelling at the top of their lungs and everything echoing off the walls. The only real source is from an official inquiry conducted by a High Court Judge.[0] Within which there is second-hand reference to evidence. Notably, the key determinant of determining that Po-210 was involved -- involved in the scenes, not Litvineko's body, as it was pointed out.. "A1 stated that in the light of laboratory tests using both alpha and gamma spectrometry, she was absolutely confident in the conclusion that the alpha radiation discovered at the multiple scenes had been caused by polonium 210," but the source for this is dead. I'm not knowledgeable in spectrometry, but evidence would have been more appreciated, and carried more weight, than an anonymous "I'm confident it's Po-210." Which coincides well with the judge's final statement of "I am sure that Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun placed the polonium 210 in the teapot at the Pine Bar on 1 November 2006," which seems to based solely on the closing statement of the lawyer representing the Metropolitan Police Service, and not the actual officers doing the investigation.
I will add that I didn't read the entire thing. But from these points above, I will conclude that it is an entire shitshow and on par with "Russia hacked the elections."
[0]http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090753/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/Litvinenko-Inquiry-Report-web-version.pdf
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Thursday March 08 2018, @08:29AM
As for the poisonings, it may be easier for Russians to get that stuff into the UK instead of say, the U.S.
It turns out to have been a nerve agent [nytimes.com]. Bug spray for humans. Apparently the UK even has large quantities of nerve agents in storage [craigmurray.org.uk]. So the substance used on him is unlikely to give much of a clue as to who did it.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:12PM
The Chinese don't admit it. There's way too much going on in Ukraine now for a poisoned spy to be notable. In America, they just assume the spy is yet another person who couldn't afford to go to the doctor so the poison isn't diagnosed.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:23PM (4 children)
Woman in Russian spy mystery is Sergei Skripal's daughter [theguardian.com]
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(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:51PM (1 child)
His son aslo died recently while visiting St. Petersburg with his girlfriend. It appears, his brother died as well, but I did'nt see any details.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:56PM
Son is mentioned in what I quoted, but I didn't hear about a brother.
Kind of looks a little worse with that trail of bodies surrounding him and his daughter.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:57PM (1 child)
Mystery solved then: Dying abruptly is just congenital.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by DannyB on Tuesday March 06 2018, @08:02PM
It might not be congenital.
It might be an occupational hazard. Or indirect exposure via direct relation to someone in that occupation.
Or it could be due to being born in a certain place and not wanting to stay there. Or knowing certain people.
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(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:22PM
Has a big military training area and also home to UK's DSTL (Defence Science and Technology Lab) where the non-nuclear top secret military stuff gets developed. Nuclear stuff is done at Aldermarston near Reading.