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Spetulhu wrote:

 Omega-soul wrote:
Behold the mighty russian secret service using our best dumb-sloppy thugs that equiped with our best outdated chemicals. And Fear us - or we send even dumber thugs with even more dated chemicals. Sound like excellent plan - what ever can go wrong with this right?

Russia would like to still consider itself the mighty USSR, the powerhouse no one dared mess with. Most terrorist groups back in the day didn't see the point in attacking the soviets because the response was brutal, and taking hostages sucked when the target respected their life less than the hostage-takers. But as far back as the fifties the USSR already started using "outside" agents for the really heavy-handed operations - for example Bulgarian agents to kill soviet defectors in Europe. They built it up as an at least somewhat beliavable ruse, and could say with a straight face that "no soviet agent was involved" even if everyone knew they could lean on the lesser satellite states to have them do something.

But budget cuts and diminished influence in Eastern Europe has taken a toll on the tools available to Russian intelligence services. Now they often have to rely on criminals who aren't really trained for secret agent stuff. Some of the murders will be sloppy operations, but the upside is that they are cheap and at least sort of deniable. And Russian nationals are by law protected from extradition, so as long as they get back home they're safe. It doesn't help how many names, say, the UK lists and asks to turn up for hearings and possible charges - they just don't leave Russia again. Another upside is that Putin doesn't have to order (many of) these operations himself. He can sit on TV and state that traitors shouldn't feel safe "wink wink", and anyone wanting more influence with the great leader can have a go at it, with whatever means he has available.

So another reason these operations aren't always very smooth is probably a result of it being several different factions carrying them out with varying degrees of sophistication.

I don't think it is the case here, but another factor that sometimes frustrates Russian secret service operations are other Russian secret services. The FSB, SVR and GRU all have a burning hatred for one another that stems from who gets to control which parts of government. It is a rivalry that has exploded into violence in the past, and it is not that uncommon that one agency does something to frustrate the operation of another agency in order to embarrass them and undermine their influence in the government. It would definitely not be the first time that byzantine Kremlin clan politics spill out on the streets, though Putin has mostly been pretty successful in keeping the infighting contained and out of sight.

An update on the ongoing investigation into the Skripals novichok poisoning for this interested.

The UK has issued an arrest warrant for two russian nationals Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. A European arrest warrant has also been issued.

More information on the investigation can be found here:-

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/05/salisbury-poisonings-police-name-and-charge-two-suspects

If they are indeed GRU agents, I doubt those are their real names. They probably traveled into the UK on passports provided by the GRU.

Yet another outbreak of this whole "naughty Russian agents" saga...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-45754606

It's given inspiration to several classic British newspaper headlines:

Carry On Spying

Novichokle Brothers

The Spies Who Muffed It

Great stuff!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yet another outbreak of this whole "naughty Russian agents" saga...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-45754606

It's given inspiration to several classic British newspaper headlines:

Carry On Spying

Novichokle Brothers

The Spies Who Muffed It

Great stuff!

At this point its a case of the UK and US throwing our clout around to embarrass the Russian leadership for their poor handling of the poisoning incident.

Great headlines though.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
If they are indeed GRU agents, I doubt those are their real names. They probably traveled into the UK on passports provided by the GRU.

Bellingcat has an article on the subject. At this stage its suspected that with the amount of information Bellingcat is releasing, its being fed by British Intelligence to obfuscate the source of the information.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/26/skripal-suspect-boshirov-identified-gru-colonel-anatoliy-chepiga/

 Wyrmalla wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
If they are indeed GRU agents, I doubt those are their real names. They probably traveled into the UK on passports provided by the GRU.

Bellingcat has an article on the subject. At this stage its suspected that with the amount of information Bellingcat is releasing, its being fed by British Intelligence to obfuscate the source of the information.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/26/skripal-suspect-boshirov-identified-gru-colonel-anatoliy-chepiga/

I don't know. Reading through their reports and tracing their steps, everything they do is something you can just do with a basic (okay, more than basic) knowledge of the internet and the Russian language. Which also means that they lack hard evidence. Their conclusions are just assumptions. Well-founded and thoroughly investigated assumptions, but not the kind of conclusively proven facts the scientist in me is always looking for. Then again, Russian intelligence services are really good at covering their tracks which means that hard evidence may very well be impossible to obtain and these scraps are all we will ever have to try and piece the truth together. I don't know how competent British intelligence is and whether they know more or not, but if they were feeding information to Bellincat I would have expected something more than just scraps of information obtained with Yandex, database and phonebook searches. Which does not in any way mean that Bellingcat isn't doing impressive work. A testament to the power of citizen journalism. Quite amazing what us nerds can do if you get enough of them together with a purpose

Funny by the way that this "Boshirov" guy appears to be from the village Nikolaevka, close to Khabarovsk. One of my best friends is from there. I will have to ask him if he knows "Boshirov" now

Also, nobody mentioned this yet, but earlier this year a bunch of Russian spies got caught red-handed trying to hack into the OPCW headquarters (the OPCW is the international institution that keeps tabs on chemical weapons). They were so obvious about it it was almost like they wanted to get caught... Typical GRU meatheads. No subtlety, just 100% brutal, nasty force. I do wonder what they were after though, considering the fact that even if their hack had succeeded it is incredibly unlikely they would get anything worthwhile out of it. It is not like the OPCW is storing state secrets or anything, or like Russia doesn't have access to OPCW data already, it being an international organisation funded in part by Russia itself.

The same point had occurred to me. Could these slack operations be a deliberate tactic of some kind?

However it's hard to say what benefit Putin derives from certain elements of his security aparatus being seen to be somewhat incompetent.

Is the idea to generate more international indignation against Russia in order to consolidate domestic support on the basis that you see now they actually are all against us?