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Let's look at another angle.

Who would gain from driving a wedge between the UK and Russia?

 Ketara wrote:
It is one thing when Russia is messing around in its backyard with little green men and loaned weapons. Out of sight, out of mind. If it turns out to be the case that they are responsible for this incident; it raises the spectre that they will repeat it next in France, Germany, or America. We are a First World Western nation with one of the highest budgets on military spending. If Putin feels he can get away with it here, then no place and no citizen is safe from him any longer.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's almost as if the Russians are behind the affair. They certainly aren't acting like someone who wants to calm things down.

Probably because the Russians don't respect you. I mean seriously, Boris was the only guy y'all could find for foreign secretary?

Your choices of retaliation are constrained by Brexit and your of lack of ability to project military power. The UK spends a lot buying the high end equipment but not enough of it. What kind of international influence do you have that the Russians would shy from? Your relationship with the EU is shot and the US "special relationship" is near dead.

You can only respond unilaterally, so they took their shot and expect your retaliation to be bearable.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I didn't believe the Russian Embassy would make such a stupid, circus style provocation, so I checked their Twitter.

It does appear to be true, though.

It's almost as if the Russians are behind the affair. They certainly aren't acting like someone who wants to calm things down.

Of course not. We all think this is quite hilarious. Well, not me. But all other Russians I know do. For decades after the collapse of the USSR the West has humiliated and laughed at Russia. Now we are the ones who are laughing. That is how it feels.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I didn't believe the Russian Embassy would make such a stupid, circus style provocation, so I checked their Twitter.

It does appear to be true, though.

It's almost as if the Russians are behind the affair. They certainly aren't acting like someone who wants to calm things down.

Of course not. We all think this is quite hilarious. Well, not me. But all other Russians I know do. For decades after the collapse of the USSR the West has humiliated and laughed at Russia. Now we are the ones who are laughing. That is how it feels.

In this topic, poisoning people is hilarious!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Let's look at another angle.

Who would gain from driving a wedge between the UK and Russia?

The alternative theory I've come across is:

A) Novichoks were manufactured in Uzbekistan up until the collapse of the Soviet Union. So there's some uncertainty of who has access to the formulas.

BBC wrote:The research centre is housed in a closed military complex and until the early 1990s was a major research site for the chemical weapons the Soviet Union still produced.

The institute was staffed solely by Russians and it was only when they left in 1993, taking with them much of the equipment and documentation, that what had gone in there slowly began to emerge.

According to a senior defector from the Soviet chemical weapons programme, the Soviets used the plant to produce small batches of a lethal new generation of nerve agents called Novichok, or New Boy in Russian.

B) The Telegraph reported:

Telegraph wrote: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.

C) Christoper Steele of said Trump Dossier, was operating out of the UK's Moscow embassy from '90-'93, then was heading the Russia desk at MI6 in 2006-2010. Skripal began work as a MI6 intelligent asset in '95 and traded in 2010. It's postulated that Steele knew/meet Skripal. Furthermore, according to CNN, he was recruited by MI6 spy Pablo Miller. Pablo Miller was later employed by in Christopher Steele's private company Orbis. The theory being that Miller was the consultant in point B):

CNN wrote:What connects Salisbury to the spy wars of the mid-2000s? A man named Pablo Miller also has an address in Salisbury, according to his LinkedIn account.
A LinkedIn profile for Miller is no longer available. A summary of his profile viewed by CNN said that prior to his retirement in February 2015, he specialized in the former Soviet Union, Russia and Eastern Europe.

D) For the Russians to assassinate Col. Skripal now is strange because there doesn't seem to be a reason. Someone else could have done it, knowing they could scapegoat the Russians in the current media climate. Which would make the Russian complaints about Russophobia hilariously true. Here you can make your wild conjecture it was the CIA, MI6 or some nutjob with a lot of money.

 Spinner wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I didn't believe the Russian Embassy would make such a stupid, circus style provocation, so I checked their Twitter.

It does appear to be true, though.

It's almost as if the Russians are behind the affair. They certainly aren't acting like someone who wants to calm things down.

Of course not. We all think this is quite hilarious. Well, not me. But all other Russians I know do. For decades after the collapse of the USSR the West has humiliated and laughed at Russia. Now we are the ones who are laughing. That is how it feels.

In this topic, poisoning people is hilarious!

No, they don't think poisoning itself is hilarious, the provocation and the UK's reaction to it is.

 avantgarde wrote:
Probably because the Russians don't respect you. I mean seriously, Boris was the only guy y'all could find for foreign secretary?

People with glass Rex Tillersons shouldn't throw Boris Johnsons.



Anyhow, while the spy was probably killed for a lot of reasons, the subsequent acts by various Russian orgs to make it so obvious is really about a bigger geo-political aim. Russia knows the US isn't on-side, but is neutered for the next few years because it has the orange man in charge. So now is the perfect time to act and prove that America won't be backing up anyone else. It degrades the 'special relationship', it shows other countries that the US can't be counted on to always have your back against Russia.

Oh, and by the way, did every notice the Whitehouse comment on the attack... didn't assign Russia any blame. They said it was 'operatives within Russia', but didn't follow Theresa May's lead in saying Russia was behind the attack. Funny that.

 sebster wrote:

 avantgarde wrote:
Probably because the Russians don't respect you. I mean seriously, Boris was the only guy y'all could find for foreign secretary?

People with glass Rex Tillersons shouldn't throw Boris Johnsons.

Hey, I like Rex at least he looks like he's trying to do his job.

Anyhow, while the spy was probably killed for a lot of reasons, the subsequent acts by various Russian orgs to make it so obvious is really about a bigger geo-political aim. Russia knows the US isn't on-side, but is neutered for the next few years because it has the orange man in charge. So now is the perfect time to act and prove that America won't be backing up anyone else. It degrades the 'special relationship', it shows other countries that the US can't be counted on to always have your back against Russia.

If the Russians did it, that's a great reason. Besides Putin getting to metaphorically take off his shirt and flex like he used to.

If there's any truth to Col. Skripal being involved in the Steele dossier and if the President is aware. This might look like one of those situations where it's none of the US's business.

 avantgarde wrote:
Hey, I like Rex at least he looks like he's trying to do his

"He's trying" is what we say about schoolkids when we're trying to be positive about their failing grades.

job.

Yeah, it's just the latest instance of Tillerson and the Whitehouse being way out of synch on the issue. Not sure if its lack of communication or if Tillerson is actually trying to drag the Whitehouse in another direction in spite of themselves. Either way its pretty grim.

But to your specific point- on this issue Tillerson has done everything right. Shame itis on his own.

If there's any truth to Col. Skripal being involved in the Steele dossier and if the President is aware. This might look like one of those situations where it's none of the US's business.

The connection to Steele is extremely speculative. They were in roughly the same circles a couple of decades ago, which you would expect, given Steele was on the Russia desk in the early 90s, and Skripal is a Russian agent who existed in the early 90s. Not saying there was no connection, but there's no evidence beyond some loose connections that would be expected whether or not Skripal was connected.

No matter what actually went down and why, this is most definitely a matter for the US, and for anyone who thinks it most definitely not okay for Russia to go about murdering people in other countries.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Let's look at another angle.

Who would gain from driving a wedge between the UK and Russia?

The UK.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I didn't believe the Russian Embassy would make such a stupid, circus style provocation, so I checked their Twitter.

It does appear to be true, though.

It's almost as if the Russians are behind the affair. They certainly aren't acting like someone who wants to calm things down.

Of course not. We all think this is quite hilarious. Well, not me. But all other Russians I know do. For decades after the collapse of the USSR the West has humiliated and laughed at Russia. Now we are the ones who are laughing. That is how it feels.

I see. It's the random lashing out of a the school ground bully. I have never see "the west" humiliating and laughing at Russia. I know Russia has seen the west and NATO standing up to them and not putting up with their petulant behaviour as humiliating, and the Russian authorities have spun the failure of the Russian state, due to rampant corruption, nepotism and abuse of power, as the fault of "The West".

My feeling from the statements now coming from our government and the support of other governments tells me that Russia are going to feel the impact of this. A line has been crossed, and when Russia feels they can carry out an attack like this in the UK they will feel they can do it anywhere. The international community will react. It won't be a military strike or anything crass like that, but there will be a serious reaction. Russia needs to be dealt with, and do not think that the UKs allies will back down. They can't. That will make them seem like a soft target.

After 1989 and perestroika, the West hoped Russia would become a modern liberal democracy with the rule of law, and so on.

At first there seemed a good prospect, and lots of western firms set up offices in Moscow, made deals and started to work with local companies.

Unfortunately things did not develop well. Since Putin, Russia has become pretty anti-Western. That is mostly due to Putin's nationalist strategy of bolstering his domestic power by casting an outside agency as an enemy to Russia, so he can blame them for economic problems and the like.

In the current situation, the UK is a convenient "enemy." There is no reason why the UK wants Russia as an enemy, except for items such as the annexation of the Crimea. There are actually many areas in which we could co-operate.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Let's look at another angle.

Who would gain from driving a wedge between the UK and Russia?

The UK.

How? The UK has nothing to gain from it.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Let's look at another angle.

Who would gain from driving a wedge between the UK and Russia?

The UK.

How? The UK has nothing to gain from it.

Well, the tories could use it to distract people from their complete clusterfeth of brexit negotiations.

However, even I wouldn't believe they'd kill people with chemical weapons people to do it.

No, they'd rather sell out to foreign money - it's not in their interest to stop Russian gangsters buying up bits of the UK.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Let's look at another angle.

Who would gain from driving a wedge between the UK and Russia?

The UK.

How? The UK has nothing to gain from it.

Anything that encourages. A country to cut ties as much as possible with Russia is beneficial. Dealing with Russia really isn't worth it. It's a criminal syndicate with nuclear weapons.

The UK may seem a little helpless given the abysmal state of it's military.

We have an army which s technically not an army by our military definition.

We have an air force of paper aeroplanes and which would struggle to put more than an actual squadron in the air at one time due to planes being canablised for parts.

It's better to just not mention the Navy with it's aircraftless carriers and ships that can only go in the right type of water.

However what we do have and what as been hinted at as our toughest option to take, is that we know where Putins loot is.
We can release details of the massive amounts of Russia's GDP that Putin and his family and friends have siphoned out of Russia. Also ultimately since a great deal of it is in places that the UK control and can access it can be frozen or even take by the UK government.

This would of course put off future crooks, spivs and Tories from hiding the loot in crown territories but given the changes the EU plan shortly that may not be an issue.

Ultimately we can hit Putin where it hurts most his wallet.

 avantgarde wrote:
Hey, I like Rex at least he looks like he's trying to do his job.

Possibly too well? He's just been sacked... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43388723

SeanDrake wrote:
The UK may seem a little helpless given the abysmal state of it's military.

We have an army which s technically not an army by our military definition.

We have an air force of paper aeroplanes and which would struggle to put more than an actual squadron in the air at one time due to planes being canablised for parts.

It's better to just not mention the Navy with it's aircraftless carriers and ships that can only go in the right type of water.

Don't believe everything you see in the news. Most of it comes from generals eyeing up next years budget requirements and media outlets with a story to sell.

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/study-finds-uk-is-second-most-powerful-country-in-the-world/

At any rate, the UK is just about the most distant country in the northern hemisphere from Russia (excluding sub-Saharan areas.)

It's practically impossible for the UK and Russia to have a 'real' war without resorting to strategic nuclear weapons.

I don't know - the Russian Air Force seems to hang around here an awful lot. We could shoot at them.

Possibly related, : Russian businessman and close associate of Boris Berezovsky found dead in Britain, lawyer says

As one commentor put it :

Was it natural causes or Russian natural causes (bullets, nerve gas, radioactive poisoning)?

Is it even a meme anymore that if you do over the Russian government and then go into exile you wind up dead? If it is the Kremlin who did it, then what a hell of a way to respond to the current state of affairs in Britain.



Also, Russia demands access to U.K. findings in spy poisoning probe

“Of course, we heard the ultimatum that was made in London,” Lavrov said, according to comments reported by the Interfax news agency. “We have already made a statement that it is all nonsense. We have nothing to do with it.”

As has been discussed, the Russians have gone from saying "oh we didn't do it, *wink*, but this is the response our enemies should expect from us, *wink*" to their default next stage of being affronted at any accusations that might have some negative response for them, "how could we have done this. Where are these accusations coming from? It must have been the Americans (they've already found a way to say it was a US/ Ukrainian plot), or no, the British! Yes, you did it this to yourselves (something else they've said...) !". Its pretty tiresome.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
After 1989 and perestroika, the West hoped Russia would become a modern liberal democracy with the rule of law, and so on.

You know? Russians hoped exactly the same thing. The people on the barricades in 1989 and 1991 weren't there because they wanted a state ruled by the military and the secret services. They were there because they wanted Russia to be like the West. But the West did not want Russia, apparently. When the economy and the entire country completely collapsed because the transition to a market economy was not done properly, there was no help or aid from the West. When Yeltsin sold out the economy to the oligarchs and their Western business partners and had his tanks destroy the Russian parliament and the fledgling democracy, the West was silent. NATO, a military alliance against Russia, was not disbanded. Clearly we were still distrusted and seen as enemies. When Gorbachev asked if the Soviet Union could perhaps join NATO, he was laughed away. And the corpse of the Soviet Union wasn't even cold yet when the West began to completely disregard Russia, violating promises, expanding NATO all the way up to our much reduced borders (as if we were still an enemy), bombing our Serbian friends... All of our protests, ideas, requests etc. were completely ignored. We wanted to treated as equals. We were not. That is how Putin and his FSB could rise to power, and why you now have people being assassinated in the streets of Salisbury. Russia was weak, and the West took advantage of that. Now that Russia is strong again, the West is reaping what it sowed.

Here, read this article from the Moscow Times. It puts it more eloquently than I could:
https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/why-the-wests-betrayal-of-democratic-russia-brought-us-putin-56658

Russia went from being in love with the West to outright hating the West in less than two decades. You can not blame that on Putin. Putin too used to love the West. Just look at his speeches and decisions in the first years of his presidency, and his opinions and actions before he became president. Nowadays, Putin is often stereotyped as a KGB-man, but this is a man who resigned from the KGB because he was fed up with Soviet oppression and chose the side of democracy. He was anything but anti-Western. Something happened that made Putin and Russia hate the West. And that something did not come from Russia itself.

All we have is Putin claiming Russia wanted to join NATO and the US declined. But Putin claims lots of things, like Ukraine shooting down flight MH17 or that there are no Russian soldiers in Ukraine or etc. etc. So......

As for the Soviets joining NATO, that wasn't going to happen with them still occupying the Baltic States.

As for NATO expansion, its been covered over and over. If anything Ukraine and Georgia shows that those countries had the right idea to join up. Any independent foreign policy lands you on the chopping block. Its quite a dishonest argument that "oh you have nothing to fear, joining NATO is bad!" to countries who had been opressed by the Soviets less than five years ago.

As for economic help. This is what happens. The West doesn't bail out countries, the IMF goes in with a harsh list of demands and if you comply they might help. Western help wouldn't have exactly made the situation better at first. The reform would still have been required, the pain would have barely been less. Whatever choices Yeltsin made ar his responsibility.

As for the article, I guess this line says it all in there: "West’s visceral and ancestral hatred and suspicion of Russia." Leaves a lot of room for debate!

Also this line: "we betrayed the eastern Europeans who longed for security, yet ended up (in NATO!) feeling less secure than they did in the years following Russia’s democratic revolution." Geeh, I wonder why they feel less secure now then right after the Soviets collapsed

The possibility of Russia joining NATO has come up multiple times, and usually been rebuffed by Russia itself. We've been over that on this board many times.

Was "the west" (that wonderfully nebulous term that gets thrown about a lot but has no clear definition and depending on who you talk to and when can also include Russia) responsible for every ill Russia suffered? No. Was "the west" supposed to step in and micromanage the Russian economy after the Soviet Union? Were nations that *requested* to join NATO supposed to be turned away? Russia has certaibly made joining NATO look like the right call for such nations that did so (loke the Baltic countries) looking at the Georgia and Ukraine examples. NATO was shifting its orientation and mission to counter terrorism entirely until a few years ago when the Ukraine/Crimea issue occurred. European militaries were at the smallest and least capable theyd ever been. Russia's actions of late are what have reoriented NATO back to its traditional role.

As for Serbia, the Serbs ended up picking fights with almost literally everyone they shared a border with, and were engaged in absolutely heinous acts (which, admittedly they were not alone in, but were by far the largest actors). Do we really want to get into how the Serb faction under Milsoevic in Yugoslavia led its disintegaration in the name of Serb nationalism and opened the path for Tudjman's actions? Was Europe supposed to just sit by while Yugoslavia disintegrated?

Lets be real, while there was unfairness and ugliness to Russia, Russia is largely responsible for its own predicament (just as the US is responsible for its current predicament regardless of Russian involvement) Putin's current stance is far more about the accumulation and preservation of power, dangling foreign threats to silence internal dissent and push programs and views that serve his purposes, than it is about the "evil west". Russia is isolated because Russia chose to isolate itself. There may be an argument that "the west" didnt actively help as much as it should have, but had it attempted to, what would the reaction have been? Can you say with a straight face it would have been openly and eagerly accepted or viewed as Western Colonialism? Was "the west" even in possession of enough information to have effectively done so in the previously closed former Soviet republics?

You cant just dump all of Russias ills on "the west" and blame them for not fixing Russias problems.

In the end it comes down to a simple question. If countries have nothing to fear from Russia, why does Russia care so much that those countries join defensive alliances?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Were nations that *requested* to join NATO supposed to be turned away? Russia has certaibly made joining NATO look like the right call for such nations that did so (loke the Baltic countries) looking at the Georgia and Ukraine examples. NATO was shifting its orientation and mission to counter terrorism entirely until a few years ago when the Ukraine/Crimea issue occurred. European militaries were at the smallest and least capable theyd ever been. Russia's actions of late are what have reoriented NATO back to its traditional role.

In hindsight, yes. What reason did NATO have to exist if the Soviet Union collapsed? It feels like this inescapable situation where the eastern NATO countries are rightfully afraid of being bullied by the Russians but end up even more afraid because being in NATO attracts Russian interference, so cling ever tighter. I do think Georgia and Ukraine were a mistake, Georgia largely on Dubya and EuroMaidan largely on the Europeans and Obama. Flipping Georgia stinks of containment strategy and flipping the Ukraine chips at an already decimated Russian buffer with the EU.

Shimon Peres discussing conversations with Putin

Putin says, “Look, what do they want from me? What do you need NATO for? The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore. The Warsaw Pact was dismantled. I am ready to be a member of NATO, like you! But why do they need Georgia in NATO? Why do they need Romania in NATO? They want to go to Europe, go to Europe. But which army do they want to fight?”

And then he said: “You think I didn’t know that Crimea is Russian, and that Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine as a gift? I didn’t care, until then you needed the Ukrainians in NATO. What for? I didn’t touch them. They wanted to go to Europe, I said, ‘Great, go to Europe.’ But why did you need them in NATO?”

Putin told me he talked with Obama. He said, “I told Obama, ‘You know what? I’m ready to join you in the Middle East. Economically, not militarily. I invested $4 billion in Libya, we are working toward a transition there.’ Then one morning, I read that Obama cut the connection with Libya. I lost $4 billion. So I asked him, ‘Why did you do that? Did you think about what will happen there afterwards?’ ”

Pivoting the NATO framework to global terrorism then back to Russia makes it seem like the original mission was self fulfilling. I don't know what alternative could have been made at the time as a middle ground between abandoning the Eastern Euros and bringing them under the NATO umbrella, perhaps a Eastern European only mutual defense treaty, call it Baltic Treaty Organization. Regardless, the bed was made and we're locked again in this cycle of mutual recrimination with the Kremlin where neither side believes the other's version of events. We've all seen this movie before.

 War Drone wrote:

 avantgarde wrote:
Hey, I like Rex at least he looks like he's trying to do his job.

Possibly too well? He's just been sacked... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43388723

I guess it was the straw that broke the camels back. Tillerson was too public about his disagreements with Trump, now we got a little brown noser like Pompeo running the state dept and a known torturer running the CIA. Hopefully Theresa May and the US general's cabal can prevail on the president to reverse course and back the UK. General McMaster is also on the chop block, doe. We'll see Wed. when May makes here announcement.

 War Drone wrote:

 avantgarde wrote:
Hey, I like Rex at least he looks like he's trying to do his job.

Possibly too well? He's just been sacked... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43388723

Tillerson is often accused of being too soft on Russia as he's the former CEO of EXXON that has several billions dollars at stake in Russia that's currently being neutered by current sanctions. (not sure if I agree... but the conflict of interest is quite obvious).

If the idea that Trump is replacing him with someone who's soft on Russia... it wouldn't be with someone Mike Pompeo. In fact, tapping Pompeo may signal a more harsher relationship between Russian and the US.

What I can't wrap my head around... is what more can UK/US do? Stuff like the Maginski Act definitely hurts the Oligarch.... but, does it really faze Putin and upper leadership?

Maybe UK/US would push for US bases in Ukraine? More missile defense assets in Poland?

Kick out RU Embassy personnel for awhile?

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
In the end it comes down to a simple question. If countries have nothing to fear from Russia, why does Russia care so much that those countries join defensive alliances?

Seeing said alliance is heavily anti-russia and led by country that has led illegal invasion of foreign countries with trumped up make-up excuses...yeah nothing to worry for russia there obviously.§

Has there been any violence at the Russian embassy in England? If this happened in America they might be some violent protests at the Russian embassy in America.