Salisbury, Skripal, Poison and Russia.

[leicsmac]

OPCW is pretty conclusive, the only non-Russian theory now is that it was some other actor using Novichok and pinning it on them. Would make for a pretty good crime to get away with (everyone would go after Russia) were it the case, but with no evidence to that happening you have to conclude that it was the Russians that did this tbh.

[m4DD0gg]

 

 

Prob wont go down to well on this site.

[Beechey]

Just now, m4DD0gg said:

 

 

Prob wont go down to well on this site.

You're right, because this guy is a total nutjob.

[m4DD0gg]

1 minute ago, Beechey said:

You're right, because this guy is a total nutjob.

Sure maybe but have you seen every UK prime minister for the last i dont know.......50 fking years?

 

He makes some exceptionally valid points.

[leicsmac]

Well, there's two sides to it tbh.

 

On the one, Russia did most likely do all this.

On the other, war is, for the most part, a stupid and pointless exercise that ends up taking more lives than it saves because the people in charge don't know what they're doing.

[Beechey]

Just now, leicsmac said:

Well, there's two sides to it tbh.

 

On the one, Russia did most likely do all this.

On the other, war is, for the most part, a stupid and pointless exercise that ends up taking more lives than it saves because the people in charge don't know what they're doing.

True, but there does have to be a response to a foreign state using chemical weapons on our territory and citizens.

[Buce]

11 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

OPCW is pretty conclusive, the only non-Russian theory now is that it was some other actor using Novichok and pinning it on them. Would make for a pretty good crime to get away with (everyone would go after Russia) were it the case, but with no evidence to that happening you have to conclude that it was the Russians that did this tbh.

 

It may be that there is a shadowy organisation separate to the state - I have little doubt that most major nations have them. The question everybody seems to be ignoring is why? What did Putin have to gain? They already had him in jail before, so why leave retribution till now?

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, Beechey said:

True, but there does have to be a response to a foreign state using chemical weapons on our territory and citizens.

Most certainly there does have to be, but it would be better all around if it were kept strictly to diplomatic squabbling. That's what they're there for, after all.

 

2 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

It may be that there is a shadowy organisation separate to the state - I have little doubt that most major nations have them. The question everybody seems to be ignoring is why? What did Putin have to gain? They already had him in jail before, so why leave retribution till now?

It could be a rogue FSB element or whatever operating beyond Putins control - that's not outside the realm of possibility. That being said, you'd have to answer the same question for them too; what would they have to gain from offing this guy?

[m4DD0gg]

6 minutes ago, Beechey said:

True, but there does have to be a response to a foreign state using chemical weapons on our territory and citizens.

Yeh do you know when we are going after the Saudis?

[SpacedX]

2 hours ago, m4DD0gg said:

 

The Ukraine.........well that is down right text book. They meddled and meddled and meddled in something that was not theirs to meddle in and got burnt big time. If they had not meddled in the first place then i suspect that the follow on events of crimea, mh17 etc would not have happened.

Arrant nonsense.

 

In transfer of the Crimea to the Ukraine Khruschchev's goal was to decentralise the Communist monolith, hence the Crimea transfer He saw Kiev as the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus as a common source and that they could not live without each other, Implying that given this closeness Russia must have control over the Malorossian territory. Khrushchev too thought that Ukraine and Russia were almost one - after all a symbolic reason for the 1954 transfer was the 300th anniversary of the Ukrainian-Russian unification. But he would think of them as equal nations, assigning the original primacy to the 9th century Kiev, not to Moscow, which until the 1100s was just an obscure place in the woods.

 

In the words of Vladimir Putin, "In people's hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia." - meaning under the jurisdiction of Moscow. To him, Khruschchev's  actions were traitorous.

 

This was also about the Dacha complex in Yalta which has long been the choice destination for Kremlin leaders to unwind. Stalin used to spend summer breaks strolling in the sprawling grounds of Yalta's Massandra Palace. And in 1991 it was in Crimea's Dacha No 3, in Foros Yalta, that the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, was held under house arrest as his empire collapsed around him. Dacha No 1, also known as Wisteria, was owned by Nikita Khrushchev himself.

 

Putin has tried to get his hands on the dacha once before. In 2005, just two years after he first declared his affections for Wisteria, the property mysteriously came into the ownership of the Russian bank VTB under the title of "the official residence of the president of Russia in Crimea".

 

To avoid seizures, sanctions and taxes, Russia's elite rarely purchase deluxe properties in their own names but prefer to use a complex system of backroom deals and the signatures of political patrons. Unsurprisingly, the property deeds for Wisteria, under the supervision of Ukraine's notoriously corrupt leaders at the time – presidents Kuchma and twice-ousted Yanukovych – passed through the hands of several state department officials before emerging in the Moscow-based VTB bank's inventory. It's well known locally that Dacha No 1 belonged to Putin in everything but name. But his luxury holidays on Crimea's picturesque coastline were brought to an abrupt end in 2005 when the corrupt scheme was revealed in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution. Yushchenko, consequently waged a bitter lawsuit with Moscow on behalf of his parliament. The property was eventually restored to the Ukrainian government at a a third of the cost of its estimated value.

 

Russia had long feared the possibility of a pro-democracy “colour revolution” on its own territory, having watched in horror as mass protests overthrew regimes in the former Soviet states of Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004 and Kyrgyzstan in 2005. Putin and the state-controlled media depicted these movements as western conspiracies, CIA plots funded by George Soros. For Putin, they were threats to Russia’s regional authority and stability, which had already been ravaged by the fall of the Soviet Union, as well as threats to his personal power.

 

Hardly surprising, then, when Moscow moved swiftly to quash Russia’s recent “snow revolution” in the form of beatings and violent dispersals, arrests of opposition leaders and protesters on trumped-up charges, show trials of dissidents – remember Pussy Riot? - and further curtailments of the already limited freedoms of the press, speech and assembly.

 

But Putin’s efforts to head off a potential colour revolution went beyond repression to a campaign aimed at constructing a positive sense of Russian identity. Through a strategic combination of propaganda and geopolitical aggression, Putin’s government promoted a narrative meant to bolster patriotism, and Russian xenophobia and paranoia along with it. State-controlled media has pushed the idea that the “return” of Crimea to Russia was the greatest moment in Russian history since victory over the Nazis in 1945, the cornerstone of postwar Russian identity, the tragedy and triumph that united the Soviet people. Putin’s disregard and flagrant violation of international law and the postwar order, through the annexation of Crimea, was an aggressive move to return to a world in which Russia was still an international superpower, filling its citizens with patriotic pride.

 

For the moment, Putin is taking a leaf out of Stalin’s book, blaming every problem on external enemies, internal wreckers or incompetents. It remains to be seen how long this can last amid the economic unravelling.

 

[Buce]

8 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Most certainly there does have to be, but it would be better all around if it were kept strictly to diplomatic squabbling. That's what they're there for, after all.

 

It could be a rogue FSB element or whatever operating beyond Putins control - that's not outside the realm of possibility. That being said, you'd have to answer the same question for them too; what would they have to gain from offing this guy?

1

 

Who knows what their motives might be if we don't know what their aims are? Whoever did it didn't seem to make a very good job of it, did they? You could argue that there was a trail of breadcrumbs. Maybe the victim wasn't important to them but the consequences were.

[Beechey]

11 minutes ago, m4DD0gg said:

Yeh do you know when we are going after the Saudis?

Has Saudi Arabia launched a chemical attack on the UK?

[leicsmac]

11 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Who knows what their motives might be if we don't know what their aims are? Whoever did it didn't seem to make a very good job of it, did they? You could argue that there was a trail of breadcrumbs. Maybe the victim wasn't important to them but the consequences were.

It was certainly a botchjob, no matter who did it.

[Buce]

17 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

It was certainly a botchjob, no matter who did it.

 

Indeed, and it just doesn’t add up. It was so badly done that they may as well have left a calling card. I just don’t see what Putin had to gain from the inevitable diplomatic fallout. 

[Sharpe's Fox]

Remove all sanctions now and de escalate.

[Beechey]

1 minute ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

Remove all sanctions now and de escalate.

Otherwise known as "we are cool with you trying to kill our citizens"

[Sharpe's Fox]

1 hour ago, Beechey said:

Otherwise known as "we are cool with you trying to kill our citizens"

Every movement the west makes against Putin makes him stronger in his own dictatorship. As Putin gets stronger it allows him to act unilaterally in his own interest abroad. We cant do that because after Iraq and other interventions the electorate in western democracies dont accept intervention. So what do we do? Putin does something bad. We get outraged, impose sanctions on Russia. Sanctions makes Putin stronger, he acts militarily abroad and we can’t. Repeat. 

 

The only logistical step is to restore some semblance of democracy to Russia and you do that by reintegrating them into the world economy, the first step to that is to remove sanctions on trade. People don’t do wars with countries you buy shite from, its foreign policy 101.

[Beechey]

32 minutes ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

Every movement the west makes against Putin makes him stronger in his own dictatorship. As Putin gets stronger it allows him to act unilaterally in his own interest abroad. We cant do that because after Iraq and other interventions the electorate in western democracies dont accept intervention. So what do we do? Putin does something bad. We get outraged, impose sanctions on Russia. Sanctions makes Putin stronger, he acts militarily abroad and we can’t. Repeat. 

 

The only logistical step is to restore some semblance of democracy to Russia and you do that by reintegrating them into the world economy, the first step to that is to remove sanctions on trade. People don’t do wars with countries you buy shite from, its foreign policy 101.

That is demonstrably untrue. See both World Wars, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Franco-Prussian War etc. Falklands, Football War, Napoleonic Wars, all wars between India and Pakistan. Economic entanglement has never stopped war. It might make people be wary of it, but in the end it's not powerful enough.

 

Putin is kept in power by the Oligarchs, in return he protects them and their assets, the way to pressure him is to damage the Oligarch's assets, putting Putin's position in jeopardy. The way to urge Putin to keep going in finding out if we will ever step in is to do nothing, or as you say: reintegrating them into the world economy. We did nothing after he ordered the murder of Litvinenko, we did nothing, he went on to invade Georgia, we did nothing, he went on to invade Crimea, and only them did we apply sanctions.

 

What makes you think, given our past experience, that doing nothing will help in any way whatsoever, other than to show the world that using chemical weapons meets with economic stability and assurance from the West?

 

Appeasement is hated here more than intervention is.

[leicsmac]

7 minutes ago, Beechey said:

That is demonstrably untrue. See both World Wars, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Franco-Prussian War etc.

 

Putin is kept in power by the Oligarchs, in return he protects them and their assets, the way to pressure him is to damage the Oligarch's assets, putting Putin's position in jeopardy. The way to urge Putin to keep going in finding out if we will ever step in is to do nothing, or as you say: reintegrating them into the world economy.

Is Putins position really that dependent on the rich ones around him, when he has considerable riches and power from which to draw himself?

 

I can see what you mean should he go totally off the reservation and they present a totally unrelenting totally united front against him (viz. perhaps escalating a situation to the degree the oligarchs think all their money could end up worthless), but simply giving a few a glancing blow or two to the pocketbook when they can move their money elsewhere if needs be isn't a particularly quick or effective way to restore democracy to Russia IMO.

 

That being said, I can't actually think of an option that would be.

[Beechey]

14 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Is Putins position really that dependent on the rich ones around him, when he has considerable riches and power from which to draw himself?

 

I can see what you mean should he go totally off the reservation and they present a totally unrelenting totally united front against him (viz. perhaps escalating a situation to the degree the oligarchs think all their money could end up worthless), but simply giving a few a glancing blow or two to the pocketbook when they can move their money elsewhere if needs be isn't a particularly quick or effective way to restore democracy to Russia IMO.

 

That being said, I can't actually think of an option that would be.

Recently, less so than before, simply because he's so erratic. Locking up or killing his political enemies, but the Oligarchs united (there are around 50 that ensure Putin's power base) could break him if united, simply because of the wealth they can draw on, and the industry and media that they control etc. I watched a really good documentary on the Russian political system a few weeks ago, I'll try and find it in the morning.

 

The thing with Russia is that since so much of the Oligarch money is dirty, it's rinsed and cleaned through London and UK territories. It would definitely hurt us to cripple the Oligarchs because of the wealth they own here, but some would argue it's worth it. Russia has never has had a proper functioning democracy anyway. As I said, the Oligarch's control so much of the country that in reality they decide who becomes President, as they did with Putin (they actually chose him to be Boris Yeltsin's successor).

 

Russia won't stop because we show weakness and lift sanctions. It will just be portrayed as a great victory by Putin in bringing the West to heel. The Cold War wasn't won by cuddling the USSR.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

4 hours ago, Buce said:

 

It may be that there is a shadowy organisation separate to the state - I have little doubt that most major nations have them. The question everybody seems to be ignoring is why? What did Putin have to gain? They already had him in jail before, so why leave retribution till now?

 

And why execute so poorly... all they silenced was a cat and two guinea pigs

[Beechey]

9 hours ago, DJ Barry Hammond said:

 

And why execute so poorly... all they silenced was a cat and two guinea pigs

They didn't "silence" Litvinenko either, he lived for weeks and was able to tell the intelligence services everything he knew in that time. Silencing isn't their goal, sending a message to would-be traitors is.

[Alf Bentley]

21 minutes ago, Beechey said:

They didn't "silence" Litvinenko either, he lived for weeks and was able to tell the intelligence services everything he knew in that time. Silencing isn't their goal, sending a message to would-be traitors is.

 

That's my guess, too.

 

Doesn't make much sense otherwise. If they'd cared that much about killing Skripal, they could have done it while they had him imprisoned in Russia - and would surely have been capable of arranging a more efficient hit in Salisbury, if they'd suddenly thought that necessary?

 

Unless you get into the realms of conspiracy theories and imagine that the UK or US might have done it to incriminate Russia (why?!), then the only alternative seems to be some powerful non-state player in Russia.

But would they have been able to acquire the nerve agent, to take it to the UK and to use it? And if they had, couldn't Putin have got them to take the rap for it?

 

"Pour encourager les autres" (a subtle reminder to serving Russian agents of the long arm of the Russian state) seems a likely motive. 

[Buce]

35 minutes ago, Beechey said:

They didn't "silence" Litvinenko either, he lived for weeks and was able to tell the intelligence services everything he knew in that time. Silencing isn't their goal, sending a message to would-be traitors is.

 

2 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

That's my guess, too.

 

Doesn't make much sense otherwise. If they'd cared that much about killing Skripal, they could have done it while they had him imprisoned in Russia - and would surely have been capable of arranging a more efficient hit in Salisbury, if they'd suddenly thought that necessary?

 

Unless you get into the realms of conspiracy theories and imagine that the UK or US might have done it to incriminate Russia (why?!), then the only alternative seems to be some powerful non-state player in Russia.

But would they have been able to acquire the nerve agent, to take it to the UK and to use it? And if they had, couldn't Putin have got them to take the rap for it?

 

"Pour encourager les autres" (a subtle reminder to serving Russian agents of the long arm of the Russian state) seems a likely motive. 

 

That doesn't explain why Putin would consider it worth damaging Russia's foreign relations so badly to send such a message.

 

Putin is anything but stupid.

[Carl the Llama]

8 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

 

That doesn't explain why Putin would consider it worth damaging Russia's foreign relations so badly to send such a message.

 

Putin is anything but stupid.

If he was worried about damaging foreign relations he wouldn't have invaded Crimea tbf.