Another Former Russian Spy Falls Ill

Posted by BooMan | Mar 7, 2018 | 56 |

The Kremlin appears to have struck again, this time using a nerve agent in an attempted murder of a former Russian intelligence officer.

The former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was deliberately poisoned with a nerve agent in a case that is now being treated as attempted murder, the police counter-terrorism chief has said.

Scotland Yard assistant chief commissioner Mark Rowley said the police officer who was first to the spot where Skripal was found in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon was “seriously ill” in hospital. His condition had deteriorated, Rowley said, adding: “Wiltshire police are providing full support to his family.”

Describing the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia, as a major incident, Rowley said scientists had identified the substance used. He refused to reveal what the specific poison was.

All three were suffering from “exposure to a nerve agent”. Detectives now believed that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were specifically targeted, he added, in a deliberate act. They remain critically ill in hospital.

Although further details are awaited, the suspicion in Downing Street will be that the Kremlin has attempted another brazen assassination operation on British soil.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin struts around like he has no responsibility for this crime and praises Trump while criticizing the people who are investigating his role in getting Trump elected.

I’m already seeing some people express doubt that Russia would be motivated to attack this man. Let’s look at who he is.

Colonel Skripal, a retired Russian military intelligence officer, was jailed for 13 years by Russia in 2006.
He was convicted of passing the identities of Russian intelligence agents working undercover in Europe to the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

In July 2010, he was one of four prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for 10 Russian spies arrested by the FBI.
After a Cold War-style spy swap at Austria’s Vienna airport, Col Skripal moved to Salisbury, where he kept a low profile for eight years.

Also, let’s not forget his children. His daughter was also exposed to this nerve agent, and his son is already dead.

Ms Skripal lives in Moscow and has visited her father in the UK regularly, especially during the past two years.
Family and friends say she did move to the UK but missed Russia so returned to Moscow where she has worked for multinationals, including Nike and PepsiCo.

It is thought her latest visit to the UK may have been timed to coincide with her late brother’s birthday.
Alexander Skripal died aged 43 last July in St Petersburg from liver failure in what relatives believe to have been suspicious circumstances.

The Russians believe in deterrence, and intelligence officers who cross over and spy for their enemies aren’t ever going to feel safe walking down the street in London or Washington, D.C. They’ll never have comfort that their children are safe, especially if they’re still living in Russia.

There will be an investigation and it may drag on or even be inconclusive. But there’s absolutely no reason to doubt that Putin would order something like this. He’s done it before and he’ll continue to do it.

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

56 Comments

TarheelDem on March 7, 2018 at 7:10 pm

Interesting how much both the UK and apparently Russia want to make a big deal out of what in less politicized times would be considered a nation exacting punishment on a traitor. (If the UK is considered an enemy.)

Was this attack unprovoked or did Russsia suspect that Skirpal was not quietly enjoying his parole and asylum (what exchanges generally amount to) but continuing to be active with UK intelligence. Suspicions do not necessarily correspond to realities.

Interesting that this is in the high profile track. What are each of the countries out to prove? It is no surprise that veteran KGB operative Putin internalized the values and practices that date back to the Soviet Union. What is valuable is that PM May wants to signal “Stop that in the UK”.

Personnel actions in intelligence services have nationally predictable results.

The salience of this story does not increase because of the Russian activities (which we are still waiting for clarity on) in the 2016 election. It is just another tragedy resulting from the fact that nations have clandestine services and means for enforcing discipline.
- BooMan on March 7, 2018 at 7:36 pm
  
  find me an example of an American traitor assassinated on the street in an Eastern Bloc country or the Soviet Union.
  
  find me any example of even the suspicion of such a thing.
  - Arthur Gilroy on March 7, 2018 at 7:50 pm
    
    How about in the U.S.?
    
    Seth Rich
    
    No?
    
    WTFU.
    
    AG
    - BooMan on March 7, 2018 at 8:09 pm
      
      Shut up.
      - Arthur Gilroy on March 7, 2018 at 8:13 pm
        
        No. I will not.
        
        AG
      - jsrtheta on March 7, 2018 at 10:26 pm
        
        You really should.
      - Don Durito on March 8, 2018 at 1:16 am
        
        We’ve been trying to get that message through to that idiot for ages. Apparently even the septuagenarians are eating TidePODs these days. And we wonder why this blog is dying.
    - Marie3 on March 7, 2018 at 8:58 pm
      
      Several giant leaps in you example. First the DNC is a private company; thus, a theft would fall under the category of industrial espionage. A crime but not treason. Second, no evidence that Seth Rich stole and passed along DNC files. Third, no evidence that Rich’s murder was committed by any federal, state, or local government official.
      - Arthur Gilroy on March 8, 2018 at 10:23 am
        
        Lack of publicized evidence in a crooked system is not “proof,” Marie. I have lost all trust in this system. Sorry, but there it is. The whole Seth Rich thing is simply too convenient as far as I am concerned. It smells rotten as hell.
        
        AG
      - bazzz on March 8, 2018 at 2:14 pm
        
        Ofcourse Arthur, it is clear that you dont trust the system.
        
        You dont trust reason and sense either it seems, since you make claims, and when challenged you attack the other rather than proving your claim.
        
        It feels that the only thing you trust are your feelings of distrust.
      - Arthur Gilroy on March 8, 2018 at 3:49 pm
        
        Read my sig.
        
        I did “trust.” I trusted the Democratic Party…as my pro-worker/anti-McCarthy grandfather taught me early on…until the assassination years, LBJ (who i still believe was complicit in JFK’s murder and/or its coverup) and what followed. I was tempted to trust Clinton I until I realized that he was selling out the working class to globalist interests, and I was also tempted to trust Obama simply because we shared a similar street culture. When he was at Columbia I was playing jazz in Harlem and elsewhere in NYC plus he claimed he listened to John Coltrane for pleasure…almost always a recommendation for me…and he was without a doubt highly intelligent.
        
        Then I began to realize that he was just another hustler.
        
        Adolph Reed pinned him early on:
        
        Obama No
        by Adolph L. Reed Jr.
        April 28, 2008
        25
        
        I’ve never been an Obama supporter. I’ve known him since the very beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and new directions, is neoliberal.
        
        His political repertoire has always included the repugnant stratagem of using connection with black audiences in exactly the same way Bill Clinton did–i.e., getting props both for emoting with the black crowd and talking through them to affirm a victim-blaming “tough love” message that focuses on alleged behavioral pathologies in poor black communities. Because he’s able to claim racial insider standing, he actually goes beyond Clinton and rehearses the scurrilous and ridiculous sort of narrative Bill Cosby has made infamous.
        
        It may be instructive to look at the outfit where he did his “community organizing,” the invocation of which makes so many lefties go weak in the knees. My understanding of the group, Developing Communities Project, at the time was that it was simply a church-based social service agency. What he pushed as his main political credential then, to an audience generally familiar with that organization, was his role in a youth-oriented voter registration drive. The Obama campaign has even put out a misleading bio of Michelle Obama, representing her as having grown up in poverty on the South Side, when, in fact, her parents were city workers, and her father was a Daley machine precinct captain.
        
        This fabrication, along with those embroideries of the candidate’s own biography, may be standard fare, the typical log cabin narrative. However, in Obama’s case, the license taken not only underscores Obama’s more complex relationship to insider politics in Daley’s Chicago; it also underscores how much this campaign depends on selling an image rather than substance.
        
        —snip—
        
        You say that I “don’t trust reason and sense either.” I suppose it all depends on whose reason and sense. Those who continue to support the DNC/Clinton/Schumer/Pelosi nexus? No, I do not trust their reason and sense. Some are flat-out hustlers and the rest are fools and dupes. Nor do I trust the “reason and sense” of those who…after decades of absolute proof of total dishonesty on every level…choose to believe the professional liars in the intelligence system and its captive media.
        
        You?
        
        I guess we have differing definitions of ‘reason and sense.”
        
        You take the low road; I’ll take the high road and I will still get to Scotland before ye.
        
        Watch.
        
        AG
  - TarheelDem on March 7, 2018 at 9:20 pm
    
    The purpose of this exercise is what? Deflecting from my point that what the Russian Federation does with its national security personnnel is far from a good matter of American propaganda when there are much better issues in Russia. I really don’t get the point of the comparison. Moral comparisons are tricky for all nations anymore, mostly because all nations try to deflect attention away from their misdeeds and from the fact that inconsistency rules judgements of other nations.
    
    “The US is not as bad as….” even when accurate has ended a whole lot of curiosity about actions that under US principles should have gotten attention. The most recent major one that was swept under the carpet was the political use of a biological weapons attack to force through legislation that bent constitutional protections way out of shape, even while hyping the protection of the Second Amendment. I’m still waiting for a major investigation of Cheney’s national security rule.
    
    This sort of behavior does not affect US security directly,is consistent with long-term Soviet and Russian behavior, and is within the purview of the British Tories holding Putin accountable.
    
    I am actually much more interested right know in what dealings Roger Stone (and by extension Donald Trump) had with Julian Assange.
    
    It is not what Russia does to its own spies that threatens the US, it is the fact that it has negotiated parity with the United States in nuclear weapons and has some ambitions of gaining what it thinks is its rightful power after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the US’s arrogant overextension of its sole superpower status and warmongering. The US’s two decades of foreign policy mistakes and Russia’s patienct rebuilding of its military power over the same two decades are what aggravates the power rivalry between the two countries and has created cults of personality of both national leaders.
    - BooMan on March 8, 2018 at 12:31 am
      
      When you come to grips with the fact that Russia is led by a murderous sociopath who kills anyone who makes him lose a wink of sleep, and when you notice that Poland, Hungary, Austria, and Greece are now in his grip, and that Italy and Germany are headed that way, and that he put all his resources into giving the UK Brexit and the US Trump, then maybe I’ll be interested in your expositions on U.S. malfeasance.
      
      This is getting to the point where I’m living in the 1930s and having to listen to leftists explain how America brought the Communist Revolution and the worldwide fascist movement on itself because it didn’t do enough for the proletariat.
      
      While everyone else went out and destroyed those cancers, many at the cost of their lives, a bunch of apologists sucked their thumbs and made criticisms from the popcorn gallery.
      
      I’m goddamned sick of this.
      - MNPundit on March 8, 2018 at 11:29 am
        
        Meant to say this in the other thread but 5-Star movement is not fascist last time I checked. Granted that was last summer.
      - BooMan on March 8, 2018 at 11:58 am
        
        you were wrong last summer and you are wrong now.
      - seabe on March 8, 2018 at 12:02 pm
        
        Syriza is not fascist either, and I’d have voted for them if I lived in Greece. His point isn’t that all of these parties are fascist per se (although many of them are), but that many of them are oriented towards Putin and Russia for one reason or another, whether it be shared geopolitical interests, ideology, or structural powers out of their control.
      - BooMan on March 8, 2018 at 2:43 pm
        
        There isn’t much of a distinction, seabe.
        
        If you get in bed with Russian fascists, you’re a fascist. I mean, many of Nazi Germany’s allies would not have treated their Jewish population as harshly had they not come under Hitler’s thumb, but just as the Eastern Bloc came to be as oppressive, if not moreso, than Soviet Russia, political parties that ally with Putin will govern much like he does if they can’t be contained or if opposition collapses. In general, the people and parties Putin is supporting are far more openly fascist than he would ever dream of being considering Russia’s proud history of defeating fascism.
      - seabe on March 8, 2018 at 3:05 pm
        
        How they respond to that pressure is what matters here. Obviously, Hungary and Poland’s government are not the same as Greece. Golden Dawn is the true internal fascist threat, and obviously Putin would love them as partners. But Greece’s cozyness allows for relief from sanctions against Putin’s crimes, as they advocate dropping the sanctions levied for the invasion of Ukraine.
      - BooMan on March 8, 2018 at 2:33 pm
        
        MS5’s leader, ex-comedian Beppe Grillo, has been described as “the new Mussolini” by historian Nicholas Farrell, who authored a biography on the infamous Italian fascist. Grillo is also a proud purveyor[xxix] of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, who has approvingly quoted Mein Kampf.
        Nigel Farage turned down an alliance with Marine Le Pen in the European Parliament not because her `far right’ Front National party is in fact — unlike his Ukip — `far left’ on most economic and social issues, but because it has `anti-Semitism in its DNA’.
        
        Instead, Nigel Farage, the ex-commodity broker from Sevenoaks, has formed an alliance with the ex-comedian from Genoa, Beppe Grillo, leader of the Movimento 5 Stelle, which is an internet copy-and-paste version of Mussolini’s Fascist movement. Grillo, like his muse Il Duce before him, used to be a communist before he saw the light. Now he aims to replace parliament and the courts — as dictators do — with plebiscites and people’s tribunals on his website.
        
        So the decision by Farage to join forces with this ranting demagogue, a convicted manslaughterer to boot — whose slogan Vaffa! (Fuck Off!) is aimed not just at commodity brokers and their ilk but everything pretty much, except wind farms, ayatollahs and conspiracy theories — beggars belief.
        
        Perhaps it was the European Parliament bounty – reported to be up to €4 million a year — that clouded his judgment. To secure the dosh requires 25 MEPs (he has 24, Grillo 17) from seven member states. Or perhaps his motive was more straightforward: he simply decided that he could get away with it as the world has yet to get its head round Beppe Grillo in the same way that it thinks it has got its head round Marine Le Pen.
        
        But Signor Grillo says anti-Semitic things, unlike Madame Le Pen. I am not aware of a single remark of this nature made by Le Pen, and she is determined to get rid of the anti-Semitic elements which had placed the Front National beyond the pale when it was led by her father, Jean-Marie. A couple of weeks ago she rowed very publicly with him after his latest sick joke about the Jews and said: `The Front National most firmly condemns every form of anti-Semitism, in whatever form it takes.’ The Front National these days is anti-Arab, or anti-Muslim, or anti-Islamist — however you wish to define these things — rather than anti-Jew.
        
        Grillo, on other hand, gives every indication of hating not only Israel, but Jews, too. To him, as to millions of net-curtain twitching lefties, it seems that the Jews are the symbol of parasitical capitalism.
        
        During the European election campaign he posted a photograph of the entrance to Auschwitz on his website replacing the words on the gate `Arbeit Macht Frei’ with `P2 Macht Frei’. It was a reference to the Italian P2 masonic lodge — a favourite punchbag of the Italian left these past 30 years. Just a joke, of course. As usual. Everything is, innit? But it caused outrage nonetheless.
        
        One person notably absent from the Five Star Movement’s triumphant celebrations at a plush hotel in Rome in the early hours of Monday morning was Beppe Grillo, the comedian who less than a decade ago founded the party that seized the biggest share of the vote in Sunday’s inconclusive election.
        
        Instead, the 69-year-old was pondering biodegradability in what appeared to be a metaphorical plea for his party to remain “unpolluted” and, if need be, return to its roots as an opposition force.
        
        In a blogpost he congratulated the party, now led by 31-year-old Luigi Di Maio, a former waiter, but warned of the dangers of it being changed by its victory.
        
        Grillo, who was instrumental in turning the movement built by a rabble of rebels into Italy’s strongest political force, said in January that unless it won an outright majority in the election it should remain in opposition. “It would be like saying that a panda can eat raw meat. We only eat bamboo,” he said of the prospect of sharing power.
        
        But Di Maio, said to have been groomed by Grillo for the leadership, has other ideas. On Monday he said he was open to talks with all political parties, and he has already presented his would-be cabinet – a list of what he calls “anti-politicians”.
        
        “Grillo remains the last major obstacle to Di Maio’s plan,” said Jacopo Iacoboni, a journalist at La Stampa and author of The Experiment, a book about the Five Star Movement. “But victory is so strong and the power of the numbers so astonishing that it will be tough even for Grillo to stop Di Maio’s plans.”
        
        With Italy embroiled in financial crisis in 2009, it was Italians’ anger with the political establishment that helped create the Five Star Movement. The strength of feeling helped M5S win the second largest share of the vote in the 2013 elections. And now anger is again credited with driving its latest success, with Di Maio attracting support from voters who might otherwise have backed the centre-left Democratic party.
      - MNPundit on March 8, 2018 at 4:28 pm
        
        Its all about how current leader is breaking with Grillo and likely has the power to do so. Is looking to form a left wing coalition while the other option for Italy is Berlusconi with LEGA NORD in it. Thats fascists for you.
      - BooMan on March 8, 2018 at 7:36 pm
        
        At least you can recognize some fascist political parties.
      - BooMan on March 8, 2018 at 7:38 pm
        
        President Vladimir Putin’s ruling party has signed a co-operation deal with Italy’s far-right Lega Nord, deepening Russia’s ties with Europe’s populist movements.
        
        The deal marks the Kremlin’s latest attempt to develop formal links with populist groups ahead of elections this year in which the right is set to make gains.
        
        United Russia, the main pro-Kremlin party, signed a similar agreement late last year with the far-right Freedom party of Austria, whose leader Heinz-Christian Strache was narrowly defeated in December’s presidential election. The leader of Germany’s anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Frauke Petry, also held talks with United Russia’s Viacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Duma, the lower house of parliament, during a visit to Russia last month.
        
        Moscow officials have hailed the rise of anti-establishment populist parties in Europe and Donald Trump’s victory in the US as signs that western governments will fail in their attempts to isolate Mr Putin’s regime following the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
        
        Common cause in a conservative backlash against liberal values and criticism of the EU’s handling of the migrant crisis have allowed Moscow to build good relationships with European far-right parties including France’s National Front, Hungary’s Jobbik and Italy’s Lega Nord, or Northern League.
  - jsrtheta on March 7, 2018 at 10:35 pm
    
    Interesting response. It would seem the most important reaction is to point a finger at the U.S. and yell “Tu quoque!”
    - janicket on March 7, 2018 at 10:52 pm
      
      Tarheel Dem does that all the time, gets indignant when one points it out, and ripostes with a multi-paragraph exposition on all the evil things the USA has done in the world.
- Marie3 on March 7, 2018 at 7:55 pm
  
  If Russia/Putin wanted to exact revenge on Skripal, they would have let him serve out his 2006 conviction and thirteen year sentence (or made him disappear in the Gulag) and Medevev wouldn’t have pardoned him in 2010. (American spies for USSR/Russia Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen got life sentences.)
  
  Why the US offered to swap the Illegals Program Russian spies for Skripal and three other Russians convicted of spying for the US and/or UK is interesting.
  - BooMan on March 7, 2018 at 8:08 pm
    
    Please just stop.
    - Arthur Gilroy on March 7, 2018 at 8:15 pm
      
      Why?
      
      Really.
      
      Why?
      
      Do you really believe that the US spooks are any less lethal than the Russian spooks?
      
      I don’t.
      
      AG
    - seabe on March 7, 2018 at 8:21 pm
      
      They’re in too deep, Booman. It’s really amazing. Assassinations like this are done explicitly to send a message: they want you to know it was them. Why yes, I get rare substances available only to elite nations all of the time. Just like how “no one knows” who used Sarin in Syria.
      - Marie3 on March 7, 2018 at 9:38 pm
        
        So why did Obama pull back on bombing Syria over the Sarin attack? Maybe he should have consulted with you since you seem to know who did it better than Obama did. Did you applaud the missiles Trump launched over the equally unverified culprit of a chemical attack?
        
        Are some Russians pining the Curious Case of the Dying Russian Diplomats on US/Obama/Trump? Wouldn’t dead Russian diplomats be a message? (What a shame these deaths can’t be shoe-horned into the Russia-Putin CT obsession.)
    - Marie3 on March 7, 2018 at 9:09 pm
      
      Stop what? Being rational and logical?
      
      Maybe you should put down your 1964 Goldwater pom poms and stop consulting that manual used by the false flags everywhere folks and the Clinton body count conspiracy nuts.
      - seabe on March 7, 2018 at 9:11 pm
        
        You literally cited a false Newsweek article to promote chemical weapons denial on behalf of the Russian and Syrian states. But yes, you’re the rational one.
      - bazzz on March 7, 2018 at 9:47 pm
        
        I think the superior one.
      - Marie3 on March 7, 2018 at 10:01 pm
        
        Extraordinary that you can recall that I cited a Newsweek article several years ago. As Newsweek is not in the habit of publishing anything contrary to US official speak, it was extraordinary that they would have done so wrt the Sarin attack in Syria. Did Newsweek retract the article in accordance with your claim that it was false?
        
        But noticed that you didn’t answer either of my questions. Why did Obama pull back on the Sarin claim? Did you applaud when Trump launched missiles?
      - seabe on March 7, 2018 at 10:08 pm
        
        February 28th, 2018
      - Marie3 on March 7, 2018 at 11:39 pm
        
        wtf — people in government positions aren’t allowed to express doubts about USG official evidence and claims? Doubts that many non-federal US intell employees have as well. Nothing false about that.
        
        In real time, I also doubted (actually I smelled total BS for GWB to get his war on) the claims made in a 10/4/01 Guardian article: Iraq ‘behind US anthrax outbreaks’:
        
        American investigators probing anthrax outbreaks in Florida and New York believe they have all the hallmarks of a terrorist attack – and have named Iraq as prime suspect as the source of the deadly spores.
        
        Their inquiries are adding to what US hawks say is a growing mass of evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved, possibly indirectly, with the 11 September hijackers.
        … [emp addded]
        
        Such a pity both of those allegations – Iraqi produced anthrax and Iraq participation in the 9/11 attacks — fell apart in the subsequent months. Would have made the Bush/Cheney/PNAC invasion of Iraq so much easier if they could have screamed “Anthrax-9/11-Saddam.”
        
        Get a clue; when the list of possible malefactors is long and the hard evidence is sketchy, weak, non-existent, etc., always doubt the official narrative, particularly when it serves the agenda of those officials.
      - seabe on March 7, 2018 at 11:45 pm
        
        Oh ok, so now we are to take the misrepresentation of Comrade Mattis’ in an article by Ian Wilkie — an article with multiple factual errors, which should come as no surprise because Newsweek is more of a dumpster fire than it ever has been in its history — as just “hey who knows who dropped poison gas on who in 2013 and 2017.” However, if you actually look at the transcript, that is absolutely NOT what he is saying, and to distort what he is saying in service to the Syrian genocide propagated by the Syrian and Russian state, you yourself are a propagandist in service to said genocide.
      - BooMan on March 8, 2018 at 12:08 pm
        
        “For days, Russia’s main national TV channels were practically silent on the attempt to kill former spy Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent, but this changed in Thursday’s main evening bulletins,” the BBC reports.
        
        “The comment by Kirill Kleimenov — the presenter on government-controlled Channel One’s flagship Vremya news program — sounded like a veiled, mocking threat to anyone considering becoming a double agent for Britain.”
        
        Said Kleimenov: “I don’t wish death on anyone, but for purely educational purposes, I have a warning for anyone who dreams of such a career. The profession of a traitor is one of the most dangerous in the world.”
- mainsailset on March 7, 2018 at 10:22 pm
  
  Thing is, Russia always makes a point of offing anyone who they even suspect of not cowering in silence. Since the Steele dossier was released by BuzzFeed there’s been close to a dozen people who have met their end, either publicly or mysteriously.
  
  There simply isn’t another country that so routinely ends the life of people and of course who jail journalists.
  
  To think of this in political terms is probably missing the point. This is more protecting the top player in the logistics of an attack against foreign countries. Putin wants to keep his troops and his incursion in play.
- MNPundit on March 8, 2018 at 11:25 am
  
  Of course Putin thought he might be working with UK int, Putin is properly paranoid. That doesnt mean he should get a pass for assassinating his people in a foreign country. That pisses me off quite a bit. How outrageous would it be if America assassinated Snowden?
  
  He is basically shoving the wests face into his crotch and daring them to complain. He thinks the West has too short an attention span and not enough political will to result in meaningful consequences. I think hes probably right but I hope not.
seabe on March 7, 2018 at 9:10 pm

Off topic, but relevant:

Casey Newton: The Italian Job

A blustery populist takes a hard line on immigration, masters the use of Facebook, and leads his party to a surprising electoral victory. It’s the story of Donald Trump, of course, but also of Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s far-right Lega party — and, according to this excellent BuzzFeed story, a likely “kingmaker” in upcoming negotiations to form a governing coalition.

With 2 million Facebook followers and a relentless focus on immigration and bashing the media, Salvini appears to have mastered the modern art of social media engagement. If many of his tactics were borrowed from Trump, he proved to be an innovator in his own right. In a novel move I expect we will see repeated, Salvini essentially gamified his Facebook page in a bid for wider organic reach:

One month before election day, the Lega leader also raised eyebrows for running a bizarre competition, which encouraged followers to drive up the engagement on his Facebook page.
“It was called `Vinci Salvini’, meaning ‘Win Salvini’,” De Luca said. “You participated by liking and sharing Salvini’s Facebook posts, with the ones who shared and liked the most named the daily winner.”
Salvini had turned his Facebook page into a game, where thousands of people were focused on inflating the engagement on his page. “Each winner got a phone call from Salvini, a photo posted on the page and sometimes a one-on-one coffee,” De Luca said.

BuzzFeed calls this “bizarre,” but would you? In an era where Facebook has denounced “passive consumption” in favor of “meaningful interactions,” it’s hard to imagine a better strategy for promoting a candidate on the platform.

But focusing on how this might be a problem would be a distraction.
- MNPundit on March 8, 2018 at 11:31 am
  
  Note, 5-Star is trying to make a coalition with the left parties to form a government currently.
  - seabe on March 8, 2018 at 11:49 am
    
    The article is not about Five Star. I will wait to see what Five Star actually does in government. If they have the same attitude towards migrants and refugees, but with “socialism” mixed in, then I can’t say I’ll be pleased as they send thousands of people back to a war zone.
TarheelDem on March 7, 2018 at 10:04 pm

The Reuters article on this event is attributed to UK counterterrorism, Boris Johnson, and Scotland Yard. That is hardly Russia self-advertising. And comes at a critical time in Brexit politics.

It also threatens to ramp up Russian sanctions from the UK as Trump begins to come under Mueller’s spotlight.

A lot of different people benefit from this chemical agent assassination, potentially not even major international players, just someone who has a substantial quantity of chemical agents that are easily deliverable in large enough quantities.
- jsrtheta on March 7, 2018 at 10:32 pm
  
  You are really overthinking this. They did it because that’s what they do. That’s what they’ve always done.
  
  It’s the fucking Russians, for Christ’s sake. This isn’t “four dimensional chess.” This isn’t about chemical agents.
  
  It’s about thugs doing what thugs do. And Russian thugs have been doing it for over a 100 years now.
- BooMan on March 8, 2018 at 12:21 am
  
  please, for the love of God, just stop it.
  - chetsky on March 8, 2018 at 2:26 am
    
    Booman, I love your writing, and your research and knowledge. But this community …. whew. I know it’s only a few, but the lack of a “block” feature makes threads unreadable. I’m glad you post over at WaMo, where they use Disqus, and I can read your stuff (and comments) there.
    - grog on March 8, 2018 at 8:06 am
      
      This, a thousand times this. If Boo won’t boot the one outright crazy person and the rest of the Our Progressive Betters clique, at least give us the tools to block them and the purity ponies they road in on into oblivion.
      
      Why these people continue to hang here remains a mystery. There are any number of long-standing blogs out there who would gladly welcome them.
      - janicket on March 9, 2018 at 12:20 am
        
        They stay here to strut and posture and bloviate, sneering down their superior noses at the tools and fools around them.
  - Raoul Paste on March 8, 2018 at 11:00 am
    
    You’re seeing it clearly- the manipulative evil behind Brexit, Trump, and Putin’s murderous ambition.
    
    Most of us get it.
- rfahey22 on March 8, 2018 at 10:21 am
  
  I’ve seen enough in my life to know that the simplest explanation is almost always the correct one. Presumptively the attempted hit came from Putin or one of his lieutenants.
  
  We just imposed new sanctions on NK because Kim assassinated his exiled brother (which everyone in the world knows despite the fact that, from what I recall, Kim has not admitted guilt). Here, I’m confident that Trump won’t take any actions whatsoever.
astamari316 on March 8, 2018 at 7:51 am

The Beeb is trying to be objective and so has offered alternative possibilities. 1) Why would Putin do this right before the next presidential elections since this assassination attempt will make him look bad. Counter argument: Putin cares what the people think, especially when he has essentially rigged the election? Counter-counter argument: someone with access to a very difficult to make or buy nerve agent wants to embarrass Putin. Really? If this were so, access to this agent is so difficult it would be easy to find out who got it. 2) The Russian Mafia wanted this ex-KGB agent gone. Counter Argument: Why? As far as anyone knows, he has been on the down low ever since reaching England so there’s no real motive for the Mafia to take him out.

So my betting is that it is Putin but that he may have said it a la Henry II “Will no one rid me of this pesky priest?” in a vague way one day and some flunky decided to do it out of the blue right now. To be sure, Putin always secures his revenge against “treason” and is creative about his execution styles but it’s mainly the timing that seems really weird.
- MNPundit on March 8, 2018 at 11:37 am
  
  Wouldnt it make him look strong in the elections? No traitor is safe, and he can act with impunity against the threat from the west. Its the same theory as the gop electing someone who makes liberals cry except with more death.
- suvro1776 on March 8, 2018 at 1:14 pm
  
  He was connected to Christopher Steele!
  
  http://www.businessinsider.com/sergei-skripal-had-links-to-russia-expert-christopher-steele-2018-3
  
  https:/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/07/poisoned-russian-spy-sergei-skripal-close-consultant-lin
  ked
  - astamari316 on March 8, 2018 at 6:28 pm
    
    Given that a big part of Steele’s career was as a British agent/expert on Russia, it is not at all surprising he would know Skrypal and all kinds of other people: shady or straight. Doesn’t point to anything directly linking them though and, say, Trump.
  - TarheelDem on March 8, 2018 at 6:50 pm
    
    Thanks for the examined tie-in with Christopher Steele’s work for MI-6.
    
    Through Julian Sanchez at Cato Institute, Kyle Orton passes a tweet that the Russian Embassy in the UK issued asserting that Skirpal “was actually working for MI-6”.
    
    Through your article but apparently not being run by Christopher Steele.
    
    Does Skirpal have any information from a time period that would be useful to the Mueller investigation? Does his daughter? Both of them and the police officer are still in the hospital. All other injured have been released. Kind of an interesting message-sending. Or the London police are very quick on their feet.
    
    Your article makes clear that there are some sort of tit-for-tat operations going on between UK and Russia on UK territory of late.
    
    The UK report on the chemical substance in the attack will be instructive as to attribution of the attack. And the intended message or intent of the attack, which apparently included an internationally reported incident, not a privately executed disciplinary action.
    
    I seem to have gotten on the wrong side of an intended pep rally or “ain’t it awful!” session.
    
    Yes, it’s awful, but so is the continued presence of Guantanamo without due process. So is the actions of the President of the US in blowing hot and cold about his policy with respect to Russia. So is the baiting of North Korea and the intent to remilitarize Japan. And, yes, Russian elections are coming up only ten days away, also by design(?) the fourth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea. Allowed parties are Russian All-Peoples Party, Communist Party, Liberal Democratic Party, Putin running as an independent, Civic Initiative, Communists of Russia, Party of Growth, Yabloko (Russian United Democratic Party). Putin had 45% when last elected; current polls show 67%, which shows the results of the forced trimming of candidates during the pre-primary and primary process.
    
    Zhirovsky ties in the second place with Communist Party of Russia at 5%.
    
    Trump has not implemented the Congress-voted sanctions against the leadership judged responsible for Russia’s collusion in the US election.
    
    Russia entered the Syrian war as a “neutral” broker to ensure Syria’s (Assad’s) interests in the agreement by which the Obama administration removed Syria’s existing stocks of chemical weapons and dismantled chemical weapons factories under the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, The UK government has been a hardliner on Whether Assad needs replacing at the endgame of the Syrian War. Russia retains bases in Syria exactly to support Assad and to hold onto a eastern Mediterranean basing of aircraft and naval units.
    
    Which of these most motivate UK curiosity about intelligence from the Russian leadership? Which of these most motivate Russia’s own hardline stance.
    
    Leaders get their power from their followers. Putin is no different. Who in Russian society is willing to follow him?
    
    Sketch out how Russia conducts regime change in the US in the way that the US has done since World War II.
    
    The miniseries Amerika took a crack at this in 1987 based on a putative communist takeover of US democratic government. (Donald Wrye was the writer. Starring Kris Kristofferson,Robert Urich,Wendy Hughes, Sam Neill, Cindy Pickett, Dorian Harewood, Armin Mueller-Stahl
    Richard Bradford, Ivan Dixon, Marcel Hillaire, Ford Rainey, Graham Beckel, Reiner Schöne, Mariel Hemingway,Christine Lahti) Not a great effort but good enough to make some new points at the time. And to show the disconnect between US fears and US counterinsurgency strategy and tactics.
    
    But the ideological polarity is reversed under this Russia threat, is it not? Mother Russia, Orthodoxy, oligopoly still in conflict, autocracy against what culturally(?), an oligopolistic economy, a Make America Great Again political culture, a corrupt and bureaucratic military with strong individuals but poor leadership for the past 50 years, and 270 million guns in private hands. How does Russia take on that? How exactly do Americans (with or without government leadership) act to deter or counteract Russian actions.
    
    Spreading the old counterpart of the individualized Cold War fear of a fifth column is neither necessary nor adequate. And lying about the real threats is counterproductive from both a political and military standpoint. The fact that Clinton did not sway a large part of the veteran electorate from voting for Trump should have made that fact obvious; that one change would never have put the election at risk. Failing to make strong analysis of what was going on because you want to hold accountable those who were “weak supporters” is much too late now when clarity would actually help rebuild a real opposition to any outside attempt to dominate American politics.
    
    Litmus tests did not help in the 1940s and they will not help now. I hope that you are not facing them already at work or in your social circles.
afdiplomat on March 8, 2018 at 10:15 pm

I wonder if Mr. Longman, instead of the specific link on Litvinenko, might have even more persuasively linked to this piece as precedent for current events:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil?utm_ter
m=.arybLAjq4#.aaMXrey4G

This two-year investigation of suspicious deaths of Russians in the UK by
“Buzzed” was a real public service, and it deserves to be remembered. It also surfaces an important issue that could have been mentioned here. As the article recounts:

“Russian assassins have been able to kill in Britain with impunity over the past decade, 17 current and former British and American intelligence officials told BuzzFeed News. The reasons for Britain’s reticence, they said, include fear of retaliation, police incompetence, and a desire to preserve the billions of pounds of Russian money that pour into British banks and properties each year. As a result, Russia is making what one source called increasingly ‘bold moves’ in the UK without fear of reprisals.”

If we consider that context for these events, the fact that Donald Trump may be personally indebted financially to Russian money takes on an even more sinister aspect.

Another Former Russian Spy Falls Ill

About The Author

BooMan

56 Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Comments