Alleged provocations exposed by Russia’s murdered general: The main cases
Igor Kirillov spent years investigating incidents involving chemical and biological weapons
RT | December 17, 2024
Russian Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who was killed on Tuesday in Moscow along with his assistant in an assassination allegedly carried out by Ukraine, was the Russian military’s top official on the hazards posed by weapons of mass destruction.
Kirillov commanded the military branch responsible for protecting troops and civilians from chemical and biological weapons, and from the radioactive fallout of a nuclear strike or ‘dirty bomb’ attack. He was also in charge of military investigations into numerous high-profile cases directly and indirectly involving Russia.
He delivered over 40 briefings about the findings made by specialists under his command since being appointed in 2017. He also regularly offered his expert opinion to Russian officials and the media. His work came as allegations of chemical weapons use became an increasingly frequent tool in Western foreign policy over the past decade.
Syria
The turning point was arguably the war in Syria and claims by then-US President Barack Obama that Damascus had deployed chemical weapons against opposition forces, thus crossing a Washington-declared ‘red line’. In a Russia-mediated attempt to deflate tensions, the Syrian government agreed in 2013 to destroy all of its declared stockpiles of such weapons.
However, more incidents followed, which the West blamed on government forces, alleging that Damascus never actually fulfilled its obligations. Moscow, meanwhile, maintained that anti-government groups were conducting false flag operations, while foreign-funded organizations, such as the notorious White Helmets, were providing media support.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which has the mandate to investigate such allegations, was compromised by Western influence, Russia believes.
“Syrian authorities demanded on numerous occasions that the OPCW deploy specialists on the ground [for investigation], but received refusals that cited lack of security,” Kirillov said during a briefing in 2018, as he detailed cases of alleged manufacturing of chemical weapons by militant groups.
The same year, the OPCW faced what was arguably its worst internal crisis while investigating a chemical attack in the city of Douma.
According to whistleblowers, its top management suppressed findings by field investigators and manipulated testimony to implicate Damascus. Dissenting scientists argued behind closed doors that the evidence contradicted such a claim, only to be dismissed as disgruntled employees when they went public.
Kirillov reported in 2019 that Russian troops deployed in Syria conducted hundreds of tests for traces of chemical weapons as part of their monitoring mission.
Novichok
Moscow was accused of deploying a chemical weapon in 2018, after Andrey Skripal, a Russian intelligence defector, and his daughter fell ill in Salisbury, Great Britain. London and Western media claimed that they were poisoned with Novichok, a toxic chemical allegedly developed exclusively by the Soviet military.
Although civilian officials were responsible for Moscow’s messaging over the incident, Kirillov was called in to set the record straight about Novichok’s “Russian” nature. Western nations, including the UK, have chemical weapons programs of their own with enough expertise to synthesize highly lethal compounds, he pointed out.
The US and its allies had an opportunity to gain insight into Soviet research, including from chemists involved in it, he added during a briefing in 2018. A scientist named Vil Mirzayanov was the first person to discuss the program dubbed Novichok publicly after moving to the US.
He went as far as to publish a formula for one of the chemicals developed by the USSR, which Kirillov said was deeply irresponsible and posed a proliferation threat.
Ukraine and US-led biolabs
A significant part of Kirillov’s reports in the media focused on the Ukraine conflict after it escalated into open hostilities with Russia in 2022. Some of them documented alleged use of chemical agents by Ukrainian troops on the battlefield or warned of possible provocations by Kiev.
Others dealt with a network of US-backed microbiological labs, which have been a source of major concern for Russia and other countries. Washington claims that the Pentagon-funded activities by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency are merely meant to detect and identify naturally emerging threats. Critics, however, believe the program pursued more sinister aims.
Kirillov claimed that the US evacuated some 16,000 relevant samples from Ukraine while other pieces of evidence were destroyed. But some materials were captured by the Russian military, giving Moscow a glimpse into the clandestine research, the late general claimed.
With his visor up
In October, the UK placed personal sanctions on Kirillov, along with the entire Russian military branch under his command. London cited Kiev’s claims that the general was responsible for using chemical weapons in the Ukraine conflict. Moscow has consistently denied such accusations, insisting it destroyed such materials back in 2017.
The Ukrainian security service SBU announced formal charges against Kirillov hours before his murder. A source in the agency told the media that the assassination was its operation against a “war criminal.”
Kirillov spent years “exposing the crimes of the Anglo-Americans,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, commenting on his death.
“He worked without fear. Did not hide behind anyone’s back. Walked with his visor up. For the motherland and the truth,” she added.
Deception, manipulation, sabotage: What the UK does to keep the Ukraine war going
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | November 30, 2024
Unless you want to be blind, it is obvious that Ukraine under the Zelensky regime is not remotely a free country. In politics, after massive repression, there are only remnants of an opposition, which face continuing oppression and harassment by the government, as even the French newspaper Le Monde, generally naïve about the Zelensky regime, has reported.
Ukraine’s public sphere is stifled by nationalist propaganda, pressure, and demonstrative, intimidating terror. Before the escalation of 2022, even a robustly propagandistic tool of Western information warfare such as Freedom House could still acknowledge that much: its 2018 report, authored by Ukrainian researcher Vyacheslav Likhachev, identified Ukraine’s Far Right organizations as “a threat to democracy” and “aggressively trying to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society, including by using force against those with opposite political and cultural views.”
Regarding Ukraine’s media, expect not much resistance from there. They are tightly controlled and, often, pro-actively obedient, whether out of misguided conviction, fear, or careerism. Even Ukraine’s Western supporters, as well as some courageous critics in Ukraine, have voiced criticism of the crude propaganda habits of the Zelensky regime.
Make no mistake: The authoritarian features of the rule of Vladimir Zelensky – formerly the object of a veritable Western personality cult that, by now, at least some devotees must feel embarrassed about – are not the result of the large-scale war. The politics of Zelenskyism, to coin an ugly but handy term, were always unusually deceitful and manipulative and, by 2021 at the latest, openly bending toward authoritarianism, as many Ukrainian critics pointed out at the time.
And yet: Imagine a future trial, maybe to be held in Ukraine, of Zelensky and his team. The defense would not be able to do much about their record of corruption, but it would certainly at least try to blame some of the former leader’s underhanded and tyrannical tendencies on the war. It would be a stretch, but lawyers have to do their best, even for the worst of clients.
In the case of the Western users of the Zelensky regime, though, such a defense would not be merely far-fetched but completely absurd. Yet a defense some of them at least might come to need. Take for instance the case of Britain’s Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland and his shadowy but numerous associates.
The unfortunately important general – boasting of his pirate ancestors and in charge of “UK-led joint and multinational overseas military operations” – and his motley crew have just been the object of an investigative exposé by Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg. In, for now, two articles, the Grayzone has detailed how, in 2022, Stickland set up a below-the-radar network of “an assortment of leading academics, authors, strategists, planners, pollsters, comms, data scientists and tech.” Under the name Project Alchemy and overlapping and liaising with another group of wannabe keyboard Ninjas calling themselves – I kid you not – “the Elders,” this conspiratorial group has worked on, in essence, keeping the Ukraine war going at any price and by means foul and fouler.
Based on leaked documents, the Grayzone’s reporting is revealing in more ways than can be discussed here. Yet, as we are dealing with prose authored by militant bureaucrats and self-weaponizing intellectuals in the land of George Orwell, that old stickler for the English language, we would be remiss not to appreciate their bizarre lingo. It brings together a certain jejune rugby field boyishness – “mischief” is proudly being made – with a militarized sociolect of corporatese: “fusion players” and “sideways thinkers” get “badged” and “meshed in” to “move at pace,” and – greatest pride of the eminent executive – stand ready to work over the weekend!
Doing what exactly? All kinds of things, really, and all based on one stupid yet once immensely popular assumption: that the proxy war in Ukraine could be leveraged to defeat Russia, reduce it to geopolitical insignificance, impose regime change on it, and even break it up. Some, including the new de facto foreign minister of the EU, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas – imagine Annalena Baerbock, but without the brilliant intellect – still seem to be on that political equivalent of an LSD trip gone terribly wrong. What a hangover it will be one day, probably soon.
In Britain, highlights of Project Alchemy groupthink included hatching plans for stay-behind sabotage networks and recommending the example of the underground “Gladio” operations that NATO ran in Western – not, please note, Eastern – Europe during the Cold War. Strictly speaking, Gladio was an Italian label, while the same bad idea had different names in other countries. By now, though, Gladio stands for a whole plethora of clandestine organizations set up, ostentatiously, to engage in partisan resistance in case of a Soviet attack and occupation.
You may feel that, in principle at least, for generals, preparing for the possibility of future partisan warfare is not an objectionable activity. Yet the issue is that, in reality, the Gladio operations were not only extremely dubious in constitutional and legal terms, as being entirely beyond democratic control and oversight, as well as tied to foreign intelligence services. In addition, these networks served to fight a dirty war against the domestic left, including by terrorism, false-flag attacks, the systematic use of far-right conspirators and terrorists, and support for military coups.
An influential, black-ops-connected British general and his chums wanting to learn lessons from Gladio for underground networks in Ukraine? The country with the best-armed (compliments of the West), most whitewashed and naively underestimated (compliments of the Western media and self-weaponizing intellectuals of the Anne Applebaum/Tim Snyder variety), most aggressive, and most militarized far right in the world? Swimming in arms right next to an EU-NATO Europe they will soon feel bitterly disappointed by? What could possibly go wrong? But maybe Charlie ‘Pirate’ Stickland is “fusion”-”thinking” “sideways” in Churchillian terms: “Set Europe Ablaze!” Yet Stickland seems to have overlooked that Churchill wanted to set it ablaze against the Nazis, not with them.
All of this is, in and of itself, very bad, if unsurprising, news. But Project Alchemy has been prolific, producing lousy ideas the way Russian industry is churning out artillery shells and missiles. There also were: a frank emphasis on “creatively using” – let’s be honest: breaking – the law so as to get silly violent things done, including “deniable ops”; a daft idea to attack the Kerch Bridge, as if Russia would not strike back (both have by now happened, the militarily useless attack and the painful payback); an anticipatory strategy of how to manipulate the British public in case it should get tired of pumping money into the proxy war; attempts to undermine BRICS-plus (thinking big and bigger); plans to shut down Russian media in the West, obviously; and, last but not least, an aggressive strategy to use covert lawfare and deliberate financial pressure to bring down Western critical media as well, including, as it happens, the Grayzone. Say what you will, but Stickland and company seem to have had a foreboding from where exactly they would get their richly deserved come-uppance.
It would be tempting to think of this wave of disinformation and manipulation in the West as a kind of “Ukrainization.” As if the West had caught the contagion of the Zelensky regime’s very bad habits. But to be fair, the West has its own, well-established tradition of waging war by massive lying on the home front. In 2019, it was the Washington Post, usually hewing close to the American government line, that ran a series of in-depth stories detailing how, during the West’s long war in Afghanistan, started almost two decades before, the US had been “at war with the truth.” Suddenly, clearly in preparation of the impending Western retreat, readers were allowed to learn that while “officials constantly said they were making progress,” they “were not, and they knew it.”
And the name of that Washington Post series? The Afghanistan Papers. That, of course, was a reference to the famous Pentagon Papers, an internal and classified Defense Department review of US policy and warfare in Vietnam that was leaked to the New York Times by the historic whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who suffered severe, criminal attempts to silence, and in effect, destroy him. The long American intervention, begun indirectly in the 1940s and escalating into one of the most brutal US campaigns of the twentieth century in the 1960s, only ended with the total defeat of both Washington and its South Vietnamese proxy in 1975.
The New York Times began to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Once again, as with the later bloody Western fiasco in Afghanistan, the moment of truth – some truth – came late, only toward the end of a policy catastrophe that had long been supported by compliant mainstream media. The Grayzone is considered alternative media, and its reporters are doing a much better job at real journalism than their competition in the mainstream version. As to the mainstream media, they clearly have not yet reached the stage of always-too-late revelation that, during the proxy wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, was marked by 1971 and 2019, respectively.
How do we know? They are ignoring the Grayzone’s sensational revelations about a military-think-tank-industry conspiracy to undermine the law, deliberately manipulate the public, and wage proxy war in a way that is both dirty and bound to backfire very badly on the West itself. One more sign that all too many in the West are not yet ready to face reality, even while the Ukrainians they claim to help but only use keep dying.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Ukraine massacred civilians to blame Russia – witnesses
RT | November 25, 2024
Mercenaries in Ukrainian service, including Polish nationals, executed a number of civilians in the city of Selidovo before fleeing advancing Russian forces, local residents have said. Moscow believes that Kiev wanted to use the massacre for a “false flag” claim of atrocities.
Selidovo sits about 15km south of Pokrovsk, in the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic controlled by Kiev since 2014. In 2022 it had a population of around 21,000. Russian soldiers secured it completely on October 29.
The retreating Ukrainians executed local residents with the intent of accusing Russia of a “massacre,” Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry official charged with collecting evidence of Ukrainian war crimes, said on Monday.
“When the West started talking about peace negotiations, [Vladimir] Zelensky started preparing ‘Bucha 2’, but in Selidovo,” Miroshnik told RIA Novosti. He said that residents evacuated from the frontline city have reported dozens of civilians being executed in the streets.
“They said that the Nazis staged a bloodbath two or three days before the city was taken by Russian troops,” Miroshnik said, adding that the witnesses provided details such as names and addresses of the people killed, as well as descriptions of the perpetrators. Some of the witnesses, he said, described people in Ukrainian uniforms who spoke Polish.
One of the testimonies Miroshnik shared with the media was of Vladimir Romanenko, who described how Ukrainian soldiers murdered five of his family members and burned their bodies.
“I went out into the street and heard shouting. A short man was shouting, ‘Everyone out of the house, face the wall!’ And he began to shoot,” Romanenko said. He was spotted by the uniformed men and ran away, somehow managing to escape. He later identified the dead as his wife Olga Romanenko and sister Lidiya Zavarzina, both 69, son Roman (46), grandson Vladislav Nikolaychuk (33), and niece Olga Zavarzina (50).
According to Miroshnik, Ukrainian troops and foreign mercenaries wanted to blame Russia for the deaths of civilians they killed, but ran out of time to stage their “false flag” operation.
In early April 2022, Ukrainian media outlets published photos and videos of bodies on the streets of Bucha, a suburb of Kiev, claiming they had been massacred by withdrawing Russian troops. The Defense Ministry in Moscow insisted that not a single resident of Bucha had been harmed by Russian soldiers, who had left the town by March 30, and pointed to militants loyal to Kiev bragging about “cleansing collaborators.”
Dog Ate My Nord Stream: German Media Doubles Down on Ukrainian Connection Claim
Sputnik – 20.11.2024
Even though the United States has long been identified as the primary suspect in the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines, German media continues peddling the narrative where Ukraine is to blame.
This week, one German magazine presented an account that looks more like a Cold War spy thriller script, detailing an alleged effort by Ukrainian saboteurs to take out Nord Stream.
– The entire operation, codenamed “Diameter” was supposedly carried out by 12 people: 11 men and one woman who was included to help disguise the team as a tourist group
– Five of the group’s members were divers, selected from some 20 candidates
– The bombs – diving tanks loaded with octogen and hexogen explosives – were planted on the seams to ensure maximum damage to the pipelines
– The entire budget of this operation was only $300,000, allegedly donated by some entrepreneur “close to the Ukrainian special forces”
– The plan of this operation was ostensibly presented to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny then-chief of Ukraine’s army, who supposedly liked it so much that he suggested carrying out a similar terrorist act against the TurkStream natural gas pipeline that runs from Russia to Turkiye under the Black Sea. No details of this second operation are provided, save for that it failed
– Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky was allegedly unaware of this entire scheme
– The US purportedly learned of the Ukrainian terrorists’ plan in June 2022, three months before the Nord Stream attack, and demanded that it be called off, to no avail.
In other words, this narrative portrays the US leadership and Zelensky as blameless and pins the blame on a small group of rogue Ukrainian operative, which is very convenient for the US and Ukraine, not to mention Germany who needs to avoid making any uncomfortable discoveries in the Nord Stream affair.
The CIA/MI6 Skripal Conspiracy Exposed
By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | November 17, 2024
On October 14th, a much-delayed inquiry into the mysterious death of Dawn Sturgess, a British citizen who died in July 2018 after reputedly coming into contact with Novichok nerve agent left in England by a pair of Russian assassins, finally commenced. Already, the public show trial has unearthed tantalising evidence gravely undermining the official narrative of the poisoning of GRU defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, in March that year.
These revelations emerged despite the British state’s best efforts to sabotage the inquiry, and curtail its ability to ascertain the truth. For one, the Skripals have been prevented from testifying, despite formally requesting to do so. Such is the apparent risk of Russian intelligence attempting to target the pair anew, not even their video-recorded police interviews from the time can be entered into evidence. Meanwhile, the urgent question of what British intelligence and security services knew, and when they knew it, will not be explored.
Yet, primary source evidence British spies and their American counterparts were well-aware the two Russians accused of attempting to murder the Skripals were visiting Britain in advance of their arrival has lain in plain sight for years. Whether such foreknowledge implies the CIA and MI6 were in reality behind the abortive hit remains a matter of interpretation – but that the CIA and MI6 sought to exploit the Russian presence in Salisbury for their own malign purposes is beyond doubt.
In January 2021, US watchdog group American Oversight released hundreds of pages of emails sent to and from the personal address of Mike Pompeo, CIA director January 2017 – April 2018. In many cases, the emails were official Agency communications discussing matters of extreme sensitivity, conducted off-books. The records – heavily redacted under the US National Security Act – show that on March 1st 2018, Pompeo was approached by two high-ranking CIA operatives, who asked for a meeting on a “very urgent matter”. They added:
“A very positive opportunity is within reach but requires your engagement because of the urgency…I am convinced that this is a very promising opportunity.”
Pompeo responded in the affirmative, and the meeting went ahead early the next morning. Underlining their covert summit’s importance, the emails indicate CIA staffers were preparing to pitch the “positive opportunity” to the Agency’s chief from the early hours of March 2nd. Eerily, the email requesting Pompeo’s signoff on the proposal was sent less than half an hour after Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, Skripal’s alleged assassins, purchased plane tickets from Moscow to London Gatwick for their Salisbury visit.
‘Strong Option’
Who emailed Pompeo is redacted, although then-CIA deputy director Gina Haspel is an obvious candidate. A longstanding Russia hawk, who cut her Agency teeth recruiting spies in the Soviet Union in the years before its collapse, she twice served as the CIA’s London station chief twice – from 2008 – 2011, and 2014 – 2017. Sergei Skripal arrived in Britain in July 2010 via a grand spy swap during her first tenure, which was negotiated by Haspel’s longtime collaborator Daniel Hoffman, then-CIA Moscow station chief. He was among the very first sources to publicly blame Russia for the Salisbury incident.
During Haspel’s “unusual” second spell in London, Skripal’s enduring connection to his homeland, and yearning to return, would’ve been well-known to British intelligence. Serendipitously, BBC veteran Mark Urban serendipitously interviewed the GRU defector in the year prior to his poisoning. He recorded that Skripal was “an unashamed Russian nationalist, enthusiastically adopting the Kremlin line in many matters, even while sitting in his MI6-purchased house.” Coincidentally, Urban once served in the same tank regiment as Pablo Miller, Skripal’s MI6 recruiter/handler, and Salisbury neighbour.
Moreover, former Kremlin official Valery Morozov, an associate of the GRU defector likewise exiled to Britain, claimed days after the poisoning that Skripal remained in “regular” contact with Moscow’s embassy in London, and met with Russian military intelligence officers there “every month”. He also flatly repudiated any suggestion the purported nerve agent attack on Sergei and Yulia was the work of Russian spies:
“Putin can’t be behind this. I know how the Kremlin works, I worked there. Who is Skripal? He is nothing for Putin. Putin doesn’t think about him. There is nobody in Kremlin talking about former intelligence officer [sic] who is nobody. There is no reason for this. It is more dangerous for them for such things to happen.”
That this information was not shared with Haspel stretches credulity. The Washington Post has reported how her time in Britain made her the personal “linchpin” of the CIA’s relationship with MI6, the Agency’s “most important foreign partner.” Her British colleagues gushed to the outlet, “she knows them so well… they call her the ‘honorary UK desk officer’.” Haspel regularly drew on this experience to “stabilize the transatlantic alliance” between London and Washington, which was frequently strained while she was CIA director May 2018 – January 2021.
This friction resulted in no small part from Trump legitimately accusing British chaos agents of “conspiring with American intelligence to spy on his presidential campaign,” charges that “rattled the British government at the highest levels.” Strikingly, a cited example of Haspel stabilising CIA relations with MI6 provided by WaPo was convincing a highly reluctant President to back the Western-wide expulsion of Russian diplomats, encouraged by London in the Salisbury incident’s wake.
How Haspel pressed Trump over Salisbury was revealed in April 2019. The New York Times reported that the President at first downplayed Skripal’s alleged poisoning and refused to respond, believing the apparent attack to be “legitimate spy games, distasteful but within the bounds of espionage.” However, Haspel successfully lobbied Trump to take the “strong option” of expelling Russian embassy staff in the US, by providing him with British-sourced “emotional images”:
“Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives… Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option.”
‘Operation Foot’
The New York Times exposé caused a stir upon release, not least because the “emotional images” described had never hitherto been published or referred to in the mainstream media. While the Skripals giving bread to three local boys to feed ducks in Salisbury’s Avon Playground on March 4th 2018 was initially widely reported, no media outlet, government minister, spokesperson, health professional or law enforcement official had ever previously claimed children and/or waterfowl were “sickened” after coming into contact with Novichok. The reverse, in fact.
On March 26th that year, the Daily Mail recorded that the boys given bread by the Skripals – one of whom apparently ate some – were “rushed to hospital for blood tests amid fears they’d been poisoned,” but promptly discharged after being given “the all-clear.” Moreover, two days after the New York Times article was published, British health officials issued a statement not only refuting the report entirely, but denying any children were admitted to hospital in Salisbury as a result of Novichok exposure at all.
Subsequently, the New York Times radically amended its piece, removing any suggestion Haspel showed Trump photos of Novichok victims provided by the British. In fact, the newspaper reverse-ferreted, she had “displayed pictures illustrating the consequences of nerve agent attacks, not images specific to the chemical attack in Britain.” The question of whether the aforementioned images did exist, and were forged by British intelligence for the explicit purpose of bouncing Trump into a hostile anti-Russia stance, remains thoroughly open five-and-a-half years later.
After all, British spies had been planning and hoping for a mass defenestration of Russian diplomats globally, as a prelude to all-out war with Moscow, for years by that point. In January 2015, MI6/NATO front the Institute for Statecraft (IFS) a document setting out “potential levers” for achieving “regime change” in Russia, spanning “diplomacy”, “finance”, “security”, “technology”, “industry”, “military”, and even “culture”. One “lever”, which IFS listed thrice, stated:
“Simultaneously expel every [Russian] intelligence officer and air/defence/naval attaché from as many countries as possible (global ‘Operation Foot’).”
Operation Foot saw 105 Soviet officials deported from Britain in September 1971. Several mainstream media outlets referenced this incident when reporting on London successfully corralling 26 countries – including, of course, the US – into expelling over 150 Russian diplomatic staff in response to the Salisbury incident in March 2018. As a result, IFS got one step closer to its longstanding objective of “armed conflict of the old-fashioned sort” with Russia, which “Britain and the West could win.”
Fast forward to today, and Britain and the West are on the verge of losing that conflict once and for all. Meanwhile, the Salisbury incident’s ever-fluctuating official narrative continues to shift radically, in ways large and small. Contrary to all prior media reports on the matter, the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry has now been told one boy given bread by the Skripals to feed ducks actually “got sick” as a result, and he and his friends “were unwell for a day or two afterwards.”
This fresh rewriting neatly ties in with the highly controversial claim, unflinchingly clung to by British authorities, that the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok smeared on the doorknob of Sergei’s home on the morning of March 4th 2018, before heading into Salisbury. As subsequent investigations will show, available evidence – including Yulia Skripal’s own hospital bed testimony – points unmistakably to the pair being attacked elsewhere, at another time and by another means entirely, with British and American intelligence square in the frame.
Yulia Skripal Reveals the Biggest Secret of All at Novichok Show Trial…
… the Attack Was a British Operation, Not a Russian One
By John Helmer | Dances With Bears | November 16, 2024
Yulia Skripal communicated from her bedside at Salisbury District Hospital on March 8, 2018, four days after she and her father Sergei Skripal collapsed from a poison attack, that the attacker used a spray; and that the attack took place when she and her father were eating at a restaurant just minutes before their collapse on a bench outside.
The implication of the Skripal evidence, revealed for the first time on Thursday, is that the attack on the Skripals was not perpetrated by Russian military agents who were photographed elsewhere in Salisbury town at the time; that the attacker or attackers were British agents; and that if their weapon was a nerve agent called Novichok, it came, not from Moscow, but from the UK Ministry of Defence chemical warfare laboratory at Porton Down.
Porton Down’s subsequent evidence of Novichok contamination in blood samples, clothing, car, and home of the Skripals may therefore be interpreted as British in source, not Russian.
This evidence was revealed by a police witness testifying at the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry in London on November 14. The police officer, retired Detective Inspector Keith Asman was in 2018, and he remains today the chief of forensics for the Counter Terrorism Policing (CTPSE) group which combines the Metropolitan and regional police forces with the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Security Service (MI5).
According to Asman’s new disclosure, Yulia Skripal had woken from a coma and confirmed to the doctor at her bedside that she remembered the circumstances of the attack on March 4. What she remembered, she signalled, was not (repeat not) the official British Government narrative that Russian agents had tried to kill them by poisoning the front door-handle of the family home.
The new evidence was immediately dismissed by the Sturgess Inquiry lawyer assisting Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley), the judge directing the Inquiry. “We see there,” the lawyer put to Asman as a leading question, “the suggestion, which we now know not to be right, of course”. — page 72.
Hughes then interrupted to tell the witness to disregard what Skripal had communicated. “If the record that you were given there is right, someone suggested to her ‘Had you been sprayed’. She didn’t come up with it herself.” — page 73. Hughes continued to direct the forensics chief to disregard the hearsay of Skripal. “Anyway the suggestion that she had been sprayed in the restaurant didn’t fit with your investigations? A. [Asman] No, sir. LORD HUGHES: Thank you.”
So far in in the Inquiry which began public sessions on October 14, this is the first direct sign of suppression of evidence by Hughes.
Hearsay, he indicates, should be disregarded if it comes from the target of attack, Yulia Skripal. However, hearsay from British Government officials, policemen, and chemical warfare agents at Porton Down must be accepted instead. Hughes has also banned Yulia and Sergei Skripal from testifying at the Inquiry.
The lawyer appointed and paid by the Government to represent the Skripals in the inquiry hearings said nothing to acknowledge the new disclosure nor to challenge Hughes’s efforts to suppress it.
Asman described his career and credentials in his witness statement to the Inquiry, dated October 23, 2024. His rank when he retired from the regular police forces in 2009 was detective inspector. He was then promoted to higher ranking posts at the operations coordinating group known as Counter Terrorism Policing for the Southeast Region (CTPSE). By 2018 Asman says he was “head of the National Counter Terrorism Forensics Working Group since 2012, and was the UK Counter Terrorism Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) forensic lead.” In June 2015 Asman was awarded the Order of the British Empire (MBE) “for services to Policing.”
At page 19 of his recent witness statement, this is what Asman has recorded for the evening of March 8, 2018:
Source: https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/INQ006140_strong-compression.pdf — page 19.
Asman’s went on to claim in this statement: “At this point Yulia Skripal was described as being emotional and fell unconscious. I made notes of my conversation with DI [Detective Inspector] VN104 in one of my notebooks, and in addition this information was confirmed to me in writing the next morning. The information she provided about being sprayed at the restaurant [Zizzi] was seemingly inconsistent with the presence of novichok at the Mill public house and 47 Christie Miller Road. On hearing this, I personally wondered whether Yulia Skripal knew more about it than she had alluded to and therefore whilst being fully cognisant of the SIO’s [Senior Investigative Officer] hypothesis and the need to be open-minded continued to prioritise her property.”
THE SCENE OF THE NOVICHOK CRIME
The Skripals reportedly spent 45 minutes at lunch in Zizzi’s restaurant. Witnesses described Sergei Skripal as upset when he left with Yulia to walk to the bench. Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/
THE EVIDENCE THE CRIME WAS BRITISH
Left: Yulia Skripal in May 2018, the scar of forced intubation still visible; read more here. Centre; Dr Stephen Cockroft who recorded the exchange with Skripal at her bedside on March 8, 2018; that was followed, Cockroft has also testified, by forced sedation and tracheostomy – read more. Right: read the only book on the case evidence.
Open-minded was not what the judge and his lawyers wanted from Asman when he appeared in public for the first time on Thursday, November 14. Referring precisely to the excerpt of Skripal’s hospital evidence, Francesca Whitelaw KC for the Inquiry asked Asman: “ We can take that [witness statement excerpt] down, but this information as well, was it consistent or inconsistent with what you had found out in terms of forensic about the presence of Novichok at The Mill and 47 Christie Miller Road? A. [Asman] It, I would say, was inconsistent on the basis that she said she was sprayed in the restaurant.” — page 73.
Asman was then asked by Whitelaw to comment on Yulia Skripal’s exchange with Cockroft. “My question for you is: how, if at all, this impacted on your investigations? A. It only very slightly impacted on it… It was information to have but not necessarily going to change my approach on anything.” — page 73.
Left, Francesca Whitelaw KC, counsel assisting Hughes, asked Asman about Yulia Skripal’s hospital evidence – click to watch from Minute 2:01:27. Right: Hughes interrupting the witness to dismiss Skripal’s evidence from Min 2:03:23. On Hughes’s order, Asman’s face was not transmitted during his testimony, and the audio record was delayed by ten minutes before broadcast.
In the Inquiry record of hearings and exhibits since the commencement of the open sessions on October 14, there have been eleven separate exhibits of documents purporting to record what Yulia and Sergei Skripal have said; they include interviews with police and witness statements for the Inquiry; they are dated from April 2018 through October 2024. Most of them have been heavily redacted. None of them is signed by either Skripal.
Neither Yulia nor Sergei Skripal has been asked by the police, by the Inquiry lawyers, or by Hughes to confirm or deny whether Yulia’s recollection of March 8, 2018, of the spray attack in Zizzi’s Restaurant is still their evidence of what happened to them.
Germany’s AfD Urges UN to Investigate Nord Stream and Potential Government Role
Sputnik – 15.11.2024
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has called on the United Nations to prosecute an inquiry into the Nord Sream pipelines explosions and find out whether government officials were aware of this incident, party’s co-chair Tino Chrupalla said.
“We believe that the incident needs to be thoroughly investigated, and those responsible must be held accountable. In particular, we need to find out if members of the German government were aware of this incident before or after it occurred. We have called for the establishment of an inquiry commission in the European Parliament and are now calling for a UN investigation,” Chrupalla told Turkish newspaper Aydinlik.
The Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, built to deliver gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Europe, were hit by explosions on September 26, 2022. Germany, Denmark and Sweden have not ruled out deliberate sabotage.
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has opened an investigation into it as an act of international terrorism. Russia has repeatedly requested data on other countries’ investigations into the explosions, but never received it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
Moscow rebukes Canada over ‘false accusations’ of sabotage campaign
RT | November 8, 2024
The Russian Foreign Ministry has issued a formal demarche to the Canadian embassy in Moscow over what it called “false accusations regarding alleged plans of ‘Russian sabotage’ against NATO nations.”
The diplomatic rebuke on Friday came in the context of media reports about investigations into packages which caught fire in July at DHL parcel sorting facilities in Leipzig, Germany and Birmingham, England. The devices were reportedly meant to be flown to the US and Canada in cargo planes.
Western officials have claimed that the Russian military intelligence service GRU may be behind them, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week citing anonymous sources. Moscow has dismissed the story, calling it an unsubstantiated piece of “fake news.”
Ottawa said it was “aware of and deeply concerned with Russia’s intensifying campaign, from cyber incidents and disinformation operations to sabotage activities,” when asked for comments.
”Canada has expressed this concern directly to Russian officials and unequivocally stated that any threat to the safety and security of Canadians is unacceptable,” government spokesperson Tim Warmington said on Tuesday.
Moscow notified the Canadian deputy ambassador on Friday that the “speculations, which are being disseminated [on] command from the US and its satellites” are part of hybrid warfare against Russia in the context of the Ukraine conflict and may indicate an upcoming “anti-Russian provocation.”
“If such a plan is realized, for instance, in the form of a false flag operation, the responsibility for it will fully fall on the nations that make such unacceptable accusations against Russia, including Canada,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Any hostile actions against Russia will “not be left without a response, just as was the case in the past” the statement warned.
Expert questions narrative about Ukrainians being behind Nord Stream blasts
Andromeda sailing yacht pictured docked in Dranske, Germany on March 17, 2023. © Sean Gallup/Getty Images
RT | November 4, 2024
A narrative pushed by the Western media about a small team of Ukrainian divers being behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022 is hard to believe, Dr Sven Thomas, a renowned German diving specialist, has told Bild over the weekend.
Damage sustained by the Russian undersea pipelines suggests that much more powerful explosive charges and a much larger vessel were used to render them out of commission, he said, adding that a small yacht the media keep reporting about would never suffice.
American and German media have repeatedly claimed that the blasts were linked to a small Ukrainian crew that rented a leisure yacht called Andromeda at a German port and set off armed only with diving equipment, satellite navigation, and open-source maps. The operation was reportedly given a green light by Ukraine’s then-commander in chief, Valery Zaluzhny.
Multiple media outlets reported in August that the German authorities had issued an international arrest warrant for a suspect in the case, a Ukrainian diver identified as Volodymyr Z.
“There must have been at least one more team to cause the huge explosions,” said Sven Thomas, who heads a state-backed life-saving service in the German city of Halle. The specialist, who leads a crew of professional divers and underwater archeologists, added that he had “serious doubts” about the whole story linking the incidents to just a six-member Ukrainian crew using a 15-meter-long leisure yacht.
According to Thomas, divers working at a depth of just 34 meters in a lake would need at least four anchors chained to a vessel to keep their equipment stable. Andromeda had only one 25-kilogram anchor and a 100-meter-long chain, while its crew supposedly dived at the depth of between 80 and 90 meters in the sea. That is just “impossible,” according to Thomas, who has been conducting diving operations for years.
The total weight of the equipment needed for such an operation would be about four tons, the expert said, adding that seismic records of the explosions show that at least several charges equivalent to 400 kilograms of TNT were used to blast the pipes.
“They cannot drop such bomb charges into water without a crane and a counterweight, the vessel would just capsize otherwise,” Thomas said. According to the specialist diver, the fact that the pipelines were “crushed like a tin can” suggests that the damage was caused by powerful explosions nearby rather than small charges planted directly on the pipelines.
Thomas believes that it points to military-grade bottom mines with a yield equivalent to around 1260 kilograms of TNT. Such mines can only be planted by a large vessel with a crane onboard, the expert told Bild. Andromeda could have been behind only one of four blasts, which was likely caused by a small explosive charge planted directly on one of the pipelines, he added.
Moscow dismissed the Western media reports implicating Andromeda as implausible. President Vladimir Putin has maintained the view that the explosions were carried out by professionals supported by “the full might of the state, which has certain technologies,” noting that the US was “probably” behind it. Last month, Danish media reported that US Navy warships had been operating near the Nord Stream pipelines shortly before the explosions.
Deal or No Deal?
By Andrew P. Napolitano | Ron Paul Institute | October 3, 2024
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.”
–Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
The case of the Gitmo plea agreement keeps getting curiouser and curiouser.
A few weeks ago, we learned that a plea agreement had been entered into by way of a signed contract between the retired general in the Pentagon who is supervising all Gitmo prosecutions, the Gitmo defendants and defense counsel, and the military prosecutors. The agreement, as we understand it from sources who have seen it, provides that in return for a guilty plea, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others will serve life terms at Gitmo, rather than be exposed at trial to the death penalty. The guilty plea is to include a public and detailed recitation of guilt.
Stated differently, Mohammed agreed to reveal under oath the nature and extent of the conspiracy that resulted in the crimes of 9/11.
So far, this is straightforward. While the trial judge may have given his nod of approval to the terms of the agreement, under the federal rules of criminal procedure, the agreement is not final until the judge hears the defendants actually admit guilt under oath in a public courtroom and then accepts the plea in a written order.
That admission has not yet taken place because the Secretary of Defense, who learned of the plea agreement while traveling in Europe, removed the authority of the retired general supervising the prosecution to enter into plea agreements without his express approval.
Thereupon, defense counsel asked the court to enforce the agreement anyway since it is a signed contract, and schedule the plea hearing at which Mohammed and others will presumably comply with their obligations to spill the beans on this 23-year-old case.
The military prosecutors — who initiated the plea negotiations because they recognized that they cannot ethically defend the George W. Bush administration’s torture of these defendants — have been ordered by the Pentagon to ask the judge to reject the plea.
Thus, we have a tangled web, tangled because the government deceived the American public and federal judges about its own criminal behavior — the Bush torture regime. The signed contract was initiated and drafted by the same military prosecutors who have been ordered — against their professional judgement — to ask the trial judge to repudiate it.
Those who have seen it have revealed that the agreement contains a poison pill — a clause that survives the agreement even if it is nullified.
That poison pill removes the death penalty from the case, should the case go to trial.
This was apparently made a part of the agreement in case the political winds blow against the government and it gets cold feet. That is probably what happened.
When Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin — who is not a lawyer — was asked why he ordered the agreement rescinded, he stated that the American public has a right to learn “all” the evidence in the case. He must have made that comment while ignorant of the terms of the plea agreement, as the agreement requires a full recitation by the defendants of their knowledge of the events leading up to 9/11; and nothing prevents prosecutors from revealing whatever evidence they choose to reveal.
Moreover, the Pentagon’s own team of prosecutors have warned against the public revelation of “all” the evidence in the case because the evidence of stomach-churning torture will expose war crimes for which there is no statute of limitations.
Stated differently, if this case is tried in the traditional way as opposed to the entry of a plea agreement with the defendants’ recitation under oath of their knowledge of the crimes, George W. Bush himself and others in his administration, in the CIA and in the military could be indicted and tried in foreign countries for war crimes.
As well, there will be blowback against American troops now stationed abroad, most of whom were not born when Bush ordered torture and deception and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. His “don’t mess with Texas” presidential style continues to haunt today. He failed to understand that the problem of searching the world for monsters to slay is that the monsters you find will follow you home.
Adding to the jurisprudential oddities here is the intrusion of Congress. When President Barack Obama revealed his intention to close Gitmo — it costs half a billion dollars a year to operate — Congress enacted a statute that prohibited the removal of the defendants from Gitmo to the American mainland for any reason, including the infliction of capital punishment. That statute is probably unconstitutional as violative of the separation of powers. Just as the president cannot tell Congress when and how to vote, Congress cannot tell the president how to manage federal prisons or prosecutions.
Gitmo was a Devil’s Island, flawed from its inception. More than 100 years ago, the U.S. leased the land on which Gitmo is located from Cuba. When the lease ran out, the U.S. refused to leave. Bush’s lawyers advised him that if he tortured and prosecuted in Cuba, federal laws didn’t apply, the Constitution wouldn’t restrain him and, best of all, those pesky federal judges couldn’t interfere with him.
In five cases, the Supreme Court rejected Bush’s arguments for evading the Constitution. Bush has visited upon all of his successors a nearly insoluble jurisprudential mess. A mess born out of antipathy to the Constitution he swore to uphold and the knee-jerk bravado apparently integral to his persona.
Gitmo is a tragic example of what happens when the American public entrusts the preservation of constitutional norms into the hands of those unworthy of that trust and quick to cut constitutional corners in order to persecute unpopular defendants. The Constitution itself was written in large measure to assure that these things can’t happen here. But they do.
To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
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By Thomas S. Harrington | CounterPunch | August 19, 2016
… What will almost never be talked about are the many very good reasons a person from the vast region stretching from Morrocco in the west, to Pakistan in the east, have to be very angry at, and to feel highly vengeful toward, the US, its strategic puppeteer Israel, and their slavishly loyal European compadres like France, Germany and Great Britain. … Read full article
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