The Skripal Case 5 Years On: BS Then, BS Now

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

Today marks five years – five long years – since the “attack” on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England.

For those of you who may have had the details become obscure in three years of Covid fog, here is the “official story”:

• Sergei Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer, was found guilty of spying for the UK in 2006, and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

• In 2010 he was released and traded to the United Kingdom as part of a spy swap. Having settled in the UK Sergei lived a quiet and comfortable life of retirement, allegedly.

• Eight years later, in early 2018, with a Presidential election looming and just weeks before Russia was due to host the FIFA World Cup, Vladimir Putin decided to assassinate him for as yet obscure reasons.

• The GRU, Russia’s military intelligence unit, dispatched two of their elite covert operatives, who proceeded to fly direct from Moscow under aliases they had allegedly already employed and using Russian passports.

• These alleged assassins carried with them two perfume bottles full of “Novichok”, allegedly one of the deadliest nerve agents ever devised. This would be enough to kill around 800,000 people.

• On arriving in the UK these highly-trained covert agents book a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, and the next day, March 3, they travel to Salisbury by train, allegedly to recon the area, then return to London. They are apparently observed by CCTV camera’s the entire time.

• The following day, March 4, they again travel to Salisbury, this time the master assassins walk to Skripal’s house and somehow “smear” the liquid Novichok on the handle of his front door.

• No eye-witness, photograph or piece of CCTV footage has ever been made publicly available to show either of these two men anywhere in the area of Sergei Skripal’s house.

• The whereabouts of the opened bottle of poison have never been established.

• Having applied the poison, the two highly trained assassins do two things before returning to London. 1) They drop their second, unopened, bottle of novichok (presumably enough to kill approx 400,000 people) in a charity donation bin, rather than destroying it or taking it back to Russia. 2) They stop by an antiques store to browse.

• The two assassins leave the country that afternoon, flying direct to Moscow, without knowing if their alleged target is dead, and again making no effort to conceal their origins.

• Despite both handling the poison, and somehow carrying enough of it back to contaminate their hotel room, neither of the men – nor any of the staff, train passengers or passersby who come into contact with them – ever become sick, even though only 1mg of Novichok is an allegedly lethal dose.

• Later that afternoon, Sergei and Yulia Skripal are found “almost unconscious”on a park bench in Salisbury town centre. It is claimed this was due to contact with the Novichok smeared on Sergei’s door handle, though reports originally stated neither he nor his daughter had returned to the house, and the timing seems to make it unlikely they did

• The person who found them was the most senior nurse in the British Army (likely in the area as part of Toxic Dagger, the British Military’s landmark chemical weapons training exercise which began Feb 20th and ran on until March 12th).

• The nurse and her family administer “emergency aid” to the two alleged poisoning victims. Neither she nor anyone else on the scene, nor any of the first responders, ever experience any symptoms of nerve agent poisoning. Neither do any of the other people the Skripal’s came into contact with that day.

• DS Nick Bailey, a CID officer is in contact with the Skripals or their home at this time and subsequently becomes ill. It has never been stated how exactly he was exposed. It was initially reported he was a first responder to the scene, but that story was changed and it was later claimed he visited the Skripal hpouse. Despite the alleged lethality of novichok in even very minute doses, Bailey is fit to return home after 18 days.

• Porton Down, the British government’s chemical weapons research centre, is brought in to help identify what chemical – if any – the Skripals/Bailey were exposed to.

• Within a month they release a statement claiming the poison was “a novichok like agent”, but that they could not pinpoint its origin. How they were able to test for a (at the time) theoretical chemical without having a sample to test against, has never been explained.

• Porton Down is 8 minutes away from Salisbury by car.

• Nearly four months later, in late June of 2018, Charlie Rowley finds the unopened perfume bottle a full of novichok (whether he bought it from a charity shop or found it in a bin is unclear, both stories have been reported). Upon using the perfume Rowley’s partner, Dawn Sturgess, falls ill. Later that day Rowley also falls ill. Sturgess dies in hospital two weeks later. But Rowley survives. Making him the fourth person in this narrative to survive exposure to an agent lethal in doses as small as 1mg.

• Sergei Skripal and Julia both recovered and allegedly chose to live secluded lives. Sergei has not appeared in public at all since allegedly being found on that park bench. Yulia made one brief press statement. Their current whereabouts are totally unknown. Their family in Russia have apparently been denied all access to them. DS Bailey was initially also keen to maintain his privacy but has subsequently given at least one interview some while after the event.

This is the UK government’s “official version” of what happened.

Unvarnished and unsatirised. None of it is disputed, exaggerated or speculative.

It is the perfect example of a modern propaganda narrative. Convoluted, contradictory, and physically impossible.

It twines together familiar cliches.

The disputed and ever-evolving timeline, the timely bystander who happens to be a military officer, and the luckily timed “exercise” just prior.

These are all items on the “false flag” checklist since at least 9/11, if not before.

There are further details that render the story a true farce, and an obvious psy-op.

Reports that Skripal’s house was purchased for him by MI6 mean the idea there wasn’t constant surveillance of it absurd. If the “assassins” ever went to that house, there would be film of it.

The UK government issued censorship orders (“D notices”) for any mention of Pablo Miller, an MI6 agent, Skripal’s handler and neighbor.

Early reports that the Skripals were suffering from a fentanyl overdose were redacted after the fact.

In the years since the Skripal “attack” rolled out “Novichok” has been allegedly used again, this time on Alexei Navalny.

He didn’t die either. Completing the chemical’s transformation from an entirely hypothetical nerve agent, through the “deadliest neurotoxin” ever invented, to a “poison” that never, ever works.

Interestingly, the “novichok” poisoning actually foreshadowed Covid in a few weird ways.

There is the agent that is oddly efficiently identified by a lab, despite having no reference with which to identify it.

There is the chemical that we are told is SUPER DANGEROUS, and requires MAXIMUM PROTECTION…and yet people on the ground mill about without protecting themselves, and the deaths and illnesses never stack up with predictions.

There’s the well-timed exercise preceding the attack by only a few days.

There is the corporate media and pundits repeating buzz phrases like a hypnotist working a trick, or some religious mantra. Repeat after me, “there is no plausible alternative explanation”

But more interesting than that, is what comes next.

After all, now that Russia has shown they are willing to play along with globalist narratives, it may be time to “resolve” the Skripal issue.

Don’t be surprised if “new evidence” is leaked – by either side or both – in the near future. Or some agreement is made, or Sergei comes out of hiding.

Whatever happens, or whatever “new facts come to light”, it won’t ever be definitive of course. That’s important. It will just be kindling to keep the partisan fires burning.

Or, hell, maybe Russia will cop to it as part of some deal. Who knows anymore?

The Skripal “poisoning” was obviously bullshit when it happened, it is obviously bullshit now, and anything they choose to add will almost certainly be just more bullshit.

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Off-Guardian has covered the Skripal Case in detail over the years, you can read those archives here. We also recommend Rob Slane’s work over at the blogmire, and Tim Norman’s piece published on Propaganda in Focus.