There will be some who have a fixed position, this applies to both sides. The truth is likely to be found somewhere in the middle. I would like to know where.

No, the investigation was by Bellingcat and the Insider, a Russian website edited by Roman Dobrokhotov. Neither Dobrokhotov nor Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat is pseudonymous. Meanwhile both Kommersant, a Russian broadsheet paper, and the Washington Post have visited Chepiga's home village in Siberia and his parents' neighbours say yep, 'Boshirov' is 'our Tolya', the local boy made good, the GRU colonel with the order of Hero of the Russian Federation.

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3753339

https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-...=.8208e0f526a2

Nothing routine about it. The legal and diplomatic implications are quite extreme. And, as seen in the Litvinenko case, Putin will send someone he knows and trusts personally. Putin got caught out because he's one of those old-skool politicians who don't use computers, they've got people to do all that for them, so he didn't know how easily the GRU's 'legends' (that is, false identities) can be broken. Well, he knows now.

No. First, they failed, by using an ill-conceived means of attack. Second, they got found out. Putin, as a psychopath, can't bear that kind of thing. The Russians are not 'laughing at us.' They're holding angry meetings while they work out who takes the blame for making them look like idiots. Even Putin's spokesman Dmitri Peskov can't deny that 'Boshirov' is Chepiga, so he's just going, 'I don't know if the president awarded him the order of Hero of the Russian Federation, we'd have to check the presidential diary.' Pathetic. They're just waiting for 'Petrov' to be unmasked as well, along with the deception method they used to gain visas, and meantime Scotland Yard have said they're aware of the identity of a third agent who did the pre-prep for the mission.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...on-identified/

And the 'VIP' passport system, meaning about 40 GRU agents under false identities can now be identified by their passport numbers... that's not clever, that's just incompetent.

Oh, dear. Putin's spokesman Peskov is now trying to deny that Putin's ever heard of Chepiga, even though the order of Hero of the Russian Federation can only be bestowed by Putin, and Chepiga's name is listed in great gold letters as a recipient of that award on a damn great monument at his former military academy, next to a great gold statue of Red Army marshal Rokossovsky, and Chepiga's former commanding officer and his parents' neighbours have told Russian media that he did indeed receive that award.

No, the truth won'd be found in the middle. It will be found where it is. Idiot

Shouldn't Galloway defending Assad and Russia piss off the Sunni population? He obviously defended Saddam which wouldn't have gone down well with the Shia and Kurds. so how does he have so much support in the Muslim world?

I've never met a sunni Muslim - or any Muslim - that gives two flying ****s about him either way. He's an irrelevance.

Russians giving consecutive passport numbers to their wetwork specialists is a humongous blunder but it's not great Western services were (apparently) unaware of the blunder. Feels like these thugs could have been surveilled and nabbed.

.

The Foreign Office, like the governments of the Netherlands and the United States, is distinctly unamused by what the Russians have been up to. (Click on the picture to read the whole thread.)

The mere fact that they're poisoning people post Litvinyenko intimates Putin doesn't gaf. Comedian John Oliver showed footage of Russian tv presenters warning potential traitors that they could end up dying in a bizarre accident. When Putin was questioned about it at an agriculture event he didn't even attempt to deny it & said he was here to discuss agriculture. He also very recently called Skripal a traitor & a "scumbag" apparently.

So I really don't think he cares that much & sees it as Russia being strong. He's kinda low brow like that imo.

The truth likely matches neither Russian nor UK narratives, hence somewhere 'in the middle'. Most of the information is clearly not available to the public eye, this should be obvious to anybody approaching this with a degree of objectivity.

The Washington Post did not visit the village fwiw. The paper I would consider a reliable source but they are simply reporting information provided by sources I consider not legit at this point. Nothing suggests otherwise - Eliot Higgins yes we know as the founder of bellingcat and we also know that he lacks any journalistic or intelligence services credentials. Is bellingcat subject to ofcom regulation? What accountability procedures are in place to ensure information is verified and checked? Likewise the 'insider' is a similar dodgy source of information.
The report states that an unnamed journalist was due to publicise the name of a further perpetrator, the fact he uses a pseudonym means the information should be ignored really.

No it's not in the middle. Russia is clearly guilty.

@57 on Red

Looks like you may indeed have been right re Russian incompetence, considering the second poisoning suspect was identified & both were kicked outa Holland. I had honestly thought Putin was simply being brazen, but I reckon I was very probably wrong on that, in retrospect.

Da I mean..."Yes" & well said comrade I mean... *frantically checks Russian-English dictionary * "mate".

Apt username you have there btw droog .

Yeah, they're floundering a bit. Don't know if it relates to Putin's falling popularity due to pension cuts, but the Russian press are gleefully working with Bellingcat or confirming Bellingcat's findings. Kommersant, which is not a Kremlin-hostile paper, previously visited Chepiga's home village in Siberia to confirm the Bellingcat story and they've now done the same (like the BBC and Associated Press) by taking the long train ride to Loyga up in the Archangelsk region, a dead-end hole only reachable by rail except for a few weeks in winter when the unmetalled roads freeze hard enough for wheeled transport, to speak to people who know Mishkin and regard him as the local hero and confirm Bellingcat's story. And so has The Insider.





https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45799037

Examines available evidence + attempts degree of objectivity = Russian supporter/Russian. Alluding to the soviet era is plainly inappropriate/ridiculous. The partisan cannot think beyond partisanship, with us or against us and so on.
"@57 on red looks like you may have indeed been right" is not a sequence of words I expected to read.

Here is Steve Rosenberg's BBC report from Loyga. God, what a dump. Mishkin's grandmother was for many years the only doctor in the place, apparently.

You're not fooling anyone, you know.

There is an interesting piece of detail in the bbc report:

UK government sources do not dispute the name - Alexander Mishkin - given by Bellingcat.

What the UK government sources also do not do is confirm the name. I believe Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson did in fact initially tweet an endorsement of the bellingcat finding and was told to remove it, which he quickly did.

No, and I'm not trying. Unlike you who repeatedly posts sources including twitter and what I can only discern as fake news websites.

You're full of it, your nonsense is wasted here. You'd be better attempting to spread this crap on twitter instead.

The most awesome suave intelligent handsome sexy manly strong virile & legitimate President on Earth Vladimir Putin couldn't have put it better himself when he said...well, when he says anything really, magnificent brilliant leader that he is. You've clearly & totally changed my mind on this issue, with your sound logic, silver tongue & above all else total genuineness. You are a breath of fresh air with your new account & centurion level. I now believe that all this talk of Russian suspects is simply fake newskie, unlike the real & 100% completely factually accurate news which is only available on Russia Today of course & furthermore you can rest assured I will continue to believe this until someone invents a cure for Novichok


долго жить великой русской родиной!!!!