Very quickly about UK & Novichok - a collection of Eastern European style questions, plus old & new thoughts.
1. Looking at today's statement of PM May - there is always a lingering thought about her anti-pro Brexit position. Seemingly nothing to do with today's discussion, until one remembers about Russian involvement in Brexit, among other things. Not the best intro, yet...
2. Wasn't it PM May's party led Government, before her leadership, still her party (&Government) that issued the infamous memo during Ukraine war "keep the Russian money flowing to the City"?
Somehow it reminded me today about UK+France+Poland joint defence agreement (that's not the exact name) before WWII, by which UK&France would step in if anyone invaded Poland. Correct me if my memory is failling me on that one. Well, USSR&Nazi invaded and had a joint(!) parade together, UK declared war, but stopped short of any other action, except the formal statement of war. The 1939 was a world of complicated situations, of course, but some Central&Eastern Europeans had a certain level of carefulness towards this case. And the Memo on Russian money raised some eyebrows even more.
3. If that wasn't enough UK managed to quite obviously "not-see" the 14 cases of Russian killings etc on their own soil!!! Here is the article on that:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/
Aside from job&paiment for research, why Christopher Steele had to go to US to tell that story and not UK?
Aside from job&paiment for research, why Christopher Steele had to go to US to tell that story and not UK?
4. And PM May recognized publicly that Russians meddled in Brexit too, as I recall.
5. Well, on the matter of nerve agent the PM specifically said the nerve agent was "military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia" (Novichok - in English "Rookie" or BBC suggests Newcomer, well, to my mind Rookie is a better translation:)
Though I was a desk officer for OPCW matters, I have to rely on BBC, which stated that Novichok was made mainly undetectable, and some variants are made of two non-banned substances that will become Novichok after being mixed. These substances are easy to transport separately and can be even solid, powder and liquid.
Yet... Moscow never declared having it to OPCW!
6. I am surprised in a way that PM May even attempts to give Russia time to present evidence to the contrary. Russians don't play such games. The simply don't! Even when they are not guilty, they are not going to justify themselves in front of anyone, let alone what they'd privately call "some" UK.
7. In fact, today was supposed to be the day when PM Theresa May will go beyong belicose statements and actually limited sanctions, which are rightly ridiculed by Russian super-rich leadership. Their mega-rich leaders with enough money home & unlimited domestic power don't care about sanctions that(!) much.
8. Perhaps PM May uses that to show the Western world a fair aporoach, or she plays the internal political game (more likely?), but the Russians simply don't see it that way. There are a few real decision makers in Kremlin plus in FSB/GRU/SVR, who knew what happened, all the others are voices in Mr. Putin's chorus. And they will sign the same song - that the Brits were unable to prove any hard proof, since Russians don't even have such Nerve Agents anymore (maybe some will even "lower" themselves to say that UK used circumstancial evidence), and that they attempt to make Russia look guilty and shift the burden of proof over Russia, instead of determining who is the real perpetrator (not Russia, of course) - the "forever" President Putin already stated something like "maybe some Tartars did it, maybe some Ukrainians and maybe even some jews with Russian citizenship did it" And what a selection of ethnicities/countries, by the way!
9. Pretty much nothing will change, unless concrete Russians would feel some real heat, quietly, but clearly. Even then, they will only dial down.
There are ways to deal with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment