Octopus Overlords

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:46 pm Why the Seattle consulate?

Russia has ordered the expulsion of more diplomats from Western countries in a tit-for-tat response over the poisoning of an ex-spy in the UK.

The retaliatory measure comes a day after Russia kicked out 60 US diplomats and closed the St Petersburg consulate.
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On Friday the Russian government called in Britain's ambassador to order him to cut diplomatic staff to the same level as Russia's presence in the UK.

Both countries have already expelled 23 staff. Moscow also ordered the closure of the British Council.
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Twenty-nine countries have expelled 145 Russian officials in solidarity with the UK - and Nato has also ordered 10 Russians out of its mission in Belgium.

The US expelled the largest single number - 60 diplomats - and closed the Russian consulate general in Seattle.

Russia reciprocated on Thursday declaring 58 US diplomats in Moscow and two in the city of Yekaterinburg to be "personae non gratae".
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On Friday, Western ambassadors from the countries that had expelled Russians were called in to be told of Moscow's retaliation.
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On Friday, in addition to the new Western expulsions, UK Ambassador Laurie Bristow was called in to the Russian foreign ministry to be handed a protest note that said Britain's "provocative actions" had led to the decision by other governments to expel Russians.
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Police say the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent at Mr Skripal's home in Salisbury, with the highest concentration found on the front door.

Daveman wrote: ↑Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:03 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:46 pm Why the Seattle consulate?

On NPR this morning someone said it's because the consulate is near a naval/submarine base and a Boeing office/facility.

tjg_marantz wrote: ↑Fri Mar 30, 2018 3:34 pm Russia kicked out 4 Canadian diplomats as retaliation.

Kraken wrote:

tjg_marantz wrote: ↑Fri Mar 30, 2018 3:34 pm Russia kicked out 4 Canadian diplomats as retaliation.

That's like kicking puppies.

Yulia Skripal, the poisoned daughter of Russian ex-spy Sergei, has been discharged from hospital.

The 33-year-old left Salisbury District Hospital on Monday and has been taken to a secure location.

The hospital said: "This is not the end of her treatment but marks a significant milestone."

Her 66-year-old father remains in hospital and is "recovering more slowly than Yulia". Doctors hope he will be discharged "in due course".
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Wiltshire Police Det Sgt Nick Bailey, who attended the scene, was also treated in hospital after being exposed to the nerve agent, but has since been discharged.

A statement from Ms Skripal released through the Metropolitan Police last week said her "strength is growing daily".

Russia has been researching the application of chemical agents to door handles as a way to assassinate its enemies, and has been training personnel “from special units” to carry out such attacks, said Mark Sedwill, Britain’s national security adviser, on Friday in a letter to the secretary general of NATO.

The British police announced on Friday that they had found “a small bottle” containing a Novichok nerve agent, providing a possible break in the four-month-old investigation into an attack on a former Russian spy and the inquiry into the poisoning of two British citizens.

The bottle was found in the home of Charlie Rowley, 45, in Amesbury, England. He and his partner, Dawn Sturgess, 44, were exposed to the nerve agent on July 1.
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He said the police could not reveal any more details about the bottle, which was being examined by experts at Porton Down, the British government’s laboratory for chemical and biological weapons.

Ms. Sturgess died on Sunday evening, and officials have begun a murder inquiry. Mr. Rowley has regained consciousness, and he is speaking to investigators.
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The British police say they believe that Mr. Rowley and Ms. Sturgess touched a container left behind by a team of would-be assassins sent to attack Mr. Skripal.

The British woman who was killed by the nerve agent novichok was exposed by unwittingly spraying perfume laced with the substance onto her own wrists, according to a new interview.

Dawn Sturgess sprayed the odd-smelling substance onto herself shortly before displaying symptoms of nerve agent poisoning, according to Matthew Rowley, the brother of Sturgess's partner.

Rowley recounted the claim in an interview with MailOnline, saying that his brother Charlie Rowley had told him what happened.

Charlie Rowley was also exposed to novichok, but has made a partial recovery and is now conscious.
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The London Metropolitan Police, who are leading the investigation, previously said the poison was found in a "small bottle" in Charlie Rowley's home in Amesbury, Wiltshire. They declined to comment when asked by Business Insider whether it was a perfume bottle.
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Matthew Rowley's claim that Sturgess and his brother had been poisoned after unwittingly picking up the perfume bottle around Salisbury supports the theory that the couple were collateral damage from the assassination attempt on the Skripals.

Salisbury MP John Glen told BBC radio the couple may have come into contact with the bottle because of their "habit of looking into bins".

The two suspects in the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter are civilians, not criminals, Russian President Vladimir Putin says.

The UK government had named them as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, and said they were from Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU.

Mr Putin said he hoped the men would tell their story soon.

Meanwhile, a minister has suggested airport checks were not good enough, as Novichok had been brought into the UK.

"These two individuals travelled on a genuine Russian passport, making it harder to spot," Security Minister Ben Wallace has told the Commons.
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The prime minister's official spokesman said the government had "repeatedly asked Russia to account for what happened in Salisbury" but that Moscow "had replied with obfuscation and lies".
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"We know who they are, we have found them," Mr Putin said in the far eastern city of Vladivostok.

"I hope they will turn up themselves and tell everything. This would be best for everyone.

"There is nothing special there, nothing criminal, I assure you. We'll see in the near future," he added.

Pyotr Verzilov, an activist with Russian protest group Pussy Riot, is reported to have been taken to hospital in a serious condition.

Relatives speaking to the Meduza website said they believed he may have suffered poisoning but there is no official word on his condition.

He reportedly fell ill after a court hearing on Tuesday for fellow Pussy Riot activist Veronika Nikulshina.

Mr Verzilov was one of the activists who invaded the World Cup final pitch.

Max Peck wrote:Pussy Riot activist Pyotr Verzilov 'in hospital'

Pyotr Verzilov, an activist with Russian protest group Pussy Riot, is reported to have been taken to hospital in a serious condition.

Relatives speaking to the Meduza website said they believed he may have suffered poisoning but there is no official word on his condition.

He reportedly fell ill after a court hearing on Tuesday for fellow Pussy Riot activist Veronika Nikulshina.

Mr Verzilov was one of the activists who invaded the World Cup final pitch.

Holman wrote: ↑Thu Sep 13, 2018 8:12 am Putin is just trolling at this point.

In an interview with RT, the suspected Skripal poisoners claim that they were merely tourists who visited Salisbury twice to see the famous Cathedral. Unfortunately, they couldn't find it because heavy slush made it difficult for them to get around.

Salisbury is small and the cathedral is the tallest structure in town. Surveillance images have them nowhere near the cathedral but approaching the victim's house twice. The "slush" was a slight English damp.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Sep 13, 2018 8:56 am It's the new paradigm. Do whatever you want, tell outrageous lies about it/denying it, move on. No one is going to do shit.

Holman wrote: ↑Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:41 am I'm sure I'm just overlooking the steps the president is taking against this kind of violence.

Holman wrote: ↑Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:41 am NYT: Russians Planned Attack on Lab Testing Salisbury Nerve Agent, Swiss Say.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Sep 15, 2018 9:05 am

Holman wrote: ↑Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:41 am NYT: Russians Planned Attack on Lab Testing Salisbury Nerve Agent, Swiss Say.

Somce when are spies catch and release? I thought you locked them up and/or executed them. Merely expelling them seems kind of permissive.

A woman in the far east of Russia has told the BBC she recognises one of the key suspects in the Salisbury attack as a military intelligence officer.

The woman identified him immediately from photographs as Anatoliy Chepiga, a decorated "Hero of Russia".

Her assertion supports research by the Bellingcat online investigations team, which also identified Col Chepiga as one of the Salisbury suspects.

The man told Russian state TV he was Ruslan Boshirov, a civilian.

Under pressure to confront Russia, President Donald Trump's administration placed more sanctions on Vladimir Putin's government over a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy living in Britain.

It's the second round of sanctions over the 2018 attempt to kill former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in the British town of Salisbury.

Citing authority under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act, the new sanctions announced late Thursday prohibit a number of loans from American banks to Russia’s government, "except for loans or credits for the purpose of purchasing food or other agricultural commodities or products."
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Earlier this week, the top Democrat and Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent Trump a letter urging more sanctions on Russia, citing evidence of government involvement in the attack on Skripal.
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The Trump administration imposed a first round of sanctions in August 2018. They banned certain forms of foreign assistance, including arms sales and security-sensitive goods and technology.

Russia reacted negatively to the latest set of sanctions.

It "only makes the possibility of normalizing Russian-American relations even more hypothetical," said Frants Klintsevich, a Russian lawmaker quoted by the Associated Press.

Months after a man was shot dead in a Berlin park, Germany is throwing out two Russian diplomats because it suspects the murder was ordered by Russia or Russia's Chechen republic.

The expulsions come shortly after Germany's chief prosecutor decided to take over the case.

Germany has accused Russia of failing to assist in the investigation.
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Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old former Chechen rebel commander, was shot in the head from behind in the Kleiner Tiergarten park in August.

A man was quickly arrested but has given little information to police.
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The suspect was detained shortly after the killing when he was allegedly seen dumping a bike, pistol and a wig into the nearby River Spree.

The prosecutor says the suspect flew from Moscow to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris six days before the killing under the alias of Vadim S.
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Vadim S is then said to have flown to Warsaw where he stayed in a hotel until 22 August.
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The prosecutor describes Vadim K as a suspect in the 2013 murder of a Russian businessman in Moscow. The victim in that attack was also approached by a man on a bicycle who shot him in the back of the head.

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a variant of Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent, according to tests carried out by a German military laboratory. A German government spokesman said the evidence is "without a doubt."

Navalny "is the victim of a crime that intended to silence him," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during a news conference Wednesday about the findings. The crime, she said, was an "attempted murder."

Russian agent sent to tail opposition leader Alexey Navalny has revealed how he was poisoned in August -- with the lethal nerve agent Novichok planted in his underpants.

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Most dramatically Kudryavtsev provided a detailed account of how the nerve agent was applied to a pair of Navalny's underpants.
Navalny asked: "What item of clothing was the emphasis on? What is the most risky piece of clothing?"

Kudryavtsev replied simply: "Underpants."
Navalny followed by asking exactly where the Novichok was applied -- the inside or outside seams.
"The insides, the crotch," replied Kudryavtsev.

Toxicologists consulted by CNN say that if applied in granular form to clothes, the Novichok would be absorbed through the skin when the victim begins to sweat.

They say that, in this instance, it appears the assailants used a solid form of the nerve agent, rather than a liquid or gel as had previously been detected in the attack against former double agent Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom.

The investigation by Bellingcat and CNN used thousands of phone records plus flight manifests and other documents obtained by Bellingcat to track the team of toxin experts. It established that, on the night the Novichok somehow got into Navalny's hotel room, there was a ping from a cell phone belonging to one of the toxin team, Alexei Alexandrov, just a few hundred yards from the hotel.

Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko authorised political murders in Germany in recent years, according to a sensational recording of his former spy-chief obtained and published by EUobserver.

The Germany attacks never took place, but the plot, which discussed use of explosives and poison, shows the danger posed to EU states by his rogue regime...

...The fact his spy-master was so incompetent he let himself be bugged is a loss of face for the regime.

And this website's publication of the bugged KGB recording amounts to a public colonoscopy of Lukashenko's most private organs of power.

A Moscow court has jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny for three-and a-half years for violating the conditions of a suspended sentence.

He has been in detention since returning to Russia last month. He had been treated in Germany for a near-fatal nerve agent attack against him in August.

Thousands of supporters have rallied across Russia in support of Mr Navalny.

His suspended sentence for embezzlement has been converted into a jail term.

He has already served a year under house arrest which will be deducted from the total.