Skripal Affair/Boshirov and Petrov in the UK

 Skripal Affair/Boshirov and Petrov in the UK(subpage)

Date	2 March 2018 - 4 March 2018
Location	Salisbury,  UK
Description	Overview of what Boshirov and Petrov did in the UK

The two Russians citizens Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were soon fingered by the British government as Russian intelligence operatives on a mission to assassinate Sergei Skripal. The two men said they were in the UK for undefined 'business' and in addition went on sightseeing.

Visa and Passports

British authorities have said they "did not to know" under which type of visa Petrov and Borishov came to the UK. As analyst Craig Murray pointed out "why were they given the visas in the first place, and what story did they tell to get them?"

RT's exclusive interview with Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov on the Skripal poisoning case in Salisbury.

In a later interview with Russia Today, they said they were freelance traders in fitness products wanting to visit Salisbury Cathedral. If they had told this on the visa application, they would have been refused a visa as being candidates for overstaying, as would have been judged not to have sufficiently stable employment in Russia to ensure they would return.

Bellingcat (close to British intelligence services) claimed to have obtained documentary evidence that Petrov and Boshirov’s passports were of a series issued only to Russian spies, with passport numbers closely together, and that their applications listed GRU headquarters as their address, quoting fontanka.ru as a source, but fontanka.ru actually say the precise opposite of what Bellingcat claim – that the passport number series is indeed a civilian one and civilians do have passports in that series. The close passport numbers merely means they applied together. And why did British security service not identify them this way from the start?

Smuggling nerve agent through customs in a perfume bottle

According to the official narrative, the two men smuggled the highly deadly nerve agent novichok through UK customs disguised as a sealed perfume bottle. As with many other aspects of the official narrative, this claim was quickly questioned by independent analysts:

Two young men with undefinable occupations (and looking somewhat seedy), coming from a high-risk smuggling country, would have had a high risk of being checked by customs. And if the bottle had been opened by UK customs for inspection,it would have created a mass casualty incident at the airport - an unlikely high risk procedure for intelligence operatives, risking an early arrest, for mass murder.

Hotel in London

The pair stayed in a twin room in the daggy City Break Hotel, sharing a twin bed room. This led to some speculation that they were a gay couple, but the more likely explanation is that they were somewhat down-at-heel petty traders. According to some sources, they spent the night before the alleged hit by smoking marijuana and splitting the cost of the services of a prostitute.

The offical narrative is that Boshirov and Petrov left a trace of novichok in their hotel bedroom, which was only discovered at a second search, four months later.

2 day trips to Salisbury

From London, they made two day trips to Salisbury. British police posted several CCTV videos of these day trips.

Craig Murray on Boshirov and Petrov

The dissident former British diplomat Craig Murray has played a central part in pointing out flaws in the British government narrative, including this post:

"Were I Vladimir Putin, I would persuade Boshirov and Petrov voluntarily to come to the UK and stand trial, on condition that it was a genuinely fair trial before a jury in which the entire proceedings, and all of the evidence, was open and public, and the Skripals and Pablo Miller might be called as witnesses and cross-examined. I have no doubt that the British government’s desire for justice would suddenly move into rapid retreat if their bluff was called in this way."

Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are seen walking past the Dauwalders rare stamp shop before becoming distracted by the big window shopping Lamp-Lighter

"The greater mystery about these two is, if they did visit the Skripal House and paint Novichok on the doorknob, why did they afterwards walk straight past the railway station again and head into Salisbury city centre, where they were caught window shopping in a coin and souvenir shop with apparently not a care in the world, before eventually returning to the train station? It seems a very strange attitude to a getaway after an attempted murder. In truth their demeanour throughout the photographs is consistent with their tourism story.

"The Russians have so far presented this pair in a very unconvincing light. But on investigation, the elements of their story which are claimed to be wildly improbable are not inconsistent with the facts.

Craig Murray writes:"There remains the much larger question of the timing. The Metropolitan Police state that Boshirov and Petrov did not arrive in Salisbury until 11.48 on the day of the poisoning. That means that they could not have applied a nerve agent to the Skripals’ doorknob before noon at the earliest. But there has never been any indication that the Skripals returned to their home after noon on Sunday 4 March. If they did so, they and/or their car somehow avoided all CCTV cameras. Remember they were caught by three CCTV cameras on leaving, and Borishov and Petrov were caught frequently on CCTV on arriving."

"The Skripals were next seen on CCTV at 13.30, driving down Devizes road. After that their movements were clearly witnessed or recorded until their admission to hospital.

"So even if the Skripals made an “invisible” trip home before being seen on Devizes Road, that means the very latest they could have touched the doorknob is 13.15. The longest possible gap between the novichok being placed on the doorknob and the Skripals touching it would have been one hour and 15 minutes. Do you recall all those “experts” leaping in to tell us that the “ten times deadlier than VX” nerve agent was not fatal because it had degraded overnight on the doorknob? Well that cannot be true. The time between application and contact was between a minute and (at most) just over an hour on this new timeline.

"In general it is worth observing that the Skripals, and poor Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, all managed to achieve almost complete CCTV invisibility in their widespread movements around Salisbury at the key times, while in contrast “Petrov and Boshirov” managed to be frequently caught in high quality all the time during their brief visit.

"This is especially remarkable in the case of the Skripals’ location around noon on 4 March. The government can only maintain that they returned home at this time, as they insist they got the nerve agent from the doorknob. But why was their car so frequently caught on CCTV leaving, but not at all returning? It appears very much more probable that they came into contact with the nerve agent somewhere else, while they were out.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
File:Another Version Attempting To Explain Trip Of GRU Agents Petrov And Boshirov To Salisbury.pdf	article	20 September 2018	Andrei Grachev	Originally written by Andrei Grachev on his Facebook page. The post was deleted by Facebook because it allegedly violated its rules.

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