Skripal Affair

This page is disorganised, contains too much 3rd party material and doesn't properly reflect the Integrity Initiative and Pablo Miller angle.

 Skripal Affair (false flag attack?,  mid-level deep event)

Date	4 March 2018
Location	Salisbury,  Wiltshire,  England
Interest of	Duncan Allan, Neil Basu, Bellingcat, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, John Helmer, Kit Klarenberg, Rob Slane, John Ward, Working Group on Syria Propaganda and Media
Subpage	•Skripal Affair/Boshirov and Petrov in the UK
Description	A purported chemical weapons attack

The Skripal Affair began in Salisbury, UK on 4 March 2018 when Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia were taken ill. The British government very soon accused the Russian government of having sent two (or more) operatives over to assassinate Sergei Skripal with the exotic poison Novichok.

The corporate media followed the British government line closely, in what soon became a massive campaign involving the Integrity Initiative and diplomatic actions.

The numerous and large holes in the British government narrative was soon pointed out by numerous independent ('alternative') media outlets, which also pointed out the close contacts between British media and British intelligence.

The event was quickly dropped by commercially-controlled media after the UK attack on Syria, and the Skripals reportedly went into hiding.

Three months later, two drug addicts, Dawn Sturgess (who died) and Charlie Rowley were diagnosed as having come in contact with Novichok, causing a second wave of interest in the affair.

Background

In the 1990s, Sergei Skripal, then still a Russian citizen working for Russian military intelligence service GRU, had been recruited to spy for the British MI6. He was caught by Russian authorities in 2004, convicted to jail, but spy-swapped with Britain in 2010. Since then, he had lived in the British town of Salisbury, offering his consulting services to British intelligence.

Full article: Sergei Skripal

The Salisbury incident was co-incident with 'Exercise Toxic Danger', the largest exercise of its type in the UK)

Full article: Toxic Dagger

Chronology of Salisbury Events

• On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were found semi-unconscious on a park bench in the British city of Salisbury. Colonel Alison McCourt, Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army, and her daughter Abigail, were walking past this first-ever use of a “military-grade” nerve agent. As McCourt is one of the few people in Britain trained to deal with nerve agents, stopped to administer first aid.

• At 17:10, they were taken separately to Salisbury District Hospital by an ambulance and an air ambulance.

• At 09:03 the following morning, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust declared a major incident in response to concerns raised by medical staff; shortly afterwards this became a multi-agency incident named Operation Fairline.

• Health authorities checked 21 members of the emergency services and the public for possible symptoms; two police officers were treated for minor symptoms, said to be itchy eyes and wheezing. During the next few weeks and months, several hundred people who might have been in contact were checked, but no serious symptoms were reported.

• According to the British government narrative, two Russian citizens working for the Russian intelligence service GRU had gone on a day trip to Salisbury specifically to lace the doorknob on Sergei Skripal's hose with Novichok, a deadly nerve agent.

• The official story is that both the Skripals were poisoned by touching their door handle, but then well enough to go out to a pub, feed some ducks, and have a big lunch in a restaurant, before being instantly stricken and disabled, both at precisely the same time. In addition, this is a remarkably long reaction time for an ultra deadly nerve agent.

• Sergei Skripal's house soon was sealed off, suspected of being laced with nerve agent, both inside and on the door knob. Conspicuously, the Salisbury police officers who were guarding the house did so without any protective equipment.

• The same day as the incident took place, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey went to Sergei Skripal's house. The next day, he was hospitalized, reported to be in a serious condition from nerve agent poisoning.

• Original reports of fentanyl overdoses were redacted. (see section below).

• Skripal's house was sealed off for a month, with his pet hamster and cat inside. Later, the hamster was found starved to death, while the cat had to be put down due to its emaciated and distressed condition. The house was later bought by the British government. First the roof was removed, for being contaminated with the Novichok gel from the door knob. Later the whole house was torn down.

• The poisoning of two drug addicts in Salisbury three months later was ascribed to Novichok. This narrative has as many flaws as the main one (see separate section below).

Novichok

One of the many conspicuous holes in the British government narrative about the case is that despite the poison's alleged deadliness with only minute quantities, only one person died out of several dozen who allegedly came in contact, and that was three months later.

Full article: Novichok

A frequent talking point was that only Russia had access to this unique Soviet-era nerve agent, using weasel words like "of a type developed by Russia”. Over the next few months, it turned out several countries had made it at some stage or other, that the recipe was readily available for chemists, and that Novichok even was patented in the United States.

Pablo Miller

Pablo Miller was Sergei Skripal’s MI6 handler and also lived in Salisbury. Miller’s name was first mentioned in a report for the Telegraph in the days following the Skripal’s alleged poisoning, from which Miller’s name has now been totally removed.

Full article: Pablo Miller

It was later revealed by a Channel 4 reporter on twitter, that the government had issued a D-notice on “Sergei Skripal’s MI6 handler”:

British governments actions

The British government very soon accused Russia of being directly responsible.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson: "No doubt that agent is Novichok made in Russia"

In an interview 0n 19 March 2018, Conservative UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson talked about why the government believed Russia is responsible for the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and what lessons Britain learned from the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

Asked how the British government could be so sure Russia was behind the attack, Johnson deferred to “the people from Porton Down,” who he said were “absolutely categorical”:

“I asked the guy myself, I said, 'Are you sure?' And he said there's no doubt.”

However, it was not clear from the comments whether Johnson was saying Porton Down had confirmed the nerve agent had come from Russia or whether it was Novichok.

Opposition Labour Party leaders voiced skepticism. Diane Abbott called on Johnson to explain the apparent discrepancy, saying “It seems Boris Johnson misled the public when he claimed that Porton Down officials confirmed to him that Russia was the source of the nerve agent used in the Salisbury attack." Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Boris Johnson has "egg on his face" and "serious questions to answer".

Photoshopped illustration of how Colin Powell might have made the case against Putin, a reference to his lies to the UN about Iraq's WMDs.

John Ward summarized the progression of events by observing that "it took just over five weeks to go from largely unsubstantiated claims of a Russian nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain to the air strike against the régime of Bashar al-Assad."

Expulsion of Russian Diplomats

On 13 March 2018 UK Prime Minister "Theresa May wrote to the Secretary-General of the United Nations accusing Russia of having ordered the attack in Salisbury, and convened an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. Without waiting, she expelled 23 Russian diplomats." This action was followed by an immediate expulsion of Russian diplomats from other NATO-countries. Noticeably, Chris Donnelly, leader of the Integrity Initiative, immediatley had the solution ready

Corporate media

The UK commercially-controlled media, having received a D-Notice about the affair, were uncritical of the government line and did little reporting except for repeating the UK Deep state official narrative, an noticeable trend followed by press outlets in other NATO countries, and international media relying on western news agencies as a source for news.

• Mark Urban is the BBC's diplomatic editor, and personally fronted much of the coverage of the Skripal case when it was breaking news. Mark Urban was in the same Royal Tank Regiment as Pablo Miller (see above). Urban revealed, months after the event, he had regularly been interviewing Sergei Skripal in the months and weeks before his alleged poisoning, claiming it was “for a book”.

Integrity Initiative

The Skripal Affair happened to occur shortly after a massive increase in the Integrity Initiative’s budget and activity, which itself was a small part of a British Government decision to ramp up a major information war against Russia.

An appendix of The Operation Iris document showing dissenting voices from the official narrative of the Skripal case - referred to as "Troll accounts"

The Integrity Initiative/Institute for Statecraft are not known to have carried out any investigation into what actually happened in Salisbury, but were intensely interested in reporting of the Skripal Case and commissioned Operation Iris from Harod Associates, a review of social media reporting about the incident. Of particular note is that the email address of Pablo Miller, Skripal's handler, was on an II list that was leaked.

Alternative Media dismantles the UK narrative

The UK public were more sceptical of the official narrative. Web traffic to several UK-based alternative websites increased as the Skripal affair unfolded, including Craig Murray's blog, Wikispooks and 21st Century Wire‎ (see list of articles at bottom of page).

Also Russian media, including the English-speaking editions of RT and Sputnik News which let dissident western journalists like Kit Klarenberg work freely, pointed to many holes in the British narrative.

Russian government and media handling of the case

Although the British government narrative was quickly torn to pieces independent media, the Russian government failed to sufficiently shed light on certain subjects, noticeably the identities of of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

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

• On 13 April 2018, Russian Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko published a comprehensive report of the Skripal Affair entitled "Salisbury: A Classified Case", which he updated on 28 June 2018.

Russian President Vladimir Putin opined on the case in an interview with the Financial Times on 27 June 2019: : "Listen, all this fuss about spies and counterspies, it is not worth serious interstate relations. This spy story, as we say, it is not worth five kopecks. Or even five pounds, for that matter," he said. "And the issues concerning interstate relations, they are measured in billions and the fate of millions of people. How can we compare one with the other?"

"The average person listens and says, "Who are these Skripals?" And it turns out that Skripal was engaged in espionage against us (Russia). So this person asks the next question, "Why did you spy on us using Skripal? Maybe you should not have done that?" You know, these questions are infinite," Putin noted. "We need to just leave it alone and let security agencies deal with it."

"As a matter of fact, treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident is the way to do it. Not at all. But traitors must be punished"..."This gentleman, Skripal, had already been punished. He was arrested, sentenced and then served time in prison. He received his punishment. For that matter, he was off the radar. Why would anybody be interested in him? He got punished. He was detained, arrested, sentenced and then spent five years in prison. Then he was released and that was it."

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.

Fentanyl poisoning?

Skripals poisoned by Fentanyl?

On 21 January 2019, it was revealed in the Forces Network journal that Abigail McCourt, the teenage daughter of Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army Alison McCourt was the first person to notice the Skripal father and daughter slumped on a park bench, and tried to give them first aid. Neither mother nor daughter, nor members of their family were treated for effects of contact with nerve agent.

On admission to Salisbury hospital nursing staff undertook treatment for Fentanyl poisoning of Yulia and Sergei. This was confirmed on March 5th in the Clinical Services Journal. The article was subsequently doctored to remove the reference to treatment for Fentanyl poisoning. Fortunately some took screenshots of the original article for reference future reference. None of the staff at Salisbury Hospital were treated for contact with the deadly nerve agent Novichok.

Fentanyl, a very strong opiate had made inroads into the drug culture in the area, and was also the subject of a Salisbury Journal article written on the day of the poisoning, 4th March 2018. It stated: "Emergency services suspect the powerful drug fentanyl - a synthetic opiate 50-100 times stronger than heroin - may have been involved."

Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley

On 8 July 2018, three months after the original incident, the habitual drug user Dawn Sturgess died. According to the British government version of events the cause of death was exposure to Novichok. Her partner Charlie Rowley, who was also taken ill, recovered after treatment in hospital. The poisoning happened from a sealed perfume bottle Rowley had picked up from a charity bin, that allegedly contained left-over Novichok from the assasination attempt three months earlier.

After the poisoning, the Police cordoned off Charlie Rowley’s home and began a search for “Novichok”, in an attitude of extreme urgency because it was believed this poison was out amidst the public. They were specifically searching for a small phial of liquid. Yet it took 11 days of the search before they allegedly discovered the “novichok” in a perfume bottle sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter – and only after they had discovered the clue of the perfume bottle package in the bin the day before, after ten days of search.

Full article: Dawn Sturgess

Full article: Charlie Rowley

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Institute for Statecraft/Secrecy	“Implementing discernment and media literacy training prog. (using Skripal as a case-study). Activity: £90k Ben Robinson, Yusuf Desai, Greg Rowett (Tallinn University, Chester University) Teachers Unions?”		30 May 2018
Craig Murray	“We have a programme, the Integrity Initiative, whose entire purpose is to pump out covert disinformation against Russia, through social media and news stories secretly paid for by the British government. And we have the Skripals’ MI6 handler, the BBC, Porton Down, the FCO, the MOD and the US Embassy, working together in a group under the auspices of the Integrity Initiative. The Skripal Case happened to occur shortly after a massive increase in the Integrity Initiative’s budget and activity, which itself was a small part of a British Government decision to ramp up a major information war against Russia. I find that very interesting indeed.”	Craig Murray	21 December 2018
OffGuardian	“The BBC’s new drama “The Salisbury Poisonings” concluded over the weekend. A three-part story “based on actual events”, claiming to tell the story of the alleged poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018. It’s exactly what you’d expect. Schlocky tat. Poorly researched, badly written and woefully factually inaccurate. The Guardian gave it four stars. Because of course they did. Because when you’re dealing with government-backed narrative everything that reinforces it must be described as having value. It’s one of the hallmarks of propaganda, that no story which supports the propaganda – however ridiculous – can ever be questioned, criticised or disputed. There’s room for an in-depth review, and indeed Craig Murray has done a fine job deconstructing the series. But here, I just want to focus on everything they don’t tell you.”	OffGuardian	19 June 2020
Orbis Business Intelligence	“The @Telegraph story claiming a link between Sergei #Skripal and Christopher Steele's company Orbis is wrong, I understand. Skripal had nothing to do with Trump dossier. Skripal had nothing to do with Trump dossier.”	Luke Harding	2018
Paschalidis Panagiotis	“The most common characteristic of the news stories found in the Greek newspapers is the insistence on the factual aspects of the story... quite understandable since in most cases the news stories of the Greek newspapers are composed by the information provided by news agencies... the strong pro-Russian sentiment in the Greek public opinion seems to have influenced the Greek newspapers not to emphasize Russia’s involvement.”	Paschalidis Panagiotis	March 2018
Mark Urban	“Mark Urban’s piece for Newsnight tonight was simply disgusting; it did not even pretend to be more than a propaganda piece on behalf of the security services, who had told Urban (as he said) that Yulia Skripal's phone “could have been” tapped by the Russians and they “might even” have listened to her conversations through the microphone in her telephone. That was the “new evidence” that the Russians were behind everything. As a former British Ambassador I can tell you with certainty that indeed the Russians might have tapped Yulia, but GCHQ most definitely would have. It is, after all, their job, and billions of our taxes go into it. If tapping of phones is seriously presented as evidence of intent to murder, the British government must be very murderous indeed.”	Craig Murray Mark Urban	5 July 2018

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:British Skripal Narrative Fails the Occam's Razor Every Step of the Way	blog post	26 September 2018	Rob Slane	Occam’s Verdict: Where is Sergei? He’s either dead, or he can’t be prevailed upon to make a statement backing up the official narrative, because he knows it isn’t true.
Document:FCO Disinformation update: Salisbury and Syria	review	26 December 2018	Integrity Initiative Andy Pryce	UK Foreign Office email, presumably to trusted pro-government journalists, with information as 'background for your own work'. Cliff notes on Douma, Skripal etc.
Document:II Network Skripal	report	21 March 2018	Simon Bracey-Lane	media feedback from II members in smaller countries to HQ in London in Skripal affair
Document:Ideas for Ramping up IfS Contributions to the Cause	strategy document	16 March 2018	Victor Madeira	Outline of the Ifs-parts of a big covert propaganda campaign to synchronize and spread the British narrative ('the Cause') in the Skripal case.
Document:Metropolitan Police on 'Chepiga' and 'Mishkin'	blog post	12 October 2018	Craig Murray	I remain of the view that the best way forward would be for Putin to negotiate conditions under which Boshirov and Petrov might voluntarily come to the UK for trial
Document:Notes from colleagues in the Baltic States who are monitoring Russia carefully	Wikispooks Page	18 March 2018	Integrity Initiative	A document from the Integrity Initiative Leak which asserts that "A criminal investigation [into the Skripal affair] alone will not throw these essential clues up, and is unlikely to yield sufficient judicial evidence We need to be looking at, and explaining, this attack from a political and military-intelligence perspective. That means educating our audience to understand how Russia sees this world as being at war."
Document:Novichok Part Deux: A Fusion of Media, Government & Military	Article	10 July 2018	Kenny Coyle	BBC diplomatic and defence correspondent Mark Urban revealed this week that he had in fact been meeting secretly with Sergei Skripal over a year ago.
Document:Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense	blog post	3 September 2020	Craig Murray	The US and Saudi Arabia have every reason to instigate a split between Germany and Russia at this time. Navalny is certainly a victim of international politics. That he is a victim of Putin I tend to doubt.
Document:Probable Western Responsibility for Skripal Poisoning	blog post	28 April 2018	Craig Murray Clive Ponting	Those of us who have been in the belly of the beast and have worked closely with the intelligence services, really do know what they and the British government are capable of. They are not “white knights”.
Document:Russia, Novichok and the long tradition of British government misinformation	article	12 April 2018	David Miller
Document:Russian Lies and the Skripal Case	strategy document	10 March 2018	Chris Donnelly SPCD	II document describing the backstory to the British narrative of the Sergei Skripal incident
Document:Salisbury Incident - Skripal Case Investigators Could Learn From The Lockerbie Affair	Article	24 September 2018	Ludwig De Braeckeleer	Porton Down has been renamed many times: RARDE, DERA, Dstl, but it's still the same damn place.
Document:Sergei Skripal - "I wanted a life outside Russia"	Article	28 September 2018	Mark Urban	Adapted from "The Skripal Files, The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy" by Mark Urban, to be published by Macmillan on 4 October 2018 at £20
Document:Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?	strategy document	11 March 2018	Chris Donnelly	Donnelly creates an overarching narrative, and then makes a list of British punitive measures and a PR-campaign against Russia for the the Skripal Affair
Document:Skripal roundup 21.3.18	Wikispooks Page	21 March 2018		some twitter reactions on the Skripal Case, half from known Integrity Initiative members
Document:Social Media Investigation and Monitoring Proposal - Subject Poisoning of Sergei Skripal	program proposal	15 March 2018	Greg Rowett	Establish the flow across social media of the messaging, and establish key influencers, friendly and anti, to HMG.
Document:Sputnik Gatecrashes Launch of Mark Urban's Book 'The Skripal Files'	Article	5 October 2018	Kit Klarenberg Johanna Ross	Sputnik Gatecrashes Launch of Mark Urban's Book 'The Skripal Files'
Document:Spy behind Donald Trump 'golden shower' dossier feared president had been 'compromised by foreign power'	Article	10 January 2018	James Law	"It's political rhetoric to call the dossier phoney. The memos are field reports of real interviews that Chris's network conducted and there's nothing phoney about it. We can argue about what's prudent and what's not, but it's not a fabrication."
Document:Stephen Donald Lewis Davies @ GMC	snooping on doctor	20 March 2018	Integrity Initiative	Screenshot of II checking out Dr. Stephen Davies of Salisbury Hospital, who wrote a letter to the Times disputing the official narrative. See Skripal Affair
Document:The Four Horsemen Gallop By	blog post	11 April 2018	Craig Murray	The notion that Britain will take part in military action against Syria with neither investigation of the evidence nor a parliamentary vote is worrying indeed. Without Security Council authorisation, any such action is illegal in any event.
Document:The Salisbury Poisoning One Year On - An Open Letter to the Metropolitan Police	open letter		Rob Slane
Document:The World: What is Really Happening	blog post	25 May 2019	Craig Murray	Alleged nerve gas attack in Syria - Amanda Martin tweets to George Monbiot: "Don't you smell a set up here though? Craig Murray doesn't think Assad did it."
Document:Where They Tell You Not to Look	blog post	30 April 2018	Craig Murray	Craig Murray's rule number one of real investigative journalism: 1. Look Where They Tell You Not to Look
Document:‘No slither of evidence’ against Russia over Skripal attack, George Galloway tells RT	Video	28 March 2018	George Galloway	George Galloway concludes: "The OPCW, which is currently examining samples of the nerve agent used against the Skripals, will presumably be lent upon to obfuscate the outcome. No one will ever know the truth.”
Document:“Former Russian Spy Sergei Skripal May Have Been Poisoned by BZ Nerve Agent”	blog post	16 April 2018	Ludwig De Braeckeleer	Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: “Former Russian Spy Sergei Skripal May Have Been Poisoned by BZ Nerve Agent”

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