Skripal Affair

 Skripal Affair (False flag attack?)

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 (co-incident with 'Exercise Toxic Danger', the largest exercise of its type in the UK) when Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and a UK policeman (Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey) were taken ill.

John Ward summarised 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."

The event was quickly dropped by commercially-controlled media after the UK attack on Syria, but the Skripals have still not been seen in public as of June 20.

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

Could Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia have been poisoned with a nerve agent made in Syria?

"No doubt that agent is Novichok made in Russia"

On April 3rd Boris Johnson stated in a filmed interview to Die Welle that he had received a personal assurance from a scientist in Porton Down that he was “in no doubt that agent is Novichok made in Russia”.

Recovery?

The Skripals reportedly recovered, but haven't been seen in public since.

Responses

By UK Government

"Of a type developed by Russia"

“Blaming Russia for the use of a poison “of a type developed by Russia” (i.e. the Soviet Union) is like blaming Germany for all current Heroin addicts because the Deutsche Reich company Bayer developed the mass-production of Heroin as a sedative for coughs.”
 (17 March 2018) 

Expulsion of Russian Diplomats

On 13 March 2018 "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."

Craig Murray talks about Skripal case to George Galloway

By UK corporate media

The UK commercially-controlled media was largely uncritical of the government line.

By UK public

Tht UK public were more sceptical of the official narrative. Web traffic to several UK-based alternative mediasites increased as the Skripal affair unfolded, including Craig Murray's blog, Wikispooks and 21st Century Wire‎.

 

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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