Despite numerous linguistic and propaganda tricks, the British side failed to prove Russia’s involvement in the “Salisbury incident” associated with the “poisoning” of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in this southern British town.
It failed to fulfill the same mission of the “plaintiff”, which always carries the burden of proof, and the “threefold coalition” of the United States, Great Britain and France, which caused an unprovoked missile attack on the city of the Douma in the Syrian Eastern Gouta, without waiting for the sanction of the UN Security Council and confirmation of the “use of chemical weapons” against civilians in this settlement.
Thus, both the first and the second case of using unlawful means against civilians of another country may well be qualified as a war crime, and the second one also as an act of aggression against a sovereign state with a full UN membership. In order to justify its actions after the “Salisbury incident,” the current British government still uses alleged linguistic turns in the form of “highly likely” and seven other similar structures of the English language as evidence of Russia’s guilt in this tragic episode. But no one has even presented evidence of her involvement in this inhuman act: neither the British government nor the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. It seems that they will never present.
The awkward statements of the British side on the first episode, that is, in the case of the Skripal, are still full of striking contradictions, to which the British leadership has not yet received intelligible answers. British Prime Minister Theresa May could not explain why she immediately identified the type of chemical substance used against the Skripal, although she herself promised to give his formula only a few months, while the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons expected to receive concrete results in a couple of weeks. This named international structure, as is known, managed to keep within the mentioned terms, and produced the verdict without mentioning Russia.
London really “got entangled in the three pines”, first presenting the case so that a kind of nerve agent in the form of gas was used against the family of the Skripal, subsequently labeling it as a powder substance, then presenting it as a kind of gel. If in the form of gas, then why did nothing dangerous happen to the 131 Salisbury civilians who, according to one of the slides circulated by the British Embassy in Moscow on March 22 this year with the stamp “Her Majesty’s Government”, ” have potentially been in contact with the nerve agent”? And 51 people “have been assessed” in the Salisbury District Hospital after the incident with the Skripal and subsequently were released alive and well.
Diverse in the statements of London there is also about the location of the ill-fated poison. It first appeared in Sergey Skripal’s car, then on the bench where he was sitting with Julia, then on the door handle, then in buckwheat, which Julia brought to her father in Salisbury, and finally in her purse. Contradiction of the British point of view in the so-called case of the Skripal was manifested in the fact that at first the official British representative reported that Sergei and Julia survived due to the rapid use of some urgent antidotes, while the head of the Defense Studies and Technology Laboratory – military laboratory in Great Britain in Porton Down – Gary Aitkenhead declared, that no antidotes against them were used at all. So where is the truth?
London has so far responded only to two specific questions on the “case of the Skripal of 47 questions posed by Moscow. And even then partially. The British government still does not provide any opportunities to talk with Julia not only to Russian consular employees, which is a violation of the international Consular Convention but even to journalists who also would like to ask her some questions on the merits of what happened. Moreover, Julia has already been discharged from the District Hospital in Salisbury in good health, as her chief physician publicly claimed on British TV channels. But, despite this, no actual public photos or even a short video of Julia have appeared anywhere, which, despite her recovery, indirectly communicated with the outside world only through the British Scotland Yard, and even in writing.
The Russian embassy in London suspects that in the blood of Julia Skripal could introduce a chemical before taking her blood for analysis. According to the spokesman of the embassy, it is unclear how in the blood of Julia Skripal 18 days after the attempted poisoning, experts were able to detect an undecomposed toxic chemical. The British authorities have not yet granted her cousin named Victoria a visa to visit Britain under a ridiculous pretext that she does not possess enough financial resources to travel to the U.K.
Refusal to issue a British short-stay visa in such a specific situation is a direct violation of humanitarian law, and simply a regrettable example of a disregard for the desire of a close relative to see her native person in such difficult situation. It is appropriate to say here about the motives of the British side, which is clearly implicated in the poisoning of the family of the Skripal. The nerve agent under code A-234, which was used when poisoning them, is available in the safes of the UK military laboratory in Porton Down. The fact that the British leadership feared that Sergei Skripal, who after living more than seven years in the land of the foggy Albion, wished to return to Russia, where he could well convey new information about the work of the British intelligence services with him after his relocation to the UK in 2010.
There are very real reasons to explain the attempt to poison the Skripal family. It was instantly used by the British leadership as a justification for NATO’s larger military preparations, especially in Eastern Europe, and as a pretext for the United States refusing to liquidate the rest of its chemical weapons whose destruction should be implemented under the international Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. There are data that the USA hid more than two thousand tons of chemical warfare agents.
It should be noted that from the side of official London this episode was interpreted as “the use of weapons of mass destruction against Britain and Europe”. It cannot be ruled out that the “The Skripal Case” is used to help to divert attention from Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, the torpedoing of the construction of the Nord Stream-2 and the restoration of the falling ratings of the cabinet of Therese May. Leading NATO member countries also have long been waiting for some special pretexts for imposing new sanctions against Russia and with the aim of lowering its prestige in the international arena and encouraging terrorists in other parts of the world.
The British authorities began quietly destroying physical and all other evidence: the animals from the Skripal home have been put down. No samples have probably been taken from them. The places the Skripals had visited have been closed off: the bar, the restaurant, the bench, the soil in the park, etc. Meanwhile, the ordinary people in Salisbury go about their daily life as usual. Yulia Skripal’s whereabouts are unknown. There is no consular access to the Russian citizen. Let me remind you that neither Yulia nor Sergey have been seen since March 4. And yet these Russian citizens are victims of a crime, an attempted murder that bears the signs of terrorism.
Such dangerous provocations from the British side with regard to their consequences have not been applied to Russia for a long time. As for the “chemical performance” in the Syrian city of Douma, it is has been already deflated by its actors, whom terrorist groups, not yet destroyed on Syrian soil, “thanked” the food for the roles played by the “victims of the chemical attack”. This cheap setting was revealed by two doctors from the hospital where a famous show was being shot with water spraying children and adults from hoses and confessed by several actors. The same show was played out by terrorist groups and their propagandists, namely the White Helmets and the Syrian-American Medical Center last year, which was used by the current US administration to launch missile strikes on Syrian territory. Was it the aim of the support of the USA to create there with the help of irreconcilable terrorists a separatist state from Syria?
Instead of acknowledging the mistakenness of missile strikes against Syria, the US military and political leadership is trying to play a map of the “effectiveness” of the use of Tomahawks and similar missiles, thus carefully masking the qualification of a trilateral force action, which cannot be called anything other than “aggression and war crime “. Moreover, these attacks were inflicted on Syria at a time when only two days remained until the end of the operation in Eastern Gouta and when the normalization of the situation in Syria as a whole became an irreversible phenomenon.
So, in the episodes that took place in the British Salisbury in March, and in the Syrian Douma in April of this year, one and the same handwriting, the same strategic intent, is traced: with the help of rudely provocations and fakes, to aggravate the regional and international situation, to provide additional moral and material support to the “terrorist international” still operating on Syrian soil. The orchestrated performance of “chemical attack” versus civilians in the Syrian city of Douma was also aimed at disrupting the Geneva and Astana peace processes that have already brought positive results.
Why were such “chemical tricks” chosen? They were developed by their authors and performers for the reason that even staged televised shows, especially those showing shaky children, most effectively influence the world public opinion and push inadequate state and political leaders in the West to make immediate power retaliation for “real organizers of chemical attacks”. It is extremely dangerous, if such provocative methods become a pretext for conducting foolhardy and other dangerous actions of military and political leaders of the leading Western countries, who are ready to arbitrarily implement them there and then, where and when they so desire. All they need is any kind of excuse. They do not care even if it is a false one.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy and position of Regional Rapport.
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Dr. Vladimir KOZIN is a Leading Expert, Military-Political Studies Center, Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Russian Foreign Ministry, Corresponding Member, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Professor, Russian Academy of Military Sciences Member, Scientific Board, National Institute of Global Security Research, Member, Expert Council, Foreign Relations Committee, Russian Senate, Winner of Colonel-General V.Korobushin's Reward (Russian Strategic Missiles' Forces) and Russian Natural Sciences Academy Reward, Member, Friends of Gorchakov's Foundation