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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
The question is, is he deliberately attacking the UK, or a former spy. There's a difference here. Now the argument around the use of a chemical agent is a whole different ball game here, and I'd like to touch on that later. Right now, until they do something like capturing the killer, or catching a known Russian national on camera poisoning the victim, this is frankly a murder investigtion. Even if you point to it clearly being a weaponized nerve agent which points to state sponsership, and maybe I've missed it, where's the 100% link that it came from a Russian factory.
By the way, I'm on you're side here in a lot of ways.
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Yes, the nerve agent was of a type only the Russian's produce, the "Novichok" nerve agents specifically desgined to evade NATO detection equipment. I think this is a message to the UK and not specifically Russians. If it had been a message to former spies specifically, that Skripal's death would have been enough, but Russian continued to assassinate people despite the UK demanding answers and assassinated Nikolai Glushkov less than 12 hours after Elizabeth May demanded answers from Putin.
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"It is now clear that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia," she said. "This is part of a group of nerve agents known as Novichok."
"As far as I know, I don't know anybody who knows how to make it except these guys in Russia," says Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert with Strongpoint Security in London. "They've been a deep, dark secret."
Novichok means "newcomer" in Russian. Kaszeta says that Novichok agents were developed in the 1980s as a new weapon in the waning days of the Cold War. Novichok chemicals were designed to evade equipment carried by NATO troops. "They wanted to develop nerve agents that the West couldn't detect," he says.
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https://www.npr.org/sections/paralle...nitely-russian
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Is the UK invoking article 5? That's the question right now, but I have a feeling that it won't be invoked because it would be considered to be not only a dangerous escalation, but is what Russia did here really something that article 5 was designed for. This isn't a systematic attack on the UK.
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Not likely at the moment I would say since the US position is unstable. But this is a systematic attack on UK soil with the deaths of now 16 nationals under UK protection.
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Militarily this is a shyty situation.
From an economic standpoint what else can you sanction?
From a PR standpoint, the Russians don't care.
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Yes, a direct military confrontation is not the answer to de-escalate. A message has to be the sent though. Russia has employed mercenaries to attack US bases, does NATO respond with similar proxy battles with it's own mercs? I am not sure what deters this type of asymetrical proxy warefare that Russia is currently employing.
Putin has shown no willingness to back down in use of these type of irregular forces in both the Crimea, Ukraine and Syria... he will continue to employ them if not deterred.
He is rich and can weather the sanctions, his lackeys cannot though.