Russian Chemical Weapon attack in Salisbury

[Top Cats Hat 10]

Just to put the coincidence theory into perspective, my sister has twin daughters. When it came to passport time she put in two identical applications at the same passport office at the same time.

 

When she received the passports, the numbers were two or three hundred numbers apart (the elder twin got the newer passport!) the population of the Russian Federation is more than double that of the UK so the chances of two friends of different ages who are renewing their passports being sequential, is even less likely.

[lil-minx92 10]

Why would this info be released into the public domain, thus letting the GRU know they had made a big mistake.

They could then issue new passports to their agents.....new names and non sequential numbers?

 

I think it was discovered by investigative journalists rather than by police or intelligence agencies.

 

I do wonder why the might of Mi6 etc didnt manage to discover the guys true identities before a journalist found out fairly easily it seems. Maybe they did I suppose but thought it best we let all this blow over rather than risk things getting more awkward with Russia.

[Dromedary 166]

Not only were these passports sequentially numbered but were apparently part of a batch of sequential passport numbers issued to others suspected of being GRU agents.

 

Where is that information from as I cant find any source for it?

[altus 540]

I think it was discovered by investigative journalists rather than by police or intelligence agencies.

 

I do wonder why the might of Mi6 etc didnt manage to discover the guys true identities before a journalist found out fairly easily it seems. Maybe they did I suppose but thought it best we let all this blow over rather than risk things getting more awkward with Russia.

 

Security services frequently hide what they know as it keeps the other side guessing. It's possible that they pointed Bellingcat in the right direction as it gets the information out there but has no implications for them. There's also the fact that some journalists finding the information is probably more embarrassing for Putin - it's more difficult for him to claim it's a fabrication.

[Top Cats Hat 10]

Where is that information from as I cant find any source for it?

 

Here.

 

"Skripal poisoning suspects' passport data shows security services link"

 

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/14/skripal-poisoning-suspects-passport-data-shows-link-security-services/

[lil-minx92 10]

The reader comments after the article are very interesting- it appears that the Russian 'bots' (ie. Putins' internet propaganda guys) were hard at work dropping comments pretending to be westerners finding faults in the story, whilst having the mickey taken out of them by everybody else for very obviously being Russian bots

 

Its a great example of this social media Russian propaganda technique that I think first came to light during and after the Trump campaign.

 

During the Trump campaign I knew there was something fishy about the number of evangelical-esque comments from different (very scant) profiles on Facebook in support of Trump that used a similar phrase- one that no westerner would ever use- along the lines of 'we should pray to God to build a hedge of support and protection around Mr Trump'... a wall possibly but a hedge?? Something was clearly muddled up in translation

[altus 540]

The reader comments after the article are very interesting- it appears that the Russian 'bots' (ie. Putins' internet propaganda guys) were hard at work dropping comments pretending to be westerners finding faults in the story, whilst having the mickey taken out of them by everybody else for very obviously being Russian bots

 

Its a great example of this social media Russian propaganda technique that I think first came to light during and after the Trump campaign.

They've been known about since before the 2016 US election campaign. The Guardian and the Beeb both reported on them in 2015.

[Top Cats Hat 10]

 

During the Trump campaign I knew there was something fishy about the number of evangelical-esque comments from different (very scant) profiles on Facebook in support of Trump

 

Fair play to the Irish government for asking facebook to block any political ads from outside Ireland during May's abortion referendum, after the large number of US evangelical churches set up anti abortion facebook pages which were pretending to be based in Ireland!

[Phanerothyme 12]

The Russian junta isn't being amateurish about this in the slightest.

[Lockdoctor 10]

The Russian junta isn't being amateurish about this in the slightest.

I am more than a little embarrassed to use the same rhetoric as Top Cat, but are you on drugs?

[melthebell 863]

Lol, I think phanes taking the ****

[Top Cats Hat 10]

The Russian junta isn't being amateurish about this in the slightest.

 

If by that you mean that they wanted to make it absolutely clear who was behind the attack as a warning to others, I suspect the use of Novichok alone was all that was needed to make it very clear.

 

I still maintain that the rest was poorly planned and executed!