Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
97 lines (62 loc) · 8.22 KB

I00045.md

File metadata and controls

97 lines (62 loc) · 8.22 KB

Skripal

  • Type: incident

  • Name: Skripal

  • Id: I00045

  • Summary: On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the UK's intelligence services, and his daughter Yulia Skripal were poisoned in Salisbury, England, with a Novichok nerve agent known as A-234, according to official UK sources and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)

  • Year started: 2018.0

  • From country / To country: Russia / UK

  • Found via: nan

  • Date added: 2019-03-20

  • Techniques used:

Technique Description given for this incident

DO NOT EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE - PLEASE ADD NOTES BELOW

Actor: Russia

Timeframe: March 4, 2018 - ongoing

Date: March 4, 2018

Presumed goals:

  • Russian officials have sought to exploit holes in the complicated narrative of the poisoning to suggest an anti-Russian conspiracy. Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian intelligence services, wrote in an op-ed in The Moscow Times… “The Kremlin is enjoying the reputation of being a swashbuckling maverick, ruthless, dangerous and decisive,” he wrote. “This has a certain value, not least in deterring the fainthearted.”
  • Reuters: Commentary: For Putin’s Russia, a poisoned spy sends a political message “the poisoning as a sign of just how committed Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin has become to eradicating its enemies – and reminding others it can do so.”

Method:

  • Multi-source/channel/media response
  • highlighting conspiracies: It was a British “false flag” operation; It could be the CIA; Because of Donald Trump; There’s always Ukraine
  • The conspiracy theories did not stop here. Multiple special-interest groups have attempted to lay the blame for the Skripals’ poisoning at the door of their chosen enemies. A UKIP branch in High Wycombe, in the English Home Counties, tweeted to accuse “a third party such as the EU” of “trying to interfere in UK Russian relations.” Sputnik even misquoted former Kremlin advisor Alexander Nekrassov as accusing “rouge agents” [sic] of carrying out the attack, “for some sort agenda [sic] such as slander or tarnish Russia [sic] or cause friction between Britain and Russia.” Matteo Salvini, Italian politician and member of the Italian senate, shared an article on his Facebook page, titled “The Skripal Case is a hoax, the war of the West against Russia is terribly true”. His post was liked 3,800 times and generated over 800 shares.
  • Here are 20 different narratives offered by Russian media and officials for the poisoning: The United Kingdom did it to fuel anti-Russian sentiment (source: Russia 1 TV channel); Ukraine did it to frame Russia (Russia 1); The United States did it to destabilize the world (Russia 1); Theresa May helped orchestrate the attack because she is a friend of CIA director Gina Haspel (Zvezda); It was an attempted suicide (Russia 1) It was an accidental overdose (RIA Novosti); It was due to accidental exposure from Britain’s Porton Down research facility (Russia 24 TV channel); The Porton Down lab carried out illicit human testing and is lying about not producing Novichok (RT); Skripal’s future mother-in-law did it (Moskovsky Komsomolets: mk.ru) Terrorists did it (Russian ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson); American-British financier Bill Browder — blacklisted in Russia for denouncing corruption — did it (Russia 1); A drone did it (Zvezda and Russian defense ministry); Skripal was a chemical weapons smuggler (Pravda); The West is using the case to deflect attention from Russia’s successes in Syria (Russian ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson); Britain is using the case to deflect attention from Brexit (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Russian UN ambassador, Russian OSCE ambassador); The attack was an attempt by a rival faction to undermine Vladimir Putin (state TV); Russia has destroyed all its stockpiles of Novichok (Sputnik); Russia never developed Novichok (Interfax); Only the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Sweden have Novichok (Russian ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson). All three countries have denied the claim.; There is no evidence that the nerve agent used against the Skripals was Novichok, Porton Down lab is struggling to identify the substance (RT)

Counters:

  • Bellingcat;
  • DFRLab;

Related incidents:

  • ties to ongoing campaigns/narrative - Ukraine; NATO; EU; Brexit

References:

Visual assets (Google Drive)

Datasets:

Notes:

On 6 March 2018 Andrey Lugovoy, deputy of Russia's State Duma (the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) and alleged killer of Alexander Litvinenko, in his interview with the Echo of Moscow said: "Something constantly happens to Russian citizens who either run away from Russian justice, or for some reason choose for themselves a way of life they call a change of their Motherland. So the more Britain accepts on its territory every good-for-nothing, every scum from all over the world, the more problems they will have." Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on 9 March rejected Britain's claim of Russia's involvement in Skripal's poisoning and accused the United Kingdom of spreading "propaganda". Lavrov said that Russia was "ready to cooperate" and demanded access to the samples of the nerve-agent which was used to poison Skripal. The request was rejected by the British government.

Ongoing… one year later https://disinfoportal.org/sputnik-abkhazias-disinformation-about-porton-down-allegedly-denying-russian-trace-in-skripal-poisoning/ On February 7, 2019, Sputnik-Abkhazia released an article headlined “Scotland Yard about the third suspect in the Skripal case: the investigation continues.” According to Sputnik-Abkhazia, the Russian Foreign Ministry caught British Prime Minister Theresa May in a lie, because the Porton Down Laboratory denied that a nerve agent that poisoned Russian ex-spy, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia had been produced in Russia

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/world/europe/russia-skripal-poisoning-britain.html Rather than ignoring the anniversary, however, Russia punctuated the occasion on Monday with an hourlong news conference at the United Nations and a 52-page report rehashing the episode in detail, amplified by extensive coverage on its English-language government channel, RT.

Russian officials also have tried to turn the tables, accusing Britain of violating international law by refusing to provide Russian consular officials access to the Skripals, who survived and whose whereabouts has not been made public.