Russian Foreign Ministry Meeting with Foreign Ambassadors on Skripal poisoning case (21 March 2018)
For nearly all of March 2018, the world was gripped by a strange incident in the sleepy English cathedral town of Salisbury – the kind of provincial English urban centre that might be a setting for a low-budget television crime / mystery series – in which an elderly Russian ex-spy and his adult daughter from Moscow were found unconscious (and the daughter suffering convulsions and loss of body functions to boot) on a park bench in the town’s shopping mall on a Sunday afternoon. The couple are attended by a doctor who administers first aid before they are taken to the local general hospital. Initially the two are thought to have suffered an overdose of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid drug which can be fatal in small amounts, not just to those who ingest but also to first-response emergency personnel who accidentally breathe or touch the particles while treating the victims. The narrative however starts to change from one day to the next: a police officer is reported as having been stricken by the same poisoning agent (which changes from fentanyl to a mystery nerve gas toxin) but the onset of his symptoms is very different (sudden as opposed to gradual in the case of the Russians) yet his condition is described in media reports as serious but stable while the Russians’ condition is critical. British police make a strange show of going to the local cemetery in Salisbury to cordon off the graves of the ex-spy’s wife and son and having two officers in hazmat suits perform a lap around them.
By the middle of March, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson have blamed Russia for poisoning the Russian ex-spy Sergei and daughter Julia Skripal with a Novichok nerve gas agent, and demanded an explanation from the Russian ambassador, despite having no evidence that the Russian government or its agents had anything to do with the poisoning, if indeed poisoning with a man-made agent let alone Novichok did occur. At the same time the British government refused to share any information about the Skripals’ condition or to reply to Russian requests about Julia Skripal, and denied Russian consular access to the stricken woman. The British government also appointed a barrister to represent the Skripals’ interests in a High Court hearing on 22 March 2018 to allow doctors to obtain fresh blood samples from the couple; as far as is known, said barrister refuses to contact family and business connections of the Skripals in Russia.
With the British ultimatum to Russia demanding an explanation for the poisoning of the Skripals passing its deadline, the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow summoned all foreign ambassadors to a meeting on 21 March 2018 to discuss the Skripal poisoning incident. Speaker Vladimir Yermakov gave an outline of the situation surrounding the incident from a Russian point of view, noting that Russia was within its rights in requesting samples of materials for testing for the presence of Novichok from the British. He observed that the British had not shared any information about the incident or the condition of the Skripals with Russia, and that the way British authorities were dealing with the incident and blaming Russia was clumsy and inept. The possibility that British authorities themselves were involved in the attack on the Skripals, directly or indirectly, was raised.
Yermakov noted that the Director-General of the Organisation of Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had met with the United Nations Security Council to discuss the use of chemical weapons in Syria, at which meeting the Salisbury incident was raised by the British. The Russians asked questions about the incident, to which the answers were evasive. Yermakov went on to say that Russia itself had destroyed all its chemical weapons stockpiles under OPCW supervision and control by late September 2017.
Two other speakers were invited to give a broader context to the issue of the possible use of Novichok or a Novichok-like agent in the Salisbury incident. Major General Igor Kirillov from the Ministry of Defence spoke of the recent discovery made by Syrian Arab Army soldiers in East Ghouta (which had been held by jihadi forces for several years), in the Damascus region, of secret laboratories for the production of chemical weapons. Jihadis in that area had been preparing a large-scale CW attack that would be blamed on the Syrian government. He went on to discuss the issue of Novichok and how most information about it in the West comes from one former Soviet chemist, Vil Mirzayanov, who currently lives in the US and who holds anti-Putin views. Mirzayanov published the formulae for making Novichok in a book and on the Internet – which means that anyone with a chemistry background up to and including undergraduate university level can make the stuff. More information about Mirzayanov and his publications, and the research on Novichok and related nerve gas agents (including a list of these) was provided by Viktor Kholstov from the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
Kirillov also reminded the audience that the UK also researches and makes toxic nerve gas agents including VX nerve gas and sarin in its Porton Down laboratory (some 12 kilometres away from Salisbury) and has tested them on human guinea pigs in the past. He mentioned in particular the name of Ronald Maddison, a young soldier who was killed by sarin liquid in one experiment in the 1950s which he had volunteered for after being invited to participate in a flu vaccine trial.
There then followed a Q&A session in which ambassadors from various Western European countries and the US expressed support for and solidarity with Britain on the Salisbury incident. The ambassador from Bosnia and Hercegovina complained about the Serbian ambassador having mentioned incidents in Sarajevo and other parts of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s that were used by NATO to justify bombing Serbia, and suggesting a parallel with these incidents and the Salisbury incident, in that the Salisbury incident was being exploited by the West to isolate and demonise Russia. The ambassador from Venezuela expressed support for Russia to resolve the investigation of the Skripal poisoning in a manner transparent to everyone and urged the British to do the same.
This meeting should be of interest to all those keen to see the Salisbury incident dealt with in the manner that all incidents in which individuals are victims of possible foul play should be treated: in the manner that shuns finger-pointing, blaming others and holding kangaroo courts before evidence is properly collected, sorted and analysed to determine how the incident occurred, who most likely had the means to cause and create it, and the possible motive the perpetrator had to do it. The meeting presents the official Russian point of view of the Salisbury incident and provides a good (if embarrassing) example of how Western nations have closed ranks around the British position despite the lack of definitive evidence or proof provided by the British government so far of Russian involvement in the attack on the Skripals. (For an example of such evidence, see this slideshow presentation made by the British Embassy in Moscow.) The British reaction to the Salisbury incident and the British government’s exploitation of it demonstrate the extent to which British elites are prepared to jettison British principles, values and institutions – and the British people themselves – to pursue an agenda against Russia.