Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

Britain, European Union, Government, Russia, Society

Britain: Russia’s poison stockpile

SALISBURY ATTACK

BORIS JOHNSON has said that Russia has been “creating and stockpiling” the deadly nerve agent used in the Salisbury spy attack for a decade. This claim and accusation was immediately denounced as “drivel” by Vladimir Putin.

The Foreign Secretary said scientists had developed Novichok in breach of international chemical weapons conventions and researched how to use them to assassinate its enemies.

Mr Johnson’s blunt comments has heightened the war of words with Moscow over the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Putin dismissed Johnson’s claims as “nonsense”, but said Moscow was willing to cooperate on the probe.

He said he found out about the attack from the media, adding: “The first thing that entered my head was that if it had been a military-grade nerve agent, the people would have died on the spot.

“Russia does not have such [nerve] agents. We destroyed all our chemical weapons under the supervision of international organisations, and we did it first, unlike some of our partners who promised to do it, but unfortunately did not keep their promises.

“We are ready to cooperate. We are ready to take part in the necessary investigations, but for that there needs to be a desire from the other side, and we don’t see that yet.

“I think any sensible person would understand that it would be rubbish, drivel, nonsense, for Russia to embark on such an escapade on the eve of a presidential election. It’s just unthinkable.”

Russia’s ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, even hinted the Salisbury nerve agent could have come from the UK military’s chemical weapons laboratory at Porton Down. The Foreign Secretary described Mr Chizhov’s response as a combination of “smug sarcasm and denial”, and said he was lying.

Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have today come to the UK to take samples of Novichok. The tests are expected to last for two weeks.

Mr Johnson insists that the British Government had given Russia “every opportunity” to come up with an explanation for how the nerve agent (manufactured in Russia) came to be in Britain.

“Their response has been a sort of mixture of smug sarcasm and denial, obfuscation and delay,” Mr Johnson said.

“In response to Mr Chizhov’s point about Russian stockpiles of chemical weapons: We actually had evidence within the last ten years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but it has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok.”

Two days ago, Russia announced it would expel 23 British diplomats, matching the number of Russian spies ordered to leave the UK. It also closed a consulate and barred the British Council from working in the country.

Mr Johnson has travelled to Brussels today to brief foreign ministers from across the European Union on the attack. He then held talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The National Security Council will meet tomorrow to discuss the UK’s response. Mr Johnson suggested there would not be an immediate retaliation.

He said ministers were “hardening our borders” and ensuring the authorities pursued Russians who had “corruptly obtained their wealth”.

In interviews given by Mr Chizhov, he claimed that Mr Skripal had been “almost forgotten” in Russia.

“He has been living in Britain for eight years now. Before that – I think I should stress the point – he was officially pardoned by presidential decree.” He also claimed that because Yulia was a Russian citizen, the British authorities had violated “consular convention” by not allowing Russian officials access to her in hospital.

Russia had “no stockpiles whatsoever” of chemical weapons, he said. “Actually, Russia has stopped production of any chemical agents back in 1992. So, we cannot even talk about any chemical agents produced by Russia. All that have been produced previously was produced by the Soviet Union.”

Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1992. The treaty – which aims to end the development, production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons – is enforced by the OPCW.

In February last year, the OPCW presented Russia with a plague to mark the destruction of its declared stockpiles of chemical weapons.

. See also, Opinion: UK measures and sanctions on Russia still leaves us vulnerable

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Britain, Government, Russia, Society

Defence Secretary: Putin has hostile intent

BRITAIN-RUSSIA RELATIONS

VLADIMIR Putin has “hostile intent” towards Britain, the Defence Secretary has said. Gavin Williamson called for the UK to wake up to the threat posed by Russia.

He warned that the Kremlin had developed a much more aggressive posture towards the UK in the past 12 months and the country should not sit submissively by.

With relations between Britain and Russia believed to be at an all-time low, Mr Williamson told MPs that the country needed to “match what Putin is doing with Russian forces”.

During defence questions in the Commons, he said: “Putin has made it quite clear that he has hostile intent towards this country.

“We’ve been seeing the build-up of his forces across the Eastern front and in terms of what they’re doing over many years now – we have to wake up to that threat and we have to respond to it.

“And it is not just through nuclear weapons – our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is absolutely integral to maintaining the peace, but it is also through conventional armed forces. We have to match what Putin is doing with Russian forces.”

His comments came after he was asked by Labour’s Barry Sheerman about comments the Russian president had made in a statement-of-the-nation speech last week.

Mr Sheerman pointed out that Mr Putin had basically announced “a new Cold War”.

Mr Putin boasted in his speech that Russia had developed an arsenal of invincible nuclear weapons that are immune to enemy detection.

SERGEI SKRIPAL

Skripal

A former colonel in Russian military intelligence, Skripal was considered by the Kremlin to be one of the most damaging spies of his generation.

SERGEI Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence, was considered by the Kremlin to be one of the most damaging spies of his generation.

He was responsible for unmasking dozens of secret agents threatening Western interests by operating undercover in Europe.

Col. Skripal, 66, allegedly received £78,000 in exchange for taking huge risks to pass classified information to MI6.

In 2006, he was sentenced to 13 years in a Russian labour camp after being convicted of passing invaluable Russian secrets to the UK.

A senior source in Moscow said at the time: “This man is a big hero for MI6.”

After being convicted of “high treason in the form of espionage” by Moscow’s military court, Col. Skripal was stripped of his rank, medals and state awards.

He was alleged by Russia’s security service, the FSB, to have begun working for the British intelligence services while serving in the army in the 1990s.

He passed information classified as state secrets and was paid for the work by MI6, the FSB claimed.

Col. Skripal pleaded guilty at the trial and cooperated with investigators, reports said at the time. He admitted his activities and gave a full account of his spying, which led to a reduced sentence. In July 2010, he was pardoned by then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and was one of four spies exchanged for ten Russian agents deported from the US in an historic swap involving red-headed “femme fatale” Anna Chapman.

Mrs Chapman, then 28, was a Manhattan socialite and diplomat’s daughter, who had lived and worked in London during a four-year marriage to British public schoolboy Alex Chapman.

After the swap at Vienna airport, Col. Skripal was one of two spies who came to Britain and he has kept a low profile for the past eight years.

He is understood to have been debriefed for months before being given a home and a pension.

Col. Skripal was turned by MI6 when he was posted abroad as a military intelligence agent in Europe in the mid-1990s. During his years working for MI6, the spy unmasked dozens of agents threatening Western interests.

Col. Skripal was so well-connected that even after his retirement from his spy service in 1999 he continued to pass exceptional secrets to London by staying in touch with his former colleagues as a reservist officer.

He may finally have been snared by the FSB after passing his intelligence to MI6’s infamous “spy rock” – a fake stone packed with receiving equipment in a Moscow park.

Russian secret services exposed the ploy in 2006, revealing how British undercover agents transmitted their data to the rock via a hidden hand-held device while walking past it.

After Col. Skripal’s conviction, one official said: “His activities caused a significant blow to Russia’s external security.”

Chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said: “It is impossible to measure in roubles or anything else the amount of harm caused by Skripal.”

State-run TV in Russia even compared him to the legendary Soviet double agent Oleg Penkovsky, who spied for Britain and the US during the height of the Cold War.

Penkovsky was shot by a firing squad in 1963 and is regarded as one of the most effective spies of all time.

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Britain, Military, NATO, Russia, United States

Putin says Russia’s new nuclear weapons are invincible

VLADIMIR PUTIN

Putin

Vladimir Putin delivers his state of the nation address and says Russia has a new arsenal of invincible nuclear weapons.

RUSSIA has boasted that it has developed an arsenal of invincible nuclear weapons that are immune to enemy detection.

Vladimir Putin used his state of the nation speech this week to warn of his country’s resurgent military might, saying Russia was not listened to before, and declaring: ‘Listen to us now.’

The Russian president said his deadly weaponry included a nuclear-powered cruise missile that could reach anywhere in the world and an underwater drone with nuclear weapons that can obliterate an aircraft carrier.

Mr Putin also revealed details of an ‘invulnerable’ hypersonic missile and insisted it was not a bluff as he showed chilling test footage of the new kit. ‘No one else in the world has anything like that,’ he said.

He warned that any attempt to use nuclear weapons against Russia and its allies would bring instant retaliation. But Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson accused him of choosing a path of ‘escalation and provocation’ and added: ‘We are facing intensifying threats to our way of life and this development is another reminder to not let down our guard.’

Mr Putin made his hot-blooded claims as he laid out his key policies for another term in office, ahead of an election he is expected to win in 15 days.

The 65-year old president, who has led Russia for almost two decades, usually delivers the annual speech in the Kremlin but this year delivered his address from a nearby exhibition centre. This allowed him to show a series of slick video montages of missiles manoeuvring across mountains and oceans and heading over the Atlantic.

He quoted a 2004 speech in which he vowed Russia would develop a new generation of weaponry. ‘No one wanted to talk to us,’ Mr Putin said. ‘No one listened to us then. Listen to us now.’ It brought a standing ovation from the audience of lawmakers and celebrities.

He presented Russia’s military efforts as a response to recent actions by the US which last month unveiled plans to revamp its nuclear arsenal and develop new low-yield atomic weapons.

In a speech that ran to almost two hours, Mr Putin described several different capabilities which he said would render NATO defences completely useless.

One new weapon, called Avangard, is an intercontinental hypersonic missile that would fly at 20 times the speed of sound and strike its targets ‘like a meteorite, like a fireball’, he said.

The weapon is capable of performing sharp manoeuvres on its way to targets, making it ‘absolutely invulnerable for any missile defence system,’ Mr Putin added.

He said neither the nuclear-powered cruise missile nor the underwater drone had names yet, suggesting with dark humour that a public competition be held for ideas.

He also said that another new weapons system, called Kinzhal, is already operational and is a hypersonic missile carried by an aircraft that flies at ten times the speed of sound with a range of 1,250 miles.

Defence minister Sergei Shoigu later said Russian arms would be able to ‘overcome all existing anti-missile systems’ such as those the US intends to deploy in eastern Europe and South Korea.

. See also A policy brief warns that NATO and Russia are preparing for conflict…

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