There has been widespread incredulity, derision even, of the halting, stilted and peculiar interview on RT with the alleged GRU agents involved in the Salisbury poisoning. This blog is not proposing to embroil itself in this. The evidence, including micro traces of Novichok in their hotel room, plus CCTV footage which contradicts their innocent tourist claims, is conclusive.
Yet there are questions. The GRU is one of the most sophisticated military intelligence agencies in the world and it seems extraordinary that such highly trained personnel would act with such abandon, almost waving at the CCTV as they go by, when engaged in a covert assassination mission. Or that such people would chuck the unused poison in a dustbin or park. And yes, how did they get it through customs? And if the highest authorities in the Kremlin were involved, surely they did not expect such a shambolic response to their orders, which let us remember, failed completely to kill the targets. It was an innocent and vulnerable civilian who died, not a traitorous double agent.
There is a lot about this story which we do not know and maybe never will. Two things are clear, aside from the damage to the Salisbury economy, the use of weaponized nerve agents by a foreign power of British soil and the death of an innocent citizen, politically it has not been unhelpful to May. But to Putin, allegedly the author of the project, it has been an absolute disaster. That fact alone poses yet more questions.