You haven’t watched anything beyond the headlines have you?
Did you see the UN conference? Have you heard the universal support we have from the EU?
Putin is laughing. He knows we can’t prove it publicly (you can’t have a trial without jurisdiction) as he can just keep doing a Chemical Ali and denying it. Privately any half decent intelligence service can write its own persuasive report!
All the ambiguity just destabilises the west and gains him strength. It’s the old propaganda war.
All we can do is throw out Russian money. And watch it go elsewhere. It’s a catch 22 and he knows it.
Of course he can get away with it, he can get away with annexing Crimea, he can get away with mass murder of civilians in Syria, no one in the world is doing anything about that, compared to International War Crimes no one gives a toss about a defector getting poisoned in the UK.
I think the Russians in a realpolitik sense might reasonably see it as ‘a spy, who very likely caused the deaths of others, being bumped off by another ‘spy’ - a moral equivalence in other words.
Our Govt seem to be framing this as some innocent murdered by the dreaded Ruskies…all a bit rich when they already admitted they knew that half the Russian embassy are ‘spies’ who are now being ejected, plus a bunch of rich oligarchs who we knew were a bit dodgy but we invited them in took the money anyway…etc etc. The idea the West is pure in its motives is faintly ridiculous.
Of course it allows May to portray herself as the strong leader, vs Corbin the traitor and deflects from all the negative shit that has been her reality as the premier. I don’t blame her but part of being objective is seeing both sides of what is happening.
Covert assassination goes on all the time.
The difference here is they have made it obvious they did it. (As they did with the radioactive assassination).
This isn’t a killing, it’s a public broadcast.
Big difference. We aren’t framing it as something big. It’s big! We don’t need to frame anything!!
We have a man seriously ill in hospital. This isn’t our agenda and media opportunity. This isn’t designed to help May.
It’s designed to undermine her and show she can’t do anything much about it. In the long run it’s going to hurt her.
Good summary
You’re asserting its big which is how it occurs to you. It doesn’t necessarily occur to others in the same way.
Like Americans and guns…
I didn’t ask whether he could get away with it, history say’s he will to an extent as we as a civilised society will by necessity exercise restraint.
I asked whether you personally are scared by this fact, and if so, condemn it.
It’s an act of war technically.
Not a local shooting and domestic policy issue.
The UN sat tonight. That’s big. Come on… wake up.
It’s world big. Every country is wondering how to play this.
(Edit: for the man in the street abroad it’s not as impactive as a terror arrack. For their respective governments it’s a bastard big problem as it is fundamentallly connected to how we maintain political stability).
Just imagine for a second that it was deffo Putin.
The really worrying thing then becomes that he doesn’t give a shit that we know it’s him. In fact he knew all along that we would blame him.
Alternatively it could have been someone else framing the Ruskies in order to bring Trump back into the Western anti Russian concensus.
I’ll take the former ta.
Putin knows full well that he can do pretty much anything and other than strong words and some sanctions the West can’t / won’t do a thing. He is untouchable.
Military action is off the table unless we want the end of the World.
This
Yup. And the UK, USA, Israel,France etc etc have also done things that could have started military action but didn’t for the same reasons
It’s not worrying he knows we know.
It’s the whole point.
That’s the issue. Or the couple would have had a boring accident and no one would care.
The aftermath has been well mapped and planned and pondered. This is a calculated action and the consequences have been scrutinised in advance and signed off. Make of that what you will, but its all to cause friction in Europe and play on public support.
Agreed. I have no idea how this will play out - sometimes small things trigger wars and big things don’t and vice-versa. It’s definitely big news, but as you said earlier we know little of the motives behind the scenes and it could be the case that politically there is a lot of reputational upside for politicians in both camps, with very little at stake economically or politically.
Someone, a labour peer I think, said on the radio this morning that ejecting Russians would really hurt them ‘because they like London so much’. Not quite the same level of seriousness as children being victims of barrel bombs in Syria and our politicians don’t protest as hard about that.
Western Europe waits for the gas to be turned off…
Exactly. Let’s not forget this guy was allegedly spy and if so did similar things.
Just wait until he turns the Nord Stream gas supply off next winter.
Beat me too it.
There has been suggestions the barrel bombs are Russian sponsored acts to displace people and exacerbate the migration crisis.
Underneath most Russian foreign policy is a will to destabilise the West.
The Russians know this won’t start war. They know it will cost us money and face. Like Sky cycling, they know the power of marginal gains on a world politics stage. Big arguments on the face of it but little wins adding up.