Who says there's no evidence? Are you directly involved with the UK intelligence agencies and this investigation to know that they have no idea who carried out the attack? Just because they're not publicly disclosing what they know doesn't me they don't know anything.
I'm sure the government don't just kick out diplomats for the sake of it, I'd be very surprised if they didn't have too reason to think Russia was behind the attack, especially as I see no motivation for them blaming Russia.
Hmm. So you put it in that way - if someone is punished, that means he's guilty, not in reverse. Alright.
And America invaded Iraq because it had chemical weapons, too...
Of course it wasn't for the sake of expelling diplomats. I guess this is just the beginning of the upcoming actions. One would say that kicking out 23 diplomats isn't a proper retaliation for an alleged chemical attack on your country. But when the UK government starts arresting the property of Russian oligarchs (including Putin's sponsors) and (optionally) deporting their wifes and children, things will get
really fun.
(I gotta stock up with popcorn before that happens.)
I'm not sure what UK news you've been looking at but I haven't seen anything that would give anyone that idea and can safely say that no one here is worried about there being lots of Russian spies everywhere.
Well, this is good if true. Because I thought some people could start suspecting their hangover being a Russian poisoning...
Neither the comment nor the cartoon make any sense.
In all of the cases mentioned above but one*, in both the UK and the other countries (Sudan, India, USA, Ukraine, Greece, Turkey and, yes, Russia), the authorities investigated the deaths - as with all sudden deaths - and found there was no involvement from outside agencies. They were all ruled by the police, coroners and courts as accidents, suicides and ill-health. No Russian involvement whatsoever, other than the fact that some of the dead people were Russians.
Alright, I'll write what I wanted to.
Strangely, you didn't mention April 2010 and the Polish president Lech Kaczynski, known for his anti-Russian stance, who died in a plane crash near Smolensk, where he was invited by the Russian president Medvedev. Today, the Polish media speculates about that plane being shot down or a bomb being planted inside. But that's just a conspiracy theory, nothing more. Although Russia still refuses to give the plane fragments back to Poland.
Or Professor Stephen Hawking, who promoted science and atheism, which goes against the Orthodox Christian ideology, which is popular in Russia (and as you probably know, Putin is a quite religious person). It's not disclosed why exactly he passed away, but his death happening so soon after the Skripal incident is a pure coincidence.
What I want to say is, your list can be absurdely long.
I've quite clearly stated this in both of the posts, so I don't know what you mean with your comment.
Uhm... If you weren't being sarcastic, then what were you trying to say? Perhaps that if a suicide by two different knives is not a suspicious thing to happen in England, then why couldn't Skripals use a military-grade nerve gas to poison themselves?..
Interestingly, The Telegraph says the agent was planted in Yulia's luggage before her flight to UK:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ning-plot-nerve-agent-planted-luggage-sergei/
Knowing the chemical formula of a product and being able to manufacture it are vastly different things and the success of the end result is often based on purity.
Almost inevitability you will have impurities and these will be due to a wide variety of issues from method to equipment to input chemicals. This gives you an ability to make a very good conclusion on who and where the compound was made.
That's not what a country with well-developed chemical industry and scientific potential (not worse than the Russian, I believe) would not be able to overcome in 20 years. If you know the formula, it is possible to suggest the reactions chain(s), try (not without a risk of course) and modify the methods to reach the maximum yield, purify the product and reach the purity close to 100%.
(In my own research work, the purification was a PITA, but I did it after all.)
Mirzayanov had said that Novichok and its derivatives can be sythesized secretly, from precursors recieved from fertilizer or pesicide manufacturers, and therefore, evading inspections by OPCW (he accused Russia of doing that, and faced charges in the early '90s for revealing state secrets).
Anyway, neither mass spectrum nor IR, UV, NMR or other methods of spectral analysis I know can tell whether the substance has come from Russia or not. What they said it was "of a type developed by Russia".
