Putin has already deployed a chemical weapon. In Salisbury

[dalton99a]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/13/putin-has-already-deployed-a-chemical-weapon-in-salisbury

Putin has already deployed a chemical weapon. In Salisbury
Carole Cadwalladr
Sun 13 Mar 2022 01.00 EST

...

On 4 March 2018, Putin deployed a chemical weapon against a civilian population. Our civilian population. Us.

The poisoning of Sergei Skripal may have played out in the British press as a “botched assassination attempt”, but that’s just half of a more terrifying story. Because Salisbury is not just a pretty, quintessentially English market town with a famous cathedral, which Skripal’s poisoners mocked us with when they claimed to have visited it. It’s also a home to the British military establishment, and some of its highest ranking officers, adjoining the biggest military training ground in Britain, Salisbury Plain.

And Putin struck at its heart. Was it Skripal he was after? Or Salisbury? Or, as it turned out, both? Because two Russian soldiers – military intelligence officers from the GRU agency – caught a commercial flight to London, sauntered down a Salisbury street without making any effort to disguise themselves, in full view of 100 or more security cameras, and released a deadly nerve agent. And then? Then they threw away the bottle.

Three months later, an Amesbury resident, Charlie Rowley, fished it out of a charity bin and gave it to his girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess. She died, agonisingly. This was a British citizen murdered by the Kremlin.

In a recent interview, Fiona Hill, formerly the national security adviser on Russia to Donald Trump, makes her thoughts on the incident plain. “There was enough nerve agent in that bottle to kill several thousand people,” she said. It proved Putin was prepared to use any “cruel and unusual weapon” he has, she said. “And he wants us to know that.”


People in hazmat suits during the cleanup operation following the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

[AlexSFCA]

1. putin deployed chemical weapon on civilians in nato territory with no consequences

will nuclear power insulate him forever from justice?

[Irish_Dem]

2. Looking that way.