The Skripal Episode: Prepping For War On Russia

Commenter Amanda R has provided a link to an Off-Guardian article that goes over the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia with a nerve agent. This was loudly proclaimed in the West to be a Russian hit, ordered by Vladimir Putin. The article, dated in July, 2018,

The Rapidly Evolving Skripal Story: Evidence of the Destruction of an Anglo-American Plan

provides an overview of the collapse of this narrative—for those who had the patience to wade throught the torrent of government disinformation. Nevertheless, the episode had the intended effect of leading to a wave of government sponsored anti-Russian hysteria in the West, amplified by the compliant MSM.

Much remains obscure in this episode, but it’s worth presenting the author’s thesis from the four years later perspective of the open war on Russia that has ensued. These paragraphs are the concluding portion of the article. The earlier portion provides a summary of the details of this episode:

A series of events occurred shortly before the attack on the Skripals that possibly provide some insight into the perpetrator’s motives. First, the so-called Russiagate witch-hunt, attempting to blame Russia for “interfering” (rich in irony) in the 2016 United States presidential election had spectacularly collapsed.

That particular campaign against Russia had relied heavily upon a dossier produced by a “former” British spy named Christopher Steele. In the weeks preceding the Skripal attack it was revealed by Britain’s conservative newspaper the Daily Telegraph among others, that Sergei Skripal had links with Steele and another major player, Pablo Miller, in the Steele dossier saga when they worked together during the time of Skripal’s betrayal of his country. Miller also lived in Salisbury and was known to have had contact with Skripal.

Secondly the Anglo American attempt at regime change in Syria through its terrorist proxies and others had failed miserably thanks largely to Russian and Iranian intervention.

Those terrorist groups have being responsible for a number of false flag chemical weapons attacks blamed upon the Assad Government. With the liberation of Eastern Ghouta, the Syrian and Russian forces found a significant cache of chemical weapons materials. The Russians announced that those materials were clearly destined to be used in another false flag attack that would provide the justification for United States and its “coalition” allies, including Australia, to mount air and missile attacks upon Syrian and Russian forces.

The chemical cache discovery, which received minimal coverage in the western media, was accompanied by a blunt warning from the Russian military command, that any such air and missile attack would be met with retaliation, including against the source of the attack. This was a clear warning to US ships and missile sites. The discovery of the chemical weapons and materials and the blunt warning were sufficient to deter any attack. Clearly however, the Anglo American forces were angered by their plans being thwarted.

Thirdly, on 1 March 2018 President Putin addressed a joint sitting of the Russian Parliament. Part of that speech announced a range of new weapons that were years ahead of any western systems. Russia not only had the capacity to defend itself with its sophisticated S400 anti-missile systems, it could retaliate against any western military attack with devastating force, against which the west had no defence.

Fourthly, despite a prolonged campaign of vilification against Mr Putin, he was overwhelmingly re-elected by the Russian people for a further six-year term. That result was entirely consistent with his level of popularity as revealed in opinion polls conducted by Western polling agencies.

Those results did not stop the western media from alleging that the vote was rigged, or that Putin did not allow real opposition, and some other desperate claims. The American analyst Gilbert Doctorow has written a number of articles demolishing the western media’s claims, although one is unlikely to see them given wider coverage. (www.consortiumnews.com 15 March 2018) Western “analysts” for the most part prefer the comfort of your own prejudices.

In the light of these four factors, it is a reasonable hypothesis that the Skripal attack was a sign of the increasing desperation of some western governments, chief among them the United States and United Kingdom. The propaganda barrage and the pointless posturing over diplomatic expulsions gave those governments and others foolish enough to be taken in by their patently nonsensical allegations some brief self-satisfaction.

The latest revelations from Porton Down however, are exposing that anti-Russia campaign for the shoddy and deceptive conduct that it is. In time, the Skripal incident will be placed alongside the Gulf of Tonkin, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the attacks upon Yugoslavia in 1996, Afghanistan in 2001, Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2015 as examples of provocations justifying the destruction of societies that threaten Western hegemony.

The Russia-China strategic alliance; the progressive de-dollarization of the world’s economy; and the successive defeats of Anglo American plans in Ukraine, North Korea and elsewhere indicate that the geopolitical balance of the world is changing rapidly. The challenge will be to discourage the increasingly desperate crazies who inhabit Western centres of power from embarking upon a war to try and reverse the inevitable destruction of their rapidly failing plans for “full spectrum dominance.”

To be clear, I don’t say that the Skripal hoax was a direct preparation for war on Russia. It may have been part of the usual delusional Neocon schemes of precipitating regime change in Russia—the Skripal hoax may have been intended to provoke mass Russian revulsion against Putin, forcing his ouster. Fantasy schemes of this sort can never be discounted when dealing with Neocons. Nevertheless, these hoaxes and gaslighting of the gullible masses in the West do tend to take on a life of their own. In retrospect the Skripal hoax will probably be seen as a clear prelude to war on Russia.