News / Brèves Back to previous selection / Retour à la sélection précédente U.K. Alleges ‘Spy Poisoning’; Desperate Attempt at U.S.-Russia War 12 March 2018 FROM EIR DAILY ALERT EIRNS—Prime Minister Theresa May announced to the House of Commons this afternoon that Her Majesty’s government has determined that it is “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the March 4 poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence turned MI6 agent, and his daughter, Yulia, and therefore had delivered an ultimatum to the Russian government to answer the charge by Tuesday evening, March 13. In terms formulated for invoking NATO’s Article 5 (an attack on one member is an attack on all) down the line, May told Parliament that “should there be no credible response, we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom.” For over a year, President Trump has steadfastly refused to put the United States on a war footing against Russia, which the British Empire and its neocon Obama instruments demand. Now comes this latest U.K. provocation, as desperate as it is dangerous. The timing of the “poisoning” incident—occurring on U.K. soil with fingers immediately pointed at Russia, three days after President Putin delivered his “Sputnik shock” speech—cannot be ignored. The “proof” presented by May of Russian responsibility in the poisoning, is as preposterous as the now-discredited “Russia hacked the DNC” hoax and, subsequently, MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s “dossier” hoax. May said that Britain’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory had identified the nerve agent used against the Skripals as one of a group of nerve agents known as Novichok, developed by “Russia” (actually, by the Soviet Union). May pronounced that “the government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal,” based on the identification of that nerve gas; “our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so; Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations; and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations.” Based on that unproven chain of not-so-“highly likely” assumptions, the U.K. government now asserts that “there are therefore only two plausible explanations for what happened.... Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.” May reported that Russia has been given until Tuesday night to accept which of those two U.K. assertions is true! If no satisfactory answer is given, May will trot over to Parliament on Wednesday, and “set out the full range of measures that we will take in response.” Are those the only two “plausible explanations”? Could not the “Novichok poisoning” evidence turn out to be phony fingerprints, like the crude planting of Cyrillic writing in the “Russian DNC hacking” case exposed by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)? An article appearing in the Washington Examiner Tom Rogan after May’s parliamentary show, in cheering the “Russians did it” charge, reveals that “Britain and a few of its allies hold samples of the particular agent.” To the fury of the warmongering establishment media, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders did not jump aboard that U.K. “Russians did it” campaign, despite their pressure, in Monday’s press briefing. The U.S. is monitoring the incident closely, takes it very seriously. She said, “I think [our U.K. ally is] still working through even some of the details of that.”