You'd get a fair trial
Whatever you read or hear, regardless of the source, temper the information received with the fact that it is good for a government who holds power to have the great unwashed in fear of something or somebody. It makes it easier to govern because attention is diverted away from what is really happening and it can unite people behind the leader. That's true for all sides.
Agreed, but Putin is also coming up for election and he operates under similar but more extreme principles. Have a read
, yes perhaps biased but makes good points..
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Spy poisoning: why Putin may have engineered gruesome calling card.
Insiders say all trails lead back to Moscow, suggesting a deliberate act to incite row with UK
Luke Harding and Andrew Roth
Tue 13 Mar 2018 19.18 GMT Last modified on Tue 13 Mar 2018 22.00 GMT
Vladimir Putin and Theresa May.
The response from the Kremlin has been uncompromising. The foreign ministry described Theresa May’s accusation against Moscow as a “circus show”. Its boss Sergei Lavrov said there was no proof the poison used against Sergei Skripal came from Russia. And the embassy in London promised an “equal and opposite reaction” to any UK measures.
Beneath this bluster, however, is cool calculation. Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury with a Moscow-made military nerve agent, developed during the 1970s and 1980s during the cold war. Whoever wanted to murder him might have used a subtler weapon. Instead, his assassins picked novichok. How it was deployed remains unclear.
Sergei Skripal scandal has sent UK-Russia relations tumbling. What next?
One former employee of the Russian special services said nerve agents were used only if the goal was to draw attention. “This is a very dirty method. There’s a risk of contaminating other people, which creates additional difficulties,” he told the Kommersant newspaper, adding: “There are far more delicate methods that professionals use.”
In other words, novichok was a gruesome calling card. As those who organised the hit must have known, the trail goes directly back to Moscow. The incident even took place down the road from Porton Down, the government’s military research base, which swiftly tested and identified
All of which means Vladimir Putin and his FSB spy agency have probably sought to engineer a confrontation with the UK. Why now?
There are many theories. The most obvious answer is Sunday’s presidential election. True, Putin is guaranteed to win. He has scarcely bothered campaigning. But the Kremlin remains worried about turnout, amid widespread voter apathy and calls from Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, to boycott the vote. The authorities want to the poll to look authentic, even if it isn’t.
Putin and Trump.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump broke his silence about Russia’s probable role in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
Over the next few days, state TV channels will pump out this message: Moscow is again the victim of a western conspiracy. Russia under siege is a favourite Kremlin theme. Conflicts with the west can bear some fruit: Putin has maintained the bump in his nominal popularity rating after his annexation of Crimea, despite western condemnation and sanctions. The wave of patriotism that followed also split the Russian opposition.
So a row with London can do Putin no harm, especially among voters who share his uncompromising nationalist worldview and his smouldering sense of victimhood.
One former senior Foreign Office adviser said it was a mistake to assume that Skripal’s spy work for MI6 triggered the decision to poison him in Salisbury. Skripal was merely the “instrument”. The real target as the UK, he said. “I don’t think it was about Skripal. It was a geo-political intervention.”
Russia tries to entice voters to polls to prop up Putin's legitimacy
The adviser added: “Moscow’s goal is to demonstrate the UK’s weakness and isolation and to drive a wedge between us and other countries. The Kremlin understands how to make these sorts of interventions at just below the level that will trigger a serious collective reaction against them.”
To my mind all way more believable than attack being internal and or a 3rd party."
From Guardian.
No doubt OG will dismiss all this as reporters being stupid and Guardian biased. In mean time Putin gets away with murder, with Corbyn being an apologist.??? He,s played straight into Putins hands.
