Talk:Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Suspects and attack timeline

There's not much of a timeline in this section. Also, nobody has tried to explain how the Skripals were poisoned by the door handle at 9.15am when the poison wasn't put on the door handle until after 11.48am. Mock wurzel soup (talk) 22:06, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

This is the same discussion you initiated above—we're not going to explain any of this, or suggest that it is unexplained. We report reliable third-party coverage. Endymion.12 (talk) 22:16, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

The timeline, such that it is, is in the Poisoning section. But 9:15 says "... the car of Sergei Skripal was seen in the area of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road at Salisbury." Martinevans123 (talk) 22:18, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Seriously enough. You're bordering on disruptive. MartinezMD (talk) 23:55, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Is that a threat? Mock wurzel soup (talk) 00:03, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Like I'm going to take your lunch? really? Use common sense. MartinezMD (talk) 00:11, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

I've no idea what you mean. Mock wurzel soup (talk) 00:17, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

All I'm saying is that we should at least ask the question "How can you be poisoned by a door handle before it has been contaminated", even if we can't answer it. Mock wurzel soup (talk) 00:26, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Sergei and Yulia didn't leave the house to go to Zizzi until about 13.40. CCTV shows the suspects on the way back from their presumed visit to the house by 13.05. Sergei and Yulia were at Zizzi from about 14.20 to 15.35 and were found collapsed on a park bench near the Maltings, resulting in a 999 ambulance call about 16.15. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/05/novichok-poisoning-what-we-know-so-far And dermal absorption of nerve agents is slow, and prompt medical intervention (particularly but not exclusively the administration of atropine) is known to be effective. http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2018/04/06/myth-busting-why-didn-t-the-skripals-die-on-the-spot (The author of that article is a former US Army officer and US Secret Service agent specialised in chemical-warfare defence.) Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:49, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Park benches in Salisbury aren't very well-known for their stocks of atropine. But thanks for telling us. If the suspects were on their way back by 13.05, they could not have have poisoned the Skripals after that time, yes? Martinevans123 (talk) 18:54, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Have you been to Salisbury? I bet a good proportion of the population (certainly the older blokes) could quote Survive To Fight from memory. There are still two pubs in the centre where 70 year old mercs drink in one or the other, but not both. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:50, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

The hospital had stocks of atropine. And making fart noises with your armpit isn't particularly clever. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:25, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

How do the stocks of atropine at the hospital fit with the "suspects and attack timeline" exactly? Martinevans123 (talk) 18:29, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Per User: MartinezMD's comment in the section above which closed the prior discussion on this exact same topic, can we please stop discussing things which are not related to the building of the encyclopedia. This talk page isn't a forum for discussing whether we believe the official narrative is credible. If there has been significant commentary of this issue in the press/WP:RS (there hasn't) it can be mentioned, but in such a way that the article only states what these various commentators have said, and doesn't imply that there is some kind of unanswered difficulty in the official narrative. Endymion.12 (talk) 19:40, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Personally, I consult an encyclopedia to learn something useful, not to be brainwashed again by official narrative. There is a too serious risk of collusion between reliable source and official narrative. Wakari07 (talk) 03:32, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

There are two official narratives, and both are given due weight in this article. Firebrace (talk) 12:39, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Brainwashing, official narratives, reasons for reading WP, regardless of any of that, the article can only get what is reliably sourced. So, someone make an appropriate proposal for an edit (something reliably sourced that does not add undue weight) or simply stop the distraction please. I will disengage for a while as I find having to read all these threads wasteful of my time. I'll check in at another time. MartinezMD (talk) 04:47, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

MartinezMD out, Boshirov and Petrov in. They appear on RT (not RS of course, but still) to deny all charges and claim an 'extraordinary, fatal coincidence'. (TASS) Wakari07 (talk) 12:31, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, too bad they couldn't battle their way through all that snow and slush to visit the Cathedral on the first day. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:35, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Pf-pf-pf. According to their words (by the way, everyone who talks about their "lies" and "unreliability" should have worked hard and found the full text of the interview instead of the propaganda summaries of the BBC), they tried to visit Stonehenge on March 3, but could not get there because the roads were blocked, and returned to London, spending no more than an hour in Salisbury. They again came to Salisbury on March 4 and visited the cathedral and Old Sarum. But "there at lunchtime began such a downpour of snow, that they left ahead of time." Of course, people in Russia treat their words with some distrust, but not because they are supposed agents of the GRU (by the way, now there is no organization with such a name), but because their business seems to be on the verge of fraud. 37.151.19.210 (talk) 05:14, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

The Guardian has a piece on the suspects' interview and some of the problems with it. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/skripal-suspects-account-of-salisbury-trip-does-not-add-up For instance, the suspects claimed they couldn't reach the cathedral on Saturday because of the snow in the streets, but local newspaper photos show people were going about as normal. (I would add that the cathedral, with its famous 123-metre spire, is clearly visible in front of you, at just 1200 yards' distance, as you step out of the station. It's about 12 minutes' walk and was perfectly doable that Saturday. Also the Stonehenge Tour Bus, departing every 30 minutes, parks directly outside the station and is fairly unmissable, and the bus company has tweeted that services were indeed running on both Saturday and Sunday despite the snow, and Stonehenge was open to visitors, as the management's Twitter feed confirms. Stonehenge is a unique World Heritage Site, on everyone's bucket list. Even President Obama asked to be helicoptered there after a NATO summit and was delighted to have 'knocked this off my bucket list.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-29083959 You don't fly all the way to England from Russia, and then traipse from London to Salisbury, to see Stonehenge, and then not bother because it's a bit snowy, even though the bus is right there and you're Russian and have lived half your life in snow.) The suspects claim they did visit the cathedral on the Sunday, and one of them mentioned correctly that there's really nothing else to see in Salisbury, yet CCTV shows them walking on Wilton Road, in the opposite direction -- the way to Sergei Skripal's house, not the cathedral. The RT interviewer failed to ask the suspects if they have wives or girlfriends, or why it was a boys-only outing. The BBC has a summary including No.10's 'insult to the public's intelligence' quote and a timeline. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45509697 Khamba Tendal (talk) 17:50, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for telling us about Barack's bucket list helicopter. There were quite a few questions that the RT interviewer "chose not to ask", weren't there. The BBC news report on TV tonight said that there was no CCTV record of the two anywhere near the Cathedral (although it didn't actually explain if the Cathedral itself has CCTV coverage). I think the two also claimed to have "taken some pictures" (also not shown in the interview, I believe). Martinevans123 (talk) 18:56, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

The cathedral does have CCTV, yes. And the bishop has said there is nothing to connect those men to the cathedral. And their story of being unable to reach the cathedral on Saturday is clearly false -- the cathedral's only a little over half a mile from the station, it's visible from the station forecourt and of course you could walk it that day -- and their story of being unable to reach Stonehenge on Sunday is also false. The roads were still quite bad on Saturday and English Heritage tweeted that Stonehenge and Old Sarum were closed, but by Sunday the thaw was well underway, the mercury hit 9C, the buses were running and Stonehenge was open from 10am to 5pm, last tickets at 3pm, and EH sold about 1,200 tickets to the monument, averaging four a minute, so cars and buses were arriving pretty steadily. Yet the two sports nutritionists went to all the trouble of slogging from Bow to Waterloo, a not insignificant trip in itself, then from Waterloo to Salisbury, a 90-minute rail journey, for a second time, and they still didn't bother to visit Stonehenge, the supposed object of the odyssey, and instead went to see a modern suburban housing development in Salisbury's northwestern outskirts, a visit for which they have no explanation, and then went back to London and caught a plane from Heathrow, wasting the alternate return tickets to Moscow on the Monday which they'd bought and paid for. For some reason. And they clearly can't explain why the Metropolitan Police found traces of Novichok in their Bow hotel room, which is why RT didn't ask them about that. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:47, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Khamba Tendal, do you have a source for that statement by Nick Holtam? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:26, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, yeah. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/14/salisbury-reaction-it-would-be-comical-but-for-the-fact-someone-died And https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/the-russian-fitness-instructors-who-wanted-to-see-salisbury-cathedral-but-ended-up-poisoning-sergei-skripal And https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ten-questions-over-skripal-attack-suspects-account-of-visit-to-salisbury-a3935756.html And https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/salisbury-cathedral-bishop-russian-attack-novichok-story/ (The bishop's words to Radio 4's Today programme, concerning the sports nutritionists' spire-high story, were, 'It doesn't really add up, does it?' and 'There's nothing to link [them with] the cathedral that we have got, or I think that anyone has got.') Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:09, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

And the trip from Moscow to Salisbury is worth it also to "scout for nutrition products"?? What international cachet exactly does Salisbury have to offer in the way of "nutrition products", one wonders. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:14, 15 September 2018 (UTC) ... ah yes. it all fits... first deadly nerve agent and now mercury, you say.

Well, they said they were on holiday (a weirdly rushed and unrelaxed holiday) rather than sourcing bodybuilding supplements, Salisbury not being a known centre of that industry. (But then their pseudonyms do not appear in the Russian database of company directors and executives, not in pharmaceuticals or any other field.) They did mention they'd been to Switzerland recently, where Russian intelligence has expressed an interest in the Spiez laboratory for Salisbury and Syria-related OPCW reasons. The Dutch seem to think they're not the same Russian spies expelled for trying to hack into Spiez, though there are reports of a connection between that attack, the Salisbury attack and the Russian attempt to penetrate the anti-doping agency WADA.

https://twitter.com/JPZanders/status/1040858790126673920

https://twitter.com/XSovietNews/status/1040861072020910080

Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:45, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Ah yes, "there are reports of a connection". And some Twitter posts. I think we might be heading back into the WP:OR realms of conspiracy theories there. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:52, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Prezzo incident

I added the following:

On 16 September, fears of Novichok contamination flared up again after two people fell ill at the Prezzo restaurant, 300m from the Zizzi location where the Skripals had eaten before collapsing. The restaurant, a nearby pub, and surrounding streets have been cordoned off, with some patrons under observation or unable to leave the area.

Minutes afterward, it was reverted, with the unsourced claim that it was a "probable hoax". Whether that means the UK cops and cordons and stories linking them to this incident are also a hoax I don't know. I was told to "re-write it" (how? well, in any way that wastes my time, I presume) and to "put it in the appropriate section" (but due to the unclear merge/split status of this article, there is none except in the lead). Wnt (talk) 21:19, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

If this is to be included, we should steer well clear of both UK tabloids the Daily Mirror and The Sun. But it was featured on the national BBC News at Ten tonight. BBC News item is here. May be it is a hoax, or at least not yet properly explained, but still seems rather notable. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:36, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

According to The Telegraph, it was two people and their symptoms were consistent with Novichok poisoning.[1] This could be another hit, designed to make us believe that the real killer is still out there, and take the heat off Petrov and Boshirov and the GRU. Firebrace (talk) 23:03, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

I just put it back in under Aftermath. I sorry I did not read the talk page first. I did not think it so controversial. In fact, it is kinda expected. They cordoned off the area, so it is not a hoax or the press trying to be sensational. I also do not find the prose as written by Wnt needs any re-writing. I am sure the readers of this article will understand that it could just be a false alarm. I imagine people living in the area are a bit on edge. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 23:12, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

This morning the BBC says there is no link, so I think it needs to be trimmed radically or removed entirely. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 06:32, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

I think the placement in "Aftermath" with the statement there is no link is adequate. Just because it was a false alarm doesn't mean it is unimportant -- to the contrary, it shows that citizens of the town are, long term, left with the fear of the poison and of the police response to it. Wnt (talk) 23:50, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

I quite agree. Thank you for originally adding it. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:33, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

I also agree, but sans the tabloids. --John (talk) 09:04, 20 September 2018 (UTC)