Our more conspiracy-minded commenters have noted the seeming irregularities associated with a Kremlin hit on their former agent living in London.
In terms of the radioactivity tracing back to planes coming from Russia, well, maybe the FSB is off its game since the cold war. I'm sure they lost a lot of good people to the Russian mob. Or, as the commenter said, the trail back to Mother Russia was deliberate.
And who stands to gain from everyone knowing Putin ordered the assassination of a former FSB agent in London? Putin himself. Talk about chilling free speech. Egad.
But what Putin didn't plan on was the backlash.
Despite the protests of her loyal readers - Econo-Girl maintains that this is going to be one hell of an international incident by the time it is over. Already the case has metasized to Germany.
Econo-Girl thinks that Putin over-reached in targeting a former KGB spy in a place like London. She further thinks that other European countries share the British anger because they are aware if a targeted kill can happen in Britain, it can happen in their country as well. And who wants to cede control of their borders to that extent? No one. Even if a country conceivably didn't care about Russia killing someone on their soil, they certainly can't be seen to be allowing it.
That is why Putin over-reached. Russia still needs Europe. Putin couldn't afford to piss them off like that.
So what did you think, Vladimir? The old glory days were back?
1 comment:
The thing is, if Puting wanted to liquidate an enemy in the fashion of the good old days, why pick this method? It's so over the top. In the good old days, they might kill someone with a ricin-loaded umbrella, but it still wasn't obvious that they killed them. What happened to the good old "such a shame he had a heart attack, isn't it?" trick, or the old "shoved under a bus" trick, or the "mugging gone wrong" bit? All of those methods gave the KGB plausible deniability, but still scared dissidents and critics. A prominent dissident journalist was recently murdered in Russia, and that killing was by high-velocity lead poisoning.
Poisoning someone with a rare radioactive isotope, by contrast, seems to be the work of someone who reads too much unrealistic spy fiction.
I think that someone in the FSB must have gotten a little out of control, perhaps after a marathon session of watching Bond films.
MB
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