The British Government was exposed in the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry this week as keeping Sergei and Yulia Skripal (lead image) unconscious to silence them. That was six years ago, when they were in Salisbury District Hospital in March 2018. Now, prevented from testifying in public at the public inquiry under way in London, they are still incommunicado, either in prison or dead.
The evidence revealed in the published witness statements and transcript of testimony in four days of hearings at the Sturgess Inquiry October 28-31 shows that British Government officials have lied in public and lied on oath in the courts to conceal what they have been doing to accuse Russia of Novichok poisonings in the Salisbury area in 2018. The Inquiry records show that the chairman and judge, Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley), and the lawyers working for him are actively working to protect the lies and prevent contradicting evidence from becoming public. .
Surprise testimony by Dr Stephen Cockroft, the doctor who cared for Sergei and Yulia Skripal on their admission to Salisbury District Hospital (SDH) on March 4, 2018, has revealed that the British Government kept them heavily sedated in order to tell the courts and media that they were unconscious and unresponsive when they had revived. Government officials ordered the hospital to punish Cockroft from talking directly to Yulia Skripal when she came out of her coma on March 8, 2018.
Ragpicking is a serious women’s business, extracting value from rubbish. Cheerleading is the unserious business of girls waving pompoms at football games.
To help decide if these aren’t pompoms, here’s a pick through the 33 pages, 131 paragraphs of the terms the BRICS member states were able to agree and agree to disagree on, particularly the three most powerful states – China, India, Russia (alphabetical).
The British Government’s investigation of the alleged Novichok attacks against Sergei and Yulia Skripal, which they survived, and Dawn Sturgess, who died, has now run for six and half years. The public presentation of evidence and witnesses has completed its first week; the second week of hearings will begin next Monday, October 28. The hearings will end in the first week of December. A report of the conclusions will follow months later.
The judge presiding is a retired Court of Appeal judge named Anthony Hughes – titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley – is also a consultant lawyer. Hughes advertises that he is available for engagement on private cases at his London office, telephone +44 (0)20 7242 3555.
His terms of engagement from the Home Office, his job now, is to manage the Government’s two imperatives. The first is to protect the British government narrative to ensure no one disbelieves the Russians did it, as then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced on the BBC on March 17, 2018.
Judge Hughes’s website claims he is presiding in “an independent Inquiry into the circumstances of Dawn Sturgess’ death in Salisbury on 8 July 2018.” Independent of Russia is certain. Hughes opened the proceeding on March 25, 2022 by saying: “The issues raised by the terms of reference include those of the utmost gravity, including the allegation which has been publicly made of Russian state responsibility for the killing of Ms Sturgess indirectly.” In fact, the terms of reference make no such allegation.
Hughes then announced he had appointed Emilie Pottle, a London lawyer, to represent three Russian military officers whom the British prosecutor has charged with attempted murder. Married to a “freelance writer” who has worked in the Iraqi and Libyan warzones with UK and US forces, Pottle is being paid by the Home Office to appear. Last week as a Crown prosecutor, she fed leading questions to medical and police witnesses.
The judge’s assisting lawyer, Mark O’Connor KC revealed last week that he has concluded what has to be proved, and expects witnesses to do the same. “I want”, O’Connor asked Wayne Darch, deputy director of the regional ambulance service and supervisor of the medics who attended the Skripals and Sturgess, “to start, if I may, with the question of what understanding or training ambulance staff had of or for nerve agent, organophosphate poisoning before the Skripal poisoning in March 2018, and we will work then forward in the chronology, okay?”
Working forward in the chronology means, for the British government, that the Hughes proceeding will work backward to prove retrospectively that the Russian government ordered and carried out the Novichok assassination plot of 2018. So far, not a single British newspaper, television or social medium has reported differently.
The second imperative for Hughes is to protect the British Government from the case for negligence which the Sturgess family lawyer, Michael Mansfield KC, is making to support his claim for a multi-million pound payout for compensation of their loss to the Sturgess family, her boyfriend Charles Rowley, and to Mansfield himself and his associated lawyers. The first attempt at Mansfield’s legal strategy of “dosh for Dawn’s death” did not succeed in the High Court in mid-2020. The Hughes proceeding is Mansfield’s last, big chance to accuse the British secret services of culpable negligence in failing to anticipate the Russian strike against Sergei Skripal on March 4, 2018, and to protect the British public from the Novichok fallout the alleged Russian assassins left behind.
The contradiction between the first and second imperatives grows obvious with every session. The quality of the evidence of Russian Novichok runs from weak to preposterous; the legal presentation from tendentious to inadmissible. But to earn his ransom Mansfield must accept as true what he cannot prove to be lies. He and his money-shot are motivated by the legal principle known as claim of right – you can’t steal from a thief.
A two-month delay in Russian missile strikes against Ukrainian electricity infrastructure west of the Dnieper River and secret talks on end-of-war terms by the Kremlin go-between Vladimir Medinsky (lead image, right) produced two signals from Kiev on Monday – one an offer by Vladimir Zelensky to reciprocate with a limit on Ukrainian missile and drone attacks on Russian territory. The second signal was a “consolation prize” from US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who was in Kiev to meet Zelensky, his defence minister Rustem Umerov, and Ukrainian Armed Forces commander Alexander Syrsky.
From Zelensky’s press conference in Kiev, a Financial Times reporter wrote: “Russia putting an end to aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy targets and cargo ships could pave the way for negotiations to end the war, the Ukrainian president has said. Volodymyr Zelenskyy told journalists in Kyiv on Monday that ‘when it comes to energy and freedom of navigation, getting a result on these points would be a signal that Russia may be ready to end the war’…If Moscow and Kyiv agreed to end strikes on their respective energy infrastructures, it would be a significant step towards de-escalating the conflict, Zelenskyy said in reference to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries. ‘We saw during the first [peace] summit that there could be a decision on energy security. In other words: we do not attack their energy infrastructures, they don’t attack ours. Could this lead to the end of the war’s hot phase? I think so,’ he said.”
Unusually, there has been no Pentagon readout after Austin’s meetings in Kiev. Instead, there was a “statement” in advance that “during his engagements, the Secretary will meet with Ukrainian leadership and underscore the U.S. commitment to providing Ukraine with the security assistance it needs to defend itself from Russian aggression on the battlefield.” The geographic phrase, “on the battlefield”, is interpreted in Moscow to be the key. The Pentagon followed with a list of new military supplies tagged for “Ukraine’s urgently needed battlefield requirements.”
CNN was briefed by Austin’s staff to emphasize the limited geography of the current US commitment. “A US defense official said that during their meeting, Austin emphasized to Zelensky the importance of Ukraine defending the territory it has taken inside Russia’s Kursk region and capitalizing on those gains, as well as fending off the Russians in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk… Much of Austin’s later meeting with Umerov and Ukrainian Armed Forces commander Oleksandr Syrskyi was also focused on Kursk, the defense official said, and the officials drilled down on military planning there for the next several months.”
The New York Times was told to report: “The United States has agreed to give Ukraine $800 million in military aid that will go toward manufacturing long-range drones to use against Russian troops, Ukraine’s leader said on Monday…A Pentagon official, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue, confirmed the move, which comes as the United States shifts its policy and moves toward shoring up Ukraine’s ability to fight the war with its own weapons and on its own terms…The decision to support long-range drone production in Ukraine may be a kind of consolation prize for Mr. Zelensky, who — despite repeated pleas — has so far failed to persuade Western partners to lift restrictions on using their long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia.”
The US newspaper also quoted Umerov, standing beside Austin, as saying Ukraine would decide on its own what deep Russian territory targets to strike with the new drones the US is paying for it to produce on Ukrainian territory. “Ukraine’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, said on Monday that Ukraine had invested more than $4 billion in its defence industry. Appearing alongside the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, in Kyiv, he said that long-range drones could hit targets more than 1,000 miles away and that they had already destroyed more than 200 military facilities in Russia…The decision also shows a change in tactics for the West.”
Sources in Moscow acknowledge the sequence of statements in time; they are uncertain of their meaning for the Russian General Staff and its chief, Valery Gerasimov (lead image, left). “It appears that they are husbanding the missiles”, said one. “I wonder if there is going to be a November surprise.” “It’s a fool’s bargain,” said another. “Noone except the Russian military can guarantee the Nazis won’t continue to attack. Zelensky’s word isn’t worth the gas it takes to utter it.”
The Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was murdered on October 20, 2011, and to mark the thirteenth anniversary of his death, the Russian Foreign Ministry received Qaddafi’s daughter, Aisha Qaddafi, in Moscow on Friday. This is the first open meeting in Russia between high-ranking Russian officials and the Qaddafi family.
The political significance was buried in the communiqué. “On October 18, the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Mikhail Bogdanov received Libyan public figure and artist Aisha Gaddafi, who is in Moscow in connection with the opening of an exhibition of her paintings at the State Museum of the East. During the conversation, issues of further strengthening historically friendly Russian-Libyan ties in the scientific, cultural and educational spheres were discussed. At the same time, the Russian side confirmed its unchanged position in support of achieving Libyan national accord in the interests of ensuring the unity, territorial integrity and state sovereignty of Libya.”
The official reason for Aisha Qaddafi’s visit to Moscow to open the exhibition of her paintings omitted that the paintings are in memory of her father, brother and other members of her family assassinated by the US and its proxies in Libya. “I show these works for the first time to honour my father and my brother on the anniversary of their deaths,” Qaddafi said in Moscow. “I can tell you that these pictures are painted not with my hand but with my heart.”
Assassination of Qaddafi had been a secret US Government policy during the Carter Administration and then an open policy of the Reagan Administration. Assassination of the Arabs of Palestine, including the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, is the open policy of the current US and Israeli governments.
In this context, the unofficial reason for Aisha Qaddafi’s visit to Moscow is that the Russian Foreign Ministry is signaling its opposition to this decades-old US and Israeli policy. The signal also hints through several years of rumour and disinformation at fresh Russian support – that means armed protection – for Saif Qaddafi’s campaign to become the end-of-civil war president of Libya. “If the Libyans choose a strong president,” Saif told the New York Times in 2021, “the only thing is a strong president. That’s it. The Libyans will choose a strong one. Everything will be solved automatically.”
“The winners of the war are the Russian General Staff. Everyone in Russia understands that the Russian Army is winning and will win this war…I believe Gilbert is wrong on the history of the negotiations that have gone on since before this war began… It’s [Russian] military protection that guarantees [Ukrainian] permanent neutrality… Second, I think that Gilbert is wrong on the foundation of policy…The US policy does not date when Gilbert has put it from Madeleine Albright [US Secretary of State 1997-2001]…US policy since 1945 has been to destroy Russia and prevent Russia from ever forming a kind of partnership with Germany in Europe. If such a German-Russian partnership post-war were to develop, that would end US control of Europe… This is not a neocon invention. It goes back to non-Ukrainian, non-Jewish decision makers during World War II in the United States…Thirdly, Gilbert is wrong on method…What Gilbert is saying is that he watches Russian television talk shows… This is an absurd method for understanding either President Putin’s role in the command structure, or the General Staff’s role, or what the future security of Russia is required to be in a settlement…Who takes seriously the Rupert Murdoch approach to truth – you don’t read the London Times or Fox News to determine what is true. Therefore, the notion that we should watch Russian television with that group of talk show presenters as an example of what is the truth of Russian debate is inappropriate.”
“I’m sorry, Gilbert is well-meaning but we are not talking about Doctorow — we are talking about Doctor Zero…If we don’t settle the outcome of the war according to Russia’s security needs now, by the time there is the next [Russian] presidential election, there will be more war.”
“The issue isn’t what [President Vladimir] Zelensky says publicly. The major security threat for Russia is in the secret annexes [of the Ukrainian ‘Victory Plan’]…What went into the US secret annex in Greece [1981-87] was the deployment of US nuclear weapons aimed at Moscow…Secret annexes mean secret weapons, secret deployments, and dual-capable bombs, missiles and warheads…We know we are back in the world of nuclear targeting on Russia…That brings us back to the general problem – what’s US policy toward Russia? Can anything, anything a US administration ever offer Russia be trusted unless the Russian Army is in place? And that brings us back to the Gorbachev treason, repeated as the Yeltsin treason. No Russian president — no Russian president can repeat those two things. The Russian Army won’t tolerate it, and neither will the Russian people…Without the Russian Army, the signature of the US on an agreement is worthless.”
According to the Russian Constitution amendments adopted in 2020, Vladimir Putin can run for re-election in 2030 and win another term until 2036, when he will be 84. The contest over the presidential succession may thus be postponed for another decade.
Or else it is under way already. That’s one of the stakes in the present argument in Moscow over how the Ukraine war should end between the General Staff and the Kremlin – between unconditional capitulation of the regime west of the Dnieper River to the Polish border, and the east-of-Dnieper terms Putin proposed at Istanbul in March 2022, and repeated in a speech to the Foreign Ministry this past June.
The debate in Moscow over the terms of Istanbul-I and of Putin’s proposed Istanbul-II involves much more than future control of the territories east of the Dnieper and of the territories to the west. The question is whether the military trust Putin to administer the outcome of the war which Russian voters believe has been won by the General Staff. In his June 14 speech Putin admitted to his audience of senior Foreign Ministry officials what they all knew – that he and the General Staff had disagreed over the “preservation of the Ukrainian sovereignty over these territories, provided Russia has a stable land bridge to Crimea.” Putin’s “land bridge” and other territorial concessions were dismissed by the General Staff.
One candidate has already tossed a military style cap into the succession race: this is Dmitry Medvedev, the one-term president and currently deputy secretary of the Security Council; he is 59 now, 71 in 2036.
In his Telegram platform, Medvedev has been a consistent advocate of the General Staff line: “In my opinion, recently, even theoretically, there has been one danger – the negotiation trap, into which our country could fall under certain circumstances; for example. Namely, the early unnecessary peace talks proposed by the international community and imposed on the Kiev regime with unclear prospects and consequences [Medvedev was referring to Istanbul-I]. After the neo-Nazis committed an act of terrorism in the Kursk region, everything has fallen into place. The idle chatter of unauthorized intermediaries on the topic of the beautiful world has been stopped. Now everyone understands everything, even if they don’t say it out loud. They understand that there will BE NO MORE NEGOTIATIONS UNTIL THE COMPLETE DEFEAT OF THE ENEMY! [Medvedev’s caps]”
Medvedev implies criticism of Putin but remains loyal in the hope of negotiating an amicable transfer of power between the two of them. At the same time Medvedev is signalling the General Staff that the military can trust him. But they don’t.
There is another succession candidate who is trusted by both the military and the voters, but who has not announced he is running. Putin is well aware of him; he has repeatedly tried to sideline him. This is Dmitry Rogozin, a presidential campaigner against Boris Yeltsin; Duma deputy and negotiator in Chechnya; ambassador to NATO; deputy prime minister in charge of the military industrial complex; head of Roskosmos, and now, after surviving a Ukrainian assassination attempt, senator for the Zaporozhye region in the Federation Council. Rogozin is 60; in 2036 he will be 72.
Rogozin is the son of a Russian Army general, grandson of a Russian Navy officer, great-grandson of a Red Army pilot, great-great-grandson of a general of the Russian Army in the war against Japan of 1904-05. Rogozin’s ancestors have been recorded in the Russian fight against the Teutonic Knights (13th century) and with Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin in the war against the Poles (17th century). “That is to say,” Rogozin has written, “there have been some rather decent people in my family tree”.
In a recently published book, On the Western Front, Rogozin has said more explicitly: “The war against Ukrainian radical nationalism and Russophobia is not a confrontation between armies and military technologies, but our country’s response to an existential threat to our entire people, the entire Russian civilization. This is the restoration of historical justice. This is a common cause, in which the unity of the army, society and its political class must be manifested. This is the opportunity to kick out of the country (and not let back in!) the fifth column of traitors and globalisation-mongers. The war in Ukraine is a war for Ukraine and Russia, it is a holy war for the right of the Russian people to exist and reunite on their ancestral territory. This is a war against a much stronger and more resourceful enemy, a war to force the collective West, manipulated by the Anglo-Saxons and German revanchists, to recognize Russia’s right to a safe and independent future for our children. Therefore, there should be no ‘red lines’ for us in this war…I consider it fundamentally important to constantly show universal solidarity with our army. It is impossible to maintain the illusion that the army is ‘out there doing its job’, and we continue to live as before.”
A well-informed Moscow source explains: “I will agree that the General Staff have no friends in Kremlin. [Ex-Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu and Putin’s mismanagement is blamed on them. Once they win the war, they will hit back. Or if they are not allowed to win, they will hit back. Among politicians Rogozin will be the only one with their confidence. His presence in the war zone earned him the respect of officers and men. He distanced himself from [Wagner rebel Yevgeny] Prigozhin in time. So he is not damaged goods.”
“How and when he can leverage this isn’t obvious,” the source adds a caution, warning that Putin understands the Army is a threat to his succession and is recruiting military officers to become his political protectors in the succession. Putin announced this scheme in a Kremlin ceremony on October 2, calling it “The Time of Heroes”.
The Moscow source comments: “I will not exclude several officers of mid rank – those Putin calls the new elite – will come into politics through Rodina at local and regional levels. The potency and potential is in mid ranking officers. Generals will be given cushy retirements. They will not go against Putin or the successor. This all has bad omens for Rogozin.”
In the first day of public hearings directed by retired judge Anthony Hughes – titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley (lead image) – the evidence compiled over six years by the police, secret services, CCTV records, and witnesses is that Novichok, identified as one of the world’s fastest acting nerve poisons, was sprayed on the front door-handle of Sergei Skripal’s house in order to kill him by direct contact.
“As each of them touched the front door-handle on the way out of the house, that they were poisoned with Novichok,” reported the judge’s chief counsel, Andrew O’Connor KC. “It was this door handle that was the source or, in their [police] term, the ground zero of the Novichok contamination”, (O’Connor page 19, line 13, page 24, line 6).
In the official narrative, it then took at least two and a half hours to act on the alleged Russian assassination targets, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, as they sat on a bench in the centre of Salisbury town after drinking at a local pub and then eating at a restaurant. That was between 1:30 pm and 4 pm on March 4, 2018. Between the prosecution’s alleged murder weapon and the attempted murder, 120 to 150 minutes had elapsed. Click to follow — O’Connor page 20-21.
The timetable for public hearings has been announced by the British government and its judge, Lord Anthony Hughes, to repeat the official allegations of Novichok attacks by Russian agents against Sergei and Yulia Skripal on March 4, then Dawn Sturgess on June 30, 2018.
The first hearing will open on next Monday, October 14, in Salisbury, the Wiltshire county town where the Skripal attack first occurred. The hearings will then move to the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London. On November 25, a session has been scheduled for Hughes to hear police, intelligence agents, and government lawyers argue the agenda item, “Russian state responsibility”. That session will then be followed in early December by closing statements.
The six-year proceeding is due to close by Christmas. By then it will have violated every rule in British court practice on the admissibility of evidence. .
No testimony by the Skripals has been allowed by Hughes. Instead, he has decided that the police, MI5 and Secret Intelligence Service will publish their version of what the Skripals said during interviews they were obliged to give without legal representation in 2018.
If you want to understand who is winning the American war against Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield, and also in the world’s commodity trade markets, you can start by calculating the life expectancy of a NATO-trained Ukrainian soldier on the front line, or of a NATO staff officer in a command bunker he thought was safe. Then you can check the life expectancy of a Russian pig.
The losses of the former are Russia’s tactical gains; they aren’t yet victory in the war.
But it’s the latter, the Russian pig (lead image) who, upon turning into pork, is breaking through the enemy’s defences towards strategic victory of Russian economic power to capture a world market. This means defeat – unrecoverable loss of market share – for the hostile states led by the once powerful pork exporters, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Canada, and the US. As the most recent European Union (EU) pig and pork slaughter data show, the war is pushing up the energy and feed costs of pig farming, and drastically cutting European exports of pork to the Asian consumer market, the biggest in the world.
There, Russia’s strategic ally China has cancelled the closure of its market in effect for Russia since 2008, and simultaneously has begun pork trade restriction moves against Spain, Denmark and The Netherlands, the principal European exporters of pork to China. In trade war retaliation, China is also steadily reducing the volume and value of its pork imports from the US since 2021.
Behind the Ukraine front, the test of who is winning the war against Russia is also who puts their money and their meat where their mouth is. In Russia, meat consumption is rising per capita to a level never recorded before in Russian history. At the same time, the country has become the world’s fifth largest pork producer.
From self-sufficiency in pork production in 2018 to the export of market surplus, this industry achievement has been based on direct and indirect state support measures, including retaliation against EU imports which followed the start of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions in 2014.
