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Pat Buchanan: Did Putin Order the Salisbury Hit?
[Townhall] Britain has yet to identify the assassin who tried to murder the double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England. But Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson knows who ordered the hit. "We think it overwhelmingly likely that it was (Russian President Vladimir Putin's) decision to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the U.K." "Unforgivable," says Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov of the charge, which also defies "common sense." On Sunday, Putin echoed Peskov: "It is just sheer nonsense, complete rubbish, to think that anyone in Russia could do anything like that in the run-up to the presidential election and the World Cup. ... It's simply unthinkable." Putin repeated Russia's offer to assist in the investigation. But Johnson is not backing down; he is doubling down. "We gave the Russians every opportunity to come up with an alternative hypothesis ... and they haven't," said Johnson. "We actually have evidence ... that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok," the poison used in Salisbury. Why Russia is the prime suspect is understandable. Novichok was created by Russia's military decades ago, and Skripal, a former Russian intel officer, betrayed Russian spies to MI6. But what is missing here is the Kremlin's motive for the crime. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-03-20 |
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