Russian Chemical Weapon attack in Salisbury

[Top Cats Hat]

Why would this info be released into the public domain, thus letting the GRU know they had made a big mistake.

They could then issue new passports to their agents.....new names and non sequential numbers?

 

Presumably at some point, someone decided that it was more important to publicly show that the Skripals' poisoners were definitely killed under the instruction of the Russian state than any other intelligence gathered.

 

Two supposed 'friends on a sightseeing tour' who happened to have passports issued on the same day from the same passport office with sequential numbers is pretty damning evidence that these two people were sent by the Russian state.

 

(of course, it could just be a massive coincidence! )

[Lockdoctor]

It's clear the UK authorities release information into the public domain at a time of their own choice, which seems to be working well in exposing the Russian fairy tales to the World. The Russian authorities will have worked out for themselves it was a schoolboy error having sequential passport numbers for their agents.

[Top Cats Hat]

Just to put the coincidence theory into perspective, my sister has twin daughters. When it came to passport time she put in two identical applications at the same passport office at the same time.

 

When she received the passports, the numbers were two or three hundred numbers apart (the elder twin got the newer passport!) the population of the Russian Federation is more than double that of the UK so the chances of two friends of different ages who are renewing their passports being sequential, is even less likely.

[lil-minx92]

Why would this info be released into the public domain, thus letting the GRU know they had made a big mistake.

They could then issue new passports to their agents.....new names and non sequential numbers?

 

I think it was discovered by investigative journalists rather than by police or intelligence agencies.

 

I do wonder why the might of Mi6 etc didnt manage to discover the guys true identities before a journalist found out fairly easily it seems. Maybe they did I suppose but thought it best we let all this blow over rather than risk things getting more awkward with Russia.

[Dromedary]

Not only were these passports sequentially numbered but were apparently part of a batch of sequential passport numbers issued to others suspected of being GRU agents.

 

Where is that information from as I cant find any source for it?

[altus]

I think it was discovered by investigative journalists rather than by police or intelligence agencies.

 

I do wonder why the might of Mi6 etc didnt manage to discover the guys true identities before a journalist found out fairly easily it seems. Maybe they did I suppose but thought it best we let all this blow over rather than risk things getting more awkward with Russia.

 

Security services frequently hide what they know as it keeps the other side guessing. It's possible that they pointed Bellingcat in the right direction as it gets the information out there but has no implications for them. There's also the fact that some journalists finding the information is probably more embarrassing for Putin - it's more difficult for him to claim it's a fabrication.

[Top Cats Hat]

Where is that information from as I cant find any source for it?

 

Here.

 

"Skripal poisoning suspects' passport data shows security services link"

 

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/14/skripal-poisoning-suspects-passport-data-shows-link-security-services/

[lil-minx92]

The reader comments after the article are very interesting- it appears that the Russian 'bots' (ie. Putins' internet propaganda guys) were hard at work dropping comments pretending to be westerners finding faults in the story, whilst having the mickey taken out of them by everybody else for very obviously being Russian bots

 

Its a great example of this social media Russian propaganda technique that I think first came to light during and after the Trump campaign.

 

During the Trump campaign I knew there was something fishy about the number of evangelical-esque comments from different (very scant) profiles on Facebook in support of Trump that used a similar phrase- one that no westerner would ever use- along the lines of 'we should pray to God to build a hedge of support and protection around Mr Trump'... a wall possibly but a hedge?? Something was clearly muddled up in translation

[altus]

The reader comments after the article are very interesting- it appears that the Russian 'bots' (ie. Putins' internet propaganda guys) were hard at work dropping comments pretending to be westerners finding faults in the story, whilst having the mickey taken out of them by everybody else for very obviously being Russian bots

 

Its a great example of this social media Russian propaganda technique that I think first came to light during and after the Trump campaign.

They've been known about since before the 2016 US election campaign. The Guardian and the Beeb both reported on them in 2015.

[Top Cats Hat]

 

During the Trump campaign I knew there was something fishy about the number of evangelical-esque comments from different (very scant) profiles on Facebook in support of Trump

 

Fair play to the Irish government for asking facebook to block any political ads from outside Ireland during May's abortion referendum, after the large number of US evangelical churches set up anti abortion facebook pages which were pretending to be based in Ireland!