Given how these stories over the poisoning have played out it certainly looks that way. The "cover" story is comically poor, and they have plenty of people intelligent enough to do better.

So short of Putin calling a press conference saying "Yup, we did it" it couldn't have been telegraphed much clearer.

I agree. This is by far the most likely rationale. They've basically taken a leaf out of the Mossad playbook.

I'm a bit surprised they don't have Shaggy playing in the background during the press conferences.

> they have plenty of people intelligent enough to do better

Now, that's a very charitable assumption. I am not sure we have any evidence for that :-)

> Given how these stories over the poisoning have played out it certainly looks that way.

But that would mean that they were provoking the Western countries to give them hell. I am the first to admit that I do not hold their intellectual powers in any high esteem, but even so, even for them, this sounds outrageously insolent and stupid.

No, I would gently submit that they are provoking Western media to give them lots, and lots, of free publicity.

Western countries are not going to give Russia any kind of hell that Russia´s rulers will really care about. Russia is a major gas and oil supplier to the entire of Western Europe.

>But that would mean that they were provoking the Western countries to give them hell

Gee, you think?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...

Putin clearly has no problem with the idea of provoking Western countries.

Crimea is really very much of a corner case.

First, it's not in a Western country.

Second, the annexation happened soon after the Ukranian revolution, which made the legitimacy of the Ukranian government (and the very status of the Ukranian state) at that point uncertain.

Third, there were various historical and political considerations muddying the issue (Crimea was given to the Ukraine by the head of the USSR only about a generation ago, and there was a general feeling of a historical injustice done by this act; there was a large Russian population in Crimea; and the revolutionary Ukraine was markedly nationalistic and anti-Russian, which probably pushed a large portion of the Russian-speaking Crimean population into the embrace of Russia).

Smuggling a military-grade poison in Britain is quite a different matter.

The invasion of Crimea is a much bigger deal that the Skripal poisoning. Russia clearly isn't afraid of "provoking" Western countries.

Why is it a bigger deal?

It could have been a bigger deal if Ukraine were a member of NATO, and the alliance had an obligation to respond. But as the things stand, why is it a big deal — for the US, the UK, Germany, France, etc.?

(Skripals poisoning, in contrast, would imply a special operation on the soil of a sovereign Western country, using the tabooed chemical weapons. A concrete, old-school, physical action, as opposed to the more abstract propaganda wars or some shady online activities.)

>Skripals poisoning, in contrast, would imply a special operation on the soil of a sovereign Western country, using the tabooed chemical weapons.

That's nothing Russia hadn't already done years before.

And proudly signaled to the rest of the world that it was them that did it?

What cases are you thinking about?

Yes, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

Even the Wikipedia article says that the correct diagnosis — the poisoning by polonium-210 — was made to a large extent due to a happy coincidence: there happened to be a scientist in the facility where Litvinenko was treated who happened to have worked with polonium. Were it not for that coincidence, it is very possible the correct diagnosis would not have been reached, and the very investigation that followed would not gone very far.

So I am not sure how Litvinenko poisoning is an illustration of an assassination attempt advertised as such to the rest of the world. On the contrary, it looks like a murder attempt that was intended to have never been solved.

>On the contrary, it looks like a murder attempt that was intended to have never been solved

Seriously? Using Polonium meant that it took weeks for Litvinenko to die, giving him plenty of time to make it clear exactly who was responsible, and even give interviews to the press. If they wanted to keep it quiet, they did a pretty terrible job.

The invasion is a much bigger deal on a global scale, but not against a country firmly established as part of the West, while the Skripal poisoning is chemical weapon attack on the territory of a NATO member; as such, it is a far greater provocation of Western countries.

The invasion of Crimea triggered a far greater response from the West than the Skripal poisoning. Russia has been poisoning people on British soil for a while now; it's nothing new.