HOWEVER

As I said, after the fall of the Soviet Union there was a free for all on Russian arms. It was chaos. This was even documented in the Nicholas Cage movie God of war.

I think it's fairly plausible that novichok was taken by Soviet military officers during that free for all and kept at home. Novichok is supposed to be stable for up to 50 years.

Skripal was interesting coz he blew the covers of about 100 GRU agents and was part of a spy swap. There is cover in having 100 people with motives.

Putin just after the poisoning was demanding (somewhat desperately I thought) that the UK send him evidence. I thought that was telling. It suggested he was just as keen to get to the bottom of it.

The British Inquiry (page ~245) concluded that it was likely the hit on Litvinenko was ordered close to the top. Putin was a KGB officer - he now doesn't take an interest anymore?

And if he blew the covers of 100 officers, they would've been under deep cover i.e. not going around assassinating people and going home on the plane.

In the case of Navalny, Putin's main opponent gets hit - if Putin didn't order it, it damages his credibility, I repeat: Whose head is rolling?

I didn't mention it earlier, but Russia no longer has a death penalty officially - this is why Skripal was alive to be swapped. Oleg Gordievsky was sentenced to death in absentia and I believe the order still stands (although hopefully unenforceable)

>And if he blew the covers of 100 officers, they would've been under deep cover

I hope it's not too controversial to say that they clearly weren't very competent and probably thought they were doing things properly.

>In the case of Navalny, Putin's main opponent gets hit - if Putin didn't order it, it damages his credibility, I repeat: Whose head is rolling?

Assuming Putin doesn't know, If I were him I would be furiously investigating but in wouldn't be keen to share with the world whose head rolled. Especially if it's FSB. If a US CIA agent went rogue do you think they'd tell us all about it? C'mon.

With skripal using him as part of a spy swap and then killing him ruins Putin's to negotiate. I don't think FSB agents who got their covers blown will give a fuck about that because they will desperately want revenge but Putin will.

Yes? "CIA agent goes rogue and kills Ronald McDonald" is bad PR for the US and the CIA in particular, of course they would emphasize that the agent was not acting under their orders. Organizations like Bellingcat (Who Murray calls warmongering propagandists by the way) make it increasingly difficult to get away with secrecy, people will find out so you have to separate yourself from the controversy.

Bellingcat looks suspiciously like it was "adopted" as a public front for CIA to release intelligence they want out there publicly using parallel construction.

Not necessarily a "bad" thing but I've yet to see them release something the CIA wouldn't either be either happy or ecstatic to see in the public domain ("Russia shot down an airliner you say???").

Idk do you know of any examples of them using "open source data" to expose an undercover CIA agent for instance? Expose a an American war crime like wikileaks did with collateral murder? I can't and I'd be shocked if they actually did in the future.