RedHanded - Episode 232 - Novichok Eau de Toilette: Sergei & Yulia

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

On the 4th of March, 2018, the residents of Salisbury, England, watched on in horror as British soldiers flooded their streets, and people in hazmat suits cordoned off their roads. Earlier that day, a man and a woman had collapsed on the high street; both were convulsing and foaming from the mouth. The people of Salisbury had no idea that their sleepy little town was ground zero for the first chemical weapon attack, using a deadly nerve agent, in Western Europe since WW2. Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Contact us: Contact Sources: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072413634/russia-nato-ukraine?t=1642085879353 https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/public-inquiry-into-novichok-poisoning-death-of-dawn-sturgess-announced/4014796.article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYkz56dKTkUSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Pregnant pause. Pregnant pause. Pregnant with nothing because we have nothing to say other than happy February you made it you did oh yes someone emailed us and then they were like hey do you want to come to this thing next Tuesday it's the first of February I was like next Tuesday isn't the first of February I told you and then I looked at the calendar I was like

oh my god yes it is I hate it it's happening it's all happening but no I don't it's fine we're in a good place and maybe you're in a good place. And maybe you're in a good place, dear listener, because I suspect where you might be, I'm hoping where you might be, is no doubt on tenterhooks, awaiting the next installment of the Russian poisoning series. If you haven't got the faintest idea, the foggiest idea, what the hell I'm talking about, it's probably because you didn't listen to Russianussian poisonings part one which is a grave error go back and do that immediately please do that and then this episode will make a whole lot more sense so last week hannah dear listeners you might

remember that we left it taking a bit of a jab at the British government. How uncharacteristic. What an outlier to the normal format of this show. What a shocker. Unbelievable. And we also had a little bit of a jab at other Western powers for not really coming down hard on Russia as the Kremlin runs absolutely fucking roughshod over various governments. And if you don't know, again, what I'm talking about is because you are still ignoring us and you haven't gone back and listened to part one and maybe you're like i'm not going to listen to part one because i don't follow the rules well it doesn't matter because if you are not living under a rock right now then i would say that this accusation that the western world is not taking russia not that we're not taking Russia seriously enough, but that we're not maybe having a singular focus on the danger that is Russia enough. This accusation can be backed up

by what is going on literally, quite literally, right this minute, as we are recording this episode on the 25th of January 2022, because Russia is invading Europe. That's what's happening. Nobody's talking about it, including Russia themselves. They're like, ignore tens of thousands of troops. We're definitely not invading Ukraine. No, no, no. We're doing these NATO talks. We're definitely taking these NATO talks seriously.

We're going to come back onto this later. I think it's safe to say that unfortunately, as of right now, the response from the West has been somewhat lukewarm. Tepid. Tepid. Things might change by the time you're listening to this. We are going to deal with that later in this episode, so bear with us.

We are coming to you from the past. But I think it's safe to say, like we mentioned at the end of last week's episode, our dependence on Russian energy and the West's quite legitimate fear of Russia's unpredictability and what they might do, given what they are already doing.

And what they've done in the past. They carved the gas, they've done that before. And everything that they have been doing. And if you go back and listen to last week's episode, the 14 people that we know about that they've definitely assassinated on British soil, then I think we have well and truly painted ourselves into a tiny little corner in the shape of Russian fear. Now, I do understand that there are, of course, difficulties in responding to what is currently going on in Ukraine. And we will talk more about this later in the episode. But I think the key point is, if you were in any doubt as to how far Russia will go, the situation in Ukraine right now will tell you just about everything you need to know.

And it's very far. It's very, very far. And another incident that will tell you just how far Russia will go is the story that we're going to be talking about today because it is of course you've read the copy the poisoning of sergey and yulia scripple in 2018 right here again in jolly old england they just love it they're fucking mad for it and it's also similarly to litvinenko the way it was covered in the press like i remember watching the footage of the crime scene being hosed down by people in hazmat suits. Like I remember watching that and I remember everyone being really confused. And then it just vanished.

Nothing really happened exactly like with Litvinenko. They were like, no, no, definitely, definitely poisoned. But never mind. Also, just in case, went over anybody's head. It happened in 2018 yeah that is a mere i can't even say four years ago we've just started 2022 it was like three years ago yeah this is crazy so let's get into it because this is a really really important case that is worth mentioning the reason we had to make this a two-parter we couldn't just talk about alexander

litvinenko was because the scribble case that took place in 2018 was i think in many ways a sort of turning point insofar as the west's reaction to russian foreign aggression because after all of the other assassinations on british soil that had taken place by this point it was apparently only now that the british government finally realized the things were getting a tiny bit out of control. Just a smidge. This is like when they acknowledge Russia's not being great. Yeah.

Russia isn't playing nicely with the other children. Russia does not play well. Mm-hmm. And this is when apparently a big... Britain, bright, could try harder. On the 4th of March 2018, at around 3pm, a call came in to emergency services in Salisbury. Americans, if I hear you say Salisbury, I'll Novichok you.

Salisbury is a small cathedral city in England because that's how we calculate cities. If they've got a cathedral, it's a city. If they don't, it's a town. Nothing else matters. I think it's changed now only because Salisbury, I looked up the population of Salisbury and I didn't write it down. So I can't remember. And if I start Googling it, you're just going to hear typing noises all over the place. So let's just move on.

But it was literally only like a tiny bit bigger than the town I grew up in, which I would not say is a big town. And in the document, I was going to say I've never been to Salisbury. Of course I've been to Salisbury. We went to Salisbury, didn't we? We went to Wells. We went to Wells, but we went to Stonehenge, which is kind of. And we did a wee. And we did do a wee. For more on that, come more on that under the duvet we did a public wee it was desperate

not on step two we did a wee with a view of stonehenge we did and lots of cars saw us the less said about that the better and in some of the documentaries on this case people will be like salisbury so small we call it smallsbury. I know. And I was like, oh, you cute druid. But yeah, it's small. It's not big, but that's why I think it's classed as a cathedral city. Yes. But anyway, you don't care, listeners. Salisbury or Smallsbury, depending on your persuasion, is a small cathedral city in England. They have druids, a fuck off cathedral, and Stonehenge is a mere nine miles down the road. That's quite a good set of things to have, I'd say.

You know what it is? If you want to get those old people on coach holidays through your doors, then you're ticking those boxes. Or a couple of, like, vaguely curious podcasters that are like, let's go see Stonehenge. Oh my God, that's the queue? No, let's just wee here and look at it. Let's do a drive-by of Stonehenge, which you can actually see the drive-by go see Stonehenge oh my god that's the queue no let's just wee here and look at it let's do a drive-by of Stonehenge which you can actually see the drive-by photo of Stonehenge on my personal Instagram and my favorite thing about that is not only that I took it through

the driver's side window while I wasn't driving but also that you can see traffic cones yeah yeah it's perfect it's so British I love it so let's leave Stonehenge where it is because moving it is illegal. And let's get to the 999 call that happened on the 4th of March 2018 at about 3pm. The call that day was to report two people acting oddly in the city centre. Apparently the pair had walked out of a ZZ Pizza restaurant. Terrible choice. And again, more destruction of the British high street food restaurants. Oh, yes.

Last week it was Zitsu, this week it's Zizi. Next week it'll be Pizza Express. They're just, well, we already know. And if you don't know what we're talking about, go look up all of the lies told by sweaty nonce Prince Andrew. But no, the Russians have really got it out for the high street casual eateries of Britain, it would seem. Yeah, I suppose so. Maybe they've had meetings with Andrew. All the Russians love it. The Russians being assassinated love them,

and the Russians doing the assassinating hate them. Interesting. Interesting. Maybe we've uncovered something. So these pair walked out of Zizi's and they wandered into the street, looking completely disorientated, and then they collapsed. When paramedics arrived, they found a man passed out on a park bench. He was completely rigid and totally covered in vomit. And there was a younger woman on the floor next to him. She was convulsing and still being violently sick. Even though everyone assumed that it must have been some sort of drug overdose situation,

which is probably what you would assume if you saw someone convulsing in broad daylight and vomiting. But within hours, both of them were on life support, having slipped into comas. Doctors were baffled if it was a drug overdose.

Neither of the patients were responding to any of the usual treatments. You would be scared though if you were the manager of that ZZs. Oh yeah. You're like, uh oh. Uh oh. I can't even remember the last time I went to a zzz's are they the ones that do that like hey we've got a new low calorie pizza and you go in and it's just they've cut out the middle bit and

put a salad in it no they haven't this was years ago but it's basically a full-size pizza but they've cut out the whole of the middle and then just put some rocket leaves there so you're like i quit so is it still a pizza anyway anyway i'm not here to further destroy the casualties of this country of this good country so let's keep going so when police obviously thinking that these two people had taken a drugs overdose when they searched the victim's clothes they didn't find any drugs or drug paraphernalia and and they didn't find any out the scene. But what they did find was, of course, the victims' IDs. The man was 66-year-old Sergei Skripal, and the woman was Yulia Skripal, his 33-year-old daughter.

One of the officers with Wilshire Police apparently decided to Google Sergei's name and quickly discovered that the man now laying in ICU was a former Russian spy. Is that information freely available on Google? It is because when he Googled Sergei Skripal, but leave it open as to why he's Googled him. Like this is the thing. This is one part. I really don't want to get into this, but now you're twisting my arm, Hannah. Let's go. So in all the documentaries, in all the news coverage of this case, there's a big gap in knowledge i feel like that they're trying to cover up with a random google story because they find these two victims very quickly things start happening that do not seem like the normal

series of events that would occur for an investigation when you think two people have just had a drugs overdose and then there is no explanation really for how they knew sergey scripple was who he was apart from the fact that they googled him but as a police officer if you found two victims on the road being sick would you google them or would you just look at them in your police database and then just be like i don't know who he is let's go find his next of kin why google i would google them you'd go i think i think the thing is because it looks like a drug overdose it smells like a drug overdose it sounds like a drug overdose but it ain't a drug overdose i think that's the intrigue and it's easier to just goog okay the last month doing the research of these two episodes i would say i have become

very conspiratorial minded and now i don't know what is a conspiracy and what isn't. So I'm fixating on things like the Googling episode because I've lost my mind. Yeah. So let's keep going. Let's ignore it. So they Google him and they discover that he was a former Russian spy because of the following headlines that he uncovered. Because Sergei Skripal had been in Russia's GRU which is also pronounced

GRU but I prefer saying GRU so I'm going to say that now I know it's confusing to keep moving between the KGB the FSB and now the GRU but essentially let's just keep it really really simple the GRU is basically the military intelligence service in Russia. Okay? And it is probably the most secretive, most obscure, and the most effective, and also the most dangerous of spy agencies in Russia, and therefore probably the world. So Skripal had been a part of this unit, and eventually had become a double agent when he was approached by MI6. We don't know when this happened, how it happened really,

but he becomes a double agent. And there are a lot of accusations that he does this purely for the money but i'll be like i don't really want to get fucking murdered by the gru how much money is mi6 giving him i don't know but he does do it and he's not very good at it because he quite quickly gets found out by the russians and he's branded a traitor putin's least favourite thing, and he's arrested in Moscow and thrown in prison in Russia pretty fucking quickly. And then, plot twist, in 2010, the US and Russia agreed to do a bit of a spy swap situation. Happens. Happens. Happens apparently quite like regularly, like a prison swap, a spy swap, this kind of thing. And Sergei Skripal was actually released by the Russians

and resettled in Salisbury with his wife and his daughter. I mean, it hasn't got heaps going on, but I wager it's probably better than Russian prison. Yeah, I mean, yes. It's got a Zizi. I would take it. I'll take it. Thank you, please.

Good, because you are ending up in Russian prison after this. If I see that car with the FSB license plate again, I am leaving. I'm moving to Salisbury. Oh no, wait, that's the the FSB license plate again, I am leaving. I'm moving to Salisbury. Oh no, wait, that's the worst place to go. Hey, lightning never strikes twice. Smart. I'll go eat in that ZZ's and everything will be fine. Just go to Oxford Street and lick the tables in it soon. Beat them to it. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some

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You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of

the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favourite podcasts. And we think in our humble, teeny tiny brains. I don't, but I'm happy to go with this narrative. I think there's something more secret, like how the police found out. Oh, then why did you write, I think?

Because I didn't want to overcomplicate the story. No, let me explain. Let me explain. So basically what I was saying about how things now transpire, I basically was like confused because they find Sergei and Yulia and they take them to hospital and almost immediately the people in the hazmat suits are there. But literally, why would you do that if you just think it's somebody who's taken an overdose of drugs i don't believe that wilshire police have got that level of resourcing that they've just like hey guys we've got to use it

or lose it like get those guys in the hazmat suits out there like it happens really quickly and the only way i can explain it in a narrative sense that makes any sort of rational sense is to say that this was because that police officer googled Sergei Skripal, found out who he was, and then that's why this happens. I see. But it kind of happens simultaneously, and I really don't want to overcomplicate the situation. But I think when Sergei Skripal got sick, MI6 knew somehow quite quickly. And then they told Wiltshire Police, that's a former asset slash current asset.

And you might want to get someone in a hazmat suit down there fucking ASAP. Because I don't know if you've heard, but the Russians, they've got literally no problem coming here and murdering people. But again, I don't want to overcomplicate, so please continue. Okay, so some people think, not Saruti Bala, but some think that the discovery of just who Skripal was, where he'd been, what he'd done, is what prompted the next thing. Which, if you are English, you will have seen on the news. Immediately, the spot where Sergei and Yulia had been found was cordoned off and investigators in full hazmat suits, literally like Monsters, Inc. What's it called? 2318!

That's exactly what they're doing. Yeah, like full bright yellow. We're not talking forensic suits. We're talking hazmat suits. And when I say cordoned off, I don't mean like the little park bench. They like cordoned off like quite a big distance off the city centre in Salisbury. And of course, the residents of Sleepy Salisbury were freaking out. They watched in shock and confusion as these people in strange biohazard

suits started collecting up the samples of vomit. To be clear, the taking of vomit samples in and of itself isn't that weird, but the suits, plus the fact the investigators were seen triple bagging these particular bags of sick and then placing them inside metal sealed containers, definitely had some eyebrows going skyward. The suited people then hosed down and seemingly disinfected the entire area and just made people, rightly, feel like they weren't being told the whole truth. And the fact is, they weren't. No, they weren't and we definitely aren't. Again, I'm going to temper my conspiratorial notes, but I've got a very strong coffee in my hand. There may be four shots of espresso in this coffee. Wow. I know know i made a mistake well we'll see what happens saru doesn't react to caffeine

particularly well no i've never seen four espresso saru so maybe i'll have to get a hazmat suit my eyes feel quite wide right now so let's see what happens saru won't even have a red bull before a show unless it's turbo wine oh my god no it no. It's a killer. It's a killer. Whereas I can't give enough. Sometimes I'll drink a Red Bull just to feel something. Oh my God, no. Red Bull, keep it away from me. Absolutely not.

So Wilshire police were already talking to Porton Down to understand what sort of substance could have made the Scribbles so ill. And the only reason you would do that is because Sergei was a former Russian spy. Because Porton Down is just simply not the place that you waste their time. No, and again, this is what I mean. You're telling me that they just googled this guy's name, saw that he was a former spy,

and instead of just being like, oh, that's interesting, there's a former spy here who's taken a drugs overdose, they're like, oh my God, there's a former spy here. collect up that sick with all this massive amount of money that's gonna cost and then let's go speak to port and down i don't know i feel like someone's feeding them more information but they never tell the rest okay not that it matters but i don't like being lied to especially when i've had four espressos port and down is described as a science park if you google port and down that's what it says it's a science park and then there's a picture of a deer

i wish the deer was like holding a test tube but it's not but it's just a picture of a deer and then it says science park so yeah nice and vague what it actually is rather than a theme park with like test tube themed rides or where children go to learn how to make chemical compounds the only thing i can think is like you know like how you have like a industrial park like a retail park yeah or a retail park i do appreciate what they're saying with science park but again that's vague yeah it's actually a top secret lab, like Dexter's top secret lab, but grownups, one would assume. And it's also the only place in the UK that is permitted to create nerve agents. Nerve agent examples that you might have heard of, anthrax, chlorine gas, and sarin.

And they're allowed to do this in order to develop antidotes and treatments and protective responses to these nerve agents, which it is internationally illegal to use at all anywhere. Yep. That's the official story, anyhow. Yes. And I found this during the Googling of Porton Down that I've been doing over the last couple of days. You might be interested to know, Hannah, that there is actually an official British government web page titled the truth about port and down oh that sounds transparent is it on gov.uk it is on gov.uk it is it is an officially sanctioned british government web page uh-huh those are the best exposes gov.com or gov.uk slash the truth about port and town jesus christ okay lay it on me i'm definitely definitely

sure that the people who believe that aliens are secretly being vivisected in there will definitely read that web page and be like 100 convinced that there's no creepy mad shit going on at that science park after all that's what the google search should actually say it should be portland down mad shit mad shit mad shit and alien vivisections. Definitely not going on in here. Not going on in here. But yeah, there's loads and loads of conspiracy theories about Porton Down. You literally just like have to scratch the surface and there's aliens, there's like human experimentation, etc, etc, etc.

People are very like paranoid about Porton Down. Yeah, conspiracy theories galore. And speaking of conspiracy theories, you can imagine that when this case first hit headlines, there were, of course, tons of them flying around immediately all over everybody's face. Especially when the world saw those hazmat suits walking around quiet little Salisbury. I mean, really, really want to put this into perspective for our international listeners, right? If I was walking around London and I saw something cordoned off and some people in hazmat suits, I'd be like, oh. But I wouldn't be like, oh my God.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Call the presses. I'd be like, oh. I would assume it was a bomb threat. Exactly. But we're talking about this happening in a tiny little town, right? So you've got to understand, it really freaked people out. And of course, conspiracy theories started and the real standout one which to be fair is very hard to deny as in in terms of

like it's very hard to discredit immediately from my perspective the theory was that porton down had actually been the one to release the nerve agent hear me out so port and down is the only lab in the uk that is allowed to play about with nerve agents yeah port and down is coincidentally based just a few short miles outside of salisbury yeah like we're talking under 10 miles outside of salisbury a bit of a wuhan situation it is a bit of a wuhan situation except that definitely came from that lab. So yeah it's it's hard not to see why so many people started to suspect that Porton Down may have been more involved than they were leading people to believe. But we'll get back to this later so pin here for now. Let's get back to the day that Sergei and Yulia were rushed to hospital. That evening a team of Wiltshire police

officers led by DS Nick Bailey headed to a house on Christie Miller Road. It was a quiet suburban cul-de-sac and home to Sergei Skripal. They went inside and had a look, but when nothing seemed out of the ordinary, they locked up and left. Later that night, DS Bailey started to feel not so great. He was hot and sweaty, suddenly exhausted, and his pupils were like pinpricks. Nick just put it down to being tired and stressed and went home to get some sleep. But the next day, he was only getting worse, and within 48 hours, his fever had skyrocketed.

He described it as if he was standing with his face in a fire. He could also barely walk, his eyesight was going, and he was increasingly confused. So his family rushed Nick to hospital. The case was starting to snowball. So Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism unit took over and given the profile of the first and most likely intended victim, Sergei, it was at this point already being investigated as an assassination attempt by an aggressive foreign state.

So blood samples from Yulia and Sergei were taken and run at Porton Down. And when the results came in, it was beyond what anyone could have imagined. And I know, after all the cases that we covered last week, you're probably thinking, how could anyone be surprised by anything found in the system of a former Russian spy living in the UK? But hold on to your hats. The substance that was used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal was a military-grade nerve agent, a chemical weapon of mass destruction. Novichok. It was unbelievable. It was the first time that a chemical weapon like a nerve agent had been used in Western Europe since World War II.

So what is Novichok? It's actually a term for a group of particularly deadly nerve agents. Novichoks disrupt the body's nervous system and prevent the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholin. And as this neurotransmitter builds up in the victim's body, because they can't break it down because the Novichok is stopping that happening it leads to convulsions blindness vomiting paralysis and respiratory arrest and unlike polonium 210 that we covered in last week's episode novichok is absorbed through the skin and i think that is one of the biggest and most deadly differentiators here novichok is actually one of the most deadly deadly nerve agents outside so it's not even just the fact that they used a chemical weapon they used the worst that is out there and it passes through the skin there is nothing you can do to protect against that apart from being in a full fucking

hazmat suit and unlike other horrendous chemical weapons that are just as illegal like sarin which is much more volatile and disperses relatively quickly, Novichoks are highly persistent and hang around for a very, very long time. And in the BBC Panorama documentary on the Salisbury poisonings, they describe it like an oil. I've also seen it described as like baby oil. Like the two women who were like forced to assassinate King John Nam, they were told to practice with baby oil and they didn't notice the difference. So because it's viscous, I suppose, it sinks into any porous surface that it comes into

contact with, making it incredibly hard to remove. And it also is spread by touch. And just for added bonus, fun times, it's impossible to detect. Yep. It's almost like it was made to murder as many people as it possibly could. Oh wait, that's exactly what it was. So all of these things are potentially catastrophic for the UK if you think about it. They don't know where it is, they don't know how far it's gone,

and they don't know how many people have touched it. And they also had no idea how the Novichok had been administered. It could be literally anywhere. And that put an untold number of people in grave danger. Investigators were now going to have to retrace the scribbles every step to find the source of the poisoning and they were taking no chances 18 police cars nine ambulances and 37 other vehicles were all destroyed because they had been exposed to the novichok like isn't that mad yeah you see

in the documentary they're just like piling these ambulances and police cars onto what looks like you know when you're on the motorway and you see those big things that are holding millions of cars on like one of those. And they're just like either destroying them and incinerating them or burying them under the ground. And they're just like, we can't take any risk because we cannot guarantee, no matter how well we clean it, that we'll get all the Novichok out. And it's so scary. scary and also a thousand troops from the british army were also deployed into the city of salisbury in camo and full hazmat suits to carry out wide-scale decontamination across the entire city center and also like the hospital that the scribbles had been taken into the police station anywhere that the novichok could have gone like imagine the panic if you live in salisbury and

you are seeing the army just entering your town dressed in full hazmat suits when they haven't given you one just fyi and of course like i know it's the cost of what would happen if more people were to die that's the most important thing but i do think it's worth mentioning that this whole thing of like all of the ambulances all of the cars that we had to destroy, everything, plus the full scale decontamination that the army had to come do. This cost the taxpayer fucking millions, millions of pounds. And it freaked everybody out. Like, I think I can't even imagine what it would have been like to live through that, not knowing what was going on.

And the people of Salisbury were right to be scared because this attack could easily have led to mass casualties. I can completely see why this just would be so upsetting and scary because the water that had been used to hose off the bench where the Scribbles had been found had run off and then run into the River Avon. I assume the river must run through the city centre at some point. So it runs into the River Avon and within days people were reporting seeing ducks and swans in the surrounding areas dropping dead. Yeah, that's some 28 days later shit. Like, you did that, it's going to be scary because of people. Mate, I'm fucking out of there.

So on the 12th of March, Theresa May, our then Prime Minister, confirmed in the House of Commons that the substance used in the Salisbury attack was indeed a Novichok, and that it had come from Russia. The filthy cat was out of the bag. Because they wouldn't normally make this kind of announcement this quickly. This happens within days. This happens within a week of the poisonings. Because as we saw last week, our politicians are kind of reluctant to

or hesitant to directly point the finger at Russia. But I really think in this case, such swift and decisive statements were made only because A, the world's media was watching everything, and B, because the use of a chemical weapon of mass destruction like Novichok being used in the UK was a line too far, even for the most silent of governments. Like, I know last week, obviously, polonium-210 sounds horrendous because it's a radioactive substance, but you have to remember it cannot pass through the skin. It is harder to make a bunch of people sick unless you're going to pour it into like the water supply or something novichok once it's out it's out and also if the name hadn't given it away already novichok is a russian nerve agent so it was clear that this was an attempted assassination carried out by russian intelligence and sanctioned by putin himself They say Hollywood is where dreams are made,

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to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free

on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Putin keeps such a tight grip on his government that it was unfathomable to think that this was the work of a disgruntled agent gone rogue. Nothing of this magnitude would dare to be carried out without Putin's express knowledge. Yeah, you cannot imagine that anybody who works in the Russian government or works in Russian intelligence would go and attack somebody who was living under the protection of MI6 in Britain without Putin's express knowledge because that could be an act of war. There's no way anyone would do that. But in classic Kremlin style, Putin denied it all, saying that it was too much of a coincidence that Porton Down, a lab that deals in chemical weapons research, was based so close to where the Skriples had fallen ill. It's almost like they picked the chemical they

were going to use based on what was in the area. Maybe. And it wasn't just that passing comment. No, no. This signalled the start of a mammoth Russian disinformation campaign. And utilising a typical Russian tactic, the following day day articles on the salisbury journal's website were absolutely bombarded with a flood of russian comments all focused on the port and down lab leak conspiracy and people believed it yeah people in the uk were absolutely convinced by these russian bots and russian hackers they don't even need to be hackers but just russian agents like filling up all of the news articles. They particularly targeted the Salisbury Journal. And I know that sounds weird

because you obviously haven't heard of the Salisbury Journal if you don't live in Salisbury, but they are just like a small local paper in the town of Salisbury. But they really got the scoop on a lot of the stories coming out about this because they were obviously there when it first happened. All of the photos that exist

of the hazmat-ed people collecting up the vomit, they all were taken by the Salisbury Journal because the world's press wasn't there yet. Yeah, yeah. They came, but they weren't there yet. People really did believe that this had come from Porton Down. Then after this, the Russian hackers took it a step further. Scotland Yard, just to be very, very clear to the international community, had sent samples of the Novichok agent that had been found in Salisbury to the OPCW, which is the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is basically the Global Chemical Weapons Watchdog. They independently tested the samples and confirmed that it was indeed Novichok. In reply, a Russian hacking team flew to The H hague where the opcw is based and were actually physically caught

sat in a car outside the opcw's building trying to hack the watchdog systems presumably i assume they were doing this to try and change the results from novichok to a western nerve agent to back up a baseless claim that the kremlin was regularly making just to be clear novichok was created by the russians and they are almost exclusively the only people that use it so they were like the uk is lying it wasn't a novichok it's a british or western nerve agent and when the opcw confirms no it's a novichok then the whole international community is like that's what we needed to hear because sure port and down testing it but everybody's also accusing Porton down of having done it. So when the OPCW said it, they were like, right, we'll just hack it and change it or whatever.

And after this, the British government, for once, didn't drag their heels. On the 14th of March 2016, 23 Russian diplomats were expelled for unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the UK. Then, in a show of Putin rage-inducing unity, less than two weeks later, Britain's allies expelled another 153 Russian diplomats from 27 countries. We be small, but we have big allies. And that is how we have remained a major player on the world stage for a long time. So Britain's allies kick out these Russian nationals, accusing them of spying. It was the largest collective expulsion of Russian officials in history. And I don't think Russia

were expecting it at all. Because nobody's fucked with them so far. Why would they start now? No, no, I don't think that they thought this was going to happen. And I think it really did take them by surprise. It was a high price to pay, arguably not enough, but it would definitely have been a surprise after all the inaction that had gone before. So why had Russia bothered to go after Sergei Skripal? And why hadn't he been better protected by the British government? Well, let's start with the second question. MI6, in the aftermath of the Skripal poisoning, said that they hadn't thought that Skripal was at risk. When the spy swap had taken place, Sergei Skripal had been given a presidential pardon from Putin.

No one thought that the Russians would rescind on this. Why not? I know it sounds naive, but they have done this a lot of times before. They've done spy swaps before, and the Russians have always stuck to their word and not come after people that they have given presidential pardons to. And even the Russians have said, we wouldn't do this. But they also say that if after the pardon, that person is found to be back up to their old anti-Russian tricks. So if they go back into espionage for a foreign government, because

remember, Sergei Skripal was still a Russian national. He was just living in Salisbury. Then as far as the Russians are concerned, you're fair game. So Skripal had been living in the UK for a few years, seemingly keeping his head down after he'd been exchanged in this swap. Then his wife had died. And it was after this that Skripal began travelling all over Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, spending long periods of time in former Soviet countries. It's really not clear what he was doing during these trips was it business was it espionage we don't know but in a documentary when the former head of mi6 was asked if scribble had started working for them again as a spy after his wife had died he gave a very non-answer so i think it's highly likely that Skripal, maybe after his wife dies, he's not from

Britain, maybe he's feeling a bit lonely and he's like, you know what, I might as well go back to work. I think he possibly started working for MI6 again and I think it's likely that the Russians found out and that's why they went after him. Got it. And as the political gears were grinding between the West and Russia, investigators were still on the hunt for the source of the Salisbury poisoning. And two weeks after the incident, they finally found it. Novichok had been smeared onto the front door handle of Sergei's house. So that's how it had got Sergei, Yulia and DS Nick Bailey, because Nick had been the first officer to go into Sergei's house on the night of the search. Luckily, on the 22nd of

March, GS Nick Bailey was discharged from hospital and he survived, although it hadn't been an easy recovery. And because Nick had gone home after being contaminated, his family house, their cars and all of the Bailey's belongings, including their kids' toys, photo albums and personal effects, were all destroyed. I know that this is so much bigger than that but that did make me feel really sad yeah it's a life it's the life that you've built just gone and that's what you listen to nick bailey talking in any of these documentaries we'll leave links below and you can tell he is seriously not okay like after what happened to him i think people just think oh he survived he's fine now his entire life was really kind of wrecked

by this and his wife and his kids who didn't ask for any of this all he did was go home because he was ill and then their entire house was destroyed yeah and they lost everything it's rough it's rough a couple of weeks later on the 10th of april yulia was also discharged followed a month later by sergey all three had suffered immensely but all three were alive. It was remarkable. And the only theory behind why they all lived was that a Novichok agent's only weakness is that it breaks down in damp conditions.

So the climate in grey old drizzly England in Salisbury in March is ultimately what saved their lives. I'll never complain again. I'm lying, of course I won't. I'll forget about this in two hours and then I'll be right back on my bullshit But just because no one had died yet

this incident could not just be ignored and once again like last week's story it was a highly precarious and complex case for British officials The geopolitical implications the legal red tape and of course the massive fear

that more of the novichok was still out there on the streets of the uk made it incredibly volatile and i know this is jumping back a bit but when the three of them were still in hospital nick actually is conscious the entire time it's only yuli and sergey who are unconscious and in comas but the doctors caring for them were like we were fucking terrified because a we'd no experience in dealing with a chemical weapon attack so we were having to figure it out as we went but we also knew if any of them died it could start a war so the amount of pressure we felt to make sure they did not die their doctors were like we've never felt anything like it this case it's kind of like the novichok everyone who came in contact with this was like poisoned

in some way yeah so a lot of fear a lot of stress because we just don't know what's going on with the novichok we don't know what's going to happen there still has to be an investigation this has to be taken seriously so the investigators from the scotland yard counter-terrorism team had to find and track the exact movements of the would-be assassins. And they caught their first break when they painstakingly sat through thousands and thousands of hours of CCTV. I read somewhere that Wiltshire Police, in conjunction with the Met, in conjunction with Scotland Yard, sat through 11,000 hours of CCTV. Oh my god. Like, that's a job you're getting put on if you fucked up.

That's a punishment job. Absolutely. And you again see how seriously this had to be taken. So on the CCTV, they spotted two men at Salisbury train station on the day of the attack, who on the 2nd of March, so just a couple of days before, had arrived in the UK from Russia, under the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Bosherov. An investigation by Bellingcat, and just in case you don't know who they are, they are an investigative journalism website,

quickly, however, revealed that these weren't their real names at all. Their real names were actually Anatoly Chapaiga and Alexander Mishkin. Both were former Russian military. And both were former Russian military, now turned GRU. Hmm.

Bellingcat were also nominated at the Podcast Awards last year. They do excellent, excellent work. Must be nice. We won the listeners' choice. Oh, I know what we won. We won the listeners' choice. When the hotel rooms these two men had stayed in were tested, bing-a-dee-bang-go, trace amounts of Novichok were found.

And these men could be seen arriving at Salisbury at the train station at 11.48am. They headed straight to Sergei Skripal's house before heading back to London, and then boarding a plane just five hours later. It's almost as if they had a job to do. And this timeline is particularly interesting when you know that both men went on Russian state television after the British named them as suspects and claimed that they had been in Salisbury as tourists. For two hours. Yeah. Yeah. Enjoying a two-hour day

out in Salisbury, historic cathedral city, where they went to a residential road and then gave Stonehenge a miss and didn't even have a look at the cathedral. Nope.

Just going to look at Christie Miller Road and then we're going to head back to Heathrow and get on that flight back to Moscow. Fine. Believable. Yeah. And that Novichok in my hotel room how did that get there maybe someone's trying to assassinate me what's also really grim about this two-hour timeline that the two men were in

Salisbury is that given that they must have sprayed the door handle with the Novichok in this window. We know that Sergei and Yulia were inside the house when they did this. I hate that because literally if they just looked out of the window, they'd have seen these two guys like out there. And I know neither of them died. But like how sinister is it to think they were just inside the house and these men were spraying the door handle with a fucking nerve agent. Yep. the house and these men were spraying the door handle with a fucking nerve agent yep and we know this because sergey and yulia only left the house together to go get lunch at 1 30 and by this point the two men are like they're done and hours later of course sergey and yulia were both in comas

so the evidence seemed clear and the cps just to just to be clear, by the way, the CPS is not the Child Protective Services, which what other countries? Oh, yeah. The CPS in the UK is the Crown Prosecution Service. So it's like our district attorneys, but for the whole country. They decide what can go to court and what can't. Yeah, exactly. So the CPS charged Mishkin and Chapaiga in 2018.

So that very same year with traveling to the UK to carry out a nerve agent attack but fat lot of good that did because of course the two men had left that same day they'd gone back to Heathrow and they were back on a flight in less than five hours and of course Russia refused to extradite them and then in yet another bold and brazen move and this honestly is just like the fucking Novichok-covered oily cherry on top of the horrible little cake. Because Russia started accusing the UK of holding two Russian nationals, being Sergei and Yulia, against their will.

Yeah. They start being like, well, where are they? Why don't you show them to us? How do we even know they're still alive? Maybe you poisoned them with that nerve do we even know they're still alive maybe you poison them with that nerve agent from your port and down lab because sergey and yulia once they leave hospital they are immediately taken into protective custody i'm not fucking surprised yeah yeah so the russians are like why don't you show them to us i'm like oh yeah you're the ones trying

to kill them and you're like show them to us the spin the the spin is like nothing you've ever seen. But Yulia did happen to make a public statement 81 days after the attack, telling the world what had happened to her. Sergei, on the other hand, has never been seen again. Yeah. In that video of Yulia, it's so sad because she's 33 years old. You know, she's not far off my age. She just looks knackered because she'd been in fucking hospital for 81 days.

And they obviously had to give her a tracheotomy when they were rescuing her because she kept vomiting. And there's this scar just like on her neck. And I'm like, you're never going to be okay again. You're always going to be scared for the rest of your life. I know she lived, but it's fucking sad. So yeah, Yulia a little bit more visible. But Sergei is probably living in those cottages by the sea that MI5 keeps specifically for witness protection people.

Nick Bailey retired from law enforcement in 2018 after being deemed not capable of being a police officer due to psychological issues. When you watch interviews with him, you can see that there has been an enormous impact on his entire life due to this experience. I mean, he lost his entire life. It's all gone.

After everyone survived, things did simmer down. The UK once again backed off and Russia went back to being Russia. But the question remained, what had Mishkin and Chapayga done with the rest of the Novichok? And after months with no sign, the fear dissipated and life in Salisbury went back to normal. That is, until the 30th of June 2018, when another man

and woman fell critically ill. Dawn Sturgis and Charlie Rowley, who lived in Amesbury, which is a village about eight miles outside of Salisbury, had been at home watching the Football World Cup when suddenly something happened. Dawn had started vomiting and convulsing and frothing at the mouth, so a terrified Charlie called 999, but soon after, just like his girlfriend, he too started frothing at the mouth. By the time the ambulance arrived,

Dawn and Charlie were both unconscious, and as soon as the doctors in Salisbury, because remember, it's just a few miles away, heard about this incident, they knew the Novichok was back. And this suspicion was confirmed in just hours. But now there was a renewed mystery. Where had this attack come from? And why had it started all over again? Especially because neither Dawn nor Charlie had any connections whatsoever with Russia. Nine days after the poisoning, Okay. Another irrelevant conspiracy. Okay. Okay. You scoff at my tarot readings make this happen look i can't stop seeing it i don't know how old charlie roly was but maybe that's why maybe i

chose not to look up how old he was or nick i don't want to break the pattern but no it's fucking it's fucking grim it's like dawn stur, she's got nothing to do with anything. Because I think the point is with the other cases that we covered, say last week, and this week, up until this point, Sergei, Alexander Litvinenko, the other 14 people that we talked about last time, I'm not saying it's okay, in any way, shape or form, but they are people who were either journalists, they were people who were associating themselves with Russian dissidentsidents or they were themselves double agents or speaking out against the russian state they were people who to some extent and again i'm not justifying what happened to them you can tell throughout the entire tone of these two episodes that we do not think that but they were people who knew what could happen yeah apart from yulia who again i would say it was sergey's choice to do what he did and be a double agent. His daughter gets dragged into it. But Dawn and Charlie are the first two people that we've come across over the course of these two episodes.

And actually the only people that I've come across at all who we think have been victims of Russian espionage attacks, who are wholly innocent of any sort of involvement. And Dawn doesn't just get sick and spend a horrible time in hospital like Yulia did. She dies. And there are now three children who don't have a mother because of this. And this part of the story is pretty horrendously tragic. Boyfriend and girlfriend Charlie and Dawn had only just moved in together and they'd both had a tough life. The flat they were living in was actually Charlie's first ever proper home. Things were finally starting to look up for the couple. Charlie didn't have very much money,

so he used to do a bit of bin diving so he could sell anything valuable he found. One day, Charlie had found a Nina Ricci perfume box. It was clean, all sealed up in cellophane, so he thought he'd hit the jackpot and he took it home as a present for Dawn. He gave it to Dawn on the 30th of June. She was delighted. She quickly opened the box and sprayed the scent on her wrists. Oddly, for a perfume bottle, Charlie had had to put the thing together like some sort of kinder egg. Yeah, it's weird. I don't think what you are shown in the documentary is probably the actual thing,

but they kind of have a reconstruction of it. Essentially, it's like they open up the box and the bottle is in parts, like with the pump, with the dispenser, with everything. Presumably because you find out what's inside and they don't want it accidentally dispersing all over the place. So Charlie has to like assemble it before Dawn can spray herself. Which again, like it's wrapped up, it's in cellophane, it's completely sealed. So there's no reason that they should think that there's anything wrong with it but it is weird when charlie put the perfume bottle together

he got quite a bit of the liquid inside on his hands he commented that it was odd it didn't really smell of much for a perfume and it was also quite oily feeling which is quite typically not what a perfume feels like within minutes dawn was frothing at the mouth and convulsing. In case it's not clear, the perfume bottle is full of Novichok. Just in case you needed that dot connecting for you. And it is just so horrific, isn't it, to think they're just like getting it on their hands by accident and then Dawn sprays it on her wrist and rubs her wrist together. And it's just Novichok. And you're like, fuck me. So while Charlie was in the coma,

the police had obviously searched the couple's flat and they had found the bottle of perfume, tested it and it attested positive for Novichok. When Charlie eventually woke up, they told him that Dawn was dead and that the perfume bottle he'd given her had been filled with poison. Charlie was, of course, course completely destroyed and the tragedy just continued i really really fucking hate this so much because the perfume bottle had been inside charlie's flat and that's where it had been sprayed and dispensed and whatever they had to tear it

down it was his first home he'd ever had he'd like been homeless in the past the pride you feel of like having your first place that you get to live in and he has to watch as they bulldozer it and it's also the place where his girlfriend died and they obviously destroy all of his belongings like the whole thing is just so fucking miserable so with this incident the police mi5 and the government went into panic mode because charlie tells them i don't remember exactly where I got that perfume, but I'm pretty sure I got it bin diving. And so now the police are dealing with an incident where there are just bottles of Novichok that could be out there in random places.

And this is the real fucking killer because the amount of Novichok that had been in that bottle could have killed thousands of people. And worse still, this is the real, like, clincher. Since the bottle that Charlie had found had been inside a sealed box, and it had been cellophane wrapped, and the pump had to be assembled, it was clear to authorities that this wasn't a receptor that had been used to poison Sergei and Yulia. This must have been a second bottle, a second device, like a backup. And it must have been brought over by the hit team. But then, how on earth had it turned up in a bin almost 10 miles outside of Salisbury, where the original

attack took place, three months later? Who would put it there? Because if it had been dumped by Mishkin and Chepaiga when they had been in the UK still, there was no way it would have still been in that bin. How? They're not clearing these bins out for three months. Yeah. No chance. So the concern was immediately, was there more out there? And unfortunately, I don't have the answers to those questions.

No one does, at least publicly. In this case, as with all the Russian assassination cases that we could have looked at, we definitely don't know the whole story. Four years on from the attack, the UK counter-terrorism police say that they still, quote, remain as determined and committed as ever to bring down those responsible to justice. And in September 2021, the inquest into the murder of Dawn Sturgis was upgraded to a full public inquiry. And what that means is that judges will now be allowed to examine more evidence, including highly sensitive material relating to any involvement of the Russian state. And again,

what will come of this, except more public acknowledgement that it was Russia and Putin? We're not sure. In September 2021, the CPS also charged a third man, a Russian spy named Denis Sergeev, also known as Sergei Fedotov. Sergeyev was an ex-Russian special forces and major general in the GRU and headed up a team tasked with sabotage, subversion and assassination. Again, Russia refuses to extradite him, but British law enforcement did learn its lesson after Litvinenko, and this time they didn't bother with repeated extradition requests. Instead, they had European arrest warrants issued, as well as Interpol red notices. So if any of the men try to leave Russia and they are spotted, they will be picked up. And there's not much Putin can do about that.

Apart from stopping them leaving, obviously. He can definitely do that. And they're probably also not particularly keen to go. No, I wouldn't imagine. And I think that the reason this level of collaboration happened, again, it's this escalation by Russia to the point of now using chemical weapons in Europe. I think that really disgusted a lot of NATO members, European Union members, and they were like, right, this needs to be handled now. But we also aren't the only ones after Sergeyev, because Bulgarian authorities say that he came to their capital, Sofia, in April

2015 where he met with Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrav as well as his son who both shortly after this meeting became violently ill. Again both did manage to survive but it's thought that just like with the Skripal case a toxic substance like Novichok had been smeared on the door handles of the men's car so they've got four again they're carrying out this sort of stuff and if you start to see it happening again and again and nothing happens then no one is safe they're not even going after here ex-russian kgb gru fsp they're going after arms dealers not saying they're particularly like positive people but you cannot have foreign states come into your country

and murder anybody, even if they're criminals. That sets a dangerous precedent. So that is Sergiev. But Chepega and Mishkin have also been up to no good because they've been linked with a blast that tore apart an ammunition storage depot used by the same arms dealers in a forest in the Czechzech republic back in 2014 so

they're just doing whatever the fuck they want they're poisoning people they're blowing up buildings like they're literally doing whatever they want to do in other countries so yeah how how the mind boggles but mps in the uk and politicians in europe and also in the us and are finally starting to scream that we're not tough enough on Russia. Like, I know this has never been, like, proven to be Russia. But do you remember in 2014 when a Russian ground missile? Yep. So a ground missile that had been made in Russia by Russia,

though Russia said we didn't do it, shot down a fucking commercial plane, Malaysian Airlines Flight M17 over ukraine they killed almost 300 people it killed 298 people and we did nothing they just shot down a plane not like a military plane a commercial plane and the world was just like but that's why though like that's why they're blowing shit up and killing people because literally nobody has stood up to them ever because like world war three has been discussed so many times that it's kind of a joke now and like nobody really takes it seriously

but russia isn't gonna stop no russia is not gonna stop and this is the problem look i don't want to sound too fucking doom and gloom about all this but i have had four espressos but we are pushing together russia and china and also probably the likes of india will join that fold we are creating a vacuum for them to group together and once that happens because i think it will we're in real fucking trouble like i really don't want to sound like some sort of fucking warmonger i'm not like let's go invade china yeah yeah but we need to face up to some really scary realities. Because there has been this sort of continuous pattern of Russia waging a sort of soft war, if you even want to call it soft, a war against the West. And if they can just come

into Britain and murder people, especially people who were intelligence assets to agencies like mi5 and mi6 it creates a really dangerous situation for us and we're allowing putin to act with total impunity and use murder as state policy to prop up his kleptocracy like the confidence that this gives him can't even imagine and it's really really scary stuff i'm gonna save the rest of my thoughts on this for under the duvet because i'm gonna really fucking railroad this entire episode if i go into it and the more we see sort of the rise in the west as well of more isolationist populist governments coming up that are all about nationalism and they're like you know let's leave the european union let's like make america great again let's focus on us inward looking inward looking inward

looking the destruction of nato which is obviously what Putin wants. The more we isolate ourselves and don't have unity in the West, the more again, it creates a power vacuum that China and Russia want to fill. And that again, is also a very dangerous thing. Also, I want to point at something that is also equally pathetic, slightly funny, but still pathetic, still embarrassing for us. So in 2018, obviously, there was the Football World Cup, which took place in Russia. So, you know, they're having a great time. They're poisoning people in the UK. They've got the Football World Cup that year. Everything's going on for Russia.

When the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, Dawn Sturges, Charlie Rowley, and Yulia Skripal, and Nick Bailey, five people that were poisoned in the UK with a nerve agent happened. In 2018. In 2018, the year that the Football World Cup was happening in Russia, Boris Johnson, our then Foreign Secretary, said in Parliament, this was Putin, and then he says, you know,

well, maybe our football team won't go to the Football World Cup in protest. And then I can only imagine the fucking shit show that erupted at the Football Association where they all collectively lost their minds that boris johnson had just said this and then he was forced obviously we didn't see any of that but boris johnson is enforced to well then boris johnson then backtracks and

he's like oh well no we actually won't do that because it's not about punishing the players i'm like it's so weak it's so weak and embarrassing and then we went it's so weak. It's so weak and embarrassing. And then we went, it's embarrassing. Yeah. I always feel like pulling out of major sporting events, obviously, especially football for this country. And it was gouged out case 30. Anyway, it is never going to happen. So don't even bother saying it.

Don't say it. The FA would never allow it. And also, can you imagine Boris Johnson, who is a populist politician, do you really think for a second that he had really thought about what this meant? Pulling the England football team out of the World Cup and you think everyone in this country is going to love you

and vote for you ever again. You might as well just fucking leave. You might as well go back to America, Boris Johnson, because the people of Britain will murder you. Yeah, I will say England-Croatia in 2018, even though we lost, was one of the best nights of my life. I was standing on a windowsill in my local pub, shoulder to shoulder. We scored in the first five minutes.

We really thought it was coming home. We always think it's coming home. It was the furthest we'd gone in 25 years. Oh yeah, mate, I'm not here to shit on the English stream. I'm just like, sad, sad times. But anyway, the less said about our continuing football anticlimactic outing, the better. Hey man, could be this year. It could be this year.

This year, it could be coming home. It could be. In case you don't know, because you are not British or European or South American, that the Football World Cup is, of course, this December? November, December. November, December, which is weird. But fine, because it's in Qatar, which is going to be a million degrees. Yeah, and the stadium has been

built by slaves more on that later so yeah it's easy to throw scorn Boris Johnson's way especially this week he might have stepped down by the time this comes out fingers crossed it is hard to retaliate against Russia it's hard to retaliate against someone who is crazy unpredictable and has no sense of fear I think if you just boil it down to like a person to person, it's hard to know how to retaliate against somebody who has no boundaries, right? And that's the problem. And also who has no patience. And to complicate things even further, bang in the middle of the Skripal situation, Parliament was in the middle of Brexit negotiations, which famously did not go so well. So it wasn't the ideal time to bring up more trade sanctions

that would have greater impacts than leaving the European Union. I think this was such a difficult position because, you know, for sanctions to work, for anything to work like that, you need it to be a unilateral, united front. And it's very hard for the UK to be like, I know we're trying to leave and we've got to like real play tough with you on the Brexit negotiations, but please could you help us out with this? And even when we have put sanctions in place, they don't really seem to work against Russia because we have fundamentally misunderstood the structure of Russia's political system.

Corruption isn't a bug in the program, it's a feature. In fact, sanctions disproportionately affect the middle and lower classes of Russia, causing rises in food prices, etc. And that plays right into the hands of the Kremlin, who use the state propaganda machine to roll the people up and push the narrative that the West is the enemy of the Russian people. He'll just be like, oh, your food prices are going through the roof. It's not because I've been murdering people in Britain. It's because the West is sanctioning us to punish us because they don't want us to be the great, strong, Russian, imperial state once

again. They are to blame for why you're hungry. It's not me. I'm trying my best. And like we talked about last week, Putin uses this strategy and mixes it up with all sorts of Russian, neo-imperial, historical, nostalgia, wet dream stuff to ramp up nationalism and, of course, national pride.

He also tells people that the West is just out to try and stop Russia from once again becoming a world superpower. And so, instead of addressing inequalities, poverty, corruption and a floundering economy, Putin just uses the West to maintain his position and consolidate his power with aggressive foreign policy. I think that's the thing that we've misunderstood. I think the West thinks we'll sanction him. And then when inequality rises, when poverty rises, I know we're not trying to make that happen,

but we're trying to say he's going to care about that. He's going to care when the people of russia are hungry he's going to care because they'll protest they'll take to the streets and then he'll have to listen to them and then he'll have to react to the sanctions by de-escalating that is what we have misunderstood that putin doesn't care about corruption about inequality about poverty about all of those other problems because like you said they are not a bug. They are a feature because that is how he controls the population. And also he's not trying to make things better.

He's trying to consolidate power for himself. And we look at him and think that he is going to respond in the way that we would want our politicians to respond. But he doesn't care. And I think this is such a theme again and again. I remember we were talking about it in the Shamima Begum episode with ISIS. You cannot hope to defeat an enemy that you do not understand their motivations.

And you have fundamentally misunderstood their entire structure or thinking. And that's what we're doing with Russia. Yeah. Putin does not care about Russian people going hungry. He really, really cares about Crimea. And we saw that in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. And that annexation was reported by the Russian media as the greatest moment in Russian history since victory over the Nazis in 1945. Having said that, it's pretty difficult to assess public opinion in Russia. Putin seems to win elections with what is almost unbelievable margin. But we've also seen protests erupting

all over Russia for the past decade. And it's really ramping up in recent years but with other insular nations that should remain nameless you have to be careful of what press comes out of places like russia because it's run by the state of course that's the thing it's like when you look at the state media it's all state run propaganda so that can be discounted but when you look at opinion polls like popularity polls putin's always very high in them but then sometimes it shows that he is low and then he increases after there's like a war so he's also gauging the response that people are having to this kind of return to russian imperialism which some people say is working and is cutting through possibly with older russians maybe but then we're also seeing on the other hand that was a rise in protest so

in a state that is this secretive and this authoritarian it is very hard to know what the public actually think but i think we can get a good idea from the fact that for the first time we've seen protests like russia hasn't seen in generations and arguably there's been one man behind much of the organizing of these protests that we've seen and that is of course alex Navalny who if you'll remember in August 2020 was poisoned with Novichok during a flight from Germany to Moscow. He only survived because he was taken to Berlin and given treatment immediately. Do you also remember when he was going to go to speak at his own political rally when he was running against Putin and somebody threw green dye in his face? And by somebody I mean Putin. So the friction between Russia and the West, where is it headed? Well, it only looks to get worse, unfortunately. Russia is actively

changing and trying to change borders within Europe. Again, something that hasn't happened since the war. After the annexation of Crimea and now threatening to invade Ukraine, that is what he is trying to do. So why is Russia doing this? Well, in negotiation talks between Russia and NATO, which have been taking place over the past couple of days, over the past week, let's be real, they were never ever going to be successful. Anybody who thinks that they were,

anybody who thought that Russia was coming to the table, in good faith, you're being naive, quite frankly. Russia was demanding things like, he was demanding that nato agreed to say that ukraine would never be allowed to join nato that is just never going to happen if nato accepted that term it goes against everything it goes against the very founding principles of nato which is that every sovereign nation should have the ability to choose its own destiny yeah they cannot say that ukraine would never be allowed to join NATO. And Putin

knows this. He knew this going into the talks. The talks were just a smokescreen. He wants to say, look, I did the talks and now I'm going to invade because you couldn't come to an agreement with me. What Putin really wants is to go back to the old Soviet style where the West can have influence in the West. He's like, go nuts, do what you want. I don't care. But Russia to have full influence in the West. He's like, go nuts, do what you want. I don't care. But Russia to have full influence in the East. That's what he wants. He doesn't want NATO nations. He doesn't want NATO growing. He doesn't want his neighbours to be NATO nations and therefore to have NATO soldiers on his doorstep. That is what he wants to avoid. So what's going to happen next? With Russia sending more and more troops to the Ukrainian border as of the 25th of January 2022.

And also, I don't know if you saw this, but threatening to invade Cuba and Venezuela. Why? Why not? I don't know. To then ramp it up, I guess, against not just Europe, but against North America as well. Yeah, I suppose. I mean, I was going to say... Cuba is very, like, militarily advantageous in terms of positioning. Yes, I forgot that. Yes, the positioning of Cuba, it makes it a very valuable piece of land

to have under your belt. Doesn't have a lot of resource, but Venezuela definitely does, I suppose. And also Venezuela has been in political hellhole for years. And this is what Putin does. We saw this when it happened in Kazakhstan, if you remember. Soon as Kazakhstan started to descend into chaos,

when the energy prices were going through the roof, and then it obviously transpired into more than that. People were demanding that the government leave due to all sorts of corruption putin immediately is like well i can help you because look government of kazakhstan it looks like you're really struggling to get these protesters under control i will send in the russian army and this is what he does he infiltrates these countries under the guise of providing military support to an authoritarian regime that is under attack by its own people and what he also does is those false flags and send in the little green men with no military insignia on or dressed up as venezuelans or as kazakhs and you know attack

set fire to buildings create violence kill people to then justify russia moving in with its military troops to quote unquote help suppress the violence because they're not protests anymore they're riots and it's violence so this is his whole like his whole bag why did he want to go into kazakhstan because they've got a shit ton of oil this is what he does this is what he does and honestly all of that we have already seen we saw him go into kazakhstan last year we see what's going with ukraine We saw a few years ago the annexation of Crimea. God knows when he will stop. And also we've seen with Ukraine that he's been carrying out cyber attacks against the Ukrainian government. So like government controlled websites are down.

This is the level of brazenness that Putin is willing to carry out. So how do we de-escalate this? I honestly don't know. What I do know though is to ignore Russia is not really an option anymore. So again we've been saying this throughout this episode by the time you're listening to this by the time this is out things in Ukraine may have become much much worse. It didn't feel like it made much sense to just try keep on top of it in this episode. So what we're going to do is we've given you a very good understanding hopefully of what's going on what's likely to happen we're never going to be able to stay totally up to date what we're going to do instead is give an update on the situation that's going on between russia and

ukraine and do a bit of a red-handed rundown on why putin is so obsessed with ukraine over on under the duvet this week to listen to that you only need to be a five dollar or up patron of red-handed the minute we record something like this it can become out it's it's the nature of the career we have chosen for ourselves exactly we are not a rolling news channel but hopefully that has whetted your whistle for some russian my whistle is soggy delightful um for some russian i don't even know what the word is russian awareness yes Russian awareness

because I suspect it's going to be in the headlines quite a lot this year yes I would think you're right it's not going to stop

no it's not nor are we because we'll be back next week with another episode but that is the end of the red-handed Russian poisonings two-part series

hopefully you enjoyed it hopefully you've learnt a lot go check out the book From Russia With Blood I do think it is a very, very insightful piece of work into all of the assassinations that have taken place.

Also check out Alexander Litvinenko's book Blowing Up Russia because it's the best attempt there has been to investigate the Moscow bombings and the fact that Putin definitely, definitely did it to rise himself to power.

And there you go. Hopefully we've opened your eyes, whetted your whistle, given you some enthusiasm for this particular realm of geopolitics. If not, sorry, we'll be back next week for something else. And if you'd like to listen to something else

from Red Handed in the meantime, you can head on over to Spotify where you can listen to our Spotify original podcast with Parcast. There it's called Sinister Societies where Hannah and I talk about different types of cults every week. It's a good time. And how they take your money. Absolutely. podcast with podcast there it's called sinister societies where hannah and i talk about different types of cults every week it's a good time and how they take your money absolutely out of your

warm alive hands absolutely with your consent uh-huh so check that out and if you're like i need something else i need some more my whistle is so wet i need more then head on over to patreon.com slash red handed where you can sign up to become a patron for as little as $5 a month and get your hands on loads and loads and loads of extra bonus content. And here are some people who have already done that with their wise brains. Alison Kingston, Ben Slezak, Kerry Reid, Ashley Lawrence Ball, Jenny Erlenius, Claire Doherty, James M and Alison B, Corinna Jane, Howard Fitez fights, I don't know, Samuel Bell, C.D.Dot, Georgina Middleton, Elle Wren, Elspeth McIntyre, Emma Hickey, Michaela Schmidt, Angie Vitpil, Tobias Sargid, Sylvia Caldwell laura mcginnis usha stephanie peters amy nina taylor alex ellie's skiri skiri shears shears shiras maybe shiras let's go with that jenna v or jenna

the fifth bridget waters googler matty uh steph tipton alma Garcia, Quali Dubar, Roshin Butler, Mia Jantz van Ransburg, Kataki Schrader, Tess Kinzel, Jacob Willis, I'm sorry guys, there's so much coffee in my system, Millie Brown, Caitlin Spooky in SF, Laura Raken Young, Angela Jones, Happy Gariah Conboy, Caitlin Nicole Wilhelm, April Wolfe, Shannon, Michaela Trinnerman, Lisa Margulis, Emily Burnley, Gabby Coles, Kevin Van Bell, Regina Billis, No idea. Can't help you. Jansen, I think. I think that little backwards, I think that little B is a double S sound.

Anyway. think i think that little backwards i think that little b is a double s sound anyway werner goring uh e dot molly noel jones madison poon dorothy call victoria mckinney oh mateo salawu donnie geiger rose shakhan katie alice jane airplane steph in skip and lee fenner thank you very much Alice Jane, Airplane, Steph Inskip and Leigh Fenner. Thank you very much for your support and thank you for listening to the show. Make sure you hop on over to Spotify. It helps us out. And we'll see you next week for something else. Bye.

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