First it was the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in early March, and now the recent poisoning of two more people in the small town of Amesbury in south-western England has once more fomented diplomatic hostility between the UK and Russia. Though the police said that it was unlikely that the latest victims were deliberately targeted, but the British government has demanded for an official explanation to the Russian government. However, more than the deteriorating relations between the two countries, it's the venerable chemical nerve agent to have become the centre of attention.
By now it has become public knowledge that the nerve agent is one of the most deadly chemical weapons ever developed and was produced by the former Soviet Union. Guessing its age to be 50 plus, its efficiency in today's world can surely be questioned?
As this writer curiously followed the latest developments on the issue, the deeper he got, the more puzzled he became. And from the British Home Secretary Sajid Javid's official demand for an explanation on the chemical poisoning at the UK parliament -- it appeared, as if the Russian government has undertaken a grand sinister scheme to poison all Britons in their homeland. Russian made chemical nerve agent Novichok or whatever is available in abundance anywhere in the UK, and the Russians have transported them deliberately to eliminate their targets.
Whatever, other than seeking an official explanation from Moscow, it's time the British Home Office enquires how the nerve agent landed in the UK soil, If it was indeed exported from Russia. The home minister also included by saying, "Russia was decisively using the UK as its poison dumping ground."
Until very recently, I was fairly convinced that it was mostly our ministers who spoke rubbish, but some British ministers do the same. Today's Russia's historically established arch rival, for nearly a century, has been the United States of America. It would have been more convenient to have chosen USA for making that dumping ground, and not the UK. For chemical dumping it is better if the garbage is far away, not somewhere closer to Russia.
Till today it's not understandable to me, whether the Russians truly poisoned the Skripals, and if they were why were not they killed?
Have the Russians become incompetent in the field of executing international espionage? Given the former Soviet Union's success rate in local and international espionage encounters during the cold war, at least this writer is unwilling to believe it.
Also why would the Russians apply and start circulating a 50 or more year old lesser effective chemical substance to eliminate targets in a foreign land?
This blame game that has erupted on the basis of a chemical nerve agent is clearly avoidable. In general, it's disrupting diplomatic relations between Russia and the Western World. The Cold war era has vanished, and there is no point to re-install it once more. The residue of mistrust born out of the Cold War is still almost everywhere as of now.
Today the UK is exceedingly concerned about the poisoning of its citizens at home with imported chemicals, what about the chemicals which are claiming scores of lives in the Middle East? More specifically, the anti-Assad Western powers are repeatedly failing to deter the usage of chemical weapons by Assad and non-Assad fractions in Syria.
This writer clearly remembers what the former British Foreign Secretary William Hague had to say, just days before leaving the foreign office in 2014. He admitted that during the 80's some British companies sold precursor chemicals to the Syrian government which was later used to manufacture the lethal Sarin chemical weapon. And until 2012, British firms were planning to sign contracts to export dual-use chemicals to Syria -- in other words, chemicals that could have both civilian and military applications. Pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and medicines all contain agents that could be used to develop weapons.
The point, however, the British firms which supplied chemical raw materials for developing civilian products in Syria were perhaps unaware about their abuse. May be some of the supplies were meant for developing weapons.
Is the UK taking any responsibility when it comes to the using of chemical weapons in Syria?
Suspicions and assumptions on illegal export of Soviet-era chemical agents, allegations for poisoning anti-Russian individuals in the UK, asking for explanations and sacking diplomats on that ground is not benefitting the UK on any count. Need of the minute is to carry out a countrywide thorough investigation and unearth the real truth.
Manufacturing and the application of Novichoc inside UK territory could well be an evil design by a dodgier syndicate to harm UK-Russia relations. Concurrently, it could be an attempt to further isolate Russia from the Western World.
Also no report has confirmed whether Novichok can be produced at any secret laboratory by using indigenous chemical substances in the UK. Rooms for all types of supposition or hypothesis are yet flat open.
One doesn't have to be a pro-Russian to ask, why should Russia shoulder the responsibility to explain isolated poisoning cases occurring inside the UK?
The UK home minister's demand for explanation makes little sense in this regard.
The bottom-line, Russia may have invented Novichok but this writer believes it has even more lethal chemicals in stock for applying on its foreign targets -- the aged Novichok is in the last in line. The UK government politicians have evidently turned the Novichok episodes into its nemesis, but is it a nemesis at all or a carefully designed anti-Russian propaganda?
The writer is Assistant Editor,
The Daily Observer
