A London/Moscow confrontation is now likely, not just possible

The deployment of 180 military personnel trained in nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare to Salisbury has raised the crisis over the attack on the former Soviet spy Sergei Skripov and his daughter to another level.

The NBC-trained troops are now clearing cars, parking sites, and ambulances that might have picked up even the smallest drop of the agent. The current operations in and around Salisbury are reminiscent of the precautions taken when it was believed that Islamist terrorist had been handling ricin, a substance which can kill even in tiny amounts.

The seriousness of the attack indicates that a state agency, or rogue state agents are involved. Suspicion has quite logically fallen on Russia, and the official and unofficial activities of agencies like the GRU and FSB.

A major confrontation between London and Moscow is now a probability rather than a possibility. The question now is what form the crunch will take.

On Friday morning, Moscow reverted to blameless innocence mode – officially, that is. Once again, the Russian government offered to help unravel the mystery attack in Salisbury and identify the substance that has brought Sergei and Yulia Skripov to death’s door.

The lie to all this was given by a Thursday’s broadcasts by Russian state television, the acknowledged mouthpiece of the Kremlin. The frontman declared that Britain was no safe place for spies and traitors (referring to Mr Skripov) and said that spies were safer in Moscow.

It was a foolish jibe, because it has firmly drawn the spotlight to Moscow. The Skripov attack was the 16th on a prominent Russian or Ukrainian in as many years in the UK. The most talked of was that on the maverick intelligence and security analyst Alexander Litvenenko, murdered by Russian agents using polonium-20 in 2006. It took ten years for the UK authorities, after a delayed inquest and then public enquiry, to conclude Russian agents, led by Andrey Lugavoy, had killed on orders from a chain of command that led to President Putin himself.

Lugavoy is still at large and has been sounding off about the Skripov case.

Litvenenko had been delving into organised crime circles in St Petersburg and Moscow at the time that Putin rose to power. This may give a powerful clue to the present case. If Moscow is involved, it may be part of a whole pattern of information operations, subversion and deceit of the kind exposed by the indictment of 13 Russians and three agencies by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III in the United States.

It may also be linked to the dossier on Russian subversion drawn up during the 2016 presidential election by the former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, now of the Orbis security consultancy, which has just had its fullest exposure in the public domain in a long article in the New Yorker.

It also relates to the ideas expounded by the Russian chief of defence staff General Valery Gerasimov in 2013 in a speech and article entitled “The Value of Science is in the Foresight.” Gerasimov and his acolytes have since denied that he was expounding a theory or doctrine of war – but that claim may be a deliberate deception ploy in itself.

In the speech Gerasimov says that the uses of techniques of disinformation and subversion, plausible counter-propaganda, and general activities of ‘non-obvious war’ (like spontaneous strikes and demonstration) mean that “a thriving state can, in a matter of months or even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war.”

The aim of such subversion, with fake news on social media and botnets, is to undermine confidence, and break down trust and belief in civil society, politics and the law. The aim is to cause chaos in the West, rather than pursue physical conquest – though Putin’s recent broadcast about his new nuclear arsenal, cruise missiles and underwater drones suggests he still gripped by the addiction to military menace and threat.

The use of such a potent nerve agent in Salisbury is in itself very worrying. Britain’s defence forces still train for such attacks, but this is a wake-up call that we need to do more. Generally, it has been believed that the deadlier biological and chemical agents, such as ricin, sarin and VX are simply too dangerous for all but the most scientifically adept terrorists to use. This now seems false comfort.

Deadly nerve agents are becoming more common, and terrorists and non-state actors are sure to turn to them. The ease with which two women killed the estranged half brother of Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur airport last year (by smearing his face with a cloth impregnated with nerve agent) was a jolt to western intelligence agencies. Syria’s forces  have continued to use sarin and chlorine, most obviously on Eastern Ghouta in 2013 and last year at Khan Sheikhoun.

One of the most suggestive incidents was the mass attack with sarin gas on the Tokyo underground railway on March 20th 1995. Carried out by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, it killed a dozen immediately and sent 7,000 to hospital. The sarin had been prepared hastily in a makeshift lab – the cult leaders were some of the most brilliant medical and chemistry students of their generation – so the attack only partly succeeded. But it should have raised the flag that do-it-yourself biological and chemical terrorism was on the way in.

The immediate task in Salisbury is to follow the trail of the toxin, known not to be either sarin or VX, and probably something more deadly. The intensity of the operation shows how vulnerable first responders are to such attacks, led in this case by the heroic Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey and the anonymous doctor. Finding the delivery method, the package or container for the nerve agent, will be the jewel on which the whole plot will turn.

If it can be traced to  a state agency, arsenal or lab, we could move rapidly from criminal case to major international incident – and even confrontation.

Britain’s allies must be consulted and asked for support. After the whole ghastly saga of Alexander Litveneko’s very public murder, Russia, curiously, now has much less wriggle room. It cannot rely on Mr Putin’s chest thumping, fake news through official media, RO the botnets and the usual resort to weaponized bluster.