According to an article Leon Trotsky published on 10 August 1940 in Liberty Magazine, just ten days before he was ice-picked to death by NKVD ( KGB predecessor) agent Ramon Mercador, in Mexico City, he revealed he thought that Soviet Communist Party leader Vladimir Lenin had been poisoned on the orders of Stalin, and the murder was conducted by one of Lenin's two cooks, a man named Spiridon Putin: the grandfather of the current Russian President!
The teller of the tale was Gavriill Volkov, Lenin's other cook, while in jail later.
The source of this intriguing nugget is pp 431-437 of The Putin Corporation, (Gibson Square, 2012) -citing original source in Russian - by two Russian authors Dr Yuri Felshtinsky and the late Vladimir Pribylovsky, who was found dead in mysterious circumstances in January 2016.
Meanwhile, The Chairman of the 2018 Meeting of States Parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, Ljupčo Jivan Gjorgjinski, of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia wrote to Convention members on 21 February this year stating, inter alia,
“When we have all the evidence of what took place, we will - if it is appropriate - attribute it to somebody.If that is the case then we will have a plan in place. We need to be very methodical, keep a cool head and be based on the facts, not rumour.”
On 6 March 2018 Sir Alan Duncan, Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, made a written statement to Parliament, on the outcome of the latest annual meeting of States Parties of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (
HCWS515)* reporting to MPs that
“At December’s meeting of States Parties, we sought to agree a substantive new programme of work to advance our objectives, through a series of expert technical meetings leading up to the next Review Conference in 2021. The UK, with the US and Russia, the two other Depositary Governments for the Convention, worked with many other states throughout 2017 to build consensus around common elements of such a substantive new work programme.”
Two days earlier, on 4 March, a Russian national British double agent, now resident in the UK, after a multiple spy-swap in 2010, Sergei Skripal, was found unconscious and seriously ill alongside his adult daughter Yulia in a park in Salisbury,
Two days later, in a Parliamentary statement on UK Government Policy on Russia 6 March, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told MPs in a statement that escalated tensions to the verge of being at war stressing: "I increasingly think that we have to categorise them [Russian cyber-attacks on the UK’s critical infrastructure] as acts of war."
Next day the investigating British authorities announced they considered the cause of the sickness of the Skripals was a nerve agent, possibly VX, GF, Tabun, Soran or Sarin( “Sergei Skripal: former Russian spy poisoned with nerve agent, say police, 7 March ; https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/07/russian-spy-police-appeal-for-witnesses-as-cobra-meeting-takes-place). Sergei Skripal case: what do nerve agents do and how hard are they to make? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/07/what-do-nerve-agents-do-and-how-hard-are-they-to-make-sergei-skripal)
www.theguardian.com
The ingredients for the lethal substances apparently involved in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal are easy to obtain and are usually absorbed quickly through the skin ...
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Meanwhile, British Home Secretary Amber Rudd warned that politicians and press to “stay cool” and not jump to conclusions over whom the perpetrators might have been, saying in an early morning interview on BBC radio 4’s Today Programme:
“When we have all the evidence of what took place, we will - if it is appropriate - attribute it to somebody.If that is the case then we will have a plan in place. We need to be very methodical, keep a cool head and be based on the facts, not rumour.”
But the press seem determined to finger the FSB, the Russian State’s secret service successors to the KGB, as perpetrators of the crime.
So, we seem to be in a bizarre situation in which two of the three depositary states of the very multilateral convention that bans toxin weapons are moving towards a serious diplomatic dispute in which one, the UK, accusers another, Russia, of using these very weapons on their territory.
Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice!
*Meeting of States Parties of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention
States Parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) held their annual meeting 4-8 December 2017. This was the first such meeting since the Convention’s Eighth Review Conference in November 2016, on which I made a statement to the House on 10 January 2017 [HCWS400].
The Convention is one of the foundation stones of the international disarmament and arms control system. The UK, one of the Convention’s three Depositary Governments, is strongly committed to its effective and universal implementation as an essential instrument in helping combat and mitigate the threats posed by biological warfare. Our objectives are to enable the Convention to remain relevant in addressing the evolving threats of biological or toxin weapons being developed or used, and to keep pace with the rapid and diverse advances in many fields of science and technology.
At December’s meeting of States Parties, we sought to agree a substantive new programme of work to advance our objectives, through a series of expert technical meetings leading up to the next Review Conference in 2021. The UK, with the US and Russia, the two other Depositary Governments for the Convention, worked with many other states throughout 2017 to build consensus around common elements of such a substantive new work programme.
I am pleased to inform the House that this hard work is paying dividends. States Parties joined consensus to agree a new Programme of expert meetings each year from 2018 up to and including 2020. The meetings will discuss issues such as the preparedness and response to any potential use of biological and toxin weapons, and developments in Science and Technology. The agreed programme will discuss and promote common understanding and effective action on these issues, aiming to strengthen the implementation of the Convention as a whole to respond to evolving challenges. Importantly, future annual Meetings of States Parties have authority to respond to these expert discussions, including by taking necessary budgetary and financial measures by consensus with a view to ensuring the proper implementation of the work programme.
The Convention is one of the foundation stones of the international disarmament and arms control system. The UK, one of the Convention’s three Depositary Governments, is strongly committed to its effective and universal implementation as an essential instrument in helping combat and mitigate the threats posed by biological warfare. Our objectives are to enable the Convention to remain relevant in addressing the evolving threats of biological or toxin weapons being developed or used, and to keep pace with the rapid and diverse advances in many fields of science and technology.
At December’s meeting of States Parties, we sought to agree a substantive new programme of work to advance our objectives, through a series of expert technical meetings leading up to the next Review Conference in 2021. The UK, with the US and Russia, the two other Depositary Governments for the Convention, worked with many other states throughout 2017 to build consensus around common elements of such a substantive new work programme.
I am pleased to inform the House that this hard work is paying dividends. States Parties joined consensus to agree a new Programme of expert meetings each year from 2018 up to and including 2020. The meetings will discuss issues such as the preparedness and response to any potential use of biological and toxin weapons, and developments in Science and Technology. The agreed programme will discuss and promote common understanding and effective action on these issues, aiming to strengthen the implementation of the Convention as a whole to respond to evolving challenges. Importantly, future annual Meetings of States Parties have authority to respond to these expert discussions, including by taking necessary budgetary and financial measures by consensus with a view to ensuring the proper implementation of the work programme.
This outcome was the product of determined diplomacy over a number of years. The achievement is all the more notable after the disappointing result of the 2016 Review Conference, and a cycle of relatively unproductive meetings which had lowered expectations of progress on a more ambitious work plan.
The UK will continue to work hard to support further tangible progress towards universal and effective national implementation of the Convention, and to enable it to maintain its relevance and vital role as a keystone agreement in the broader international disarmament and non-proliferation architecture.
The UK will continue to work hard to support further tangible progress towards universal and effective national implementation of the Convention, and to enable it to maintain its relevance and vital role as a keystone agreement in the broader international disarmament and non-proliferation architecture.
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