Thread by @carolecadwalla

Govt’s failure to understand exponential growth in March 2020 & its failure to act now are both catastrophic but with key difference.

‘Russia we know what you’re doing. And you will not succeed.’

This was Nov 17. The UK govt *did* know. And did nothing

https://twitter.com/syrpis/status/1501203986011115526

This is how Russia responded. With a clear, overt threat. She specifically called out Russia’s illegal invasion of Crimea. And Russia invoked Crimea in response.

4 months later, Russia used a banned unconventional chemical weapon in heart of UK military establishment: Salisbury.

It may feel like March 2020. But it’s not. Nov 2017 was this crisis’s March 2020. That’s when exponential nature of threat from Russia was known.

Russia made itself clear. It signalled these threats publicly. Yet UK govt denied denied denied Russian had already attacked us

I’ve been thinking about Fiona Hill’s comments on nuclear weapons all week. She makes point Putin has already shown he’s prepared to use unconventional weapons.

And she specifically cites Novichok.

‘There was enough nerve agent in that bottle to kill several thousand people’

I’ve always thought the attack on Skripal was about more than taking out an ex-Russian spy.

This is Salisbury. It’s the base of Britain’s military, just outside its biggest training ground.

It wasn’t (only) a botched assassination. It was a warning.
salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/17974977.…

I know Salisbury because I lived there for a time. I know it’s where Britain’s highest ranking military officers live.

Putin deployed a banned chemical weapon at the heart of the British military establishment.

I don’t believe there is anything accidental about this.

What we’re failing to understand in current moment is that we’re in grips of a stunning & catastrophic military failure.

The oligarchs matter. Their money & influence is a disgrace. And their roubles have bought Conservative compliance.

But the bigger picture is even worse.

Russia left a chemical weapon containing enough nerve agent to kill thousands of British citizens in a rubbish bin.

It doesn’t ever seem to have been acknowledged that it was a sheer fluke that it killed Dawn Sturgess & not the entire town of Salisbury.

This was a Russian military attack on British soil. Where the operatives openly mocked us.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/s…

The Skripal attack - I believe - was hybrid war. It combined both "kinetic warfare" (weapons) & "information warfare".

It wasn't a "botched assassination" attempt. It was a potential war crime, murder of 1000s of civilians.

It was also a stark message to UK military & govt.

But our response to it was a total systems failure. Because, we discovered 2 years later, the British government decided that* it didn't believe in information warfare*.

True fact.

FBI confirmed Russia's actions beyond doubt. But UK govt simply buried it.

We know, thanks to @bellingcat, that GRU (Russian military intelligence) attacked Skripal. And FBI confirmed, GRU attacked US election.

But UK govt buried it. It took astonishing step of deciding Russian information warfare didn't exist. Because? Brexit

theguardian.com/world/2020/jul…

Everyone is making slightly strained historical analogies right now. And here's mine. The way we're responding to events right now is if it's 1938 & Germany has just invaded Sudetenland.

It's not that we don't care about Ukraine. We just don't think we can do anything about it.

But it's not 1938. And it's not Sudetenland. That was 2014 when Russian troops invaded Ukraine, the first illegal occupation in Europe of a sovereign nation since WW2.

And what we've been doing since then, as @peterjukes pointed out yesterday: appeasement
nytimes.com/2019/06/10/boo…

It's 1941. Only Hitler has nukes.