In Russia, you only fuck up once

The head of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency that the West has blamed for a string of brazen attacks [Igor Korobov, 62, who ran the spy agency since 2016] died on [November 21] after "a serious and long illness," the Russian defense ministry said.

[...]

Britain has accused the GRU of attempting to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a nerve agent in the city of Salisbury.

[...]

Speculation about Korobov's fate had been growing since an unconfirmed Russian media report that he had been summoned by President Vladimir Putin after the Skripal affair and severely criticized for the operation which left the Skripals alive and the GRU a target of mockery in the Western media.

[...]

Asked last month if there would be a shake-up at the defense ministry in the aftermath of the Skripal affair, the Kremlin said the low quality of the allegations leveled at GRU did not justify such changes.

  NBC

And what a coincidence: Korobov is dead, so now they can put someone else in.

Putin may be Stalin's heir.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A different Christopher Steele report

That's an RT article headline from early November, 2015.

Mikhail Lesin, a prominent Russian political figure and mass media expert credited with inspiring the creation of Russia Today (now RT), has died in Washington, DC after a heart attack.

Lesin, a former press minister and ex-head of Gazprom-Media, Russia’s largest media holding, died at the age of 57 on Wednesday, according to family members. “Mikhail Lesin died from a heart stroke,” a family member told RIA Novosti.

Meanwhile, TASS has reported that Lesin was found dead in his hotel room in Washington, DC, citing the Russian Embassy in the US. Police found no signs of foul play, but a formal investigation has been launched. It has been reported that Lesin had been suffering from a prolonged unidentified illness.

  RT

Fast forward to a BuzzFeed article today:

The FBI possesses a secret report asserting that Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was beaten to death by hired thugs in Washington, DC — directly contradicting the US government’s official finding that Mikhail Lesin died by accident.

The report, according to four sources who have read all or parts of it, was written by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who also wrote the famous dossier alleging that Russia had been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Donald Trump.

[...]

Both the UK and the US have blamed the Kremlin for poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England this month, using a rare nerve agent that endangered bystanders. (Russia has denied it was behind the poisoning.) In the wake of that attack, the British government has opened a review of all 14 suspicious deaths linked to Russia that a BuzzFeed News investigation exposed last year.

[...]

• Steele’s report says that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin, the four sources said.


• The thugs had been instructed to beat Lesin, not kill him, but they went too far, the sources said Steele wrote.


• Three of the sources said that the report described the killers as Russian state security agents moonlighting for the oligarch.


• The Steele report is not the FBI's only source for this account of Lesin's death: Three other people, acting independently from Steele, said they also told the FBI that Lesin had been bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for the same oligarch named by Steele.

Lesin’s corpse was found in a Washington, DC, hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015. The coroner determined that he had died from blunt force injuries to the head and had also sustained blunt force injuries to his neck, torso, upper extremities, and lower extremities.

  Buzzfeed

All that was consistent with a heart attack?

After an 11-month investigation, a federal prosecutor announced in late 2016 that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an “accident,” with the coroner adding acute alcohol intoxication as a contributing cause of death, and prosecutors closed the case.

His room must have been full of furniture that he kept falling on as he continued to get up and have another go at walking. I wonder what he hit his neck on.

“What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died,” an FBI agent told BuzzFeed News last year. “Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.”

[...]

For his report to the FBI about Lesin, Steele gathered intelligence from high-level sources in Moscow, according to the two sources who read the whole report.

All four of the people who read Steele’s report said it pins Lesin’s murder on a professional relationship gone lethally awry. According to the report, they said, Lesin fell out with a powerful oligarch close to Putin. Wanting to intimidate Lesin, the oligarch then contracted with Russian state security agents to beat up Lesin, the report states, according to three of the sources. The goal was not to kill Lesin, all four sources said Steele wrote, but Lesin died from the attack.

Perhaps as a result of a heart attack incurred while being severely beaten.

Since the outcry over the poisoning death of Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England recently, the British government has agreed to review the case of Lesin, along with another 13 suspcious deaths exposed by BuzzFeed that are allegedly linked to Russia.?


...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He finally had no choice

President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the United States on Monday, including 12 people identified as Russian intelligence officers who have been stationed at the United Nations in New York, in response to Russia’s alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain.

The expulsion order, announced by administration officials, also closes the Russian consulate in Seattle. The Russians and their families have seven days to leave the United States, according to officials.

  NYTCNN

Why Seattle? Is it the Russian consulate in the US closest to Russia? Can they see Russia from their front porch?

The officials said that the closure of the consulate in Seattle was ordered because of its proximity to a U.S. naval base.

Is it the only Russian consulate near a US military facility? Seems like that would be a good place fromn which to keep an eye on them.

“Today’s actions make the United States safer by reducing Russia’s ability to spy on Americans and to conduct covert operations that threaten America’s national security,” the White House said in a statement.

Except spying in the age of cyber hacking seems to be the currently preferred method. They can do that from anywhere.

Mr. Trump has said that, despite its denials, Russia was likely behind it. “It looks like it,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on March 15, adding that he had spoken with Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain.

“We are in deep discussions,” Mr. Trump continued. “A very sad situation. It certainly looks like the Russians were behind it. Something that should never, ever happen. And we’re taking it very seriously, as I think are many others.”

Very sad indeed. He trusted Vlad.

The senior administration officials who described the expulsion order said the three weeks that lapsed between the attack and White House action was due to close coordination among about a dozen American allies.

And Trump not wanting to believe that he has to risk making an enemy of the one person on earth who has the power to take him down at the snap of his fingers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: