Comments on: Polonium-210, Novichok, and now Epibatidine

By: T. Beholder

T. Beholder — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 12:47:27 +0000

Oh dear. At some point it’s not even “lazy asses are plagiarizing the Original British BS”, but rather “morons are unable to invent anything new”.

Handle says:

I have strong doubts about this claim. I think Putin had the guy killed, but also that the European foreign ministers are just making up the bit about conclusive identification of the lethal compound. What’s the explanation for use of the compound?

I suppose one could hypothesize up something. But the simple questions remain, like what’s even the point? Serious assassination? It’s a stupid method. Demonstration? It is indeed not clear WTF is even demonstrated.

Middle management dodged retirement with acute mental problems and did weird things (see Voynovich — that one almost certainly was real poisoning)? Both too coincidental and too convenient for the adversary.

What’s left?

Besides, it’s a copycat of a pre-existing scandal, so… IMO the simplest hypothesis is the most likely. The authors had to make it sensational enough to compete with the British BS. Thus needed something exotic. But unlike the British professional BS slingers, they are not diligent or smart enough to look up literature on the subject and hunt down uncommon sources like Mirzoyanov. So they picked the inspiration from Hollywood or Young Adult section: poison dart frogs!

In general my impression is that these incidents are considered opportunities to

…and if politicians want opportunities, why must they politely wait for one? Duh.

By: McChuck

McChuck — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 13:25:43 +0000

And how, precisely, did Western European leaders, who are at war with Russia, obtain samples of the dead man’s blood?

By: Handle

Handle — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 22:43:47 +0000

I have strong doubts about this claim. I think Putin had the guy killed, but also that the European foreign ministers are just making up the bit about conclusive identification of the lethal compound. What’s the explanation for use of the compound? It isn’t to demonstrate that Russia has it: the total synthesis is well within the capability of good organic chemists in most countries, and Russia has a deep bench of excellent chemists. It isn’t to say, “we can reach out and touch you with this very lethal stuff” – they did it in the most under-their-control environment possible. I’d guess the most plausible explanation if true is that they wanted to confirm whether Euro lab detection capabilities was sophisticated enough to accurately detect the substance even though they probably only needed half a milligram and the samples would have been both very dilute and degraded in the long period between poisoning and getting samples. That might have been an open question for Russian Intel, and now they know the Euros can do it. Still, that all that seems a stretch. For it to be true, the Russians would have have seen their own equipment not able to do it, and weren’t sure whether the Euro cutting edge was far enough ahead to do it. But I know that Russian equipment and capability is, if not perhaps true best-in-world cutting edge, then close enough for something like this, if it’s actually doable at all. In general my impression is that these incidents are considered opportunities to justify whatever actions they want against the Russians by characterizing them as a country making and using banned nuclear, chemical, and bio-chemical agents, which has a long track record of generating disproportionately emotional negative public sentiment and manufacturing consent for the willingness to go to war or continue a war.