
Russian spies detained in The Hague were planning cyber break-in at Swiss lab - yread
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/09/russian-spies-detained-in-the-hague-were-planning-cyber-break-in-at-swiss-lab-nrc/
======
megous
Quite believable. Russian gov. has a motive to interfere with OPCW
investigations, and anything that can sow more doubt, fear, confusion or
distraction is good as to their strategy post-Chemical attacks that gain
publicity. The final report on Douma attack is yet to be released, so it would
not be late to create needless problems for the investigation, and I trust
OPCW to not make up stuff about hacking attempts certainly more than secret
services or Kremlin. It's a fine international organization. If anything,
Kremlin is probably more interested now that OPCW gained responsibility to
point fingers at perpetrators a few months ago.

~~~
guilhas
Russians had to beg for the OPCW to go collect samples from Douma. While they
were there, UK, FR, US were having fun bombing the area.

How can more Russian FUD be good for Russia? Because that is UK and US do
everyday. They dont need Russia help.

Also OPCW does analysis in more than one lab.

Both Skripal and Syria chemical use theories are very weak.

~~~
megous
Not really. Point me to the OPCW report that says evidence of chemical weapons
use in Syria is weak.

FUD is good, because it takes away/weakens popular support from any kind of
western intervention, which is good for Putin's interests in the region. Less
competition.

Also you're rewriting history. I was actually watching the developments quite
closely as it was happening and there were numerous reports of Russians
delaying OPCW FFM on basis of security in the area, while at the same time
parading around some journalists in the same area.

And last, the US and friends bombing were during the night and in a different
place. Certainly nothing that would prevent OPCW FFM from operating in the
area.

~~~
antpls
I have been starting to read TASS news in parallel to Reuters' feed.

From only reading news, I don't know which side to trust anymore. Putin's gov
denies almost all accusations (cyberattacks, chimical attacks, nerve agents,
etc) from Western countries, and instead accuses the West govs of creating a
"russo-phobia" amongst people opinion.

Example of news you can read on TASS, but not relayed by Reuters :
[http://tass.com/politics/1021365](http://tass.com/politics/1021365)
[http://tass.com/politics/1021274](http://tass.com/politics/1021274)
[http://tass.com/defense/1021107](http://tass.com/defense/1021107)
[http://tass.com/world/1021091](http://tass.com/world/1021091)

And it goes on and on...

If you only read TASS, you would quickly think Western govs are not much
"cleaner" than Russia

~~~
dragonwriter
Reuters isn't a state-owned propaganda outlet; TASS has been since at least
the early days of the Bolshevik regime (and maybe earlier; it was state-owned
telegraph agency under the Tsarist regime, but I don't have any information of
whether it acted as a state propaganda arm then; it's journalist came from a
separate firm.)

~~~
guilhas
That doesn't mean CIA/NSA doesn't influence it. You can clearly see the same
narrative across all mainstream media. And commentators with different
opinions being shutdown.

~~~
dragonwriter
> That doesn't mean CIA/NSA doesn't influence it. You can clearly see the same
> narrative across all mainstream media.

A simple explanation for that is that facts exist and impact the coverage
presented by media outlets that make some effort to do what their overt role
is.

I mean, alternatively, you could suspect,as you imply, that all non-fringe
media that aren't state run propaganda arms of US rivals are, in fact, US
state propaganda outlets pushing CIA/NSA scripted narratives.

Well, except when Paul Manafort isn't planting propaganda for Russian client
regimes in them, at any rate.

~~~
guilhas
I just agree we are better informed watching news from both countries when it
involves them. Be it state owned or not.

"Hillary is going to win the election!" Was certainly propaganda.

I don't have any theory, but you can see they all somehow sing to the same
tune, including UK and EU. They want to give their approved opinions instead
of reporting reality. With the exception of the ocasional independent
journalist.

~~~
krapp
>"Hillary is going to win the election!" Was certainly propaganda.

An opinion that one of two candidates would win the election was "certainly
propaganda?"

~~~
guilhas
Ok. What I meat was: "All mainstream media claiming Hillary was certainly the
election winner. And some pointing statistics like 95%." was propaganda.

~~~
dragonwriter
No, the predictors making that prediction weren't doing propaganda, and most
mainstream outlets didn't make that (or any other prediction), though many
reported the fact of the existence of one or more of the predictions that were
made.

Those making the 95% prediction were using statistical models established for
that purpose before the identity of the candidates or what those models would
show were known. They quite arguably are bad models as they assumed state
level deviations from polling results are independent where history suggests
that, in fact, they are strongly correlated (a fact pointed out by Nate Silver
prior to the election, in explaining why 538 had a much lower projection of
Clinton's probability of victory.) But choosing a bad model isn't propaganda.

~~~
guilhas
Nice excuses. What I heard was the media, and the "experts", did a bad job.

A poll, your favorite. Let's hope they used a good model.
[https://news.gallup.com/poll/197090/majority-voters-think-
me...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/197090/majority-voters-think-media-favors-
clinton.aspx)

------
yread
Is it related to this? [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/30/swiss-lab-
analys...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/30/swiss-lab-analysed-
salisbury-nerve-agent-says-targeted-russian/)

~~~
PeterisP
Yes.

------
AlexeyParamonov
Yeah, we, Russians, are so stupid so decided to kill the guy who was in our
prison several years ago (why did not we do that then?) with a top Soviet
chemical weapon which is like droping a nuclear bomb to kill a single person.
There is a information war happening to desecrate Russian Federation in the
eyes of the world and nothing more.

~~~
neffy
That is one of the interesting things about all this - but there are also much
easier ways to do false flag operations.

The evidence of this and previous assassination attempts is either there´s
some idiot at the top of Soviet intelligence who just _has_ to be creative, or
far more likely the whole point is to send a very public message to the rather
large Russian diaspora, that no matter how far they run, Mother Russia is
looking over their shoulder.

For that purpose, a quiet inconspicuous assassination would be totally
pointless.

~~~
azangru
Wow, so what you are basically saying is that the Russians _intended_ this
assassination to be discovered and demonstrated to be a poisoning attack?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Given how these stories over the poisoning have played out it certainly
_looks_ that way. The "cover" story is comically poor, and they have plenty of
people intelligent enough to do better.

So short of Putin calling a press conference saying "Yup, we did it" it
couldn't have been telegraphed much clearer.

~~~
azangru
> they have plenty of people intelligent enough to do better

Now, that's a _very_ charitable assumption. I am not sure we have any evidence
for that :-)

> Given how these stories over the poisoning have played out it certainly
> looks that way.

But that would mean that they were provoking the Western countries to give
them hell. I am the first to admit that I do not hold their intellectual
powers in any high esteem, but even so, even for them, this sounds
_outrageously_ insolent and stupid.

~~~
foldr
>But that would mean that they were provoking the Western countries to give
them hell

Gee, you think?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation)

Putin clearly has no problem with the idea of provoking Western countries.

~~~
azangru
Crimea is really very much of a corner case.

First, it's not in a Western country.

Second, the annexation happened soon after the Ukranian revolution, which made
the legitimacy of the Ukranian government (and the very status of the Ukranian
state) at that point uncertain.

Third, there were various historical and political considerations muddying the
issue (Crimea was given to the Ukraine by the head of the USSR only about a
generation ago, and there was a general feeling of a historical injustice done
by this act; there was a large Russian population in Crimea; and the
revolutionary Ukraine was markedly nationalistic and anti-Russian, which
probably pushed a large portion of the Russian-speaking Crimean population
into the embrace of Russia).

Smuggling a military-grade poison in Britain is quite a different matter.

~~~
foldr
The invasion of Crimea is a much bigger deal that the Skripal poisoning.
Russia clearly isn't afraid of "provoking" Western countries.

~~~
azangru
Why is it a bigger deal?

It _could_ have been a bigger deal if Ukraine were a member of NATO, and the
alliance had an obligation to respond. But as the things stand, why is it a
big deal — for the US, the UK, Germany, France, etc.?

(Skripals poisoning, in contrast, would imply a special operation on the soil
of a sovereign Western country, using the tabooed chemical weapons. A
concrete, old-school, physical action, as opposed to the more abstract
propaganda wars or some shady online activities.)

~~~
foldr
>Skripals poisoning, in contrast, would imply a special operation on the soil
of a sovereign Western country, using the tabooed chemical weapons.

That's nothing Russia hadn't already done years before.

~~~
azangru
And proudly signaled to the rest of the world that it was them that did it?

What cases are you thinking about?

~~~
foldr
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko)

~~~
azangru
Yes, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

Even the Wikipedia article says that the correct diagnosis — the poisoning by
polonium-210 — was made to a large extent due to a happy coincidence: there
happened to be a scientist in the facility where Litvinenko was treated who
happened to have worked with polonium. Were it not for that coincidence, it is
very possible the correct diagnosis would not have been reached, and the very
investigation that followed would not gone very far.

So I am not sure how Litvinenko poisoning is an illustration of an
assassination attempt advertised as such to the rest of the world. On the
contrary, it looks like a murder attempt that was intended to have never been
solved.

~~~
foldr
>On the contrary, it looks like a murder attempt that was intended to have
never been solved

Seriously? Using Polonium meant that it took weeks for Litvinenko to die,
giving him plenty of time to make it clear exactly who was responsible, and
even give interviews to the press. If they wanted to keep it quiet, they did a
pretty terrible job.

------
steveharman
They weren't spies, they were tourists. We get them all the time here in the
UK.

~~~
raverbashing
Just walking around, doing nothing suspicious and carrying nothing special.

~~~
coldtea
Well, carrying whatever some secret service said they were carrying (and which
we should take their word for it) in an ongoing effort to revive the Cold
War...

Perhaps they even had WMDs on them...

~~~
heavenlyblue
>> and which we should take their word for it

Would you rather distrust the UK secret service and believe whatever the hell
Putin is saying?

My Russian parents are so happy to listen to Russian television it makes me
sick (given the fact that they are Lithuanian citizens since 1991).

The question is not whether you should trust UK secret service, but rather -
which side are you on? Because the fact is that we'll probably never know
anyway, and Russia is happy to monetise on the liberal distrust of the
government.

After all, Soviets did have a culture of managing the public opinion in their
own state.

~~~
kushti
Your "logic", basically "choose your side and believe without questioning" is
not appropriate for any more or less educated person, I need to say.

~~~
heavenlyblue
You choose a side based on the environment you support. The fact is that those
"educated people" make uneducated disappointed in their own government, and
Russia is happy to take advantage of that fact. The problem isn't the truth,
the problem is the platform where that truth is practically used against your
own system of values.

~~~
azangru
This is a really interesting proposition. So what you are saying is, if your
values do not agree with the truth (whatever that might be; I am not sure what
you mean here), then so much the worse for the truth? It is not your values
that need revising, it is the truth that needs to be ignored?

------
ryanlol
Article says detained, not arrested.

~~~
huhtenberg
Swiss newspaper article also says (Google-translated):

    
    
        Why the two were brought back to Russia and not 
        prosecuted in the Netherlands or transferred to
        Switzerland, neither the Dutch military intelligence 
        nor other requested authorities wanted to explain. 
        
        It is also unknown what they did in the Netherlands.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
would you have a link please?

~~~
huhtenberg
[https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/panorama/russische-spione-
auf-d...](https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/panorama/russische-spione-auf-dem-weg-
ins-berner-oberland-verhaftet/story/27257777)

It's the second link from the first paragraph of the HN's submission.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
thank you!

------
Wimpzilla
All this stuff sums up to the already existing superciliousness nonsense a
living form needs to goes through during life, as perpetual assault to any
knowledgeable human being living on this planet! Human Being going down
further and further without any brake!

Edit: Nice insta downvote!

------
kushti
I simply can not find source in the original Swiss article. The most relevant
part of the article is:

The Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) confirms on request that the Swiss
authorities are aware of "the case of the Russian spies who were discovered in
the Hague and then taken away". NDB communications chief Isabelle Graber also
writes: "The NDB has actively participated in this operation, together with
its Dutch and British partners." This has contributed to the "prevention of
illegal actions against a critical Swiss infrastructure".

How's that related to the two guys detained in Netherlands? I mean, the
accusation of them being targeted Swiss lab?

How can I be sure this is not a sensationalist fantasy of a journo?

It would be good to publish the full report from NDB.

