[Breaking] Murder inquiry after Novichok woman dies - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44760875?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_breaking&ns_linkname=news_central&ns_source=twitter Figured it deserved its own thread as this drastically changes the situation, could we be looking at military action?

So, a (suspected, I don't believe we have absolute proof yet?) foreign country has now tried to assassinate one of our citizens, and has successfully killed a innocent bystander. The could be the prelude into something massive.

You'd hope so, but how do you effectively retaliate against Russia?

Don't worry this is probably going to be the prelude to more appeasement.

The fact it's just a member of public means it will probably just be mostly ignored I think.

Retaliate in kind. MAD works both ways - they are limited in their retaliation the same way we are. Assassinating a mid-level director of the Russian SVR (in a plausibly-deniable-but-clearly-us way) would send a clear message of "if you keep killing our people, we'll keep killing yours". And targeting the people responsible for the attacks might dissuade them from doing it again in the future - it makes it a personal risk. Fat chance we'll help, with Putin's cockholster in the White House, but maybe Britain can do it alone. You Brits are supposed to be pretty good at the espionage game.

The "sanctions" aren't really full sanctions. Like you said, gas purchases are still in full swing, and Russia's economy, through means various and dubious, is still tightly interwoven with Europe's. It would require a motion of solidarity between Britain and the rest of Europe to do anything of note in retaliation to this. It would take literally the opposite of Brexit. In this case, Russia won.

lol no it won't.

In 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and killed 269 innocent people, including a sitting member of the US Congress. Nothing happened, and that was at the height of the Cold War. Nuclear weapons have rendered a "Franz Ferdinand" situation (where a single death sparks an entire war) nearly impossible. Nothing will happen, aside from even worse relations with Russia.

In my opinion we should re-approach Ukraine about inclusion in NATO, with the promise of Trainers for their Armed forces to scale up what we (UK) and Canada are already doing, In my mind that would send a clear message that we will not be pushed around.

On the 11th-12th, the NATO summit begins, where we will probably insist on tougher sanctions and Trump will likely insist we drop sanctions all together. Trump will also likely try and antagonise the rest of NATO, saying that we are purely leeching of the US. Europe might be forced to face the possibility that even if the US isn't our outright enemy, we can never truly rely on them as a friend again. It's likely we'll have have to get more serious about a Europe-only NATO like organisation. On the 13th-15th, Trump will come to the UK for a state visit. Due to the massive protests he's likely going to avoid all populated areas and will stick to estates and golf courses meeting business leaders. I strongly suspect he'll come over near by where I live because there's a golf tournament starting on the 18th, which means there's a ready made golf-fortress with warehouse sized tents for the secret service to occupy. Trump will likely have an absolute hissy fit over the protests and the mere idea that he isn't welcome here, while trying to promote the nazi values of his home country over here. On the 16th, he meets Putin in Helsinki. Depending on how the NATO summit and UK state visit goes, it's likely we could see Trump, with his love of dictators, try and appease or befriend Putin some more with a unilateral promise to withdraw US troops or halt NATO exercises - with no warning to the rest of the NATO partners or even his own generals. Who knows, he might even make an executive order to drop US sanctions. I think it might be quite a spicy week. We could actually see NATO's power fall apart, if not NATO itself.

Yeah great, let's start a war. Something we totally need.

journalists are reporting hearing the sounds of a strongly worded letter being written, possibly directed at russia. internal sources suggests an ink pen is being used, no confirmation yet.

Calm down, literally nothing will come of this. The Russians could kill dozens of british people, start their usual "dindu nuffin" routine, and the world would go on about as usual.

Yeah it's not the Russian's I'm worried about though, is it? Nice reading.

clearly the answer to every red blooded american is to just ask putin very nicely and if he says no then leave it at that.

I don't agree with this one bit, though I do remember Russia slaying a bunch of Chechens or something like that after Nord-Ost, didn't seem to do any good.

Confiscate stuff owned by Russian oligarchs linked to government (houses, apartments, etc.), kick their families out and forbid them entry, other methods probably only will hurt common people, which in turn only make russians hate West even more. Though, to really hurt our gov, you probably will need cooperation of everyone in EU, and Brexit will not help that

Tom Clancy is still alive it seems

Disgusting. Can we stop collectively choking on Russia's cock and actually say "actually maybe poisoning our citizens with chemical weapons isn't ok". They illegally invade another country and are now murdering our civilians, at what point do we say enough is enough?

My point is that nothing will happen

I'm not proposing we up and kill a bunch of random Russians. I'm proposing a targeted, proportional response. Ideally, we'd kill someone directly responsible for the novichok attacks, but it's likely we don't know exactly who that is, so targeting someone who merely works for whichever division we believe is responsible might be necessary. The intent is to impose a cost - in manpower and morale - on Russia for performing these attacks. Now, it is entirely possible Russia considers such a cost to still be worth it. Or they may decide to retaliate again, and start attacking our intelligence agents. However, if nothing is done, Russia will still be out there killing people. A response that has a chance of dissuading them is obviously preferable to a non-response that has no chance of success.

you are insane

THIS IS IT THEY'RE GONNA WRITE A LETTER

Punishing the average Russian citizen does not help. It only makes it worse, because they feel they're being directly targeted(And rightfully so), thus they're more likely to support their government in continuing the very actions that started this whole mess.

I can't see any actions besides sanctions unless you wanna invade Russia

Invade and end our suffering since I got laid off. But can you wait until next year, I want to play new Resident Evil