Craig Murray: Nonsense Drones & Novichok

The notion that nuclear war should be fought over who is mayor of Lugansk has so little public support that Russophobia is being assiduously stoked by Western governments and the E.U. itself.

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

Europe urgently needs to re-establish access to Russian oil and gas. Gas prices are high — as all U.K. energy consumers know — and German gas storage is at a record low for September. Gulf production is degraded, supplies are cut off and its long-term strategic stability undermined.

German manufacturing already suffered a 9.5 percent production loss from 2022 to 2026 following the Russian gas shutdown, with the loss in energy-intensive manufacturing (including petrochemicals, chemicals, metals, glass/ceramics/stone, paper, mineral oil etc.) at 15.2 percent.

Western Europe can regain access to Russian hydrocarbons either by accepting a negotiated peace in Ukraine, or by attempting regime change in Russia. The political class in Europe have evidently decided to go all out for regime change.

It would of course be much easier, and much safer, to settle the Ukrainian conflict. We can identify the following reasons the European political “elite” is not taking that path:

Loss of face and political capital by in situ leaders who have gone all in for conflict with Russia — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, etc.

Generational family and national hatred of Russia by those wanting to reverse World War II in Eastern Europe — von der Leyen, Kallas, Merz, etc.

Deep common interests between the political personnel and the military-industrial complex

Note that none of these motives has anything to do with the welfare of their people, and still less “democracy.” I find it very hard to think of any occasion when a drive towards war had such little foundation.

Consider this. The United Kingdom, like many Western countries, is openly supplying the Ukraine with long-range missiles, manufacturing plans for long-range missiles, and personnel to service them, in the full knowledge that Ukraine is using those missiles in an attempt to devastate civilian infrastructure deep within Russia, killing many Russian civilians in the process.

Yet we are repeatedly told by both politicians and the media that Russia is the threat to the U.K., when very plainly it is the opposite which is the truth. Until this year, Russia had in 300 years of history never had any plans to invade or occupy the U.K. — while the U.K. invaded Russia in 1854 and 1917. I presume the Russians are currently working on defensive plans against the U.K., given the disgraceful warmongering of the government.

The notion that the boundaries of a Ukrainian state, which had never existed in history until 1991, are so sacrosanct they cannot be adjusted to avoid World War III, is mad. They were only ever internal Soviet boundaries. Ukrainian is a new nationality, but the Ukrainians are entitled to a state if they wish one. What they are not entitled to do is insist on the old Soviet boundary, when they have:

• closed Russian schools, universities, bookshops, theatres, cinemas, libraries, kindergartens, banks and churches
• banned the Socialist Party, Communist Party, Left Party, 11 other parties and eight trade unions
• continued the systematic glorification of Nazi and genocidal figures from Ukraine’s past — alienating Poland in the process.

The notion that nuclear war should be fought over who is mayor of Lugansk has so little public support that Russophobia is being assiduously stoked by Western governments and the E.U. itself.

The latest episode is the extraordinarily thin gruel of the “Leipzig airport attack” story. Last week we had the most incredible release of coordinated statements by Western European leaders all telling us that the evidence is plain of a “hybrid attack” by Russia.

Every single one of them uses the same expression “hybrid attack.”

Why? 

Every single one of them uses the same expression ‘hybrid attack’.

Why? pic.twitter.com/pHJE2gJ2iZ

— John Laughland (@john_laughland) September 2, 2026

All accompanied by no evidence whatsoever.

History of False Flag Attacks

The German state of course has history with this sort of false flag. On the night of Aug. 31/Sept. 1, 1939, it staged false flag attacks by Polish forces on the German border post at Gliwice (Gleiwitz), and a couple of other locations. Murdered corpses of political prisoners were dressed in Polish uniforms and spread around. A radio broadcast was transmitted in Polish. This “attack” was the justification for the German invasion of Poland the next day.

Now the “Russian drone attack” on Leipzig Halle airport was on Aug. 4, and yet the carefully coordinated attribution to Russia, with identical statements from all western European powers, was not launched until Sept. 1.

I have seen it suggested that this was deliberately on the anniversary of Gliwice. That seems to me unlikely, and yet not to have at least avoided the date of perhaps the most famous false flag in history — by the same state — is very curious, when the date was so obviously voluntary for an attack that occurred four weeks before.

If you reject the warmongers’ logic for a moment, the actual scandal is that there were Ukrainian aircraft in Leipzig stacked with German weapons to kill Russians, not that an amateur toy drone allegedly tried to stop them.

To be told that this is a Russian attack by precisely the same set of goons who lied to us that it was Russia that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline, is testing not just the gullibility of the public, but its patience.

The Farcical Novichok Story

In the U.K., the purveyors of Russophobia — including government ministers — fall back repeatedly on the farcical “Russian Novichok on Salisbury” story [of a supposed attempt to assassinate a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies with the Novichok nerve agent in the city of Salisbury, England, on 4 March 2018] to explain why we should prepare for war with Russia.

Nobody has ever even pretended to answer the dissection of the official line I published in my article, “Pure – Ten Points I Just Don’t Believe.”

I am now able to add a further point I was not aware of at the time, thanks to Tim Norman and his coverage of the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry. The use of a judicial inquiry to determine official cause of death, rather than a coroner’s court which exists for that specific purpose, is almost always a sign of a government cover-up — see also the Hutton Inquiry and the murder of David Kelly.

But one thing the inquiry did receive was the toxicology report on Dawn Sturgess, [who, according to official accounts, died not far from Salisbury from exposure to Novichok] from the National Health Service central toxicology lab in Birmingham. This is what it found in Dawn Sturgess’ blood:

It is worth noting that fentanyl was also found, but this was removed from this list presented to the inquiry as she had been given fentanyl in hospital. That does not, of course, mean there was, or was not, already fentanyl in her bloodstream. But what you do have for sure is cocaine, plus a synthetic opioid given by the NHS to heroin addicts, plus gin and tonic, plus two different antidepressants, plus sleeping tablets.

What you don’t have is Novichok.

The idea that the NHS central toxicology lab cannot detect organophosphate poisoning or was not testing for it in the blood of someone in Salisbury when the entire media was already screaming Novichok, is arrant nonsense.

Only the Ministry of Defence laboratory at Porton Down claimed to find Novichok — and controlled the samples which the OPCW [Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons], an equally corrupt institution, got.

Dawn Sturgess was a frail, known long-term drug addict. The combination in her bloodstream could kill anybody — of course depending on the quantities. The astonishing thing is that the pathologist at the inquiry stated he had been given no quantities or concentrations for these substances. He was therefore in no position to say they did not kill her.

This is incredible. There is no such thing as a toxicology report which does not quantify concentrations. Otherwise the information is clinically meaningless. I have spoken with three doctors, two nurses and a senior NHS administrator. All say it is impossible the toxicology report came without quantification. I assume the pathologist was not lying; so they must have been deliberately deleted. Only government can do that, and the obvious motive is to cover up the actual cause of death.

Let us face it: from that list of substances in her blood the actual cause of death is extremely obvious.

The great structural weakness of the inquiry was that nobody had the job of scepticism about the official story. The only non-governmental representative was Michael Mansfield, who represented Dawn Sturgess’ family, and his brief was to argue that Dawn Sturgess was not a drug addict. That – I am sorry to say — completely untrue version of events fitted the story which both the government and Sturgess’s family wished to be put forward.

I am genuinely upset to have to relate unpleasant things about a dead woman who was a victim of circumstance in her life, in order to tell the truth, but you don’t get cocaine and buprenorphine in your blood by accident. We therefore had the farce of the police apologising at the inquiry for having called Dawn Sturgess a drug addict.

So we have alleged Novichok in Salisbury which killed nobody, and an explosive drone, or possibly two, in Leipzig which did not explode. To counter this massive threat, we need to push an entire continent to nuclear war. As a first step, we need to cut health and social spending to give trillions more to arms manufacturers, and prepare our children for conscription, to die on the battlefield.

Forgive me if I am not convinced.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

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This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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