UPDATE
I am prepared to acknowledge that, given the gate design, they could have passed through different gates in exact synchronicity and this may be a red herring. I am leaving this post up here as it is good to acknowledge mistakes. Please read my updated post Skripals – The Mystery Deepens
Russia has developed an astonishing new technology enabling its secret agents to occupy precisely the same space at precisely the same time.
These CCTV images released by Scotland yard today allegedly show Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov both occupying exactly the same space at Gatwick airport at precisely the same second. 16.22.43 on 2 March 2018. Note neither photo shows the other following less than a second behind.
There is no physically possible explanation for this. You can see ten yards behind each of them, and neither has anybody behind for at least ten yards. Yet they were both photographed in the same spot at the same second.
The only possible explanations are:
1) One of the two is travelling faster than Usain Bolt can sprint
2) Scotland Yard has issued doctored CCTV images/timeline.
I am going with the Met issuing doctored images.
UPDATE
A number of people have pointed out a third logical possibility, that the photographs are not of the same place and they are coming through different though completely identical entry channels. The problem with that is the extreme synchronicity. You can see from the photos that the channel(s) are enclosed and quite long, and they would have had to enter different entrances to the channels. So it is remarkable they were at exactly the same point at the same time. Especially as one of them appears to be holding (wheeled?) luggage and one has only a shoulder bag.
I have traveled through Gatwick many times but cannot call to mind precisely where they are. Can anybody pinpoint the precise place in the airport? Before or after passport control? Before or after baggage collection? Before or after customs? The only part of the airport this looks like to me is shortly after leaving the plane after the bridge, and before joining the main gangway to passport control – in which case passengers are not split into separated channels at the stage this was taken. I can’t recall any close corridors as long as this after passport control. But I am open to correction.
Please read my updated post Skripals – The Mystery Deepens
Street photo was shopped too:
http://i68.tinypic.com/x5td3t.png
P.S. Airport shot was shopped: one of the image was rotated and drawn text, but all 2 photos was from same camera position (you can rotate it back and see 100% same details). Example with reflected, but you can do same without reflect (only rotate):
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4f8c61fe54f22c13e4fbabaaaff8737ebfda95efa98b774e8f9f85ff95ae9a79.gif
Craig Murray,
” Russia’s Alleged Skripal ‘Assassins’ Caught Breaking The Laws Of Physics By Tyler Durden ”
You are famous now – You have been published by Zerohedge, and they acknowledged you
“Authored by Craig Murray”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50195.htm
Well done.
Tony
Unfortunately this intelligent hypothesis, which in my opinion has now been shown to be false at the 99% level, may now become common currency among the conspiratard “Sandy Hook was staged”-type milieu.
A different camera angle, but still pointing down the corridor, must surely mean the camera was mounted, in a different position.
And therefore, though the wall, is in a similar, position to the other walls, it’s still A DIFFERENT WALL, which means the camera will also have been different, and the corridor, would have been similar, BUT DIFFERENT.
Not very good at this deductive reasoning stuff, are you?
It is unlikely that Gatwick airport would have two corridors with more or less identical structures mounted thereon. It would be extremely unlikely that two persons would be filmed at exactly the same time in the same position in the two different corridors, if they existed.
Regarding the different camera angles, I presume the cameras are pivotally mounted about different axes, and it was pivoted slightly about the horizontal axis between the two shots.
Like all complex buildings like airports. Wheres the camera identification information.
CAM 1, CAM 2
The file names
CO1416-18-CCTV2.jpg
CO1416-2018-CCTV1.jpg
suggest different cameras
To the people with the correct tools, If you use extreme contrast and brightness setting.
You can see the JPG artefact around the date time stamp is too regular, where the selection tool used was the
rectangular method. This is with CO1416-18-CCTV2.jpg
File name also suggests the time of 14:16, its what I would use.
The Sun has found a “glamorous Russian woman” angle. Except she’s from the Ukraine and has a Ukrainian-sounding surname. (My expert says that Sun editor Tony Gallagher can be heard on tape saying “Ukrainian? Russian? I don’t give a toss. Has she got big tits?“) She is Ruslan Boshirov’s “sole social media pal”, she claims she only met him once – five years ago in Prague (well I suppose it would have to be either Prague or Vienna – and she doesn’t know him.
WW3 it is, then.
The photographer’s face was in the mirror: the British government’s lack of interest in the Skripals’ [two] friends ”at Zizzi’s” implies its involvement in their poisoning. and subsequent disappearence
This widely-published photo of Sergei and Yulia “at Zizzi’s” (https://www.globalresearch.ca/a-british-gag-order-after-the-skripals-poisoning-points-to-uk-government-guilt/5638522 ) indicates that Sergei knew the photographer, who shared their table with an apparent fourth person (note the fourth glass in the foreground). Less than 45 minutes after they left “Zizzi’s”, they would be found in distress on the Maltings Park bench. Although there is apparently no attribution for the photograph, the photographer inadvertently took his own picture because of the mirror just behind the Skripals’ heads. Since that man could have been the last person who saw them before their collapse, the UK government should have identified him as a major suspect. Its lack of interest speaks for itself.
Background: Late in the afternoon of March 4th, Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who had flown in from Moscow to get Sergei’s blessing for a marriage, were found unconscious on a Salisbury park bench. The Skripals’ activities on March 4th are largely unknown because the GPS of their cell phones had been turned off for the four hours before they were found (1) and many of Salisbury’s CCTVs were “not working” (2).
There were two significant denials of “nerve gas” use:
A mid-March letter to The London Times from SteDavies, described as “Consultant in emergency medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust”, stated that “…no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. (4) [Note that the third person poisoned, policeman Nick Bailey, was not a “first responder” as the UK had claimed, but became ill only after visiting the Skripal house on March 8th; the actual first responders were fine!]
Also, the OPCW’s Spiez lab broke ranks to imply that Britain’s A-234 sample was not only fraudulent and could not have been used on the Skripals, but contained BZ (5), a non-lethal agent possessed only by the US, UK and NATO countries.
Where are the Skripals?
The UK government’s refusal to allow the Skripals their freedom is suspicious, particularly given Yulia’s intent to return to her fiance in Russia. The UK Government recently admitted that it had buried vehicles connected to their poisoning in a secure landfill site*;: could other things have been buried as well?
* Press Association. “Salisbury novichok emergency vehicles buried in landfill site”. The Guardian. Sat. Sept. 1, 2018. Accessed at:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/01/salisbury-novichok-emergency-vehicles-buried-landfill-site
(The URL to the (hacked) article has the references.)
Did you not notice the caption underneath the photo? It’s from 2016. And it was taken by Skripal’s son who died later.
I wonder a lot about Skirpal’s son, who died so young – and we never hear about him.
The 2016 photo is clearly older then this one; It is evident, comparing the photos, that this photo shows the Skripals to be older.
What? 🙂
@ Curious September 6, 2018 at 02:12
Excellent point about the cameraman’s photo being in the mirror.
Could it have been ‘Sgt. Bailey’?
It wasn’t John Glen was it?
Photographer: pic taken in 2016, as noted was probably Sergei’s son who took it. There’s not 4 beer glasses, there’s one beer glass (Sergei), one full wine glass (Yulia), and two apparently empty wine glasses (in 2016 picture – if you look to the right in the mirror there is an empty table also with empty wine glasses, meaning tables pre-set with wine glasses). This just to point out: you are an incredibly bad “detective”.
Nick Bailey was allegedly poisoned as he touched the doorknob to Sergei’s house, where UK claims the poison was placed.
As to the new pictures, the dust/smudges on the camera lens look different, indicating it’s a different camera even more so than the different mount angles. In particular, Boshirov’s picture shows a triangular-shaped smudge mark over his right upper chest and arm, which does not appear on Petrov’s picture.
Really I think it fair to say these two men were in UK on that day, one can check the flight logs and the like, and Russia would know too. Also I give enough credit to MI6 not to screw up as badly as suggested.
However this does not answer the question of whether they poisoned the Skripals and, if so, with what and on whose instructions. I.e., opportunity does not equal guilt. There were literally millions of folks with that kind of opportunity, i.e., were in Salisbury that day. There is no evidence they carried any poison, nor that they spread it anywhere.
Why now, when the CCTV ‘evidence’ must have been available for months? Just like the Douma pantomime and subsequent bombing of Syria, this is clearly setting the scene for a western assault on Idlib, possibly this weekend.
https://syrianobservatoryforhumanwrongs.wordpress.com/2018/07/09/an-idiots-guide-to-the-skripal-affair/
Does Google Maps have a lot of pictures like this of security channels at British airports?
They were in the North terminal – https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/09/the-impossible-photo/comment-page-9/#comment-776125
I’m not casting doubt on the genuineness of the photos or the rightness of the conclusion, just asking what other British airports’ security channels Google Maps have published pictures of.
Because I haven’t seen many Google vehicles being driven around airport terminals photographing security channels.
There are actually a lot of these. You can walk through restaurants, shop, pubs etc.
There are multiple versions of these shots on the net. How do we know this is not a photoshop by russian special ops? Where is a link to originals?
@ Alex September 5, 2018 at 23:21
Yep, good idea getting google images.
The red signs would account for the red in bottom right of the Police pictures.
But that still doesn’t explain why more people aren’t in the pics; in the google pics, there are six people visible, and all coming through the same corridor, with no one using the other two.
But most people are averse to queuing, so why would people line up for the same corridor, if the other two were open?
If the ‘alleged suspects’ were travelling together, why would they use different corridors? So as not to be seen together in the airport is possible, I suppose.
Someone put this OffGuardian link up before – https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/05/skripal-case-suspects-named-questions-raised/
Now in those pictures, the lighting and angles seem to be the same – how is that, when the police pics have different lighting?
I wonder where the OffGuardian got those pics from?
And why no pics of them at Heathrow?
The police have ‘form’ for video-pokery:
‘J7 7/7 CCTV ‘Evidence’ Analysis’:
http://www.julyseventh.co.uk/7-7-cctv-evidence.html
Then there are all the other ‘terrorist’ events where expected CCTV is never produced, or ‘wasn’t working’, or shows a battered and stabbed man, lying prone on the ground, suddenly leap up and leg it after a police car (parked without the handbrake on) starts rolling towards him (London Bridge/Borough Market), and also cops changing into ‘camo’ casuals in same incident, behind a police van.
The latter was filmed by a cameraman, not CCTV, and I don’t believe it was part of the ‘plan’.
Back to the latest alleged suspects, the Russians have offered to assist, but once again, HMG won’t allow it.
But Aeroflot will have it’s own security, and Moscow will have excellent CCTV and passport control, so they should be able to identify if these two actually did fly out of and back to Moscow (even if they had double passports, they could check their records and establish who they really were).
They are extremely competent in Moscow airport; they even managed to find me (in the bar!) because the plane was due to depart, and I wasn’t on it. And not by a Tannoy anouncement, but they actually sent someone to seek me out.
Another point: why just showing the one CCTV image of them in a corridor/s, when they doubtless would have oodles of pics of them from many points in the airport, particularly easy to find given the airport seems very quiet (too quiet?).
Just those two very suspicious same-second snaps.
Could be the basis for a new ‘Keystone Cops’ film, what with the ‘Russians’ sending incompetent buffoons with variable ‘dial a strength’
deadly/mild liquid gel and a top-secret manual giving highly detailed instructions on putting Novichoks on doorknobs (an incredibly difficult task), and the British police falling over themselves with contradictions and implausibilities, and our impeccable politicians firing off salvos of evidence-free accusations.
But hopefully the Russkis will have the last laugh. Sergei’s pushing-90 mother is applying for a visa to visit her son before she dies – how on earth can HMG refuse? If they did, that would really push public opinion in Britain against them.
Metropolitan police images
http://news.met.police.uk/latest_media
FotoForensics provides budding researchers and professional investigators access to cutting-edge tools for digital photo forensics.
http://fotoforensics.com
Same moment, different entrance way. See the slight difference in three metal bars on left of frame. Also different framingof the image. More care please.
+1
I was about to type the same thing.
“The “three metal bars on left of frame” are not three metal bars. The two that are in a slightly different position in the two photographs are actually the automatic barrier that opens to allow the passenger through. That’s why they are in a slightly different position. Same with the ones on the right.
Also, there isn’t any “difference in the framing of the photos”. They have simply been cropped slightly differently, as is apparent from the fact that the top of the date box is visible in the bottom left hand corner of one of them, and not in the other.
More care please.
It seems the police have followed orders and produced some evidence, but in their disgust, have debunked it at the same time.
I think you are right, just as re 9/11 the film of the “planes’ show remarkable inconsistencies.
O/T (but it is the tenth page of comments):
‘IDF confirms: Israel provided light-weapons to Syrian rebels’: https://www.rt.com/news/437719-jerusalem-post-idf-censor/?
‘IDF has forced the Jerusalem Post to remove its explosive report on the Israeli military giving weapons to the Syrian rebels, the newspaper’s managing editor confirmed to RT.
“We were told by the army’s military censor to remove that part of the story,” David Brinn, the managing editor of the Jerusalem Post told RT as he replied to a request for comment. The report, ‘IDF confirms: Israel provided light-weapons to Syrian rebels,’ which claimed that the Israeli military acknowledged for the first time that it had provided money, weapons and ammunition to the Syrian militants, was removed just hours after being published without any explanation…..’
I wonder how all the CFoI and LFoI will react to this news? And the MSM?
Is^ael arming terrorists? No story there.
I’ve now had a reply from the British Propaganda Corporation re my complaint of their original brush off of my first complaint; I’ve now complained to their Executive Complaints Unit; if there is no write-up on the RT/Jerusalem Post issue, I’ll send another complaint tomorrow.
Anyone here conclude that Israel now has a more robust and critical press than the UK?
There are many aspects of Israeli self criticism which are admirable including the willingness to prosecute heads of state.
It is though unfortunate that there is a marked resistance to allow outsiders to criticise.
It is almost like a Goons or Python sketch, we’ve had:
contaminated properties – bought by the state to demolish, because of deadly nerve agent
contaminated vehicles – buried because of deadly nerve agent
contaminated tables and park bench – incinerated because of deadly nerve agent
contaminated grass/parkland – ripped up and disposed of because of deadly nerve agent
It seems Salisbury is awash with this stuff, and yet no animals and only five people have been contaminated. Of those contaminated, four have recovered and one poor soul has lost their life.
You have to hand it to those clever Soviet scientists of the 1980’s, they managed to produce a military grade nerve agent, that once deployed would prove to be absolutely lethal to buildings, vehicles, furniture, trees, grass and anything else it comes into contact with,but be almost completely useless in killing anything with an actual nervous system.
I keep thinking this is Mrs. May’s take on the “funniest joke ever told” sketch.
Seems there is a limit to how much more can usefully be said about these pictures.
But whether or not the photos are somehow faked, has any evidence been presented to show that the fellows in the photographs spent their time in Salisbury painting door knobs?
Congratulations to the authorities on producing a series of such clear CCTV photos of the suspects, including the ones at Salisbury station. Particularly when every other CCTV photo of every other person in any way involved in this story is a piece of fuzzy shit.
It’s great to see that the good guys do occasionally get something right!
I agree with most of what Craig has been saying about the whole Skripal affair. The official story coming from London is full of contradictions and there is no way one can believe that the Russian government is so stupid. However, a most curious thing happened today in the afternoon (around 4/5PM in Europe) For a short while, the website of Sputnik News included a report according to which the Russian Foreign Ministry had issued a statement critizicing Theresa May and Scotland Yard for blaming two Russian nationals without any supporting evidence, etc. But the strange thing was that the Russian Ministry’s statement, according to Sputnik, used the words “our two nationals” to refer to the named suspects. I thought it was most unusual for the Ministry to just accept that the two guys shown in the pictures were indeed Russian nationals, just like that. I would have thought that Zakharova or Lavrov himself would point to the obvious fact that nobody can even claim that those two guys are indeed Russian, because Britain is refusing to share copies of the passports, fingerprints, etc. To cap it all, a couple of hours later the report on the alleged statement from the Foreign Ministry dissappeared from Sputnik’s website. There is no trace of that report. At least I can’t find any trace. Also, the website of the Russian Foreign Minister does not include anything at all on Wednesday’s accusations coming from London.
Correction: the report can still be found if one tries a little harder. It says “our two citizens”, not nationals as I said before. Truly bizarre in my view.
https://sputniknews.com/world/201809051067781016-skripal-may-russia/
My take on the whole thing, for what it’s worth:
1. Lead up to the US election – UK government decides to ingratiate itself with “let’s hear it for the future President of the United States of America, folks!” by providing her team with a delicious series of absolutely cast-iron solid-gold platinum-plated genuine tawdry smears on her crass opponent…
2. November 2016 – Oops! Er… that wasn’t supposed to happen…
3. Sergei Skripal, source of all that glorious made-up dirt, has suddenly gone from ‘hero of the hour’ to a source of enormous potential embarrassment…
4. Baldrick of MI5/MI6 – “Don’t worry Prime Minister. We have a brilliant plan that will get Sergei out of the way, provide a pretext for international condemnation of the evil Russians, and justify a new assault on Assad ALL IN ONE FELL SWOOP! And the thing is, in their deranged hatred of Donald Trump, all the ‘progressive’ MSM will line up with our owned assets on this one…”
5. Teresa May – “Brilliant. Just brilliant. This is fantastic. Go for it guys.”
6. And so the elaborate concoction of implausible idiocy unfolds…
7. One minor detail involves a ‘crack team of GRU assassins’ made up of two complaisant Western-owned Ukrainian assets, traveling around the UK countryside by omnibus, Boris bike and wheelbarrow, ostentatiously ensuring that they are clearly photographed in as many incriminating locations as possible…
The corridor and the camera are the same in both images. For some reason one of the images has been mirrored (flipped horizontally) on a computer, and rotated about 10 degrees. Every line and angel in the images will line up extremely well if one un-does these operations and then mounts the photos one upon the other, say, with 50% transparency in an image editor. (sorry if this already has been pointed out). But why was this done?
(Politically the picture is clearer, of course. Russophobia must be maintained, or US will not longer be able to justify its political/military role in Europe. Lies & war-mongering, or the Empire will crumble. All that jazz).
Evidence the image has been flipped.
https://postimg.cc/image/x1ixk7r4x/
That’s an interesting point. It could just be a bizarre coincidence, but the left hand barrier in the first photo appears to be in the identical position to the right hand barrier in the second photo, and vice versa. And I don’t think there has been any ‘rotation’. The slight difference in the overall framing could simply be because the cropping of the two photos is slightly different. I’m sure someone has already got a hold of individual copies of the two photos and is testing out your theory.
the Met images clearly state they are two different CCTV cameras
Metropolitan police images
http://news.met.police.uk/latest_media
FotoForensics provides budding researchers and professional investigators access to cutting-edge tools for digital photo forensics.
http://fotoforensics.com
goo.gl/dvUcYt
There are FOUR identical corridors.
If two people are walking alongside each other and go through different corridors, then they would still be walking pretty much in parallel, unless one of them stopped for some reason. So, the 43s things very easy to explain. In regards to mirroring images – these corridors are identical, with identical cameras, so overlaying two pictures and getting them to match isn’t that hard.
A flight from Moscow to Gatwick in March of this year? I travelled from Russia to London the day before, and don’t recall such an option. Anyone know which airline and flight?
Perhaps Air Baltic over Riga ? Maybe we are looking at Lithuanians or Latvians or Estonians ….or actors ?
You go through these when you enter the terminal after the baggage reclaim area – goo.gl/dvUcYt
“Intelligence Agency” is an oxymoron.
They have their own agenda and always did – look at Zinoviev Letter and where that was forged and which “newspaper” published it in England ! There is so much at stake for UK Government as the Fake Dossier unravels and the truth emerges from Deripaska, and Adam Lovinger at DoD about Stefan Halper and his connection to British asset Joseph Mifsud
Odd the broader timing of all this too – how it all kicks off again virtually on the day May resumes work for her American bosses after the long summer break.
I thought video had to have a Real Time Clock (RTC) but here there is no verification on the CCTV clock. I do wonder if these were actors doing a dummy run…….you know
http://crisiscast.com
I certainly do not believe they were GRU which incidentally was founded by Trotsky assisted by Maj. Hill of MI6 in 1917 and they are a tad more professional than flying direct together using Russian passports and landing together and standing together in the CCTV capital of the world.
Theresa must be in deep trouble to pull this iron out of the fire
Find the differences.
Metropolitan police images
http://news.met.police.uk/latest_media
FotoForensics provides budding researchers and professional investigators access to cutting-edge tools for digital photo forensics.
http://fotoforensics.com
Someone did a nice job figuring this out;
https://postimg.cc/image/yv0uutpdj/
So the pictures are of the same corridor, but flipped/reversed and twisted a little bit.
The blue jacket man was probably the picture flipped because the fringe direction is correct on the other one.
The timestamps are clearly fake, no need to try and figure that out.
the Met images clearly state CCTV1 and CCTV2 – ergo two different cameras, corroborated by two different angles
yes ..two different camera angles ..or I suspected earlier two different corridors [ notice the perceptible irregularities in the structuring of the metal railing to the left and right of the men [ particularly the vertical metal poles comparative positions that are different in the 2 images] …This suggests the corridors were different or the cameras’angles were ..well spotted tadaaa
If you take the time to look at the images on the Met’s site, it’s clear that these are two different cameras, the angles are clearly different. That’s not so clear on the images on this blog. Looks like these have been “doctored”. Mr Murray asserts that:-
“The only possible explanations are:
1) One of the two is travelling faster than Usain Bolt can sprint
2) Scotland Yard has issued doctored CCTV images/timeline.”
This is logically incoherent, since there is, at least, a third “possible explanation”:-
Mr Murray is wrong & is wilfully misconstruing the facts.
I’d go with the third.
Let us not neglect the fact that, according to the inane drivel now being pumped at us by our MSM (cf the Guardian’s story), the crack team of GRU assassins were photographed on their way to the Skripals at 11:58 on the Sunday morning, and heading back to the station at 13:05.
In other words a critical element of this dastardly assassination plot, which had presumably been months in the planning, involved walking up to the Skripal’s house in broad daylight, smack bang in the middle of a Sunday, and smearing the deadliest nerve agent known to man on a door handle.
What level of intellectual dishonesty is required to pretend even for a microsecond that this could possibly be true?
“walking up to the Skripal’s house in broad daylight, smack bang in the middle of a Sunday, and smearing the deadliest nerve agent known to man on a door handle.”
Walking up to a door in broad daylight of a Sunday afternoon. Yes, how unusual an event. That’s it then, Could not possibly have happened. Must be an alternative explanation.
What’s next? Flat Earth?
Good thinking Roy. Apart from the possibility that somebody might actually see you diligently smearing the deadliest-known nerve agent on a door handle, the other advantage of carrying out this cunning (failed) assassination plot smack-bang in the middle of the day is that there are lots and lots of luvverly clear CCTV photos of you in all sorts of incriminating locations.
I mean, what highly-trained GRU assassin would ever miss the opportunity to ensure that there are lots and lots of luvverly clear CCTV photos of him in all sorts of incriminating locations?
On a separate tack, is your head composed almost entirely of skull?
“Walking up to a door in broad daylight of a Sunday afternoon. Yes, how unusual an event.”
It would indeed be unusual, for you would have to be wearing a space suit, and that would certainly be noticed. Also, what an idiotic way to try and kill someone, the door handle could first have been touched by visitors or neighbours, rain could wash it away, it could drip onto the floor and be touched by cats or dogs, etc., and the whole plot would be blown.
I think that if the Russian state wanted you dead, you would be DEAD, none ot this Keystone Kops stuff.
Craig if you examine the metal railing to the left and right of the two Russian men there seem to be structural irregularities ..The vertical metal poles are more equally adjacent in the bottom image yet more at variance in the top photo .The u shaped second level metal horizontal railing is structured differently as is the top bar in the two photos ..There appear to be different corridors and camera angles – the ‘third logical possibility’ mentioned .[ The ‘synchronicity’ is not extreme ] ..British security agencies are as versed in the Dark Arts as their Russian counterparts but your theory seems mistaken ..To resolve the matter you or someone else should visit Gatwick and examine the corridor – or corridors – pictured
what actually put some effort in – much easier to conjure up some nonsense from your armchair – the actual Met source clearly states two different CCTV’s and as you correctly say the angles are different for each camera
Different cameras makes more sense now
The place this happens is after bag collection, customs and duty free. It is actually a relatively short ‘corridor’ and I suspect looks longer because of the angles involved. It seems entirely plausible that they could be at a similar position at the same exact second
Perhaps these two guys are Russians and perhaps they did the poisoning. That is very different from proving that they were working for the GRU or the Russian Government under the orders of Comrade Putin. It seems likely that both the West and Russia employ criminals to carry out their deniable dirty work. Quite often, I suspect, they use the same criminals, who are working for different sides at different times. These same people, on different occasions, will be working for the mafia (who have links with intelligence agencies) It might even be possible to lure / tempt the other side into poisoning a likely target, by leaking details of the target’s address. It is all very murky and hard to fathom, and the press are all too willing to go with the James Bond type story.
But anyway, if you were MI6 and you wanted to poison some Russians, they first people you would turn to would be Russian criminals, so as to make it look like it was the Kremlin behind this. You would hardly send James Fonsoby-Hadley-Bond because it would be too obvious, even to the British Press, that the FCO and the MI6 were behind it.