Here is b's account.
Telepolis points out (in German) that this would not be the first time that a 'western' service would stage such a 'provocation'. The Skripal case is indeed quite comparable to Operation Hades.
On August 10 1994 German officials in Munich 'found' 363 grams of plutonium on a plane coming from Moscow. They immediately asserted, that the plutonium 'must' have come from a Russian reactor. There was a lot of media panic, international political noise and condemnation of Russia.
This put pressure on the Russian government to increase its security at its nuclear sites. The U.S. offered to 'help' with nuclear security and thus got easy access to Russia's nuclear secrets. The case broke in the mid of the federal election campaign in Germany and helped chancellor Kohl to get re-elected.
Months later first leaks appeared, enterprising reporters dug deeper into the story and it started to unravel.
Der Spiegel filled ten pages (in German) with the explosive story.
It turned out that the plutonium was not from Russia but had been planted by the German equivalent of the MI6, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). Later leaks and counter-leaks created a convoluted story to hide the truth behind it. A parliamentarian commission investigated the case but the Kohl government eventually shut it down without any political consequences. Shortly thereafter the deeply involved BND head, Bernd Schmidbauer, was sent into retirement.
The Russian depict the 'Novichok' case as a staged 'provocation'. There is a historic antetype for such a 'provocation' by a 'western' intelligence service. That gives the Russian claim some significant merit....More about the Skripal case in the post.
Moon of Alabama
Operation Hades - A Model For The 'Novichok' Case?
