This is the name given to a certain set of consequences from the use of some unknown weapon against American diplomats. The symptoms are quite vague, and everyone has different symptoms, so for a long time the US government preferred not to escalate the tension and refused to recognize it as an attack on diplomats. They had to respond if these were attacks. This is despite the fact that dozens of people were unable to continue their full-time work after the attacks with these weapons.
The Insider accurately synchronized the movement of GRU agents around the world and some attacks on American diplomats. Now we are sure that this is not a set of different tactics used by Cuba, Iran, China, and the Russian Federation, but a Russian development. If anything, these are the very same pear-shakers who poisoned Skripal. The very same Mishkin who, together with Boshirov-Chepiga, poisoned him.
“Since all the symptoms pointed to acoustic weapons, most likely infrasound and ultrasound, in some cases the United States had reason to refuse to believe that these were all planned attacks.”
Because some people were under attack in a situation where there was no direct line of sight to the outside. Accordingly, it could not have been sound, because it does not penetrate walls well (and would require a lot of power) and could generally be detected by embassy equipment, for example, through banal vibration. Embassies have such equipment in case someone wants to dig into the embassy. But there was no detection.
For a long time, everything was attributed to depression, medication, and overwork. The US officially denied that these cases could have been a targeted attack in 2023. However, it was difficult for the US to dismiss the case because some of the victims were KGB officers or special forces, who often undergo all kinds of examinations.
“And in some cases, it was clear that something had definitely happened, because the person had just been 100% healthy and had passed all the tests, and now he or she was ruined as a specialist. There was some kind of intervention.”
Most likely, microwave radiation with sophisticated modulation was used, which can cause the illusion of an acoustic shock in the victim. There are a lot of medical terms there, I won't quote them here. The insider found out that the very center that poisons people was studying the relevant syndromes. And it was the same people who developed Novichok.
The equipment for such attacks, of course, must be large in size, because you need a generator and specific antennas. In general, all this is usually placed in cars the size of a minivan. And yet, it was not too much of a problem to transport them to many countries around the world. Because they were transported.
“The question is: why would the GRU agents then bother with Novichok, which leaves traces, does not always kill the victim, and can kill someone else, if they have such an effective weapon to disable political opponents and anyone else? Because if it works on embassies, what's the difficulty in radiating to cafes and offices?”
A possible answer is that the victim must stay under the focused radiation for a long time. And if they move, the effectiveness decreases. But people sleep in their homes, and it is easy to determine the location of a bed in a building. And the homes of dissidents are clearly less protected than embassies. You can drive a car and radiate all night long.
So, rather, the answer is that the GRU agents knew that their superweapon did not work equally well on all people. And so it was okay to randomly target diplomats so that at least some of them would refuse to work against Russia. And their colleagues will refuse to work on Russia on their own, because they will take into account that they will be worked on. Therefore, these weapons were used to work on the masses, and where the use of chemical weapons could cause problems. And everyone else was already being poisoned with Novichok.
And here the question arises. Is the reluctance of top American officials to do anything about Russia really due to any rational reasons, or is it due to their fear of being hit by a weapon they do not recognize as existing? After all, not everyone is guarded as carefully and for life as the US president.
I hope that now US embassies and officials will buy some microwave detectors to avoid being attacked. And someone will have more determination.
And I hope that finally the harsh people from Langley will think about taking revenge on certain GRU units of the Russian General Staff. Because impunity provokes.
About the author. Anton Shvets, Ukrainian blogger, TV presenter, publicist, and political activist.
The editors don't always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.