Somebody Poisoned the Russia-Ukraine Peace Negotiations...Literally

Matt Vespa | March 29, 2022 6:00 AM

Someone wants the Ukraine war to continue. Someone is trying to stall the peace process. We’re lucky this wasn’t an attack aimed to kill because everyone involved would be dead already. Some of the top officials trying to broker a peace deal, including a Russian oligarch, were poisoned after a meeting in Kyiv. The meeting occurred in early March. The symptoms were not life-threatening, though incredibly disconcerting as the skin from their faces began to peel off. Experts who have analyzed poison attacks in this region of the world saw photos of those afflicted and concluded that this attack was meant as a warning (via Wall Street Journal):

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and Ukrainian peace negotiators suffered symptoms of suspected poisoning after a meeting in Kyiv earlier this month, people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Abramovich Ukrainian lawmaker Rustem Umerov and another negotiator developed symptoms following the March 3 meeting in Kyiv that included red eyes, constant and painful tearing, and peeling skin on their faces and hands, the people said. Mr. Abramovich has shuttled between Moscow, Belarus and other negotiating venues since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Mr. Abramovich was blinded for a few hours and later had trouble eating, according to a person familiar with the matter.
[...]
Western experts who looked into the incident said it was hard to determine whether the symptoms were caused by a chemical or biological agent or by some sort of electromagnetic-radiation attack, the people familiar with the matter said.
[…]
The investigation was organized by Christo Grozev, an investigator with the Bellingcat open-source collective who concluded that a Kremlin team poisoned Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny with a nerve agent in 2020. Mr. Grozev said he saw the images of the effects of the attack on Mr. Abramovich and Ukrainian negotiators. But he added that examinations of the affected individuals couldn’t be arranged in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, through which they were traveling, because these people were in a hurry to get to Istanbul.
Too much time had passed for the suspected poison to be detected by the time a German forensic team was able to perform an examination, he said. “It was not intended to kill, it was just a warning,” Mr. Grozev said.
Bellingcat said the three men who are suspected to have been poisoned consumed only chocolate and water in the hours before the symptoms appeared.

The Kremlin did not offer a comment to The Wall Street Journal. Was it them? Would you be shocked if it was? The war is going terribly for Russia. They’re stalled on all fronts. Generals are dying by the fist full. They don’t have the men or the supplies to meet any of their objectives for now. They haven’t captured a single city. Even Kherson, which was supposedly in Russian hands, is now back in play. Russian troops lost strategic control a few days ago. We’ll have to wait until April when fresh troops are supposedly being deployed, but for now, it’s a stalemate.