The story of murdered Chechen insurgent Zelimkhan Khangoshvili is strikingly similar to the Skripal case. In both cases Western media started their information campaigns only after some time: a week after the poisoning in the Skripal case and four months following Khangoshvili’s murder. The thing is in summer 2019 the West was seemingly interested in improving relations with Russia, so anti-Russian activists who started speaking about “Kremlin’s arm” and “mayhem” created by Russian security bodies in Europe, suddenly shut up for some time. In both cases, no conclusive proofs of Russian implication have been presented.
By all accounts, in both cases, there was a political decision to find a good reason to wage an information war against growing Russia. On the eve of Salisbury poisoning, Vladimir Putin demonstrated Russian brand-new hypersonic weapon which devalued the American anti-missile system and NATO infrastructure and made Russia the only country totally free from US’s military coercion.
The year of 2019 has also been successful for Moscow, Russia does very well at the international stage. We are observing Russian negotiations about deeper integration with Belarus, its interim victory in Moldova, and Uzbekistan’s plans to enter the Eurasian Economic Union. In order to contain Russia and to make its position at the Normandy summit softer, Russia is being intimidated by Khangoshvili’s murder as a new Skripal case. It will not work though, and the Skripal case proved just that. Russia will be named a threat to the whole mankind again but talks with it will continue anyway.