Barend Vlaardingerbroek: A critical appraisal of the Novichok incident narrative

What we have here, it seems to me, is an attempt by the UK to limit the damage to its own reputation – damage perhaps it never envisaged, because it assumed everyone would “buy” the “wicked Russia” story. - Mary Dejevsky in The Independent, 24 May

The murky world of secret operations by State intelligence units is one that we seldom get much of a look into – well, if we did, it wouldn’t be ‘secret’ anymore, would it? – but enough transpires to give us considerable insight into its workings.

When it comes to awarding first prize for clandestine operations aimed at liquidating individuals they don’t like, the Russian secret service would have to be the front-runner. For the past three quarters of a century, these furtive characters have built up a reputation for slick, targeted assassinations outside their own territory. 

Matt Ridley: The Russian role in the nuclear winter theory

So, Russia does appear to interfere in western politics. The FBI has charged 13 Russians with trying to influence the last American presidential election, including the whimsical detail that one of them was to build a cage to hold an actor in prison clothes pretending to be Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, it emerges that the Czech secret service, under KGB direction, near the end of the Cold War had a codename (“COB”) for a Labour MP they had met and hoped to influence — presumably under the bizarre delusion that he might one day be in reach of power.