This does not correlate at all with the polonium and Novichok cases.
I live quite close to Salisbury and have no idea apart from "bloody tall", how high the spire thrusts skywards. Apart from anything else we'd generally measure it in feet.
I'd better spell it out: One of the gentlemen accused of poisoning a Russian ex-pat in Salisbury (Hants. UK) claimed that he was a tourist and came to see the cathedral in Salisbury. He quoted the height of it to quite a degree of accuracy as proof of his touristic intentions. He really did not smear novichok on Mr Skripal's door.
And if they had been visiting the spire, which they probably weren't, it's likely they would have gotten information about it in their native language which would use meters.
It's just not really a fun thing to do in your own town. And to be fair most tourist attractions are hugely overrated.
The “tallest church” explanation is kind of like of someone saying they buy playboy magazine for the articles. It’s transparently false to the point of absurdity.
Doesn't really prove anything. Could just be a really strange individual who memorises statistics. To 3 significant figures doe.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2018/09/26/skr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_church_buildin...
It's just an observation of something that doesn't add up.
If one makes an explicit effort to get into Britons' good graces, why would then they do something as exceptionally damaging as those two assasinations? This makes no sense, and the article doesn't address it.
Why would he think he should act differently abroad? Remember: he's a psychopath.
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Edit: a flagged comment replying to this called this hysterical hyperbole because I used the words "literally" and "psychopath".
In the latter case I understand this to be the assessment of more or less every foreign intelligence service on earth. The flagged comment suggested "sociopath" is better; I do not see evidence of Putin's ability to feel remorse or of his conscience generally. Also, psychopaths are not unusual; up to 3% of the human population could be psychopaths, and the point was not to stress his personal violence, but his remorseless consistency.
In the former case: OK, let's go with "very nearly literally" -- there may be some days where Putin's regime, if not Putin quite directly, does not have someone at least jailed, threatened or ruined for opposing him, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say there are very few days like this. He runs a regime that threatens every single citizen who opposes him, and he could stop it if he chose. He chooses not to.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
I could have clarified more to avoid provoking a flame war.
So I have clarified more.
I'm a bit surprised that what I have done here is frowned upon when it was an attempt to reach consensus.
FWIW, enter "sociopath" in Wikipedia and you are redirected to the "Psychopathy" page.
The colloquial distinction is that sociopaths are still capable of a limited form of remorse.
The past view that Putin was not necessarily a psychopath hinged on the idea that his government was more than just him. For example that other people in his regime might have chosen to use a chemical weapon on British soil, but not necessarily Putin himself, directly.
The Ukraine war totally explodes the myth that Russia's foreign policy is under the control of anyone but Putin.
Either way, the point I was making is not that he is evil or violent, but that there's no reason to believe he would think he should act any differently when having people killed on foreign soil; he's unconstrained by any such deference or restraint.