I don't think so; Russian government doesn't need a martyr, they will discredit him thoroughly before they make any kind of move on him at this point.
You see the same behaviour with Snowden and the US. The US security industry for sure would prefer this man to be quiet and away from any spotlight, but all they can do is make up some rumours about how he's just a disgruntled employee or maybe a pedophile fleeing for that reason or a rapist. Obviously it doesn't gain traction but I've seen those attempts.
Man has quite a lot of security against on-the-ground "deniable" attacks.
Then you have the question of whether the surviving second in command decides to just eat the loss and surrender his country to the United States without firing a shot, or .. fire a shot.
The bare minimum is probably the televised execution of all US embassy staff in Russia; the maximum retaliation is, of course, nuclear war.
We're already at war with Russia, it is just a cold war involving cyberattacks and attacks on the US election system. With Russia moving troops to the border of Ukraine they are going to keep testing the US until we are forced to act. Better be on the preemptive.
I think they will work to destroy the US from within as much as possible until it is entirely possible for them to destabilize the US to the point that they spark a civil war. This last election was just a preview in my opinion.
We shall see, but I think the left/right paradigm is something that has only gotten worse through time we need ranked choice voting an more participation from third-parties or we'll quickly end up right back where we were.
Taking out the Archduke Franz Ferdinand went well, didn't it?
That wasn't even done by another major power, I think. (I'm no good at history.) Presumably there's a reason why major countries don't usually murder the heads of state of other major countries. I imagine it has something to do the military having standing orders to retaliate in such cases.
I was born in socialist Czechoslovakia. Everybody hated Russians (they had an army stationed there), and everybody loved Americans. (This "everybody" excludes about 20% of the population that are authoritarian conservatives, who exist in similar numbers everywhere.)
So what did the Americans do? In my opinion: It wasn't military invasion, it wasn't sanctions, it was they have built a better, more free, system (at least that's how it was largely perceived), and opened their doors for people who wanted to emigrate and live there. Often these were intellectuals, who then "spread the word" about how it works in the U.S. back to the land they were born.
I think with America coming to neoliberalism in the 1980s, this approach was lost. (Freedom turned into an ideology, and that neutered the pragmatic consideration of different human values.) But in some places, it never really existed, in Latin America, or Middle East, Americans often supported dictatorships.
So here you have it, this is what you can realistically do. Build a better system, create an example, let people (from Russia or elsewhere) come and see why it is really better.
Absolutely this. The US could accelerate Russia’s brain drain [1] using robust visa quotas and fast track immigration programs. This would be far more devastating for the future of Russia than any military action or sanctions.
Very similar to what Great Britain is doing with Hong Kong. [2]
I think you totally misunderstood my proposal and twisted it into chauvinism. I don't want to destroy them, I want to (indirectly) help them. Failed states, especially those with nuclear weapons, are far more dangerous.
I believe "Russia the government" is beyond redemption, but "Russia the people" aren’t, therefore the only path to success is helping Russian citizens emigrate to a country with better prospects for their future. This is help for the people, even if it shifts geopolitical power long term. The idea that Russians will take better systems back to a brutal regime and instill democracy or other improvements seems unlikely considering those who are in power.
Russia will fail eventually (as the USSR did before it), its only a matter of when.
They might transition to democracy through state failure, or they might not. My country, Czechoslovakia, did transition without it.
It's worth reminding that despite the sorry state of USSR economy when communism ended, it still contracted by almost 1/3 during the 90s neoliberal era. And Putin improved on that, despite being authoritarian ruler. So the failure of the state is not at all given.
I hope nothing but the best for the people of Russia. I acknowledge Putin has provided some lift for them, while also acknowledging his significant shortcomings, many of which hold back more progress for those he governs.
I feel the same, but you started this thread suggesting that we "accelerate the brain drain". I don't think that's a good idea, it's going to make ordinary Russians worse off. The immigration policy should not serve as a tool to do that, but rather as a tool to help those who are not happy living in Russia. In practice this would mean, a genius professor of nuclear science, or a dissident coal miner, should be given the same chance to immigrate into the U.S.
It is interesting to see how the war with Syria started as a means to remove Al-Assad from power because of his veiled dictatorship and somehow there is people like Putin sitting in his throne for 2 decades and nothing happens.
Targeted sanctions work. Removing sanctions was the main goal of Russian "lobbying" (let's call it that way) of the Trump administration.
Personally annoying leaders and oligarchs by preventing them to move around, if only to bring their kids to Disneyland, is not flashy but is convincing Putin's inner circle that he is turning Russia into a third world country.
Hit at the wallet. Especially at the personal one.
Problem with sanctions is that most likely they only affect normal people who is not then able to rebel against their leaders.
See Cuba or Venezuela, they live on sanctions for decades but show the oligarchs can live well on them, the people is struggling and has not any possibility to fight against their regimes
targeted sanctions. "Here is a list of 20 oligarchs who can't travel to US and EU anymore and can't transfer funds there." There may be a few false positives but that's much better than blanket embargo on a whole population.
And when you find a business front of one of these, you have a legal reason to destroy millions from their wealth.
Angry oligarchs are probable more scary to Putin than protests in the streets of Moscow.
That’s right, if you want the job done, you have got to call the United Nations—then and only then—might they write and send a stern, toothless letter.
Russia has a veto voice in the security council. Not really much the UN can do here. The way the UN is set up is entirely broken and there's very little the organization can do against authoritarianism.
> Russia has a veto voice in the security council. Not really much the UN can do here.
That seems like the kind of problem the UN would have run into and found a solution for within about the first 5 years it existed, instead of leaving it inaddressed for three-quarters of a century.
Paywall, but even the first few available lines of the article begin with lies:
in a harsh penal colony
It's not a harsh colony, there's even video available where Navalny lies on a bed most of the time, drinks tea, does nothing.
Besides what's the point of Navalny dying in prison? He's not that popular in Russia. Here most people believe he's a crook and/or CIA agent. He's more popular among Russian emigrants. Here in Russia very few people believe him.
It's an opposition figure that is actually helping Putin by being such an easy target, e.g. spending people donations on luxurious hotels in Thailand.
Besides, if western readers/journalists could read Russian, they'd be flabbergasted by the bullshit Navalny says. Firstly, he's nazi and his political career started with nazi slogans (nobody wants to remember that now, though). Secondly, he's saying dumb populist bullshit. I listened to his "presidential programme" - it's for people with IQ of a room temperature. There's no substance in it.
It's purely a Western (USA) view that this is a bad thing (although not even European leaders change that often). I'd love to see Putin rule for many more years because I don't see any sane alternative. Why would I want him to be replaced with somebody else, especially inept and low-brow Navalny?..
Frankly, we don't have a choice. I favour Putin, but mostly because there's no alternative. There's not a single opposition leader that is trustworthy and competent.
But it's not like Putin is a bad leader. Maybe the lack of choice is due to his actions, but he's doing lots of good things for Russia. For me, clear sign of this is how he's hated by the western media.
Bad Russian leaders are loved by western media (e.g. Gorbachev, Yeltsin) and good ones are hated.
People like you are the reason you don't have any choise, World is increasing turning to dictators, same thing is being propogated in India in form of Modi, anyone else is being ridiculed.
I don't know anything about India politics and I don't think it's equal to Russian politics. Anyway, I can't compare. But I don't think I'm the reason for Modi or people like me. It's a different situation. E.g. Modi is nationalist and Putin isn't. Modi is pushing one predominant religion and Putin isn't. Etc.
No, I don't see how it is possible. First of all, West and East use different metrics and different words for describing political views. E.g. "left" in US and "left" in Russia are very different things (also, "left" and "right" are almost not used in Russia).
I happen to remember USSR collapse, then the awful years of Yeltsin, when everything went to hell: economy was dead, crime rate went through the roof - there were shootings every day on the streets, suicide rate went through the roof, population started to decline because people didn't want to have children (or didn't have means to raise children), millions were starving to death. And I remember how this started to change almost the next day after the first election of Putin. No more street shootings and businessmen cars explosions. Corruption started to wither (and continues to this day). Not only old buildings stopped to deteriorate, but new buildings, roads and bridges started to appear everywhere.
In short, just about every metric you can measure started to improve under Putin's rule. Except maybe some "freedom of speech" which is almost unimportant to me. I remember that "freedom of speech" was used to calumniate Russian past and present in 90s, I don't remember a single good thing caused by "freedom of speech" in 90s. Bunch of freaks were allowed to speak on TV and other media, what they said caused only strong negative emotions in everyone. It was obvious that it had nothing to do with making our life better.
the perception from the west is that corruption in Russia didn't go away but was simply hoisted up to the level of government. How do you feel about the level of wealth that Putin and his associates have accumulated during his reign?
It is interesting that you talk about different metrics and different words meaning different things to Russians compared to those in the west. If we can't use "left" and "right" as descriptors, and you don't place much emphasis on "freedom of speech", what _are_ the values that you think are important? (I suspect, from what you say, even "freedom of speech" means something different to you than it does to me)
It wasn't just a corruption. I cannot even choose a word to describe these terrible business schemes when all enterprise's income in a foregn currency were syphoned out of the country, workers payments were constantly delayed and the enterprise asked for donation from the state at the same time.
Putin stopped that.
As for left or right I would label Putin as right inclined centrist.
During Yeltsin times corruption was equally high both on street level and government level. But West didn't care, on the opposite - West praised Yeltsin and even openly meddled in our election to elect Yeltsin for the second term. Despite him being extremely corrupt and using his position to enrich his family and friends.
Now, West suddenly become very concerned with Putin's alleged wealth (nobody had seen it) - why? Why Putin's wealth is more important than Yeltsin wealth? Why current level of corruption which is measly compared to level of corruption during Yeltsin times had become so extremely important to the west? Why it didn't bother anyone before?
What is important to me: being able to live normal life: have a job, have access to medicine and education for me and my family, having enough food on my table to not starve. Less important but nice to have is enough income to travel somewhere for holiday at 1-2 times a year. To have friends and family. To not have war in my country (which is US currently actively pushing as well - they hope to force war between Europe/Ukraine and Russia because that will be very beneficial for US economy and US being separated by the ocean will not experience the devastating effects of the war on its own territory).
I do not believe that democracy exists anywhere or even actually possible. I do not need some kind of "free speech" whatever that means. I like to blog, but I seriously doubt my blog would cause any problem in any society. I'm definitely aware that blogging in the US is more likely to create problems than in Russia.
In Russia nobody cares if you're rude or politically incorrect or you have contradicting political views. Many of my friends do not support Putin unlike me - that doesn't ruin our friendship. Whatever I write on my blog will never put me in trouble in Russia, even if I'll write "I hate Putin, he's a crook" - nobody cares despite what you may read in western media. In Russia I can write or say: "BLM" or "All lives matter" and I won't have any problem at my job or with the police or with anyone. In the US there's only one approved view that you can openly support, otherwise you're destined to have problems, e.g. you can be fired from your job and become homeless if you don't agree with your latest election results or don't support some SJW movement or you support it but not in an approved way.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. It does seem that "better than Yeltsin" is a running theme in this discussion, so in turn I wonder what "better than Putin" would mean to you?
With regards to tensions around the border with Russia and Europe, Putin is firmly seen as the aggressor from here, especially after the annexation of Crimea. To us it seems that Russia is testing the water, with the full knowledge that essentially everyone in Europe wants to avoid an outright war.
You say that you can blog freely without consequence in Russia, but I wonder what the effects of publicly disclosing e.g. homosexuality would be? The impression I have is that it would be analogous to admitting to racism in the US or Europe.
I do appreciate being able to have a reasonable conversation with someone who literally sees the world from a different angle to myself!
You say that you can blog freely without consequence in Russia, but I wonder what the effects of publicly disclosing e.g. homosexuality would be? The impression I have is that it would be analogous to admitting to racism in the US or Europe.
I guess nothing will happen. It's not like homosexuality is persecuted in Russia. I've seen several times people openly admitting their homosexuality in public with no consequences. It's explicitly prohibited to "promote" homosexuality, whatever that means. Though I've never seen or heard anyone being prosecuted by this law.
With regards to tensions around the border with Russia and Europe, Putin is firmly seen as the aggressor from here, especially after the annexation of Crimea. To us it seems that Russia is testing the water, with the full knowledge that essentially everyone in Europe wants to avoid an outright war.
I assure nobody wants a war here. From here it's seen as USA aggressively trying to push Ukraine to start something stupid like trying to take Crimea back by force. Ukraine is not a sovereign country, it's under external control and they have a very little choice. Their economy is unviable, and I guess US gives them a hard choice: either you go to war with Russia or the flow of credit from the West that allows you to feed your people will stop.
We don't need Ukraine at all. It's useless for us, it's useless for Europe. If we'd captured the Ukraine (and I'm sure that would be easy), we'd have to feed the big population that can't feed themselves and about 50% of that population also hates us to guts. Everybody understands it, including Putin. Why waste resources feeding big ungrateful population if you can offload this problem to Europe?
USSR tried to feed too many hungry mouths: Georgia, Asian republics, Baltic Republics. USSR built infrastructure: schools, hospitals, industry in those countries. They were prosperous during Soviet times because Georgia for example, consumed roughly 10 times or more money its economy generated. The difference was covered by RSFSR (Russia). Only to hear after USSR collapse that we were oppressors. Nobody is going to make this mistake again. Nobody wants to take back Georgia or Tajikistan or Estonia or Lithuania. Let them care about themselves, we better spend our resources to make our life better rather than trying to buy loyalty.
So, I highly doubt Putin have any desire to start a war. It's not beneficial to him or to our country at all. It would be highly beneficial for the US, though.
I'm surprised to hear this description of Ukraine. I'll agree that their economy is not particularly strong (although it is recovering), but it has historically been an agricultural powerhouse and is still one of the world's largest grain exporters. Famine in Ukraine in the last century was a direct result of the collectivisation policy of the USSR, not an intrinsic inability to feed their own population.
The message I'll take from our exchange here is that what you and I know to be true is a result of the culture and media that we've been exposed to throughout our lives, and that objective truth is hard to determine, even for well educated people. Less well educated and informed people stand little chance of discovering the true-truth in this environment.
Ukraine economy is not strong and not recovering. One of indirect measures of economy health is energy production and consumption. Both metrics are declining in Ukraine for many years, especially after 2014 coup.
All the industry was destroyed, especially after the coup of 2014. Agriculture remains, but EU sets a tiny quote for Ukrainian exports. So maybe Ukraine could produce and sell more agricultural products, but they can't sell them because EU quotes are exhausted usually within the first month of the year.
Also, agriculture isn't so simple. It requires huge amounts of hydrocarbons for fueling agricultural equipment (tractors, harvesters, etc consume huge amounts of diesel for example). You also need fertilizers and other chemicals. Ukraine has to import all that.
Also, Ukraine is hostile to Russia so we don't want to import anything from them and law explicitly forbids many ukrainian imports. But EU also has its own industry and its own agriculture and they do not need one more competitor on its market. For example, after 2014 sanctions, when Russia stopped importing many articles of food from EU, many agricultural companies of EU started to experience difficulties. E.g. meat producers in Czech Republic. EU needs to give work to its own citizens, why would they open the market for cheap competing products from Ukraine? So that more EU producers go bankrupt? Not going to happen.
It's a little strange that in all of Russia one can't find an alternative, for decades. One might think that when an alternative shows it might get poisoned and jailed.
it's not as simple as that - poisonings, beatings, imprisonment etc have a chilling effect. We have no idea which leaders would step forward if it weren't for the effects of intimidation.
That is to say, someone smart enough to become a political force to be reckoned with is probably smart enough to realise that they will be faced with some terrible consequences for doing so. Their chances of success are extremely small and the chances of punishment is high. The smartest move is not to participate, and so this filters out all but the most principled or naive and foolhardy.
Sorry, I cannot spend my vote on such a vaguely described person - I live in this country and its my future. My list starts with representation. This person must represent interests of a big group of people wich includes me. This person must represent interests of businesses I find valueable for my country. This person must have a prioritized list of problems to fix with the corresponinding steps he think must be taken. Otherwise, as you correctly stated it is not worth participating.
So, sorry, neither Nemtsov nor Khodorkovsky doesn't pass, BTW are there someone else?
> Frankly, we don't have a choice. I favour Putin, but mostly because there's no alternative. There's not a single opposition leader that is trustworthy and competent.
Maybe because every alternative that pops up gets assassinated or jailed by Kremlin.
If it was a democracy maybe more viable alternatives would be seen.
So, I don't see any evidence. I see only accusations. Most of them don't make even slightest effort to consider other versions. This makes it very clear that the initial intent is not to figure what is going on, who are influental players, what interests they pursue and what conflicting points exist. Just blame Putin - people buy it.
a) Not everyone - a lot of people oppose Putin. https://echo.msk.ru, https://novayagazeta.ru Most content on these sites devoted to critisizing Putin and current regime. These people do this for years.
b) Not everyone from your list opposed Putin, for instnace Khlebnikov mostly concentrated on Beresovsky.
2. Correct. We don't have any official evidence. This means that the only thing we can do is to analyze what is available. The links you provided don't help much in this endevour.
In science, you don't need to explain how/why something happens, only reproduce and prove THAT something happens.
We know that people die or are jailed. We can definitely see patterns that group those people together. Everything points to a single explanation, but regardless if that is proved or not, the effects are black on white.
I don't have to understand/prove weak forces or gravity to state that 100 of 100 apples dropped fall to the ground.
In science we create theories which come form hypotheses. Theories need to be proved. Facts may support, oppose, prove or disprove a hypothesis, this is not at all black or white. Facts are black or white regardles of sience.
Black and white facts are the person murdered, crime commited and some other person guilty. The hypothesis is who this other person is.
The fact that the person murdered is not the most dangerous for the person suspected support the hypothesis that this has been done to discredit him. (but doesn't prove or disprove the hypothesis).
The fact that nobody has been prosecuted supports the hypothesis that the suspect is guilty.
Why wouldn't I? I live in Russia and I support Kremlin politics. You say it like it's a bad thing and any good Russian citizen should strive to undermine his country. For what? To become a third world neo-colony? To allow NATO bomb our country like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya that are suffering from war for decades with no sign of improvement?
This is such a sad thing. I know a lot of Russians, and most of them share your sentiment. It basically reads "Putin isn't great, but compared to other leaders we've had in the past hundred years, he is phenomenal." Maybe it's a legit point of view, that Putin is a stepping stone toward true democracy and liberty. It just seems so defeatist.
It's not defeatist. First, we see more and more evidence that there's no democracy in the West, just a well decorated fake "democracy".
All important positions in government of USA are occupied by people from the oldest and wealthiest US families. Is it democracy? I doubt that.
There's no freedom of speech. Which we hear is "freedom" of speech, because censorship is performed by not government, but private entities like Facebook, Twitter, Google. Yeah, maybe formally it's not a censorship for some strict definition of the word, but de-facto it's censorship and it's stronger than censorship ever were in Russia.
Secondly, so-called "democracy" is weaponized by the West to oust regimes West doesn't like (e.g. that aren't willing to sell rights to exploit their natual resouces to Western corporations) or simply to bomb anyone they don't like. There's no need to explain anything: "We bombed Afghanistan because they have no democracy! Hooray!". "So, have people of Afghanistan started to live better after 20 years of bombing and killing?" - "You're banned from Facebook and Twitter for violating our TOS".
The purpose of democracy is to let citizens exercise control of their own country. Wealth, status, heritage etc. is always going to be confounding factors for this to work. Ideally the democratic process should account for this, but in reality it will always be a sliding scale. A truly perfect democracy doesn't seem possible.
This doesn't contradict the fact that democracy is something to strive for. Most people would like to have their voices heard and not be subjugated by authoritarian leaders.
Alas, this is were it seems like a lot of Russians have just given up; "We'll have an authoritarian regime, because it's always been like that. This one isn't as bad as the previous ones, so it's fine."
Exactly. This is why it is also possible for USA to bomb or otherwise subvert any country because they don't confirm to some definition of democracy. Because there will never be perfect democracy, the strong bully can plunder any country saying: "You're not perfect democracy, so give up your resources to me!".
This doesn't contradict the fact that democracy is something to strive for. Most people would like to have their voices heard and not be subjugated by authoritarian leaders.
Is there any country in the world where your voice would be heard unless you're a highly ranked bureaucrat or media star? In US, which is considered a "near perfect" democracy you can't say a lot of things because either you'll be blocked by monopolistic Internet media (FB, Twitter, YouTube) or you'll be "canceled" (like RMS and many others) or both.
So what should we strive for?
And why would I care? What do I need to say to the government? There're 140,000,000 of us in Russia and all have different opinions and little understanding outside of our area of expertise. If we'll all say something, the result we'll be chaos and noise.
Besides, contrary to what western media says, there's more freedom of speech in Russia than in the West. E.g. I read critics of Putin every day on all Russian social networks. I have friends that criticize Putin for years openly. They were never even invited to police or their accounts blocked. So what?
The voice you have in a representative democracy is the right to vote for a candidate that acts as a proxy for your personal opinions, combined with the right to start a political campaign/party if none align with you. The foundation for this is fair elections and lack of censorship. Personally I do feel like I'm having my voice heard when I cast a vote at the ballot box.
I'm not going to entertain your tangential whataboutisms. There are a lot of problems in the world today, we can agree on that.
Ycombinator is also a western propaganda and most Americans in here thinks they live in a democratic country. They will downvote you here if you don't parrot the US propaganda. They should try looking into their country from the outside.
They surrounded your country with military assets and materials and you are the one acting aggressively in their democratic propaganda media machines which is owned by a couple of billionaires. I think the west think you should move out of earth and move to another planet.
Oh then they will accuse you of aggression again if you occupy the moon.
The US probably envy your military budget for all the campaign you are doing to undermine their democracy.
It still me, that reply is just for the downvoters, ycombinator has been politcal lately not a tech news anymore. Propaganda is spilling over to all tech news sight in the past few years. Economist is one of the propaganda machine of the west it used to be a nice magazine.
I am not American nor Russian. I don't care about world news. I only replied to this post because ycombinator has been showing political news being on front page lately and that is irritating. The comments shows how blind the Americans are on how people view them.
It so sad to see how a country cheers on the destruction of lives of another country just to sell weapons and oil.
I hope ycombinator bans or outright delete this kinds of post.
They are not jailed because they follow the propaganda of each nation. Journalism is dead in this generation. Julian Assange is in jail for not following the propaganda.
Your explanation hinges on that journalists in China, Russia, North Korea, etc are stupid, and none in western nations are. Even if the simple explanation is that it's not a concept that occurs.
And no, Julian Assange isn't a journalist, nor was he jailed for journalism. I applaud some of the things he did, and I don't agree with all legislation, but he clearly broke the law (regardless of how we feel about the greater good).
Which one tho? I"m trying to think of countries that are not poor af, a dictature, related or in some way crooked and do not kowtow to the US when it actually comes down to it regardless of their self interest. Can only think of exceptional cases like Switzerland or Israel. Maybe the later isn't exactly politically sound but i don't think that changes much in this comparison.
I would rather call this pragmatism, not defeatism. There are problems and most Russians are aware of them and as soon as there emerge a political forse which will feel like they may fix them we'll definitely vote for it.
The idea that something like bipartisan system may just magically fix the problem we have is deeply unconvincing for us.
> There are problems and most Russians are aware of them and as soon as there emerge a political forse which will feel like they may fix them we'll definitely vote for it.
"Putin will kill or jail anyone who opposes him, but they sucked anyways. As soon as a good challenger comes along we'll for sure vote them in!"
I wasn't even trying to be snide, but actually writing out this scenario made it too absurd to signal any other sentiment.
It's not that a bipartisan system fixes any and all problems, it's that a system where any opposition doesn't fear for their life at least opens up the possibility of viable alternatives.
I'm not sure I get your point. What kind of non absurd scenario do you imply? Vote for another person nevermind how clueless he is? Overthrow the goverment and start a civil war?
1. My approach is not pragmatic, but rather naive.
2. You seem to be a defeatist :-)
I don't agree with 1 - people die, Putin's no exception. People in ruling party rotate, change etc. The design you are talking about is, imo, overrated.
> "Putin will kill or jail anyone who opposes him, but they sucked anyways. As soon as a good challenger comes along we'll for sure vote them in!"
No, the reason I mentioned "they sucked" is that for an experienced politician killing his less dangerous opponent is a very stupid move. It wouldn't give any profit but will definitely harm the reputation. Сui bono tells us to search for another beneficiar.
> I wasn't even trying to be snide, but actually writing out this scenario made it too absurd to signal any other sentiment.
> is waiting for a scenario that can't happen, by Putins/Kremlins design.
I see only two options: waiting and starting your own party. I don't feel qualified for the second option.
> It's not that a bipartisan system fixes any and all problems, it's that a system where any opposition doesn't fear for their life at least opens up the possibility of viable alternatives.
This sounds reasonable. But it is in case a panacea.
> No, the reason I mentioned "they sucked" is that for an experienced politician killing his less dangerous opponent is a very stupid move. It wouldn't give any profit but will definitely harm the reputation. Сui bono tells us to search for another beneficiar.
Yet he spends 0 effort on finding the guilty parties when journalists/political opponents die. That you actually attempt mental gymnastics trying to explain it in more convoluted ways tells me that the Kremlin propaganda machine works.
> Yet he spends 0 effort on finding the guilty parties when journalists/political opponents die.
Yes, you are right this is very disturbing and needs to be dealt with.
> That you actually attempt mental gymnastics trying to explain it in more convoluted ways tells me that the Kremlin propaganda machine works.
This is not a "convoluted mental gymnastics", this is a necessary exercise to resist the very propaganda. Talking about propaganda - could you come up with some particular example of it which makes me perform all these mental gymnastics attempt? I'm honestly curious whether I would be able to distinguish it.
I'd been led to believe that Ksenia Sobchak is the tame opposition while Aleksey Navalny is the real opposition.
(I assume this music video features a look-alike rather than the real Sobchak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmhbOgSKF9k ... it's not relevant but it's a fun bit of Russian culture.)
When I read the news (and I mostly don't try to) I get it from Russia Today. I know they're probably not 100% objective, but so is any news source.
For a person living in Russia, I cringe every time I read news from western media about our country and our people. It's a collection of blatant lies targeted at people who don't know what is Russia, where is Russia, how Russia lives.
E.g. how would any westerner fact check any news source like this without being able to read Russian? Rely on opinions of CIA-ceritified translators?
What else source do you suggest. Mind you, as living in Russia I don't trust western media, because things they say about Russia is 90% lie which is evident to any Russian that possess some English knowledge and can fact check what they're telling about Russia.
> E.g. how would any westerner fact check any news source like this without being able to read Russian? Rely on opinions of CIA-ceritified translators?
Buddy what CIA did to you? Seriously!
They don't dominate the world. There's a good part of Europe watching that do know Russian as well. Don't live on that dream.
This.
This kind of bias leaves us no way other than participate in this doomed political discussion inevitably loosing karma :(
Why don't you ask for sources to support claims such as
"Putin jailing and killing his political opponents".
He seems to be popular enough for people to risk going out to protest in the tens of thousands. And "harsh" is pretty subjective. Witness testimonies from similar penal colonies are pretty grim; guards beating inmates, sleep deprivation, demeaning chores. I'd consider that harsh, but YMMV.
That being said, Navalny probably won't suffer from actual violence or anything too explicit. The government isn't stupid, and they know he'll get the word out if it happens. And it doesn't really serve their purpose. They just want to shut him up. Keeping him locked up with restricted access to communication is probably enough.
I sort of agree with your last point though. Navalny does seem to have a checkered past to put it lightly. He comes from a nationalist background, and seemingly still hold some of those values. It's hard to reconcile that fact with his (in my mind) positive influence as a catalyst for change.
Yes, he's not totally unimportant because CIA and MI6 pour hundreds of millions in information campaign dedicated to him every year. When you read or watch western media there's an illusion like he's the most important person in Russia.
Same with many media sources in Russian funded directly or indirectly by CIA (Meduza.io, Radio Freedom, etc). Or he's last YouTube movie that was evidently badly translated from English (using words and sentences that native speaker would never use) and was aggressively pushed by YouTube amounting millions of fake views immediately after publishing.
So, there's some amount of gullible people that go out to protests organized by CIA, but not many. Last protests were barely noticeable.
I'm very happy about it because I see what happens to countries that fail to stave off CIA organized protests - they go to stone age immediately (Libya, Syria) or gradually (Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine).
There's no hard evidence, CIA isn't that stupid. But most of of the current Russian opposition is funded by CIA. Sometimes it's evident (some of the opposition media outlets are funded directly from Washington), sometimes it's less evident (e.g. Navalny receiving millions of USD via "anonymous bitcoin donation").
Another indirect evidence is that their discourse is exactly aligned with western media discourse. They have no points of disagreement. If western media criticize something in Russia, we hear same criticism from Russian opposition. You can translate your Economist or CNN website, and you'll get Meduza.io or Radio Freedom. It's hard to believe that such 100% agreement in tiniest details is accidental.
Mate, you can read in official US documents that they spend tens, maybe hundreds of millions of USD on anti-Russian propaganda. It's just the amount that is openly admitted. Every year they open new organizations to "fight Russian propaganda", with huge budgets.
It's not a conspiracy, you can find it in the open US sources.
Even US embassies in Russia published information on how to join protests this winter.
Of course not. Instead he will suffer there approximately the same as other inmates, maybe a more, and will be excluded from coordinating anti-putin politicians in the rigged elections. Since russian political field is thoroughly cleaned up now, and Navalny was the only anti-putin figure left, this will achieve what kremlin wants - some noticeable decline in the anti-putin voting this year.
PS: I'm writing anti-putin because it is not clear that Navalny is actually going against the soviet system in general. For example he supported Crimea invasion, he supported Georgia invasion in 2008, he voluntarily invited russian terrorist Girkin a few years ago for the interview, and during that interview said that it is not a war crime to kill Ukrainian soldiers.
In the single comment you are simultaneously saying "how is he deprived" and "usa is doing the same". This kremlin doublespeak hypocrisy is actually hilarious to read every time :)
Yeah, they do want that. Tried to kill him multiple times using their FSB goons, almost succeeded. Now it's time for good old one - persecute on false charges, and let the penal system do its work. Not as effective or flashy as Nemtsov, or Politkovskaya, or Estemirova, or Litvinenko approach, but truly battle tested way of dealing with journalists or political opponents.
Without picking any sides here, I think it is somewhat funny that both parties in the comments think the other party is indoctrinated by state propaganda about their own country...
It is pretty funny. However it gets a bit skewed when you talk about Russian media vs "western media". One is largely state controlled with very rigid guidelines and directives and the other is an amalgamation of hundreds of outlets in dozens of countries, with differing viewpoints and generally good independence. Some might be louder than others, absolutely, but they can all be heard.
I'm sure there is still some bias being applied, but the whole "russophobe" narrative is a bit tiresome and seems to be engineered by the Russian state to a large extent.
I'm sure that Russian state owned media is way more biased than most Western media. However, if you factor in that for instance a large part of the US only watches Fox, OAN or Breitbart, I don't think one party is much better off in the news department. A lot of people have access to independent media, but actively choose not to use them.
I'm not sure those conservative outlets are necessarily part of an aligned state agenda. Especially considering how they are directly opposed to the current administration.
Also I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that both parties are equal, while also claiming that "Russian state owned media is way more biased than most Western media". My point is that there are no major alternative platforms in Russia. There's a reason why the few critical Russian news outlets locate outside of Russia.
I was always courious about this "state control". Seriously, I've heard this hundrends of times. And EVERY single person failed to explain how he thinks that happens.
At the same time reading all this banned criticism almost always left the impression of very poor analysis of the situation, usually non constructive and biased. The "state controlled" part of media also feels biased but more often than not it looks like a better job done when it comes to the situation analysis.
You can look at the NTV takeover for a good example of how this can happen. In cases where the state doesn't end up directly owning the media company, suspiciously often the majority of shares ends up owned by Kremlin loyalist oligarchs. On top of this there is a widespread general culture of self censorship, where there is fear of covering certain topics because of possible government interference. This was even confirmed in an official Russian report in 2004. I'm not saying this is without exception, but it would seem that the government has very large influence over media in Russia compared to many other places.
Yes, I know about it. BTW, as a result of this takeover "Эхо Москвы" which critisize Kremlin quite hard now belongs to the state owned company Gazprom. So, this is a way more tricky than you might think.
I mostly believe in self censorship - do not touch "dangerous" subjects etc. This is a main force behind censorship rather than directives from some dedicated goverment department.
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[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadYou see the same behaviour with Snowden and the US. The US security industry for sure would prefer this man to be quiet and away from any spotlight, but all they can do is make up some rumours about how he's just a disgruntled employee or maybe a pedophile fleeing for that reason or a rapist. Obviously it doesn't gain traction but I've seen those attempts.
Regardless if your post is serious or not, this post is the dumbest "dare" to Americans I ever seen.
Then you have the question of whether the surviving second in command decides to just eat the loss and surrender his country to the United States without firing a shot, or .. fire a shot.
The bare minimum is probably the televised execution of all US embassy staff in Russia; the maximum retaliation is, of course, nuclear war.
Are you suggesting that the Kremlin wants to escalate into full scale war with the US?
That wasn't even done by another major power, I think. (I'm no good at history.) Presumably there's a reason why major countries don't usually murder the heads of state of other major countries. I imagine it has something to do the military having standing orders to retaliate in such cases.
So what did the Americans do? In my opinion: It wasn't military invasion, it wasn't sanctions, it was they have built a better, more free, system (at least that's how it was largely perceived), and opened their doors for people who wanted to emigrate and live there. Often these were intellectuals, who then "spread the word" about how it works in the U.S. back to the land they were born.
I think with America coming to neoliberalism in the 1980s, this approach was lost. (Freedom turned into an ideology, and that neutered the pragmatic consideration of different human values.) But in some places, it never really existed, in Latin America, or Middle East, Americans often supported dictatorships.
So here you have it, this is what you can realistically do. Build a better system, create an example, let people (from Russia or elsewhere) come and see why it is really better.
Very similar to what Great Britain is doing with Hong Kong. [2]
[1] https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202004021...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-hongkong-security-britain...
Russia will fail eventually (as the USSR did before it), its only a matter of when.
It's worth reminding that despite the sorry state of USSR economy when communism ended, it still contracted by almost 1/3 during the 90s neoliberal era. And Putin improved on that, despite being authoritarian ruler. So the failure of the state is not at all given.
"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst."
Personally annoying leaders and oligarchs by preventing them to move around, if only to bring their kids to Disneyland, is not flashy but is convincing Putin's inner circle that he is turning Russia into a third world country.
Hit at the wallet. Especially at the personal one.
See Cuba or Venezuela, they live on sanctions for decades but show the oligarchs can live well on them, the people is struggling and has not any possibility to fight against their regimes
And when you find a business front of one of these, you have a legal reason to destroy millions from their wealth.
Angry oligarchs are probable more scary to Putin than protests in the streets of Moscow.
That seems like the kind of problem the UN would have run into and found a solution for within about the first 5 years it existed, instead of leaving it inaddressed for three-quarters of a century.
Oh, that’s because it is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assem...
It's not a harsh colony, there's even video available where Navalny lies on a bed most of the time, drinks tea, does nothing.
Besides what's the point of Navalny dying in prison? He's not that popular in Russia. Here most people believe he's a crook and/or CIA agent. He's more popular among Russian emigrants. Here in Russia very few people believe him.
It's an opposition figure that is actually helping Putin by being such an easy target, e.g. spending people donations on luxurious hotels in Thailand.
Besides, if western readers/journalists could read Russian, they'd be flabbergasted by the bullshit Navalny says. Firstly, he's nazi and his political career started with nazi slogans (nobody wants to remember that now, though). Secondly, he's saying dumb populist bullshit. I listened to his "presidential programme" - it's for people with IQ of a room temperature. There's no substance in it.
Does it ever occur to you that it's exactly by design?
But it's not like Putin is a bad leader. Maybe the lack of choice is due to his actions, but he's doing lots of good things for Russia. For me, clear sign of this is how he's hated by the western media.
Bad Russian leaders are loved by western media (e.g. Gorbachev, Yeltsin) and good ones are hated.
I happen to remember USSR collapse, then the awful years of Yeltsin, when everything went to hell: economy was dead, crime rate went through the roof - there were shootings every day on the streets, suicide rate went through the roof, population started to decline because people didn't want to have children (or didn't have means to raise children), millions were starving to death. And I remember how this started to change almost the next day after the first election of Putin. No more street shootings and businessmen cars explosions. Corruption started to wither (and continues to this day). Not only old buildings stopped to deteriorate, but new buildings, roads and bridges started to appear everywhere.
In short, just about every metric you can measure started to improve under Putin's rule. Except maybe some "freedom of speech" which is almost unimportant to me. I remember that "freedom of speech" was used to calumniate Russian past and present in 90s, I don't remember a single good thing caused by "freedom of speech" in 90s. Bunch of freaks were allowed to speak on TV and other media, what they said caused only strong negative emotions in everyone. It was obvious that it had nothing to do with making our life better.
It is interesting that you talk about different metrics and different words meaning different things to Russians compared to those in the west. If we can't use "left" and "right" as descriptors, and you don't place much emphasis on "freedom of speech", what _are_ the values that you think are important? (I suspect, from what you say, even "freedom of speech" means something different to you than it does to me)
As for left or right I would label Putin as right inclined centrist.
Now, West suddenly become very concerned with Putin's alleged wealth (nobody had seen it) - why? Why Putin's wealth is more important than Yeltsin wealth? Why current level of corruption which is measly compared to level of corruption during Yeltsin times had become so extremely important to the west? Why it didn't bother anyone before?
What is important to me: being able to live normal life: have a job, have access to medicine and education for me and my family, having enough food on my table to not starve. Less important but nice to have is enough income to travel somewhere for holiday at 1-2 times a year. To have friends and family. To not have war in my country (which is US currently actively pushing as well - they hope to force war between Europe/Ukraine and Russia because that will be very beneficial for US economy and US being separated by the ocean will not experience the devastating effects of the war on its own territory).
I do not believe that democracy exists anywhere or even actually possible. I do not need some kind of "free speech" whatever that means. I like to blog, but I seriously doubt my blog would cause any problem in any society. I'm definitely aware that blogging in the US is more likely to create problems than in Russia.
In Russia nobody cares if you're rude or politically incorrect or you have contradicting political views. Many of my friends do not support Putin unlike me - that doesn't ruin our friendship. Whatever I write on my blog will never put me in trouble in Russia, even if I'll write "I hate Putin, he's a crook" - nobody cares despite what you may read in western media. In Russia I can write or say: "BLM" or "All lives matter" and I won't have any problem at my job or with the police or with anyone. In the US there's only one approved view that you can openly support, otherwise you're destined to have problems, e.g. you can be fired from your job and become homeless if you don't agree with your latest election results or don't support some SJW movement or you support it but not in an approved way.
With regards to tensions around the border with Russia and Europe, Putin is firmly seen as the aggressor from here, especially after the annexation of Crimea. To us it seems that Russia is testing the water, with the full knowledge that essentially everyone in Europe wants to avoid an outright war.
You say that you can blog freely without consequence in Russia, but I wonder what the effects of publicly disclosing e.g. homosexuality would be? The impression I have is that it would be analogous to admitting to racism in the US or Europe.
I do appreciate being able to have a reasonable conversation with someone who literally sees the world from a different angle to myself!
I guess nothing will happen. It's not like homosexuality is persecuted in Russia. I've seen several times people openly admitting their homosexuality in public with no consequences. It's explicitly prohibited to "promote" homosexuality, whatever that means. Though I've never seen or heard anyone being prosecuted by this law.
I assure nobody wants a war here. From here it's seen as USA aggressively trying to push Ukraine to start something stupid like trying to take Crimea back by force. Ukraine is not a sovereign country, it's under external control and they have a very little choice. Their economy is unviable, and I guess US gives them a hard choice: either you go to war with Russia or the flow of credit from the West that allows you to feed your people will stop.
We don't need Ukraine at all. It's useless for us, it's useless for Europe. If we'd captured the Ukraine (and I'm sure that would be easy), we'd have to feed the big population that can't feed themselves and about 50% of that population also hates us to guts. Everybody understands it, including Putin. Why waste resources feeding big ungrateful population if you can offload this problem to Europe?
USSR tried to feed too many hungry mouths: Georgia, Asian republics, Baltic Republics. USSR built infrastructure: schools, hospitals, industry in those countries. They were prosperous during Soviet times because Georgia for example, consumed roughly 10 times or more money its economy generated. The difference was covered by RSFSR (Russia). Only to hear after USSR collapse that we were oppressors. Nobody is going to make this mistake again. Nobody wants to take back Georgia or Tajikistan or Estonia or Lithuania. Let them care about themselves, we better spend our resources to make our life better rather than trying to buy loyalty.
So, I highly doubt Putin have any desire to start a war. It's not beneficial to him or to our country at all. It would be highly beneficial for the US, though.
The message I'll take from our exchange here is that what you and I know to be true is a result of the culture and media that we've been exposed to throughout our lives, and that objective truth is hard to determine, even for well educated people. Less well educated and informed people stand little chance of discovering the true-truth in this environment.
All the industry was destroyed, especially after the coup of 2014. Agriculture remains, but EU sets a tiny quote for Ukrainian exports. So maybe Ukraine could produce and sell more agricultural products, but they can't sell them because EU quotes are exhausted usually within the first month of the year.
Also, agriculture isn't so simple. It requires huge amounts of hydrocarbons for fueling agricultural equipment (tractors, harvesters, etc consume huge amounts of diesel for example). You also need fertilizers and other chemicals. Ukraine has to import all that.
Also, Ukraine is hostile to Russia so we don't want to import anything from them and law explicitly forbids many ukrainian imports. But EU also has its own industry and its own agriculture and they do not need one more competitor on its market. For example, after 2014 sanctions, when Russia stopped importing many articles of food from EU, many agricultural companies of EU started to experience difficulties. E.g. meat producers in Czech Republic. EU needs to give work to its own citizens, why would they open the market for cheap competing products from Ukraine? So that more EU producers go bankrupt? Not going to happen.
Fine then, if money is enough to make this basic right unimportant then we're definitely not on the same page.
It's not much different from what happens in places like Dubai.
It's a little strange that in all of Russia one can't find an alternative, for decades. One might think that when an alternative shows it might get poisoned and jailed.
That is to say, someone smart enough to become a political force to be reckoned with is probably smart enough to realise that they will be faced with some terrible consequences for doing so. Their chances of success are extremely small and the chances of punishment is high. The smartest move is not to participate, and so this filters out all but the most principled or naive and foolhardy.
Maybe because every alternative that pops up gets assassinated or jailed by Kremlin.
If it was a democracy maybe more viable alternatives would be seen.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-russian-dissi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/world/europe/moscow-kreml...
1. Everyone who opposes Putin dies or ends up in jail.
2. Putin hasn't been tried in court to be proven guilty, so we don't "know" who's responsible.
2 is actually barely relevant in context. The fact of the matter is that the chilling effect occurs regardless.
That the incentives clearly points to one explanation and nothing else makes sense is unmistakable, but also secondary.
a) Not everyone - a lot of people oppose Putin. https://echo.msk.ru, https://novayagazeta.ru Most content on these sites devoted to critisizing Putin and current regime. These people do this for years.
b) Not everyone from your list opposed Putin, for instnace Khlebnikov mostly concentrated on Beresovsky.
2. Correct. We don't have any official evidence. This means that the only thing we can do is to analyze what is available. The links you provided don't help much in this endevour.
We know that people die or are jailed. We can definitely see patterns that group those people together. Everything points to a single explanation, but regardless if that is proved or not, the effects are black on white.
I don't have to understand/prove weak forces or gravity to state that 100 of 100 apples dropped fall to the ground.
Black and white facts are the person murdered, crime commited and some other person guilty. The hypothesis is who this other person is.
The fact that the person murdered is not the most dangerous for the person suspected support the hypothesis that this has been done to discredit him. (but doesn't prove or disprove the hypothesis).
The fact that nobody has been prosecuted supports the hypothesis that the suspect is guilty.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/02/20/the-kremlins-cri...
All important positions in government of USA are occupied by people from the oldest and wealthiest US families. Is it democracy? I doubt that.
There's no freedom of speech. Which we hear is "freedom" of speech, because censorship is performed by not government, but private entities like Facebook, Twitter, Google. Yeah, maybe formally it's not a censorship for some strict definition of the word, but de-facto it's censorship and it's stronger than censorship ever were in Russia.
Secondly, so-called "democracy" is weaponized by the West to oust regimes West doesn't like (e.g. that aren't willing to sell rights to exploit their natual resouces to Western corporations) or simply to bomb anyone they don't like. There's no need to explain anything: "We bombed Afghanistan because they have no democracy! Hooray!". "So, have people of Afghanistan started to live better after 20 years of bombing and killing?" - "You're banned from Facebook and Twitter for violating our TOS".
Sorry, I no longer believe in "democracy".
This doesn't contradict the fact that democracy is something to strive for. Most people would like to have their voices heard and not be subjugated by authoritarian leaders.
Alas, this is were it seems like a lot of Russians have just given up; "We'll have an authoritarian regime, because it's always been like that. This one isn't as bad as the previous ones, so it's fine."
Exactly. This is why it is also possible for USA to bomb or otherwise subvert any country because they don't confirm to some definition of democracy. Because there will never be perfect democracy, the strong bully can plunder any country saying: "You're not perfect democracy, so give up your resources to me!".
This doesn't contradict the fact that democracy is something to strive for. Most people would like to have their voices heard and not be subjugated by authoritarian leaders.
Is there any country in the world where your voice would be heard unless you're a highly ranked bureaucrat or media star? In US, which is considered a "near perfect" democracy you can't say a lot of things because either you'll be blocked by monopolistic Internet media (FB, Twitter, YouTube) or you'll be "canceled" (like RMS and many others) or both.
So what should we strive for?
And why would I care? What do I need to say to the government? There're 140,000,000 of us in Russia and all have different opinions and little understanding outside of our area of expertise. If we'll all say something, the result we'll be chaos and noise.
Besides, contrary to what western media says, there's more freedom of speech in Russia than in the West. E.g. I read critics of Putin every day on all Russian social networks. I have friends that criticize Putin for years openly. They were never even invited to police or their accounts blocked. So what?
I'm not going to entertain your tangential whataboutisms. There are a lot of problems in the world today, we can agree on that.
Oh then they will accuse you of aggression again if you occupy the moon.
The US probably envy your military budget for all the campaign you are doing to undermine their democracy.
It so sad to see how a country cheers on the destruction of lives of another country just to sell weapons and oil.
I hope ycombinator bans or outright delete this kinds of post.
And no, Julian Assange isn't a journalist, nor was he jailed for journalism. I applaud some of the things he did, and I don't agree with all legislation, but he clearly broke the law (regardless of how we feel about the greater good).
Let them go, one day will understand that there's a middle way between being a (masked?) dictature and an US vassal
"Putin will kill or jail anyone who opposes him, but they sucked anyways. As soon as a good challenger comes along we'll for sure vote them in!"
I wasn't even trying to be snide, but actually writing out this scenario made it too absurd to signal any other sentiment.
It's not that a bipartisan system fixes any and all problems, it's that a system where any opposition doesn't fear for their life at least opens up the possibility of viable alternatives.
You saying
> as soon as there emerge a political forse which will feel like they may fix them we'll definitely vote for it
is waiting for a scenario that can't happen, by Putins/Kremlins design.
1. My approach is not pragmatic, but rather naive.
2. You seem to be a defeatist :-)
I don't agree with 1 - people die, Putin's no exception. People in ruling party rotate, change etc. The design you are talking about is, imo, overrated.
No, the reason I mentioned "they sucked" is that for an experienced politician killing his less dangerous opponent is a very stupid move. It wouldn't give any profit but will definitely harm the reputation. Сui bono tells us to search for another beneficiar.
> I wasn't even trying to be snide, but actually writing out this scenario made it too absurd to signal any other sentiment.
> is waiting for a scenario that can't happen, by Putins/Kremlins design.
I see only two options: waiting and starting your own party. I don't feel qualified for the second option.
> It's not that a bipartisan system fixes any and all problems, it's that a system where any opposition doesn't fear for their life at least opens up the possibility of viable alternatives.
This sounds reasonable. But it is in case a panacea.
Yet he spends 0 effort on finding the guilty parties when journalists/political opponents die. That you actually attempt mental gymnastics trying to explain it in more convoluted ways tells me that the Kremlin propaganda machine works.
Yes, you are right this is very disturbing and needs to be dealt with.
> That you actually attempt mental gymnastics trying to explain it in more convoluted ways tells me that the Kremlin propaganda machine works.
This is not a "convoluted mental gymnastics", this is a necessary exercise to resist the very propaganda. Talking about propaganda - could you come up with some particular example of it which makes me perform all these mental gymnastics attempt? I'm honestly curious whether I would be able to distinguish it.
Not sure, that US system is such a system https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
(I assume this music video features a look-alike rather than the real Sobchak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmhbOgSKF9k ... it's not relevant but it's a fun bit of Russian culture.)
For a person living in Russia, I cringe every time I read news from western media about our country and our people. It's a collection of blatant lies targeted at people who don't know what is Russia, where is Russia, how Russia lives.
E.g. how would any westerner fact check any news source like this without being able to read Russian? Rely on opinions of CIA-ceritified translators?
E.g., what's your opinion on this: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/4/7/what-do-russians... ?
Buddy what CIA did to you? Seriously!
They don't dominate the world. There's a good part of Europe watching that do know Russian as well. Don't live on that dream.
That being said, Navalny probably won't suffer from actual violence or anything too explicit. The government isn't stupid, and they know he'll get the word out if it happens. And it doesn't really serve their purpose. They just want to shut him up. Keeping him locked up with restricted access to communication is probably enough.
I sort of agree with your last point though. Navalny does seem to have a checkered past to put it lightly. He comes from a nationalist background, and seemingly still hold some of those values. It's hard to reconcile that fact with his (in my mind) positive influence as a catalyst for change.
Same with many media sources in Russian funded directly or indirectly by CIA (Meduza.io, Radio Freedom, etc). Or he's last YouTube movie that was evidently badly translated from English (using words and sentences that native speaker would never use) and was aggressively pushed by YouTube amounting millions of fake views immediately after publishing.
So, there's some amount of gullible people that go out to protests organized by CIA, but not many. Last protests were barely noticeable.
I'm very happy about it because I see what happens to countries that fail to stave off CIA organized protests - they go to stone age immediately (Libya, Syria) or gradually (Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine).
Another indirect evidence is that their discourse is exactly aligned with western media discourse. They have no points of disagreement. If western media criticize something in Russia, we hear same criticism from Russian opposition. You can translate your Economist or CNN website, and you'll get Meduza.io or Radio Freedom. It's hard to believe that such 100% agreement in tiniest details is accidental.
Far from being an American fan here, but doubting and not playing the CIA conspiracy theory card can help at times.
Regimes live on this kind of support, so until there's no a critical mass understanding that something isn't fine, nothing will change
It's not a conspiracy, you can find it in the open US sources.
Even US embassies in Russia published information on how to join protests this winter.
But I don't think that it's a full conspiracy that involves papers, everywhere in the rest of the world.
PS: I'm writing anti-putin because it is not clear that Navalny is actually going against the soviet system in general. For example he supported Crimea invasion, he supported Georgia invasion in 2008, he voluntarily invited russian terrorist Girkin a few years ago for the interview, and during that interview said that it is not a war crime to kill Ukrainian soldiers.
>deprived both of sleep and of medical care
Thats exactly what us is doing in its prisons. How is he deprived? How is it any different from what his foreign handlers do at home?
Was there a single article on torture Maria Butina had to endure in US prison?
shame cheap pieces like that show up here.
And to be fair, the invasion was triggered by the plans of the us to bring warships in the black sea through nato alliance of ukraine.
The narrative in russia is not the same than on cnn and to me is closer to what really happened.
I'm sure there is still some bias being applied, but the whole "russophobe" narrative is a bit tiresome and seems to be engineered by the Russian state to a large extent.
Also I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that both parties are equal, while also claiming that "Russian state owned media is way more biased than most Western media". My point is that there are no major alternative platforms in Russia. There's a reason why the few critical Russian news outlets locate outside of Russia.