
The Suspected Poisoning of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Prominent Adversary - jseliger
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-suspected-poisoning-of-alexey-navalny-putins-most-prominent-adversary
======
supernova87a
I remember an essay a few years ago (it was the Ukrainian poisoning?) where
the author essentially said that Russia's brand has basically been spoiled for
outsiders. (political brand certainly, but maybe overall as a country).

As in, Russia is no longer a trustworthy seeming, interesting, attractive
place to want to go visit or collaborate with or be associated with.

I mean, of course it depends on the level of detail you're dealing with and
who exactly you're associating with. But for me, a general observer, Russia
certainly seems to have gotten a history of doing and being the source of
shady things.

Even aside from that, and this is probably skewed by the history books
focusing on the oddest parts of history -- Russia always reads like an odd,
outlier place in history. Or maybe it's the Russian literature. Always
something strange, or depressing going on there.

What's up with that?

~~~
vogre
There always were a lot of propaganda involved since forever. Even now Russia
is demonised in Western Media, mostly quite unfair.

~~~
leokennis
Can you give an example where Russia is portrayed unfairly?

~~~
vogre
You may start with this article
[https://medium.com/@dominicbasulto/russophobia-and-the-
dark-...](https://medium.com/@dominicbasulto/russophobia-and-the-dark-art-of-
making-an-anti-russian-magazine-cover-94b11e32d53f)

It has some great images, especially in the final part.

~~~
gowld
That's negative portrayal of a violent corrupt dictatorship.

~~~
vogre
It started long before Putin and long before communists.

~~~
avmich
But things changed - Russia is much more known - while something remained the
same - perception of the threat. Only now there are causes for that, so the
article isn't accurate, portraying West as being "unnaturally" negative to
Russia. West is negative for specific reasons, something which the article
fails to address.

------
baybal2
He was poisoned, _and survived_ thrice, and was also jailed for really
insubstantial periods of time.

I think the Kremlin is very much content with having such a plaything
opposition, which tacitly plays along, and does nothing to really challenge
it.

The few other people who ever were a credible threat to the regime in Russia
were dealt with much more unceremoniously: gunned down in the broad daylight.

I think the KGB is just "trolling" him.

Would they were they serious, they could've thrown the usual "espionage," or
"terrorism" charge, and landed him in prison for 20+ years, poison him to
death properly, or simply shot him dead as they've done with hundreds of
others.

~~~
quasse
Don't forget the "fell out a window" accident that has happened to several
Russian doctors recently.

~~~
baybal2
Yes, people "fall out of windows" for much lesser offenses to the regime in
Russia.

Given this, take any speculation of suddenly appearing "credible opposition"
in Russia with a big, big grain of salt.

------
gadders
This [1] is a good article from Buzzfeed about all the UK hits that have
happened. Not all were poisonings.

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-
blood-1...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-
blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil)

------
olegious
Given what's happening in Belarus, this seems like odd timing to take this
action (assuming he was intentionally poisoned by the government).

~~~
SergeAx
In Russia unified voting day is September 13. Navalny is running "Smart
Voting" campaign to consolidate votes for most electable candidate. Taking him
off the chess desk is a serious dent in that campaign.

At the same time, using poison gives Putin maximum plausible deniability. It
is almost impossible to prove his involvement.

------
dsabanin
I was born in Russia and I despise Putin. He is the reason why I emigrated. He
and his cronies brough the country into the dark age, from which it may never
come out. He is, without a single doubt, Hitler of the 21st century.

* He consolidated all the political and judicial power. Destroyed, physically, politically or judicially all the opponents. Elections are completely fake.

* He completely controls all secret services, with vast spying network and formidable IT intrusion capabilities.

* He implemented full and completely legal surveilance state. Documented and legally mandated recording of all the cellphone communications, email, internet access logs. They urgently started building DNA database of all the citizens. Every citizen will be assigned a unique number to which all the data from all the agencies will be tied. Even a regular neighborhood policeman will have access to all this data. Cameras with face recognition being installed all over Moscow. Chinese-like internet firewall is being created.

* He controls the organized crime networks, in fact his whole gang who is in charge of Russia grew out of that crime syndicate.

* He leads and benefits from a group of very powerful "capitalists", serving the regime needs in many, many different ways around the world and internally.

* He completely controls all the media (bought out by his cronies or nationalized), which helped him create a blatant propaganda machine, rivaled probably only by Chinese and North Koreans. They can spin _anything_. People in Russia are utterly confused and don't believe in reality anymore. They are drowned in ridiculous bullshit all day long and conspiracy theories are being distributed by state TV channels.

* He usied this propaganda machine to create myth of the great Russian world and moral and intellectual exceptionality of Slavs. Constantly bringing up the great heroic ancestors and their achievement in WW2, and duty if modern Russians to not squander what they achieved. There's constantly talks about how Russia is the only true God's country, and that it's a moral savior of the world. There's an instilled feeling of victimhood, almost sainthood, of Russian culture. Everything that happens is somebody else's fault, a foreign influence, an accident, or sabotage. They truly believe that russians are the greatest people on Earth.

* He annexed Crimea, created instability and puppet regimes in many bordering states. His next possible goal is Belarus.

I believe, these are pretty much all the ingredients necessary to build a
nazi/fascist state, and that is in fact exactly what they've built.

~~~
trumpersHateMe
That reads like the playbook being used by certain leader we have here in the
states.

~~~
sneak
I don’t see any huge, monolithic nations not moving toward this goal.

Putin seems to be quite good at it, but that doesn’t discount the effects in
countries he doesn’t run. The global superpowers all dream of having a system
like that, and all are various steps toward achieving it.

Here’s the same text, region modified:

> _There 's constantly talks about how America is the only true God's country,
> and that it's a moral savior of the world. There's an instilled feeling of
> victimhood, almost sainthood, of the American way of life. Everything that
> happens is somebody else's fault, a foreign influence, an accident, or
> sabotage. They truly believe that americans are the greatest people on
> Earth._

Sound familiar?

------
bitxbit
I strongly believe Putin held back Russia in the past two decades. Brain drain
is real and Russia had all the right pieces to be a force in tech.

~~~
sjg007
Russia definitely has the talent.

~~~
throwaway122kk
Had

Name any political, cultural, economic, literature, sports achievement in last
30 years to come out of Russia. That's right Internet trolls which are an
evolution on kgbs psyops

~~~
ibobev
Kotlin[1] programming language?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_\(programming_language\))

~~~
avmich
Sure, and Nginx as well. JetBrains are in Eastern Europe, Nginx is sold to
West, wonder why?

Or you can list graphene - a really nice, to say mildly, achievement. Guess
why it wasn't announced from Russia but from UK?

Russia is being seriously held back by the autocracy. The whole world suffers
to a degree, which explains animosity... Of course Russia suffers the most,
but such things are hard to change. Ukraine and Belarus going the long and
troublesome road now, while we here keep disagreements about good and evil.

------
supernova87a
Oh, by the way, I remember reading this really interesting narrative of how
the Litvinenko polonium poisoning went down and some of the backstory. It's by
a Guardian news reporter who tried to investigate.

[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002581721770737...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0025817217707377)

I believe you can grab it off of Sci-hub in case you can't access the above
for free...

------
Phillips126
I don't have a lot of knowledge in history or politics of foreign countries,
so perhaps someone here could answer this question:

In the end, time kills us all. Putin is currently 67 years old, I assume he
will likely rule for another decade plus before time comes for him. Any
hypothesis as to what may happen after Putin? Is it likely he'll "name" a
successor who shares his authoritarian views and the cycle continues?

------
atlasunshrugged
For those interested in trying to understand more of the context of modern day
Russia, and more particularly, Putin's rise to power, I highly recommend 3
books.

1) Catherine Belton: Putin's People
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VMZYK13/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VMZYK13/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

2) Bill Browder: Red Notice [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O30HFT2/ref=dp-
kindle-redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O30HFT2/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btk)

3) Masha Gessen: Several books, but I particularly liked Man without a Face
[https://www.amazon.com/Masha-
Gessen/e/B001H6MBXK](https://www.amazon.com/Masha-Gessen/e/B001H6MBXK)

~~~
strictnein
I really enjoyed parts of Man Without a Face, especially the details on his
early life and how/why he was chosen by Yeltsin.

------
johnyzee
Get political news off HN. It's a slippery slope.

~~~
sevenf0ur
It always devolves into rants with tenuous connections to the current
president. They can't help themselves.

------
fartcannon
Is there a book written by a soldier that explains why people defend/enforce
the power of evil people?

Putin himself is not poisoning these people, someone is doing it for him. Why?

Doesn't have to be from Russia. Any soldier defending any evil person - why?

~~~
rocky_raccoon
I can't point you to a book written by a soldier, but you might be able to
find some conclusions by reading "The Authoritarians" by Bob Altemeyer[0],
which studies, as you say, why people defend/enforce the power of evil people.

[0] [https://www.theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-
bo...](https://www.theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/)

~~~
fartcannon
I'm either guilty of having this mindset myself and unaware of it, or I'm
unable to empathise with this mindset. But this link is approximately what I
was looking for. Thank you.

I would like to find an introspective writer who is also an authoritarian.

------
chromedev
People like Putin and Trump play dirty because they think that's what you have
to do to win

~~~
grugagag
To win what? Lets not forget what the stakes are, the countries where all
these narcissistic psychopaths were either elected or self imposed dictators
for life were held back. Who wants a president who considers winning a
personal gain? It is extremely harmful for the short and long term as well.

A president has to inspire unity for the country and most dictators suppress
and hide the fact that they don’t even have half the country supporting them
using different tactics from rigging elections to squashing the opposition.

~~~
anigbrowl
Sure, but supporters don't mind as long as they get some rewards. This can be
as simple as feelings of higher status than their opponents or some out group.
Even if supporters themselves are objectively worse off, as long as someone
else has it worse again, then they feel like winners.

------
throwaway_pdp09
Note the very different tone here between this discussion about russia and
previous discussions about china. Strangely calmer and less troll-swamped,
this.

~~~
knolax
Probably because you're not commenting as much on this thread.

