This comment breaks the site guidelines: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
Sinister insinuation about astroturfing is the internet's favorite pastime. The overwhelming majority of this, as far as we can tell from countless hours looking at the data, is pure imagination.
Is it possible that the manipulation is so sinister and so clever that it leaves no traces we can see in the data, and yet thousands of internet commenters see what we don't? Sure it's possible. But following that path means abandoning evidence. That way leads to the wilderness of mirrors. The only sane way to look at this is to require some evidence, some objective peg of some kind (we'll take anything!) to hang your suspicions on. The presence of opposing viewpoints, downvotes, and flags on divisive issues is no evidence at all. It just means that the community is divided.
As far as I can tell, the psychological phenomenon driving this phenomenon is that people are deeply reluctant to take in how wide the range of legitimately opposing views is. We're probably hard-wired to see the world as much smaller than it is. Bring us all, with that hard-wiring, into a community of millions of people on the internet, and the inevitable result is that people see spies, shills, astroturfers, and foreign agents everywhere. No—what you're seeing is that there are a lot of humans with very different backgrounds from yours. And on any issue with an international dimension, multiply that phenomenon by a hundred.
But what is somebody supposed to do with this list, when it contains dynamic IP addresses used by many people? Ban everything on it, based on the assumption that some of them are actually endpoints of suspicious activity, thereby preventing many innocent people from using the Internet?
At my previous company I dealt with all the scraping bots for 15 years, in the end I even banned all of Tor and many of the commercial proxy network providers, with the justification that our site (CSE) didn't need anonymous posting because there was nothing sensitive and no private information on it. But I couldn't ban dynamic IP addresses for more than a few minutes since all the abusers originating from them happily obtained a new address within seconds and continued the scraping, rendering the IP address pool used by their provider completely banned from using our site.
I should have filtered IP addresses, leaving only ranges before posting. Mea culpa.
IP addresses are blocked in a different context but land on the same list.
Still, to answer your question, dynamic IP addresses can be sticky. Where I operate, some ISPs lease the same IP address for each IP lease renewal. The only way to get an IP address is to wait until the lease expires by e.g. switching off the router.
Thanks! I'll take a look. Feel free to ping me at hn@ycombinator.com if you like—it can take time to get to something like this but we're definitely willing.
Edit: I've now had a chance to examine this data. It turns out that the IP ranges in that list are so broad as to cover more than 50% of the posts on HN.
Will you provide that data for independent review?
Edit: it's not that you shouldn't be trusted. The issue is the old “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” For example, what if a large segment of the user base, that regularly contributed extraordinarily positive engagements, existed solely for the opportunities to frame certain conversations, even in the slightest, or even in preparation for something in the distant future.
No, for the privacy reason pvg mentioned (edit: since deleted, but he made the simple point that it would violate users' privacy), and also for a different reason: it would convince no one. The only people with enough time and energy to bother looking at it would be people who already have strong views, and they would inevitably pull their preconceptions back out of the data and claim that they'd proven something.
And there's a third reason: sooner or later (maybe we're already there, maybe not yet) we have to assume a sufficiently smart manipulator (SSM) who's able to do whatever they want and be indistinguishable from a legit user. This is exactly what your phrase alludes to, I think: "regularly contributed extraordinarily positive engagements, existed solely for the opportunities to frame certain conversations". Once we're past that SSM threshold, all we can do is fall back on what the community ought to be doing anyway: answering false information with correct information, answering worse arguments with better ones, preserving community-ness without falling into war.
Since that's the only long term solution and it's what we want anyway, we might as well be practicing it now.
I think it would be helpful to enlighten people about the SSM when noting that a response is breaking the rules for an accusation of astroturfing.
For me, I think a brief explanation that well formed arguments are the only defense against an SSM would have removed a feeling of helplessness derived from reading your initial comment. And instead, lead me down a path which could really be helpful.
That's great feedback. I only thought of that "SSM" wording just now but will try to weave it into future explanations. You can see that this argument has been cooking for a while: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23839602. There are lots of other instances but I can't think of a search query to dig them up.
And it's fun to extend in the obvious ways. For instance, what if a SSM (an 'essessum', as they are often referred to in the technical literature) is orchestrating a campaign to write comments insinuating astroturfery into HN threads? After all, taken as a group such comments look very much like the kind of commentary a nefarious corporate or state actor might promote, as pointed out by the shillologists themselves! A curious and under-explored connection.
I'm just being overly self-satisfied with the idea a shadowy army of shillologists and astoTERFs are diabolically manipulating HN by darkly warning about shilling and astroturfing for unknown but definitely nefarious ends.
It sounds like you’re saying you’re fine with users doing things like creating unlimited sock puppet accounts and engaging in vote manipulation (which is what the troll farms you’re describing as SSMs have been accused of doing)? I’m genuinely not trying to be snide here—I’m just reading “we won’t enforce the rules because someone’s probably smart enough to break them (i.e. ‘do whatever they want’) and get away with it”. Is it officially okay for HN users to engage in coordinated inauthentic behavior?
It's just that we need to have some evidence, something objective to go on, before we ban people. Absent that (<-- note that I said absent that), what one is encountering on the internet is a gigantic Rohrschach diagram, in which people routinely see the opposite of what they like or identify with. This internet experience is like being surrounded by demons of one's own creation: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Sock puppet accounts and vote manipulation are not what I understood BrianOnHN to be talking about upthread. Maybe one could adapt the point to those cases though. Imagine someone who was coordinating inauthentic behavior so cleverly that we couldn't detect it at all. Fortunately I don't think we're there yet—but of course we wouldn't know it if we were. Either way, just imagine for a moment that this is the case. What are our options? The way I see it, we have two:
1. Go after each other based on subjective interpretations of whatever deviousness we imagine we see;
2. Have a functioning community with a healthy immune system based on clear thinking and good arguments.
Surely we all choose #2, at least in our better moments. The key insight here is that #2 doesn't depend on what manipulators, even the cleverest manipulators, do. It depends on us. I'm not saying that it's the only defense we have against manipulation; I'm saying that if the day ever comes when it is the only defense we have, well, it's what we ought to be doing anyway, so we should work at getting good at it now.
I don’t think it’s possible. We have huge amount of evidences. This article alone has 150 references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency They include analysis of internet activity of state-sponsored trolls, insider leaks, and even documents from US courts.
I don't think that wording is very accurate, but certainly there is a wide range of geopolitical opinion among real, legitimate HN users. There's no question about it—anyone who wants to pore over just the public history of commenters here can easily establish this. Besides that, it would be bizarre if it weren't the case. Why should the disagreements and conflicts that pervade the world somehow be absent here?
That's my point, in fact. The spectrum of legitimate opinion is much wider than people imagine it is. When they encounter views which don't belong on their much-smaller imaginary spectrum, they don't go "wow, I wonder what your background is that you would see this so differently than I do!", they go "Shill! Manipulator spy! Putin poison puppet! GRU agent!" and similar variations.
Here's another version of this comment from a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867707. That was in the different context of China not Russia, but the internet dynamics in all these cases are exactly the same—which, btw, is strong evidence that they're not really about what people say they are.
I didn't say there was "no consistent astroturfing", but rather that (a) we've found no evidence of it (on geopolitical topics—corporate propaganda is a different issue) and (b) there needs to be evidence of it before taking action against it. I've been posting this for years—alas it's not clear that it has any effect. This is starting to feel a tad Sisyphean.
Are we the best at finding evidence, or even particularly qualified? How would I know? I'd never claim we were. But surely you're not arguing that we should take action without finding evidence, and the argument, "get better at finding evidence until you find the evidence that I'm sure must be there" is pretty questionable too. This way of thinking leads into the wilderness of mirrors. There are much simpler explanations for everything we see in the comments on China, Russia, unions (that one came up today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24344699) and whatever else people are battling about in HN threads.
Are all companies selling such services charlatans?
Not sure I buy it. It's well established that you can buy followers, reviews, positive comments and even stories on all large public platforms, and they are quite public about it.
Sure it exists. We've banned people for it. I've scolded them publicly for it, too, in the hope of discouraging others from doing similar things. So no, what I'm saying is that it's wrong to claim astroturfing without evidence, and the mere fact of someone posting a comment that you feel is wrong—even outrageously, perversely wrong—is not evidence of astroturfing. It's evidence merely that they have a different view than you.
I can't speak about other forums but as far as I'm aware there's one outfit that sells HN votes and comments and stories. What their customers don't seem to realize is that using that service will get them banned here. At this point I figure the spammers know this too, but since people still buy from them, they probably don't care. I doubt they get much repeat business though.
I think many Russian people, especially those who watch or read mainly Russian news, hold such views with complete sincerity. The internal propaganda is quite effective.
Not a secret russian government spends considerable resources on online astroturfing but there are large constituency of closet (or not so closet) putin supporters even among tech folks of 30yo and older (basically people who were alive and old enough to remember 90s and 80s)
It’s quite anecdotal but my sampling is rather large as I’ve worked with those people over multiple years and still have contacts there. Nobody would admit they approve of this assassination obviously same as mh17 but as long as putin maintains plausible deniability they’d be ok with supporting him
By matching what happens in Belarus now to Russia.
It was long believed, even in US, that Lukashenka had the majority. In reality, he faked all elections since 1994.
Once his deeds became hard to ignore even for pathetically peaceful Belarusians, all the population turned against him. Gosh, the exit poll in my voting station recorded only one vote for Lukashenka among 358. I was there watching the exit poll for a couple of hours. I fully trust the organizers, but one in 358... I could not even imagine it.
Same for Russia.
P.S. Yes, I have a Belarusian passeport. Yes, I run a Russian-speaking community site. Pass on.
The election results had him at ~80% votes, if he is really rigging elections, would he really go for such unrealistic numbers. If I have just 40% support, I might go for showing it to be about 55%, so that it at least looks close.
I think he did rig elections but he might have had majority already, which makes his numbers look so unrealistic or he is just plain stupid to not even rig elections to make them look believable.
I do really sympathize with the Belarussian people though, every community should get a say on who represents them.
I am from Kazakhstan. If you've ever heard of it, would you consider it to be an autocratic state? Because according to the official results our beloved leader received 98% of votes in an election a few years back. Now that's an unrealistic number for sure.
>if he is really rigging elections, would he really go for such unrealistic number
You are assuming someone has an overview of the rigging being done. It's probably more chaotic than that. If 1000 different people are chucking opponents' votes into furnaces, how do you coordinate hitting that number?
That depends on whether the purpose of the election result is to be universally accepted as an accurate reflection of public sentiment or just to say, the opposition couldn't have won
And how does what happens in Belarus match what happens in Russia? Lukashenka and Putin are different kinds of people, they do different politics, Russian and Belarussian governments are not that alike. Just because both of them are "dictators" doesn't mean their people think the same about them.
Putin's approval rating is actually pretty high even when measured by NGOs sponsored by the "West". You'll be surprised, but it is quoted to be 60% in July 2020. [1]
1. The legacy of 8 decades under a government practicing public polling under a gunpoint.
2. Only the most well fed, and carefree Potemkin villages can be surveyed.
3. The lack of any other genuine option other than saying "I back a complete joke "alternative" candidates," which are set up by the regime itself to play Pope Gapon
I am referring to polling agencies that are very west-leaning, and even they can't blatantly lie about it. His approval rating as of a month ago is 59-60% [1][2][3].
In fact his approval rating after the annexation of Crimea was at all time high of 85%. Check the sources. Again, these are not government-run polls.
And I am not saying Putin did or didn't order the poisoning of Navalny. I am just saying he is not the only one with motive/opportunity contrary to popular belief pushed in the mainstream media propaganda.
Polling in developed democracies has errors of a few percentage points, even with extensive work done to improve the accuracy of the results, correct for various sampling biases, etc. What do you think the error bars of a poll in an authoritarian country are, especially one that asks 'Do you like the authoritarian leader'.
As to Crimea, plenty of Russians believe Crimea is Russian, including Navalny - the Russian opposition is neither monolithic nor does it always represent views that in lock-step with Western ones.
So you guys don’t trust the polls results because polls in Russia are obviously inaccurate. You also don’t trust the Russians who said that from their experience, there’s still a huge number of people supporting the current president - because that’s only the Kremlin bots who would say that. Though for some reason you immediately believe a person who says that the majority of population is against Putin, not providing a single proof. Doesn’t that tell us that you actually speak with voices in your head and trust only what these voices say?
There’s a thing that you should understand about Russia.
Here it goes: Russia is a huge country and Moscow is only a part of it. A small and the richest part. Moscow is basically a country inside the country. It has almost nothing to do with Russia. And the overwhelming majority of the information you are getting is coming from Moscow only.
The polls, the internet blabbering, the protests happen in Moscow, mostly (do notice that I said “mostly” before calling me a liar. I’m well aware of the exceptions, believe me). All of the money is there as well - all the cash flow through the capital. All the money from regions flow through Moscow and only a small portion of it goes back.
People from Moscow mostly look down upon the people from the regions. Consciously or not. Some of them are outright aggressive towards the “country folks”. Many of them believe that Moscow is “feeding the regions”, and it should stop, because people there are lazy and not smart enough. I’ve had conversations like this with Muscovites during my life there, it was hilarious.
The rest of the country is concentrated on their own lives. The majority of them earn something around $300USD a month that barely allows them to live from pay check to pay check. Teachers, doctors, you name it. That’s the salary of low-skilled workers in Moscow.
These people realise that changing the president won’t help them, but in fact might make their lives miserable. And they are not wrong - I can only imagine what may start after the change of leadership and what consequences for the regions it might have.
This country has its roots in the USSR. The change in the headquarters won’t replace the people in charge in the regions - at least it won’t happen immediately. And if/when it does, the majority of the replacement would be just the same people from the same ruling party (or what’s left of it). That’s how things work in Russia, that’s how it’s always been, since 1917. That’s the system that we have. That’s us, Russians, who are the system, and the president is only a small part of the problem.
The majority of Russians either don’t use Internet or use it for social networking only.
The majority of Russians don’t have an international passport (the document that allows you to travel abroad). Why would they? They will never have the money to travel.
The majority of Russians that I know, people from outside Moscow, vote for Putin. Some of them do that because they support him and the ruling party, but the most of them (as per my personal experience) just believe that he’s a lesser evil. I can’t blame them for that.
There’s more to that. What I’m trying to say here is - Russia is far more complex and diverse than you guys might think. It’s not very obvious even for many Russians. So please, don’t downvote people who say things that are against your agenda simply because of that fact. Their reasoning might be more subtle than you think.
What you might want to do to better understand them is to ask them. They know better than you about the situation over there, the historical reasons and consequences. The only thing that you probably need to ask them first is where are they from. If they are from Moscow, chances are they are biased.
Well, thanks for explaining Russia to me (I'm one person though, not guys) but nothing you've written suggests we have accurate data on the support Putin enjoys. In fact, 'support' of the sort we typically think of, expressed in a poll for a democratically elected leader subject to periodic free and fair elections, is not really a commensurable quantity with 'support' for an authoritarian leader who's clung to power for a couple of decades.
I definitely believe you. A Russian colleague, who is living in EU for several years, found it justified that Russia invaded Poland back in 1940. We were all baffled.
>seems that holding joint parades, signing secret pacts, sacrificing Comintern, etc, still did not help much.
Neither did appeasement. The correct response to Ribbentrop's suggestions was war on Germany, just like the correct choice at the Munich agreement was war on Germany. Beyond that, you're just choosing between bad options.
Anecdotally, my inlaws who are NOT Russian also hold pro-Putin and pro-Lukashenko views. I avoid politics with them.
Why? Because they mostly watch Russian TV (those Russian WW2 serials are addicting). The propaganda in the Russian TV talk shows and news is very well done.
It is just like any other echo chamber. Just like watching Fox News,listening to Limbaugh in US, etc.
There are echo chambers for all political spectrums and all countries.
It's OK to disagree with other people. It's OK to have civilized discussions about these topic, despite the disagreement.
Avoiding some topics in fear of insulting/upsetting other party, or in context of social media in fear of downvotes/flags, is the main cause of these modern echo-chambers.
Yep. There have always been echo chambers where hostile international relations, repressing rival political movements and even open corruption are seen as good things by millions of people in established liberal democracies.
Why would it be surprising this might also be the case for many Russians, with an existing tradition of hostile international relations with the West, and more repressive and corrupt governments, especially when many Russians also felt a lot poorer before Putin arrived?
I'm training a machine learning model that honeypots commenters like you with provocative news articles. Next, the comments section is cleaned up to eliminate commenter spam. It works amazingly well!
Good grief. You posted this 7 times. That's obviously abusive and obviously a bannable offense. I'm not going to ban you because I understand how crazy-making it is to represent a minority/contrarian view and feel surrounded. But please don't do it again. Also, you were posting unsubstantive and flamebait comments more than once before that. Can you please not? We're trying for something better than that here. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
So let's drink to this comrades. I know I do; with all the trucking Russians everywhere. Novojstai! Let's drink buddies. Let's run the planets to the grounds. Davoi!. Let's drink vodka(s). Trucking russians.....
EDIT: I literally drink heavily due to the fucking russians. Russia and china should be nuked to the ground. Fucking basic tactics. Fuck these pieces of shits.
oh lol Dang is a russian operative. What could be better. My fucking post is flagged already. What could be worse. Fuck this network; ruled by russia and china, it seems. ADIOS. Good win fuckstar communist cockholes.
Until we have evidence that would carry in a court of law and assign blame at a person/country - divides in opinion will prevail and assigning those divides into categories serves no constructive purpose beyond distract from debate upon the facts.
Russian fanboys, sure. Actual Russian security forces, doubtful. They aren't idiots. They aren't going to pick a fight on HN were things are so easily moderated/downvoted/flagged. The real agents work deep inside their facebook/twitter/whatsapp nests. What we have here are pro-russia but nevertheless amature activists.
Again with the blanket accusations of astroturfing without any proof. Crying shill whenever you encounter an opposing opinion is not something a rational and free-thinking person does. What you're basically doing is refusing to engage intellectually on certain viewpoints which just so happen to go against the interests of your home country's government. From the perspective of an outsider, it looks a lot like the result of brainwashing.
I agree with you in principle, but the way you expressed it reads too much like a personal attack for my taste. I don't think it's a good way to make the discussion more rational after the initial accusation of astroturfing.
Of course it is, but responding to a personal attack with another personal attack doesn't negate the original one, it just adds another on top. If you want to be able to have a calmly rational discussion, you need to be able to resist responding to disruptive comments in kind, otherwise it only takes a single person to derail an entire conversation and ruin it for everyone.
Being unable to engage with certain viewpoints to the point of bringing up foreign infiltrators every time you see it is a sign of brainwashing. I stated that as calmly as possible. I have received far worse replies on this forum.
What really derails the conversation is needlessly tone-policing people. People have a tendency of only doing that to opinions they disagree with; so in practice it's just another way to start a flamewar.
I commented on your tone exactly because I frequently find myself agreeing with you when other people don't. If I disagree with someone in both content and tone, I won't bother engaging, I'll just downvote, flag and move on.
“ These agents were designed to achieve four objectives:[21][22]
to be undetectable using standard 1970s and 1980s NATO chemical detection equipment;
to defeat NATO chemical protective gear;
to be safer to handle; and
to circumvent the Chemical Weapons Convention list of controlled precursors, classes of chemical and physical form.[23]”
This is bad. But it was targeted. I worry about how easy it would be for terrorists to do something very bad with a large quantity of this stuff seeing it's so easy to move about.
I don't think 9/11 was simple. But by and large you're correct that they don't have the patience, organization, or funding for the most part to execute more elaborate attacks (at least on the West, one could argue ISIS was pretty damn organized in their conquests in Iraq and Syria.) They seem to prefer more immediate low-effort things like simple suicide bombings, driving into crowds, or in the UK even knife attacks. We should be grateful for their lack of vision.
I'm specifically worried that the most dangerous thing about Coivd-19 is that it woke up the world to how much damage an infectious virus can cause. Technology is now at the point where you can engineer a virus like this in many university labs with maybe a team of a dozen or so and low millions of dollars of funding. That's potentially within reach of major terrorist organizations. If you're just lashing out at the world it's tough to get more bang for your buck so to speak.
Fortunately, the circles of educated, STEM type of people and radical Islamic militant types are largely exclusionary.
Why? It’s likely the reason why we have seen terrorist attacks where people drive into crowds of people. Cars and trucks is everywhere, its easily accessible.
I would argue that the other way around is the dangerous assumption, that people will NOT use the easiest accessible means to hurt other people.
Because the goal is reaching the goal, not the process.
Undoubtedly, if s terrorist group has access to this stuff, they won't reject the idea of using it just because driving a van or yielding a knife might appear simpler.
We're talking about lines of thinking that planned hijacking three commercial airplanes simultaneously to fly them into high visibility targets.
How is spreading poison something that's outlandish when compared to that?
And also, arguably this case is already the doing of a terrorist group. I mean, the end goal obviously was to get opposites to think twice for fear of risking their lives.
> Bin Laden’s Al Qaida was very unusual in its long term planning. Most terrorist attacks by other groups have been unsophisticated.
And, IIRC, most recent terrorist attacks have been committed by isolated individuals who radicalized, and they only used means that a motivated regular person could assemble. They didn't have the material backing of any organization sophisticated enough to manufacture a military nerve agent.
Though, I suppose if a specialist like a chemist got radicalized, then we might have a lone-wolf attack with a sophisticated poison.
It is well grounded in facts. 80 people in Nice were murdered by something everybody had access to. The most sophisticated attack was plane tickets and boxcutters.
I'm just eager for some international stability as the next person and I don't want the Cold War back (and I'd hope for a more Europe'zed world to be honest) but it's incredible how much reach of Russia and China tentacles the US allows these days. As a third-world citizen I'm very much surprised the US is basically on its knees hoping the two nations don't punch too hard.
I grew up under this rhetoric for those years you mention and I still think having a kind of Team America: World Police in real life is much worse and I don't want that back. But these are not mutually exclusive issues because super powers are supposed to balance each other out like the system of balances and checks with independent powers of a democracy. I like to think the world is on average a big democracy and no single super power should be its cop but China and Russia pretty much represent a joint state of affairs that is detrimental to every freaking human being. To see the US on its kees like I said is pretty depressing to the balances and checks expectations we all used to have.
In my experience, the US is facing an existential crisis stemming from a loud segment of the population, emboldened by Trump, that believes and promotes propaganda in a way that I thought was reserved for third world dictatorships.
I'm terrified of the day after the elections. If the left wins then, we risk retaliation from the gun-and-violence-glorifying right. If the right wins, then we still face violence from the same group at the inevitable mass protests.
Edit: the fact that the president can promote essentially unheard of networks, with an already questionable record, as "real news" (OANN, and Breitbart before that) demonstrates the ease of which the propagandists are operating. Once again, something that I would have considered unheard of, even in a third world country.
The people we put in place to protect us think they're gonna make it out just fine either way. It doesn't matter who wins, because the real battle the next few years will be about defining the new rules, not playing by the old ones.
The right wing is an extreme minority that has obtained influence mostly by hacking the system. Anyone who stands up to them and patches the exploits will have a post-facto mandate, but that only happens if they have the guts to do it ("it" being things like passing airtight restrictions on legislative procedure; packing the bench; and dismantling the means by which representation is warped, like the electoral college or the filibuster).
This is why as a liberal I have little faith in Biden, Harris, Pelosi, or Schumer.
I also think that this "standing up" can start right at home.
For example, as my grandparents "number one grandchild," I informed them that the reason why I haven't talked to them for months, and have no intention of being a part of their future, is because they support Trump.
Will this be a good or bad move on my part? I don't know.
But, I do know that these right-wing extremists have no reservation using deadly force. And if ending a relationship with people that effectively raised me just might bring this to an end any sooner, then count me in.
>> If it was in his tea he never would have made it on the plane.
Everything is a function of dosage. We don't know how much was in his tea, nor how much of the tea he actually drank. "In the tea" is also functionally equivalent to it being on
his teacup, although that would be a more dangerous/aggressive attack. But they did use a doorknob as a vector in the UK attack.
Guy from Russia here. Not an expert, but I feel the pain when my country looks so negative in the news.
First, I wish Alexey fast recovery.
Second, Alexey wasn't a popular politic figure in past time, I believe that his peak of popularity was in 2013-2015.
Third, I think no one here is actually benefiting from this tragic event... the whole story just seems quite strange. Frankly, there a lot of more simple approaches that can kill a man - no need to use sophisticated things like chemical weapons (which actually doesn't work as intended).
I hope that this story will be more clear pretty soon.
>Alexey wasn't a popular politic figure in past time, I believe that his peak of popularity was in 2013-2015.
He was banned from being a politician. Banned from media with any kind of reach, banned from elections. And we don't know how popular or not he actually is -- in a country like Russia accuracy of polling, any kind of statistics that is threatening to the dictator is one of the first victims.
>Third, I think no one here is actually benefiting from this tragic event...
A ridiculous statement. It's a signal to those who oppose Putin. In the light of what is happening in Belarus the signal is pretty clear -- Putin won't tolerate any real opposition, and he will not allow the situation to deteriorate to the level where he's actually threatened. "If you are willing to oppose Putin we will poison you with invisible deadly substances, and state doctors whose careers completely depend on their superiors won't treat you" is what it conveys. The goal is to have a chilling effect on the opposition's activities.
>simple approaches
Simple approaches are not as good for conveying a message. Using Chechens from Kadyrov's personal guard(in case of Nemtsov), expensive and hard to obtain isotope(in case of Litvinenko), or chemical warfare agents (in cases of Kara-Murza, Verzilov, Navalny, Skripal) indicates that's it's a state poisoning/killing, something only the state can do. It asks those who are not yet poisoned a question "Are you willing to fight the state/regime who's willing to kill you, make you disabled?
It's rather surprising that the regime doesn't yet target family members. Although I'm not completely up to date on the subject. Maybe it already does.
> no one here is actually benefiting from this tragic event
The opponents of Nord Stream 2 are clearly benefiting from it.
People should ask themselves why he was flown to Germany of all places. People should generally ask more questions and try to see behind all the quick finger-pointing.
There will never be a power vacuum in world politics. If it’s not going to be US, it’s going to be China and/or Russia. I have been thinking quite a lot how will that world look. Will it be better or worse?
> Russia’s economy is smaller than Canada’s and per capita it’s citizens are poorer than Poles.
> Russia is not a world power and hasn’t been for a while.
IIRC, they know that. That's why one of their main foreign policy objectives is to sow division and discord. Russia is weak compared to NATO as a whole, but it's strong compared to most individual NATO countries.
You could say the same about America and Trump. The masses always will consume the propaganda, I don't see how this will ever be eliminated. Rather than sad, it's just part of the system. How can we improve the results? Is there a systems-thinking approach that takes this into account and bends it toward positive ends?
And I believe HN/Ycombinator cater to the crowd that actually has the ability to disrupt this status quo. People that can really change things for the better.
Let's turn this ship around. Solving this problem can be how SV rewrites it's history to become known for more than attention draining and advertising schemes.
Or you can say the same about America and Biden. Or America and Bush. Or America and Clinton.
> The masses always will consume the propaganda, I don't see how this will ever be eliminated.
I could say that you have consumed leftists propaganda about Trump. But I won't.
> The masses always will consume the propaganda
> How can we improve the results?
For starters, stop thinking of people as masses. They are capable of making intelligent decisions.
I think I understand why when choosing between Clinton and Trump people picked Trump. This was logical decision for many of Trump voters.
It would be very helpful for the current US democratic party to understand why people voted from Trump without pinpointig it to racism and homophobia and other sins.
It was clear to me why people voted for trump the first time round. (Although, many experts believe it was more about voting against Clinton than for trump.)
He was an outsider/wildcard/Maverick and perceived smart businessman so his promises to clean up the corruption seemed more plausible than the entrenched status quo.
Now that his lack of business acumen, lack of general intelligence, non-existent diplomacy, zero empathy, and pure personal greed mixed with nepotism and corruption has been laid bare, I understand those who plan to vote for him next time round very little except through the lens of identity politics and hate/racism/xenophobia/epistemonophobia.
There's a really good lens for understanding this called Spiral Dynamics, a scientific model of the evolution/development of consciousness which is the work of Clare Graves.
If you understand that Trump is at the red/orange level of consciousness, and so is a huge chunk of the American population, it's obvious why they will vote for him.
The stage red / stage orange worldview is pretty clearly what conservative Americans operate on, (and many are very on stage blue also).
The majority of liberal Americans are operating on stages orange and green.
And these are still all tier 1 of 2 tiers in the model.
They still have nuclear weapons. And they have enough propaganda / hybrid war capability to get Trump elected. Maybe not a world superpower but dangerous nonetheless.
I'm more interested in why Russia still tries to continue Cold War and fight the West. Contrary to what many Russians believe (or at least what they write online), West is not out to get them - other than to sell them shitty products made in China with crazy markup and make them watch internet ads.
Meanwhile China is slowly taking over Siberia with all the mineral and material goodies and they aren't doing anything about that.
Almost like it's more about pretending than about actual power.
As much as I abhor Putin, he sort of has a point, if you look at the geopolitical history since the breakup of the Soviet Union. At the time, the US and western Europe were quick to bring many of the former republics into their fold, then into NATO (despite promising not to do so), which Putin sees as an affront and a threat to Russia's sovereignty, which in turn is why he finally invaded Ukraine (twice!) as well as Georgia: He will not tolerate NATO at his doorstep.
As for why Putin still sees the West as the enemy, I don't think we can analyze Putin outside the context of the Soviet Union. He doesn't quite want to bring it back, but it's abundantly clear from his statements that he's never abandoned the idea that Russia has a claim to Eastern Europe (if not outright as its ruler, then certainly as a cultural protector), that he sees Western culture as encroaching on Russia's. From his perspective the West is out to get Russia. That's a legitimate geopolitical concern, of course; all states desire to protect their sovereignty and sphere of influence. What's unusual is that Russia has been able to wield so much military and cultural power relative to its small size, which is why we're even talking about it. I think it's incredibly scary just how much better Putin is at playing this game than the seemingly gullible Western powers.
Where it gets tricky is Putin's other side as a cold-hearted authoritarian gangster keeping a tenuous network of equally gangster oligarchs in place. If Russia ever becomes democratic and its judicial system restored, Putin would end up going the way of Saddam Hussein. (He's not going to get the Idi Amin treatment.) So you can't see Putin's political moves exclusively through the lens of statesmanship either; in choosing to be a ruthless kleptocrat, he's ruled out the possibility of a peaceful succession, and that's yet another complex factor driving the fate of Russia.
I think what's really going on is the usual. If you're stealing your country blind, manufacture foreign enemies and blame them, so the people at home think you're a hero instead of a villain.
A power vacuum can be filled with plenty of players, better or worse will probably be subjective and localized.
I wouldn’t want to be a Baltic or small Arab nation in general during the transition, but, for example, France & Turkey are already starting to enjoy the new room for activities.
Its actually not all that uncommon on controversial threads. I personally don't beleive its bots as much as people who create new accounts so they can break the "flamewar rule"
Not second, but very likely few dozenth or more. There were at least a dozen of high profile people in Russia who died under equally bizarre circumstances, with Kivilidi being the best known.
Another similar case in Bulgaria from 2015 when Russian agents are blamed for the poisoning. It was reported that the Berlin hospital inquired details about this case last week.
I think it is also used in industrial espionage cases, we just don’t hear that much about it. The SO of a former acquaintance of mine got poisoned really bad while working for an oil company in one of the Gulf states (I think Qatar). He got quickly transferred for treatment in the US, even though he’s from Eastern Europe.
It's even worse. Putin's failed attack on Skripal ultimately resulted in the murder of Dawn Sturgess[0] four months later. This was a case of using illegal chemical weapons on foreign soil, which puts Russia squarely in the same category of rogue nations as North Korea.
What would be Putin's motive in the case of Skripal? And if he really wanted him dead, there would have been a thousand other ways to do it without basically writing "Russia" with a spray can all over the body.
To be clear, I'm not saying he didn't do it. Just that it's not as completely obvious as it seems. Why would Putin and Russia lose billions (because that's the economic impact of the West's reaction) to kill an ex spy in the most damning way?
All of the evidence that it was Russia is entirely circumstantial, if we're being strictly accurate here, which is... convenient.
On the other hand, exactly zero other groups seem to be using those nerve agents to assassinate people, so it's a great calling card if they wish to discourage others from following in the victims' footsteps.
They know who did it - two colonels and a general in the GRU. I suppose you can say it was circumstantial in that nobody caught them actually putting the poison on their doorknob, but it's pretty well accepted that 3 officers from Russian intelligence travelled to Salisbury using false identification on the day of the poisoning and then left the country. Unless you believe their explanation that they were there to "see the cathedral."
Sergei Skripal was a colonel in the GRU who was also a spy for MI6 and who moved to the UK as part of a prisoner swap. Apparently he hadn't quite retired and was still briefing western intelligence services just before his poisoning.
> Apparently he hadn't quite retired and was still briefing western intelligence services
He had stopped been a Russian agent in 2004. Then, after being released from prison and moving to the UK, he had 8 years to brief the UK services about everything he knew. What kind of briefing could he do, exactly?
Note that if you read carefully the article that you linked, it says repeatedly that none of Skripal's activity was new, or uncommon, or important. Despite the subheader saying "may offer motive for poisoning" the various experts mentioned in the article repeatedly say that those "neither explained nor justified the nerve agent attack", "dismissed them as a likely motive for the poisoning attack".
Circumstantial evidence can be extremely powerful. There's no conflict between saying that the evidence is both extremely strong and also circumstantial. There's video of two Russians walking around Salisbury; there's an interview with them on Russian state TV where they totally fail to give a coherent explanation of their movements as revealed by CCTV on the day of the poisoning. And they traveled to the UK under fake IDs.
"Novichok has, however, been known to most western secret services since the 1990s,[16] and in 2016 Iranian chemists synthesised five Novichok agents for analysis and produced detailed mass spectral data which was added to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Central Analytical Database.[17][18] Previously, there had been no detailed descriptions of their spectral properties in open scientific literature.[17][19] A small amount of agent A-230 was also claimed to have been synthesised in the Czech Republic in 2017 for the purpose of obtaining analytical data to help defend against these novel toxic compounds."
----
Rate limited, so I'll reply here to the next comment:
> You'd also have to ignore the additional evidence
Ok, but if you say "only Russia have them" you're saying something that is not true. They have been synthesized outside of Russia, so it's perfectly possible that others (militaries, secret services) have them. Amounts can also have been exported from Russia in the 50 years since they've been developed.
As for the additional evidence: again, damning. However, if someone (a state actor) wanted to damage Russia, it could also have managed to attract two Russian agents in the area to frame Russia. It's a conspiracy theory of course. But we're talking about conspiracies. The bottom line is that if we conclude it was Russia then we need to ask why it would a) put the most obvious signature on the deed; b) use the most brutal and dangerous method available, one that would immediately make a vast number of very rich and powerful countries into enemies. Maybe just to sow division over the implausibility of it? I don't know.
> The syntheses were carried out on a micro-scale in order to minimize exposure.
"We synthesized trace amounts so we can detect it if it's used on us" and "we have an active chemical weapons program making useful quantities of the stuff" are vastly different things.
You'd also have to ignore the additional evidence, like identified Russian intelligence operatives claiming to have been in town to look at a cathedral, and the motive.
I'm not a chemist but it seems that Novichok is the poison with the worst track record. It was claimed that this is extremely dangerous military grade neuro agent, but currently from six people claimed to be poisoned with it only one died.
I'm starting to wonder why the Russian secret services blamed using it against political opponents, try it again and again. It is completely possible that they want not to kill, but just to intimidate, but also it is completely possible that the "Novichok" is just a propaganda weapon of the West.
> six people claimed to be poisoned with it only one died
We don't know how many people were poisoned and died, and death was attributed to natural causes.
Novichok agent is not something easily detectable.
In particular, in Skripal case, it was an accident that his daughter was visiting him, and they both found unconscious on the bench. Otherwise, it would be a cardiac arrest of 66 yo man, hard life, it happens, nothing unexpected.
I recommend lecture by economist Dr. Sergei Guriev about how Putin
s autocracy works. Most of the material is explained in the first 10 minutes, then come the examples. Based on actual research papers.
I wonder if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_29155 is also behind this assassination attempt. But until now they used to work only outside of Russia (Skripal, Gebrev, ...).
Conspiracy theory: The US did it to piss of the EU against Russia.
I strongly disbelieve that the Kremlin is that stupid. There are way easier ways to kill someone without leaving a big red sign like an UDSSR poison. Ofc I don’t have any proof, but that’s why they call it a conspiracy theory, right? :)
The article mentions Novichok being produced in Soviet Union in the 80-s, whats more interesting, it's still manufactured in Czech Republic, at least until recently:
> Novichok has, however, been known to most western secret services since the 1990s,[16] and in 2016 Iranian chemists synthesised five Novichok agents for analysis and produced detailed mass spectral data which was added to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Central Analytical Database.[17][18] Previously, there had been no detailed descriptions of their spectral properties in open scientific literature.[17][19] A small amount of agent A-230 was also claimed to have been synthesised in the Czech Republic in 2017 for the purpose of obtaining analytical data to help defend against these novel toxic compounds.[20]
This guy has gotta be one of the bravest and most principled people out there. Almost anyone else would have determined that fighting this fight has no practical utility, since nothing short of a massive popular uprising could unseat Putin at this point, and Russians apparently have no appetite for such an uprising today. Hard enough to risk your life for something that might have a good outcome. To me, it's almost impossible to imagine risking my life for an effort I knew was doomed to failure.
Anyone with such a cynical attitude like yours is inevitably doomed to failure. I’m not picking on you, specifically, just pointing out why these powers can hold such a firm grasp. Hope is really scarce these days.
You can talk the talk, but walking the walk is a different story. The OP was referring specifically to the latter - that Navalny indeed is one of the bravest, and that most people lose all their enthusiasm to object as soon as they or their loved ones are put a gun to their head (both literally and figuratively speaking). It's not cynical to observe and note this fact of life in an authoritarian state, it's simply being honest with themselves.
This cynical attitude would condemn the OP to a mundane life rather than being poisoned by a dictator. Opposition politicans in dictatorships are brave... And arguably suicidal...
Historically, almost all autocrats have been overthrown because people sacrificed their lives to oppose them.
In some cases, it happened literally in a revolution. In other cases, it was because a popular figure was assassinated.
Since a revolution is impossible against a major military power, it's likely that the latter is one of the only ways to inspire popular action (other than total collapse of the economy, of course).
One difference however, in 1985-1991 Russians were lucky to have a leader (Gorbachev) smart enough to not start a full-scale civil war when Moscow started to lose control, instead he managed to dissolve USSR with only moderate amount of bloodshed.
This does not tell the full story. He participated in a couple of "nationalist" marches, and he was long-time a proponent of abolishing visa-free regime with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but he gave pretty logical explanations for his views.
You do not have to endorse his views, but they are at least clear and well-reasoned.
Consistent about admiring bravery in the face of overwhelming odds? I guess I'm about as consistent with that as most people are. It's not something I've given a lot of thought to. Why the inquisition? Is this a harmful sentiment somehow?
Nationalism is a characteristic of both Liberal and Conservative candidates in Russia. This is something that most Americans don't understand. If you're looking for Liberal candidates in Russia following the same definition of what a Liberalism stands for in the US you're going to be very disappointed. Liberals in Russia are akin to Conservatives in the US.
Putin regime wants to make sure that Belarus fire wouldn't spread to Russia, and thus the timing of the message that they sent to whatever little opposition still exists in Russia.
I mean the chances of actual popular uprising in Russia in near future is nil, yet Belarus can definitely embolden and make the opposition bigger, thus basically reverting the effects of all the opposition squashing Putin's efforts probably back to the 2012 state and making it a serious PITA for Putin.
I've been sidetracked reading about why the Russians are into poisoning people. Some of it seems to go back to SMERSH which as well as being James Bond's nemesis was a real organisation set up by Stalin as "an organised “liquidation” programme intended to eliminate Stalin’s opponents" as well as Nazi collaborators.
After the war it continued under different names and for example:
>One failed attempt was on the life of Lisa Stein, a radio broadcaster in West Germany who in March 1955 only narrowly survived a dose of the lethal toxin scopolamine concealed in a box of chocolates
There was reasonable reason to believe Berezovsky was responsible for the Litvinenko poisoning; it's not inconceivable something like that is going on here with some other oligarch Nalvany pissed off; he is a corruption reformer more than anything else. Since the BBC is a propaganda organ rather than a news service, they are singularly unlikely to present us with any of the other potential candidates, but I could probably think of a few that Nalvany might have annoyed.
It's also kind of weird they'd use such an apparently ineffective poison when prussic acid or ricin (or car accidents) would do the work rather more reliably. Novichunk didn't work on the Skripals either. Where are the Skripals anyway?
Whatever happened: one thing is for certain: Western media, the BBC in particular is an enormous basket of fail in reporting on anything out of Russia. No shortage of numskulls who have never actually visited the place or talked to any of its people who seem really sure of themselves though.
> There was reasonable reason to believe Berezovsky was responsible for the Litvinenko poisoning
No there were no reasons to believe Berezovsky poisoned Litvinenko.
Litvinenko was the one who revealed attempt to kill Berezovsky.
Berezovsky and Litvinenko worked together against Putin.
There was no motive for Berezovsky to kill Litvinenko. In addition to that:
Berezovsky was far less powerful when Litvinenko was poisoned. Obtaining polonium was not trivial for Berezovsky.
And finally, UK police found who poisoned Litvinenko, it was Andrei Lugovoi who is currently a member of parliament in Russia. There are no connections between Lugovoi and Berezovski, but obviuosly there are connections between Lugovoi and Russian government. In fact, Lugovoi was given a medal for "serving the fatherland" some time after the poisoning.
No, Berezovsky did not poison Litvinenko, and you are spreading conspiracy theories.
Yeah thanks a lot for the completely citation and content free comment, Mr 77th brigade or whoever you are.
The evidence: Litvinenko and Berezovsky had a falling out, and Litvineko's newest scheme was to run blackmail on various russian oligarchs, possibly including Berezovsky[0]. Berezovsky was no angel and is well, nobody ever proved it, but was strongly suspected to have assassinated an unauthorized biographer[1] (whose book "Godfather of the Kremlin" everyone should read to understand recent Russian history). Lots of people besides me have suggested as much. [2] Berezovsky certainly attempted to use the Litvineko death to his propaganda advantage; he could as easily have done it himself, or suggested such actions might be useful to some other oligarch in Litvineko's sights.
I'm well aware of who British propaganda and Litvinenko blamed: I just don't uncritically accept these assertions. The possibility is certainly there that the standard assertion here is baloney, just as the possibility the Novichok tale is not entirely accurate. Western media blames Putin and "the Russians" for everything from Donald Trump to when the foam goes flat in their coffee; if Russian intelligence were so all fired competent, you'd think they'd have been able to take over America, steal some of its industries or like do some obvious projections of power that I don't need Rachel Maddow tier conspiracy theories to believe. Or at least, you know, conquer Kharkiv or something.
Opposition in Russia does not follow classic definitions. The elected opposition in Russia in the Duma is constructed by the ruling party. That opposition are opposed politically but supports “the system”. Navalnyj is part of the Opposition that is critical to the very system of Russian politics and are thus not allowed to run for elected office in Russia. That’s why the Duma opposition in Russia seldom gets a lot of votes - because it’s not really an opposition.
I'm ok with translating is as "noob", but if you want to be nitpicky about semantics, "amateur" would be quite literally "любитель", and absolutely not "новичок". And, yes, "новичок" is 100% literally "newcomer", both etymologically and in all possible meanings it can have in English.
Well, those are mostly the same. Noob (newbie, n00b) comes from newcomer/novice. Amateur I'm not sure how it fits in there. I think BBC is just using the synonym that the most people would understand (newcomer vs noob, everyone gets the first, some will not understand the second)
Amateur is related to latin "amare" = to love, and originally refers to someone that does something for the love of it (unlike a professional, who does it for money or gain). So, an amateur need not be new to a pursuit (or bad at it).
So, it seems to me (as an amateur...) that noob, novice, newcomer are better renderings of "novichok" than amateur.
Etymologically it goes "new" -> "newbie" -> "noob". "Novice" is from latin, and while it does share the same root as "new" it does so way back in proto-Indo-European.
If you are curious: no, "новичок" is not derogatory. Much less derogatory than a "noob", anyway, and doesn't necessarily mean incompetence. Like, say there is a hiking club with pretty much the same people going on hikes for the last 5 years, and somebody joined this club last week — this person would be called "новичок" in a friendly manner.
So, yeah, "newcomer" is actually a good translation.
Wouldn't say that the word implies "incompetent". "Kto na noven'kogo" is a known phrase, "noven'kii" is here practically synonym to "novichok", and there is no incompetence - rather novelty.
We've seen this poisoning technique used plenty of times by the Kremlin. The message here isn't "we want you dead" but an empirical demonstration that "we can, if we want, kill you anywhere, any time and it doesn't matter how obvious it is that we're the ones doing it. We will face no consequences. In fact we'll make sure to 'sign' our poisoning attempt and do it in a place you think you're safe."
Killing a member of the opposition is pointless, broadcasting despair to all potential opposers is very valuable.
Disagree. Proactive removal of charismatic rivals is essential for cutting off potential opposition at the knees.
You always see Russian media claim that they were a "nobody" or had no chance in the election, and that might have been true today but they could be a serious threat in a few years.
The second advantage of killing off potential rivals is that it discourages smart people from running against you.
The downside is brain drain. You end up filling your organization with toadies and with no reasonable alternatives your regime falls into chaos when you die, and usually your successor is less competent and has to be more ruthless. It's a downward spiral and after a couple of generations the whole thing collapses.
The "reliable source" here is the German Government. It has confirmed that, yes, Navalny was poisoned, and yes, he was poisoned with a hard to obtain poison that has been used in the past by the Russian government.
This does seem to reduce the likelihood that Navalny wasn't poisoned, or that he was poisoned by someone unconnected to the government. MattGaiser's argument is that the implied threat is the goal, which is helped by confirmation of the above.
Новичок is the umbrella name of dozens of substances of which 4 are now widely known. The mastermind behind those substances is long dead.
The guy you are referring to is one of the two defectors and he was mostly an office clerk with access to top secret documents. Take his comments with care.
Moreover, institutions that worked on these substances in 1970..1980 still exist today. You do not know what they produce now, but given the general decline in scientific research in Russia, I am not surprised their deliverables barely work.
I am almost certain that they wanted to send a message about who did it. Warning to other "loudmouths" that cause trouble for the ruling party. If you read on his site /YT he mentions names and how they steal. That's a no-no over there.
They could have paid a homeless person to shoot him or just ask a Russian mafiosi to do it. But no, they want to send a message.
Not if your objective is to send a public message.
Putin isn't afraid of the foreign response. He's afraid of domestic enemies gaining enough confidence to attempt a coup. Domestic enemies are the sole threat to Putin. He wants them terrified; he wants them to understand that he will kill them as necessary. Putin knows very well the first rule of being a dictator (which Lukashenko has forgotten): if you want to be dictator you're going to have to kill people, and if you want to remain dictator, you're going to have to keep killing people so long as you want to retain that position.
If you're Putin, ideally Navalny lives and is grotesquely destroyed, broken, by the poison; an example for all that would challenge his power. It says: I can do this to anyone in Russia at any time, I don't need to be very subtle about it beyond minimum plausible deniability, and there is nothing the world can do to stop me.
> NATO has enough commandos to take down Russian political leadership in a single evening.
And Russia probably has enough commandos to do the same to NATO leadership as well. Neither side actually does that because it would be a suicide mission that would just result in a war.
1. Russian leadership would not be able to order that if it will be shot dead.
2. NATO towers over Russia for when it comes to size, and quality of elite infantry forces.
3. The loyalty of Russian military is so low, that the collapse of the military leadership will be near immediate upon news of heads rolling in the Kremlin. Absolutely nobody wants to die for those guys.
4. Even if none of the points above will come to fruition. The attack is guaranteed to deliver big enough shock to the Russian C3 to assure that a followup with conventional forces will succeed.
There cannot be a single scenario in which Russia would be able to keep any advantage in force if NATO takes the initiative, and goes on offensive. This a plain statement of the fact that even the USSR's military was acknowledging.
I reiterate this for the 100th. Neither China, nor Russia is an impossible to defeat adversary to the NATO. Not only an option for the decisive defeat is still very much on the table for NATO, that can be done as a very much contained, quick, and mess free military operation. A controlled demolition of the regime in few large swoops, over a "whack-a-mole" of conventional C3 suppression campaign.
> 1. Russian leadership would not be able to order that if it will be shot dead.
If the political leadership of a nation gets assassinated, I do not think it's reasonable to expect the military leadership to sit on their hands forever, waiting for orders from the dead.
And if you want to get down to brass tacks, both NATO and Russia have the military capability to literally exterminate the bulk of each other's populations, and I beleive Russia is known to have automated fail-deadly retaliation systems.
> 2. NATO towers over Russia for when it comes to size, and quality of elite infantry forces.
Honestly, I would think surprise is more important than anything with such an operation as you propose, because success would mainly depend on attacking a target with military-level force that's completely unprepared for that.
> 3. The loyalty of Russian military is do low, that the collapse of the military leadership will be near immediate upon news of heads rolling in the Kremlin. Absolutely nobody wants to die for those guys.
Maybe not for those people themselves, but they might be willing to die for the nation that those people lead. I'm sure a scheme to assassinate the entire political leadership of a country might evoke some nationalist feelings.
Does it matter? Elections in Russia is not free and fair. Tyrants rarely are good for a country. Sad to see that the Russian people will have more suffering in their future.
> I guess in terms of USA that would be like Democrats and Republicans coming up with a president.
That's totally normal, and happens in a lot of places. For instance, in Canada, you vote for your local representatives (MPs), the party that ends up with the most MPs (roughly speaking) gets their leader installed as Prime Minister. Then, of course, the Head of State is actually the Queen who's represented by the Governor General, who is in turn nominated by the Prime Minister.
Putin's approval rating is actually pretty high even when measured by NGOs sponsored by the "West". You'll be surprised, but it is quoted to be 60% in July 2020. [1]
And while it is possible to blame Putin for this Navalny's incident, he isn't the only one with motive/opportunity. It is actually very sad that some HN readers sometimes have a strong tendency to blame Trump/Putin/Another for Everything. I get that they are very unpopular figures among liberals/progressives, but let's at least try to pretend to be more objective for a minute. How about maybe for a second or a little longer just think about it before proclaiming that clearly it's Putin? How about being maybe a little bit more self-critical for a minute? Maybe you don't have all the information and all the facts yet? Or maybe some facts aren't facts yet, and maybe there is a massive propaganda campaign (BBC/CNN/etc.)?
In my opinion, there is an alternate hypothesis. Putin is trying to finish building the last 6 km of the gas pipeline to Germany. It has been blocked by US sanctions for a long time. This incident adds fuel to the fire, and conveniently allows the US to impose more sanctions, and bend Germans (who actually want that pipeline because it is beneficial for Germany) to their will.
> In my opinion, there is an alternate hypothesis.
It could also have been his kids. Maybe they feel neglected. Is there any evidence of this? The similarity of this attack to the one on Skripal a couple years ago objectively points to the Russian government being involved as the most likely possibility. Naturally most of the information around this is and will remain out of the public eye, but claiming that the "It's Russia" and "It's the US" hypotheses are anywhere close to being equally likely is, at best, naive.
I wouldn't be so quick to point the finger at Putin or a government conspiracy personally. There are a lot of powerful billionaires in Russia who exist thanks to Putin and it seems plausible that one of them, given their vested interest in keeping their patron in charge, might have poisoned the man.
You may have missed that the elusive WireCard CEO Jan Marsalek had the formula too. It's not a huge secret that random billionaires can't buy. Some people apparently believe the spin from some low-quality media that using or accusing of using Novitchok is basically proof Russia did it. It says more about their naivety than anything else.
True. You need a facility equipped and capable of producing Novichok. Think of Porton Down, for example. Conveniently located just miles away from Salisbury.
Lol. The GRU agents who poisoned Skripal literally gave an interview where they claimed to be everyday Russian tourists before their IDs were blown.
Perhaps there's an innocent explanation why three GRU agents traveled to Salisbury multiple times, including the day that Skripal was poisoned but lied about their reason for being there, their identities, and their connection to the Russian military?
This seems like semantics, was it Putin that signed the order or did one of his henchmen? Don’t matter. This is the Nth novichok poisoning too. Putin is either complacent or participant.
There are various clans of power in Russia, and not all of them are loyal, or report, to Putin.
Navalny had a lot of enemies.
> complacent
It's likely. The alternative could lead to some serious instability. For example, evidence suggests Kadyrov took out Nemtsov, but holding Kadyrov accountable could lead to chaos in Chechnya. Is it worth it? This is realpolitik.
You're failing occams razor. On one hand we have Putin who is very publically Navalny's primary antagonist who also has the means and obvious motive to poison him with Novichuk.
On the other some nameless "enemies" who also somehow have the means to build a lab sophisticated enough to produce Novichuk without killing themselves or the people in a large radius of their lab and also access to Mercenaries/Assassins/ex-GRU/Spetsnaz agents with the talent to poison a very high profile person and not be caught?
Navalny does have a lot of enemies: if you look at this page https://fbk.info/investigations/ (use Google translate), you will see mentions of dozens of people. He keeps investigating into them in great detail and exposing their illegal wealth. They aren't that nameless, they are rich and powerful people, some of them are sure to have friends within GRU.
Not saying that Putin didn't order it, just pointing out that the group of people with motive and means to do it is bigger than just him.
well, it's Russia. USA feared that generals could sell nukes a while ago, but I sincerely doubt that any oligarch would do this without Putin's approval. Too high profile. And if Putin approved this (one way or another) there's no need for oligarchs to get involved.
So it's not an oligarch thing but reaches the highest levels of Russian government
Hey could you please stop posting flamebait and unsubstantive comments? We're trying to be somewhat different than that here, with the crazy idea of staving off internet heat death for as long as possible. Like any other entropy-defying strategy that takes a lot of energy.
Maybe I'm too skeptical, but this seems a bit too obvious to me. Why would you try to poison someone with no real threat to you and risk him becoming a martyr, using a method that immediately brings you to mind, with a nerve agent that is also strongly linked to you?
> Maybe I'm too skeptical, but this feels like a false flag thing to me. Why would you try to poison someone with no real threat to you and risk him becoming a martyr, using a method that immediately brings you to mind, with a nerve agent that is also strongly linked to you?
Russia assassinates even unimportant people for revenge and intimidation. For instance: they hired assassins to kill a bunch of nobodies in Ukraine in 2016 because they'd helped supply Georgia with Ukraine-made antiaircraft weapons that had been used against Russia when they invaded in 2008.
> Russia Ordered a Killing That Made No Sense. Then the Assassin Started Talking.
> ...The war lasted only five days and ended with a crushing victory for Moscow. But in many ways, the conflict was an embarrassment for Russia’s intelligence services. Years earlier, Ukraine had secretly sold sophisticated antiaircraft systems to Georgia, allowing for the effective defense that I had seen....
> For Mr. Putin — who has described Russians and Ukrainians as “one people” — it was an act of bloody treachery.
> “We don’t know who decided to deliver equipment and weapons from Ukraine during the conflict, but whoever it was, that person made a huge mistake,” Mr. Putin said at a news conference shortly after the war.
They started to assassinate people in Ukraine much earlier. They tried to kill me from 2008 to 2019. It was not clear why they're trying to kill me (I'm nobody, low rank officer, was not in service), until they killed Mamchur, so nobody believed me at the time, until the war. With few other officers, we started informal counter-intelligence group. In 2012, I intercepted plans to destabilize situation in Ukraine. In 2013-2014, we noticed presence of Russian agents at Maidan, so I was deployed at Maidan to find Russian and drain information from them. Because of multiple attempts to kill me, I had 5 years of war-time experience in 2013, so it was easy job for me.
Didn't they poison some guy with radioactive isotopes a few years back? I don't think they care about it being attributed to them, or think that being attributed to them has positive value.
I recall that the [very small] quantity of Polonium-210 involved had a market value of $20 Million and was tied directly back to the state atomic agency requiring the personal authorisation of the Commander-in-Chief. So a rather extravagant and blatant way of dispatching someone (with curiously bungling assassins).
Russia knows no one is going to do anything about it.
This method lets people know what tools they are willing to use on an adversary. And it’s also a signature “we did it” so you don’t have to guess who’s after you. It serves as a warning to any upstarts as well.
It’s not all that different from the Ndraghetta bombings up and down Italy in the late XX cent.
If it was, you would expect the Russians to be doing all they can to find who actually did it, people getting fired, etc. Navalny almost certainly was under 24/7 surveillance. You also would expect the best doctors to be made available for him in Russia.
We haven't seen any of that. Your version of events seems highly unlikely.
He's not even trying to be a threat. He supports the annexation of Crimea. Generally isn't too critical of Russia on any big geopolitical issues. Doesn't even poll that well. Only his anti-corruption activism might have made him some enemies. But politically he only makes Putin look moderate.
Not fair to call it a "false flag" though as there's no obvious "flag" attached to this event. It's not like anybody has claimed the attack. There's a whole world of possibilities beyond "Putin ordered it" and "false flag". But whoever did it, it does seem like Kremlin is covering for them so at least partially morally responsible.
Navalny did not support the annexation of Crimea. He merely pointed to the fact that it is not that easy now to give it back to Ukraine and that ultimately after years of stabilisation and negotiation, Crimean popolation will have to decide in a trustable and open referendum.
>Why would you try to poison someone with no real threat to you and risk him becoming a martyr, using a method that immediately brings you to mind, with a nerve agent that is also strongly linked to you?
They want everyone to know they did it. That's Putin's MO. Everyone knows he did it, and he knows everyone knows he did it. But there's still enough plausible deniability that it would be hard to conclusively prove. And ultimately he has his finger on the world's largest arsenal of nuclear ICBMs, so he knows there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. It's the same as the mafia leaving a severed horse head in your bed. It sends a message.
Sure. But Russians are notorious for various things - being blunt and serious; depressive, black humor; risk-takers. Not everybody, but the stereotype can inform the discussion, which was Why would anybody do this?
It seems that this stereotype is too generic and sweeping to be useful even if it was true.
Instead we could use facts that are already known about e.g. Putin -- that he's an individual for whom sowing fear is more important than not being blamed, as the other similar poisonings have shown.
To install puppet as "opposition leader". It's typical scenario, which works extremely well in many situations. "Look, Putin hate him so badly. He is true leader of opposition!"
It seems very odd and again perfect timing for the administration to show up in Germany and complain about the planned pipeline to Russia.
And no, I am not a Russian troll nor do I have any connections to Russia. Check my comment history. I am just sceptical that one would do this and not just shot someone they wanted to get rid of them.
Is Putin really that stupid or was it someone else?
FWIW, I agree, even though it seems to be an unpopular opinion. I don't have a strong opinion on that, and honestly I don't really care, but it looks way too weird. I mean, people mention Litvinenko and Skripal. With Litvinenko there really was no doubt with regards to both if he was assassinated and why he was assassinated. Whole story with Skripal was weird, it was a huge scandal which very much served UK (or anybody who would like to blame Russia for anything), and wasn't any use to Russia, all the "investigation" was really shady and nothing was really proven. But ok, given the fact Skripal was ex-GRU, and all such agencies have a specific "culture" (i.e. people there really don't like traitors), I'm willing to believe getting revenge was a personal thing for his ex-coworkers, possibly quite high in the government as well.
But I cannot imagine why would anyone do that to Navalny. First of (and this is very much arguable, but I'm just saying what is my opinion), I don't think he is any threat to Putin&friends. He has some supporters, but "opposition leader" is waay too generous, he isn't even treated very seriously by people who are against Putin, much less by Putin. So, some mundane harassment like police raids to his office... sure, why not? But assassinating him very publicly like that, when he wasn't even "in the news" (figuratively speaking) for some time? I have no idea, why would "the government" want it. He isn't anything new, he has no real power. And unlike Litvinenko or Skripal he isn't ex-GRU/FSB, so he isn't a "traitor" to any "interesting" agencies. Basically, I don't see why would his "enemies" (i.e. Putin&friends) even care about him.
Oh, come on. I don't know if you are Russian: if so, I would ask you to honestly think if you believe this is a threat. I personally don't. If you are not, I'd say that it probably would be a notable thing in USA, but Russia has a specific culture in a sense that nothing of this sort is perceived by anybody as a big news. Everyone always assumes that any rich person is a thief and a crook (even if they are not), and that everybody in a government is extremely rich (and a thief, and a crook squared) (even if they are not). Nobody gets surprised by anything of the sort.
I like watching these videos, BTW, because I like how they are made, it's pretty fun. But are they "hurting" anybody? I doubt so.
A single assassination of Navalny gives much more bad publicity, than 100 years of Navalny & ФБК making "Он вам не Димон" kind of movies. If they care about the latter, they surely don't want the former.
You have presented doubt about the given hypothesis without offering an alternative.
Putin & co. is the simplest explanation. Why question it? Who else would stand to gain from this? Because they do gain from it: intimidating the opposition is the name of the game in a dictatorship.
Alternative was given by the poster I was answering to: a false flag. Who has anything to gain? Basically anybody, who needs any reason to blame Russia for everything, which is a very popular thing to do for the last 10 years at least, and getting more and more popular lately. Intimidating the opposition? I already said why I don't buy it. There is no real opposition to intimidate. Navalny does what he does for the last 10 years, he didn't become any more dangerous — less dangerous, in fact, since novelty wore off and he isn't perceived very seriously anymore. BBC may call him "opposition leader", but most of the Russian people who don't like Putin (and there is a lot of them) don't really see him as a leader, more like "yet another clown".
Let me put it this way. There is a "perceived value" and a "real value" of assassination. So, if you want to send a message, "real value" is metric of people you want to get a message getting this particular message. Like if you are GRU/CIA/Medellin cartel (basically the same things) and you want every cartel member to know that traitors will be punished, you want it to be relatable for the other cartel members and gruesome. You don't really want it to be very much high-profile (which it must be to some degree if you want it to be gruesome, but only as a side effect).
"Perceived value" is what is "real" to complete outsiders unaware of situation. It is what will cause the resonance in BBC and among the people you really don't give a fuck about getting the message (and in case of Russia govt. — don't want to get the message: Russia absolutely isn't trying to tell the world there is a dictatorship, it wants for the outsiders to get exactly the opposite message, that there is "real competition", i.e. people like Navalny that are against the regime, but just don't have that much of a support).
So, to summarize, if you are Medellin cartel sending message to its members: maximize "real" minimizing "perceived". If you want to set up Medellin cartel: you maximize "perceived" and don't give a fuck about "real".
Now, what is real/perceived ratio in the case of Navalny? As I already said, this is my personal (pretty humble in this case, and not particularly strong) opinion, but my estimation is: very, very low. I don't know of any "people just like Navalny" (so it will be relatable), that are actually dangerous to the regime and need to get "a message". On the other hand, "perceived value" is very high: in fact, the moment Navalny gets to a hospital, everyone automatically assumes it is an assassination by the Russian govt, since he is such a prominent "opposition leader".
So, if I was GRU, I wouldn't want Navalny to be killed in an obvious way. If I was a CIA, I most likely would.
Your explanation requires too many assumptions, and fails to explain other facts of history - such as other people having been poisoned, or Putin et al doing other wildly unpopular things just for the sake of it.
Russia habitually invades the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish waters _just to show that they can_.
Your reasoning boils down to “if you can think of an explanation, it’s wrong”. The CIA furthermore has very little need for making Russia look bad right now. Russia is doing that all in its own.
I didn't really make any wild assumptions. Your explanation on the other hand is basically "it's Russia, because I don't like Russia" (without really acknowledging that there is no single "Russia" that kills ex-spies and invades Danish waters: there are multiple different people and agencies, with different intentions and modes of operation) which is exactly what would anybody trying to set up "Russia" (or anybody) would want. So, I don't think "Occam's razor" applies to either yours or my reasoning, it rather seems to me that people who are exceedingly eager to take at face value stories like that exhibit what is called "magical thinking".
P.S. I want to clarify, that I don't really blame CIA, it was just a way of simplifying the essence of what I'm trying to convey. I don't try to make any theories of what's happening, I'm acknowledging that I have no clue, because what I'm seeing is 2 political sides pointing at each other, shouting and swinging arms. All that I'm saying is that accepting "the simplest explanation because of Occam'z razon" here is stupid, because (unlike when setting up a physics experiment) the simplest explanation here is just words and pointing sides, the same as the more complex explanation, and I can think of dozens of "possible explanations" that all will be lies. So I don't pretend to know who poisoned Navalny (or even if he was poisoned, for that matter), but it would be baffling to me if it indeed was done under direct or indirect Putin's orders. So, I was only telling the GP that he is not alone in thinking this seems very suspicious. Indeed it does.
At first I was almost outraged at how you blatantly attribute to me something that is absolutely impossible to actually extract from what I was saying, but then I read comment history of this throwaway account of yours and understood that it is pointless to try to explain you anything: you are either completely brainwashed, or trying to do some brainwashing. So, whatever.
As far as I'm concerned, the Germans are about as trustworthy as Russia. They are currently closing the investigation around the Breitscheidplatz[1] terror attack, which has uncovered massive tampering with evidence and more open questions than answers. And let's not forget their history of false flag attacks.[2]
Most of you will likely disagree, based on their current public image vs. Russia's, but ask yourselves what the known facts are.
A NATO member is as trustworthy as a country actively trying to destabilize democracy around the world? One who has brazenly done this sort of attack before and has a very obvious recent history of silencing dissidents? I'm all for some healthy skepticism, but this is ridiculous.
A NATO member currently run by someone who grew up in a Stalinist dictatorship, with many members of the party that ruled said dictatorship currently in office around the country.
> One who has brazenly done this sort of attack before and has a very obvious recent history of silencing dissidents?
It is just "obvious" if you are a firm believer in accusations made by the "West".
Your baseless tinfoil skepticism is extremely useful to fascists like Putin who thrive off of spreading disinformation and uncertainty.
Do Western countries lie to benefit themselves geopolitically? Of course they do, but let's apply Occam's Razor here and not go looking for a global conspiracy when the answer and motivations are so blatant.
The known facts are that the most prominent critic and opposition to the Russian dictator was poisoned in a situation that is highly similar to previous incidents that are confirmed Russian.
Considering Putin has had journalists and opposition leaders killed before, and the Russian government tried to prevent the opposition from leaving the country or seeing outside doctors, one has to choose an answer which makes the least assumptions:
* Would the Russian dictator once again attempt to murder his most prominent critic?
* Or would the German government... falsify the poisoning, even though he was hospitalized... as a false flag... but domestic inside of Russia... during a period where the West is collapsing and USA is run by someone who is likely under Russian control meaning triggering Russia into conflict would be to do so during a period when you are least likely to be backed up by the only other nuclear power with a capable enough triad to M.A.D./stalemate it out?
You can make the assumptions you want, but man your route seems to make a lot more of them.
> As far as I'm concerned, the Germans are about as trustworthy as Russia. They are currently closing the investigation around the Breitscheidplatz[1] terror attack
That Islamist attack was very inconvenient for many powers that be, in Germany. Including the media. It has been quickly swept under a rug.
Living in Berlin you could barely notice, it ever happened at all. There was even some strong opposition to putting a monument/memorial to the victims.
It is remarkable that Germans for the most part are unwilling to look for signs of corruption in their government. I recall the conversations that I've had with regular German working stiffs around 2012-2014, chatting about the new Berlin Airport and how that showed symptoms of government corruption. The good folks of Germany started admitting to the possibility of corruption only when the media in Germany began to investigate the situation and uncover problems.
Brandenburg airport, Wirecard, gas deals with Russia, diesel emissions scandal and probably much more of these high-profile cases I cannot even recall now.
Germany is as corrupt as European countries get. Look at their slow reaction to the cum ex scandal (they delayed closing the loophole for years, causing tens of billions in damage to the tax payers), or the recently uncovered massive investing in Wirecard by BaFin employees who were supposed to make sure Wirecard isn't a fraud.
Not saying anything in here is good/bad/other but you rarely see this level of flagged and down-voted comments in a HN thread.