UKC

Vlad the Poisoner at it again...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54002880

In reply to captain paranoia:

I did think the Russians saying there wouldnt be an investigation seemed odd. I thought they would be really interested in how they screwed up killing someone again although I guess I can see why they wouldnt make it public.

Luckily they seem to have chosen someone slightly more competent than the cathedral sightseers otherwise everyone on the plane would be dead, probably worth being careful chosing perfume from duty free for a while though.

Hope he is careful in elevators unless he wants to end up like Anna Politkovskaya who also managed to survive a midflight poisoning attempt.

In reply to captain paranoia:

He's not just Vlad the poisoner is he? Boris Nemtsov was shot within sight of the Kremlin.

In reply to John2:

Well, I was hoping the thread might provide a distraction from the WTC nutjobbery...

In reply to captain paranoia:

Lol there's an awful lot you can't cope with isn't there? 

In reply to mondite:

It makes me wonder why Putin doesn't just order a staged "mugging gone wrong" incident which would avoid any major international condemnation. 

Anyone being tasked with handling a super toxic substance outside a glove box would have to be both extremely diligent and discreet to avoid cross contamination with others. It sounds like the tea drinking is the most likely route of administration (syringe rather than aerosol use).

In reply to Kalna_kaza:

without leaving the signature he isn't passing on the message to the world that he has it and the will to use it.

In reply to Kalna_kaza:

The point is to terrorize and instruct. As with the prior cases using Novichok or Polonium it HAS to be clear who is behind it, even in the absence of court standard proof. Anything else would miss the point.

My guess is that Putin's true domestic approval rates are plummeting due to Covid and the resulting drop in international demand for Russian raw materials (even though he probably still has the true support of a large majority of Russians, who see him as the one leader who put Russia back on the map after the humiliations by the West following the collapse of the Soviet Union).

So to avoid public discontent gaining any momentum as in Belarus next door (or at home in Khabarovsk oblast), he nips it in the bud by publicly eliminating a main opposition figure he has so far mainly ignored or at best hassled with arrests.

CB

In reply to wercat:

I guess it is more for a domestic audience.

CB

In reply to Pefa:

And how are you going to defend this latest outrage?

"It's OK because St. Vlad saved the country..." ?

In reply to captain paranoia:

Who'd have thought Russia post communism would be a bigger threat to world harmony 

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Wasn't that obvious from the outset? Whatever else, the cold war block arrangement at least offered stability for the main actors themselves. Wars were outsourced to proxies and allies, in the meantime Europe had its longest period of peace since the last ice age or something. Who gives a shit about Vietnam or Angola....

Collapse of one main actor ended that stability, hence the wars in Yugoslavia, Chechnia, and later Crimea and Donbass.

The rise of China as a world power will make returning to some semblance of balance built on three or four economic and military power centres (depending on how much longer Europe and the US can be considered part of the same block) even more tricky.

CB

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

It's a dying bear though, declining in both economic and population terms, hugely dependant on it's declining oil and gas sales, as we drift further into a carbon neutral world it will decline further, but that's likely when Putin will become most desperate and see it as having nothing to lose. 

In reply to cb294:

There was a period it could have gone either way and could have potentially transitioned into a modern democracy. Unfortunately the oligarches managed to get a hold and it all went downhill.

In reply to mondite:

Sure, but even that could have upset the apple cart and triggered war somewhere.

CB

In reply to wercat:

They either expect it to be detected as Novichok and it is intended to send a message or it is used because most of the time it isn't detected and the poisoner is really hard to trace and the cases that come to light are the tip of the iceberg.

In reply to summo:

And as shown it/he has an awful lot of power to do real harm

In reply to cb294:

Maybe but that may have been balanced by the lack of the USA and USSR fighting wars via proxy. I was thinking purely about Russia itself though and the complete mess which was made after the collapse of the USSR.

In reply to cb294:

It was a huge error in a strategic and humanitarian sense (most importantly), that the West didn't give more support to Russia and engage with it post Communism, so that the hopeful young Russians at the time could have seen democracy flourish and their economy grow. I can still remember the Russians just old enough to vote during the 90's who were hoping for a new and positive era, one where they had a say in what happened in their country. 

In reply to Timmd:

I think it would have proved fruitless, the old guard in the kgb like Putin will have seen the end of the ussr coming and if it wasn't Putin working their way to power it would have been another of their kind. 

In reply to summo: I do think it was remiss that the West didn't engage with Russia, but we can only speculate on what would have happened had they done, perhaps something in the middle of my other post and your's would have formed, whatever the case it could seem to be an opportunity lost.

In reply to summo:

I think it was more the old guard in the State Department and Langley that were the problem.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

Or US defence industry lobbying(funding) US senators. 

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Strange how its just a few weeks after a failed US/EU colour revolution in Belarus. Most likely another false flag like the ridiculous Skirpal one. 

In reply to Pefa:

Now I know you're trolling.  I always wondered.

In reply to Pefa:

Was the opposition politician shot and killed near enough outside the Kremlin and hidden from view of the CCTV cameras by a snowplow when the street was completely devoid of snow, another false flag too?

What are a the chances? A snow plow driving slowly along a snow free road successfully hiding the killing of a critic of Putin from the only cameras which could provide evidence of who it was, within sight of the Kremlin.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

I'm not. Why believe a word of Intel mobs? Because they are German? American? British? Because they are all on the same side? I find it breathtaking how news like this is greeted by some as genuine and honest considering the history of all of the above, past and present.Many people will believe anything unquestioningly, forgetting all previous patterns of behaviour its quite astonishing how no one dissents, not one person questions. Do you think the Germans aren't illegally in Syria with us and the empire? Do you think Americas managers of Europe don't want to be in control of Minsk once again? Just like Kiev etc. 

In reply to Pefa:

Lol. 

In reply to Timmd:

I don't know anything about it tbh. 

Are you saying it was near Putin's hoose so that means it was Putin? It would depend how slow the plough was moving I suppose, snow ploughs do have to travel to get to places where there is snow you know. 

In reply to Timmd:

Yes, America sought to ridicule and emasculate Russia and framed the situation as the ‘winning’ of the Cold War. Not a sensible way to treat a huge and proud nation. The chaos that ensued meant that people wanted and craved stability, and all the faults they can see and acknowledge in Putin and his administration don’t outweigh the need for this stability and the fear of chaos returning. 

In reply to mondite:

You have heard of Syria? Russia one side, America the other 😏

In reply to Pefa:

youtube.com/watch?v=04fzFPXc2KY&

It was near the Kremlin. 

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Ask a stupid question, get a stupid an... false flag you say? FFS.

In reply to captain paranoia:

From what I can see, this Novichok stuff doesn’t seem to be working very well.. I think Putin has got the dose wrong, he’s bungled it again

In reply to Pefa:

Are you doubting that it had Belarusian peoples' desire for democracy at it's root?

In reply to Timmd:

Absolutely. That's not to say many ordinary Belarusians will have been caught up in it though. It's what the US does Tim ffs look at Kiev in 2014,Syria in 2011,Libya,Venezuela in 2002 until present, HK, Serbia, Bulgaria, Honduras, Nicaragua the list is bloody endless. 

In reply to birdie num num:

It depends how you look at it. As an outright killing agent you're right, it doesn't seem to have the lethality you would expect.

However novichok nerve agents were developed to be hard to detect and extremely persistent in the environment whilst having a devastating (if not lethal) impact on a victim. As an area denial weapon it's perfect, would you risk life changing injuries going into a potentially contaminated area with little chance of detecting it?

In the Salisbury case novichok was found all over the place after a prolonged period causing untold decontamination issues of cars, carpets etc and involved a small quantity, imagine a air blast detonation over a wide area.

In reply to Pefa:

Or maybe many people are looking across the borders to their neighbours and thinking "hmm, we don't seem to have the same opportunities as those living just over there, perhaps we can change things?".

Only people tended to get arrested, beaten up, sent to prison and lose their jobs for disagreeing with the supposedly democratically elected leader (a man so vein he banned state TV from broadcasting images of his bald patch).

But you're probably right, thousands of people from across all demographics have nothing better to do at the weekend other than enjoy a good kicking or far worse in the back of a police van whilst their rifle armed president flies over them in a helicopter.

In reply to captain paranoia:

Someone releasing large quantities of this will certainly put covid in perspective.  The fact that's it's been used several times now is frankly horrifying.  

And 40% of America want to be Russian now. 

In reply to jethro kiernan:

oddly enough yes. The point was about if Russia hadnt taken the path it has now.

In reply to mondite:

Sorry, didn’t read your post in the context of the previous posst 😏

In reply to Pefa:

But the democratic opposition have explicitly said they are not pro-Western, just anti-Lukashenko.

In reply to Timmd:

I absolutely agree. Even worse, the West reneged on its promises not to expand eastward and station troops in former Warsaw pact countries BEFORE Russia turned expansionist. A prime example for wasting strategic opportunities for short term, tactical gain.

However, this is not how things are usually discussed. Same with the Cuba crisis, which in Western folklore starts with the stationing of Soviet mid range missiles in Cuba, not the stationing of the corresponding US Jupiter missiles in Turkey during the preceding months.

As for the humanitarian aid, there was quite a bit of support, both private and state organized, at least here in Germany. I personally drove a lorry with donations collected by our local church first to Russia and then to Latvia in the winter of 90/91. That was quite an adventure, especially as the crap lorry we used had a mechanical breakdown somewhere in Poland (noone would use a lorry even slightly above scrap value, chances were it would not return...), so we missed the convoy waiting for us in Brest/Bialystok and had to go on our own. Some guys actually tried to rob us on the way back, somewhere near Minsk, and I had to use the lorry to break through the barrier they had erected at the exit of the layby. Wild times.....

CB

In reply to Timmd:

What's the game? To outrage us with the overt ism of it all, to laugh at us for the lack of conclusive evidence, since ours is an evidence based legal system, to exploit where the chances emerge in a "weak" democratic process or to exploit  any uncertainty of any division. Pretty dangerous.

In reply to Pefa:

Up until now I thought you were pretty much unique in thinking this was nothing to do with Russia.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54039710

Not that Trump really believes anyone else did it, of course, but he so wishes it was China.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

It's hard to believe that Russian Intelligence don't have something on him.

In reply to DubyaJamesDubya:

Ah come on, he needed a shower to wash all that dirt off. 

In reply to captain paranoia:

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-navalny-novichok-inventor-mirzayanov-intervi...

An interview with one of the scientists who developed novichok agents and his take on the administering of it in Navalny's case.

In reply to Kalna_kaza:

Interesting read, thanks

In reply to Pefa:

Serbia? Wouldn't you say the attempted genocide of the Bosniak Muslims was more the issue?

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

There may be another very contemporary problem , that being Russia has never known culturally a democracy. How does a country shift itself internally without that cultural knowledge? Obviously with huge difficulty especially if people are used to fear and coercion.And additionally there seems to be a global debate of the efficacy of authoritarianism versus democracy. I think there is plenty of evidence that democracy has the capacity for solutions. Doesn't seem to have hit home to some in Russia and fear works in many ways to deter people- but maybe it will have the reverse effect...But Nevalny is definitely in the business of shifting a fearful downtrodden culture to one of engagement and discussion.

In reply to MargieB:

And currently plenty of evidence of how it can go horribly wrong, sadly.

In reply to MargieB:

Good points. 

In reply to MargieB:

Count Gregor Munster, a 19th century Hanoverian diplomat, once wrote, 'An intelligent Russian once remarked to me, "Every country has its own constitution. Ours is absolutism moderated by assassination."'

How little things have changed.

In reply to Dave Garnett:

Yes, it can go wrong, but the great advantage of real and lasting democracy is that it has another chance with every election to get it right or, at least, better.

The much greater danger, I think, is starting to think, when things do go wrong, it isn't worth participating or (even worse) that the solution is to abandon democratic controls and choose a strong leader who will put everything right,