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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The man is ex-KGB, installed himself in power for life and somehow his critics have a way of getting killed or tripping on some soviet nerve agents.
Merkel of Germany has been chancellor since 2005 (15 years) Putin has been president since 2000 with 4 years break (16 years). So technically he is not THAT bad in comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Skripal
It's pretty much the ultimate flex, no? "We can kill anyone we want in any country, and you can't do shit about it."
Is he really the opposition leader? Who gave him that name? What party or elected position is he part of in the Duma?
> in the Duma
You can only choose one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm thinking, if they wanted to do it quietly, we wouldn't all be reading about it now.
Stupidly to poison someone, and then give them to other country.... 0_0 Say someone is a leader this less then 2% stupidly too...
A reliable source just verified to all other potential opponents that they might be poisoned.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent “ 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.
This is the second time they've done this, IIRC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Skripal It's pretty much the ultimate flex, no? "We can kill anyone we want in any country, and you can't do shit about it."
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 i…
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.