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Alexei Navalny has died

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Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#791
post #732
post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navalty had some pretty scary things to say about Ukraine as well. To summarize: He thought there are no differences between Ukranian people and Russian people, he thinks that Crimea is rightfully Russia's (finder's keepers!), and he thinks it would be nice for Belarus and Ukraine to just be absorbed by Russia and become part of Russia again. He was only against the war in Ukraine when it became obvious it was not go…

I'm not sure that's an accurate reflection of the man's views. Your sequencing is not construable to a new fact. He did recant any notion of Ukrainians being Russian. He also asserted ukrainians Right to independent self-governing.

Navalny has always been a supporter of a concept referred to as "Russkiy Mir"[1] and has spoke at length about it. It is a weird ethno religious philosophy which shows the bounds of the russian country extend far past the borders of teh russian federation. The closest I can easily describe it is as a weird western version of jihad where they want to assume all other cultures and erase them in favor of expansion of their own via multiple methods.

In 2007, in a Russian "Gun Rights" video, Navalny compared the Chechen muslims to "cockroaches and flies" and said he wanted to exterminate them. A picture of a Chechen muslim appears on the screen and he shoots it with a pistol. In another [2] video it featured Navalny dressed as a dentist, presenting a slightly confusing parable that likened interethnic conflict in Russia to cavities and argued that fascism can be prevented only by deporting migrants from Russia. Navalny closed his monologue with “We have a right to be [ethnic] Russians in Russia. And we will defend this right.” This is an allegory to killing all non-ethnic Russians.

In 2008 when Russia invaded the country of Georgia. He said[3]:

    Of course, there is a big desire to fire a cruise missile at the General Staff of the [derogative name for Georgians], but they are just waiting for this.
Years later, he apologized for the ethnic slur denoting Georgian people, but never for his support of the Russian war on Georgia.

In an interview with Echo of Moscow radio station in October 2014, Navalny admitted that the peninsula had been seized through “outrageous violations of all international norms”, and yet asserted that it would “remain part of Russia” and would “never become part of Ukraine in the foreseeable future”.

His statement was not simply an assessment of the developments around Crimea. When pressed on whether he would return Crimea to Ukraine were he to become Russia’s president, Navalny wrapped his “No” in an odd question: “What? Is Crimea a sandwich or something that you can take and give back?” His position on Crimea was basically, "finders keepers."

Also in 2014, here[4] he is using one of the worst ethnic slurs for Ukrainians making fun of them.

In 2016, Navalny said that he intended to hold a "normal" referendum in Russian-occupied Crimea if he won the Russian presidential election. Note that Russia has forcibly killed or deported many/most ethnic Tatar peoples and native Ukrainians from Crimea. They've allowed Russian people to come occupy it and settle the lands, so by definition, any referendum would be with invaders on invaded territory. It would be a sham.

In 2023, he offered a 15 point "manifesto"[5] where he changed tac quite a bit, but this was after some prominent navalnyists were pissing off western journalists with their staunch anti-ukraine message, all in line with Russkiy Mir.

I can go on and on and on, but his support of violence and cleansing the world of non-russians goes back a long time. I just spent a few minutes to find these but if you dig in you can find the same and more.

[1] https://dgap.org/en/events/russkiy-mir-russian-world

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICoc2VmGdfw

[3] https://navalny.livejournal.com/274456.html

[4] https://twitter.com/navalny/status/505215151961014272

[5] https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1627632098608644099

Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strategy of economic integration as a way to reduce military tension has worked very well in many other instances. It doesn't seem like an obviously insane thing to have tried.

>The strategy of economic integration as a way to reduce military tension has worked very well in many other instances. It mostly worked within in the EU because you needed meaningfully adopt certain standards to join the market. Russia didn't have to do any of that and by the time more people started to understand the problem developing they already had leverage.

Russia is a gigantic country with vast resources that isn’t bordered by Europe, and more than once it was a superpower and it was a superpower against another gigantic country. On the other hand, Europe consists of small countries trying to fit in with their neighbors.

It’s like thinking the scooter kids are gonna be hanging with the skater kids. It’s not that they are inherently that different, but they have such different mindsets that it means they see their positions in the world differently.

Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen to internal speeches by Putin or Xi, they are often available on YouTube. We are not slowly sliding towards a world conflict, it has already begun and we are hopeless to stop it. It is arrogant to ignore or dismiss the happenings. Things were set in motion years ago and they are slowly unraveling. When the West rejected Russia's deeper integration into its structures after the Cold War ended and expanded NATO…

> Things were set in motion years ago and they are slowly unraveling. When the West rejected Russia's deeper integration into its structures after the Cold War ended and expanded NATO towards the East this path was set in stone. The late 2000s were the absolute breaking point. Your point would have been better made without weaseling in a Mearsheimer apology for authoritarian states. Russia snatching Ukraine has absol…

[flagged]

Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#794
post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navalty had some pretty scary things to say about Ukraine as well. To summarize: He thought there are no differences between Ukranian people and Russian people, he thinks that Crimea is rightfully Russia's (finder's keepers!), and he thinks it would be nice for Belarus and Ukraine to just be absorbed by Russia and become part of Russia again. He was only against the war in Ukraine when it became obvious it was not go…

[flagged]

"some language differences", my god.

Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#795
post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navalty had some pretty scary things to say about Ukraine as well. To summarize: He thought there are no differences between Ukranian people and Russian people, he thinks that Crimea is rightfully Russia's (finder's keepers!), and he thinks it would be nice for Belarus and Ukraine to just be absorbed by Russia and become part of Russia again. He was only against the war in Ukraine when it became obvious it was not go…

Care to provide some links apart from 'they said it on fox news'? Its exactly the type of narrative putin would like to push to marginalize another high profile murder, and we have seen he can be an expert with playing foreign powers and media against each other

See my followup here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39403310

Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#796
post #723
post #41

So in latest news, last opposition figure in Russia dies together with any hope for regime change while Russia's war effort is starting to get some traction with it's overwhelming man power and Ukraine is forced to cede more territory all while west is busy either with it's in-fighting or comparing each others superior GDP and how Russia will crumble just any day now (TM). Man, are we in for a ride next decade in Eur…

Navalty had some pretty scary things to say about Ukraine as well. To summarize: He thought there are no differences between Ukranian people and Russian people, he thinks that Crimea is rightfully Russia's (finder's keepers!), and he thinks it would be nice for Belarus and Ukraine to just be absorbed by Russia and become part of Russia again. He was only against the war in Ukraine when it became obvious it was not go…

Some people in the West really tried to make him the face of opposition in Russia, but he was unpalatable to Eastern Europe, which no longer is a part of the world that doesn't count. The West, Western Europe in particular has to realign its diplomatic strategy and stop ignoring countries located between Moscow and Berlin.

Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things were set in motion years ago and they are slowly unraveling. When the West rejected Russia's deeper integration into its structures after the Cold War ended and expanded NATO towards the East this path was set in stone. The late 2000s were the absolute breaking point. Your point would have been better made without weaseling in a Mearsheimer apology for authoritarian states. Russia snatching Ukraine has absol…

[flagged]

Spoken like a Putincrat.

Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Martyrdom. Navalny calculated that this process would be watched and documented through to the very end. He hoped that might be significant, perhaps even sufficient.

He will be forgotten in a week, at least by the West. Do you remember the guy who flew over Belarus and his plane was redirected to seize him? Any news? I do not even remember his name. Going back to Russia was a stupid move, he could have had much more visibility from the EU.

| He will be forgotten in a week, at least by the West.

He wasn't doing that for the amusement of the West; he was doing it for the Russians.

Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen to internal speeches by Putin or Xi, they are often available on YouTube. We are not slowly sliding towards a world conflict, it has already begun and we are hopeless to stop it. It is arrogant to ignore or dismiss the happenings. Things were set in motion years ago and they are slowly unraveling. When the West rejected Russia's deeper integration into its structures after the Cold War ended and expanded NATO…

Sadly I think you’re right about NATO expansion. I think a hot war with Russia was always on the table with NATO expansion. You either have to be willing to fight it to defend the expansion or you’re going to cede something to Russia when they push back.

Hot war was absolutely on the table without expansion, just look at Moldova, or Georgia. Or even Ukraine. Ukraine was already ineligible for NATO prior to 2014 as a result of the multi-decade lease of Sevastopol to the Russian Navy.

Re: Alexei Navalny has died

#800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What deeper integration would that have been? Geniunely curious, I don't see what could have worked once the oligarchs were minted. They only care about selling simple low-effort stuff, easily corrupted, like oil.

It might be difficult to believe, but in the 1990s the people of Russia truly wanted to be in Europe (kind of like Ukrainians do now). That sentiment is now gone, and it's not (just) due to propaganda. The common people believe that Ukrainians will just be used to achieve some goal in the US vs. Russia power struggle and then abandoned. https://www.politico.eu/article/how-the-us-broke-kosovo-and-...

Where do you got that info. Most Russians want to be part of Europe. Its not that Russian people dont have a way to think freely. They all watch youtube and other social media. And they all love to ski in Austria or to visit Italy for a holiday. I don't know one russian person who is not pro Europe. Even Putin himself is pro europe.
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