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Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

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Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#261

Post by vkou »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #204
vkou wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If responding to this would mean nuclear armageddon, then what is Russia doing by attacking NATO in this way? Doing low-stakes trial runs of its capability for sabotage in a future conflict. The reason it can do this against NATO is because NATO has non-war means to tit-for-tat punish Russia for this sort of behaviour. Those means are called sanctions, and there could always be more of them . NATO does not do much…

>because NATO has non-war means to tit-for-tat punish Russia for this sort of behaviour. Those means are called sanctions, and there could always be more of them. Except that they don't really work well against Russia, if you ask anyone in those small and formerly depressive Russian cities where property prices are currently rising. Parallel imports and proxy exports do magic, bureaucrats in the financial block of th…

So all it took to unfuck the Russian economy is for it to be subjected to sanctions and import/export restrictions? Weird, countries rarely tend to prosper under those circumstances.

I thought that the crooks in charge were running it into the ground for the past ~33 years, I didn't realize that this was all it took to get them to start managing the country well.

> if you ask anyone in those small and formerly depressive Russian cities where property prices are currently rising.

Not sure which properties you're talking about, most of the Soviet construction in my home town is - quite literally - falling apart, with no motivation or economic capacity, or money to repair, rebuild, or replace any of it.

Sure, you can inflate property values to whatever amount you want, if you start printing money to finance a war, but that doesn't on its own result in economic prosperity. You actually need to make stuff, and Russian industry has lost the ability to do that decades ago.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#262

Post by dylan604 »

yencabulator wrote: post #158
dylan604 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your pay is whatever job you have as a cover pays you. If you were getting additional pay to that, then it would be a red flag when the various agencies investigate you.

The article directly contradicts you: > Elena also provided a veneer of plausibility for the Šapošnikovs’ lavish lifestyle. Despite Šapošnikov’s modest income from Imex (around $650 per month), the family bought real estate in Czechia and Greece at a value far in excess of what their collective income could account for. As Czech investigators note, “in some cases their official income could not cover even their phone…

Sure, when you get caught and are being interrogated for crimes against the state, you go right ahead and provide your new friends access to those accounts.

Edit: Nothing you wrote contradicts anything I said. Your quote proves my statement. They had other sources of income than their cover provided, and the investigators used that to zero in them.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#263

Post by causality0 »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #9

This is my semi annual plug for all of you to watch the fantastic and somehow forgotten FX network TV show, The Americans, A spy drama set in Washington DC in the 1980s about KGB “illegals” posing as travel agents. It’s way better than any basic cable TV show had any right to be. Plus, all seasons are streaming on Hulu, so you don’t have to worry about whether the story will be completed. https://www.hulu.com/series/…

It spreads the interesting stuff out too much for me. Halfway through the third season I realized the episodes were starting to run together in my head and if I waited more than a day to start watching again I ended up rewatching half the episode before realizing I'd already seen it.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#265

Post by dylan604 »

elie_douna wrote: post #214
dylan604 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hope it's an HBO series and not a Netflix one. I'd be very happy if the producers of Chernobyl worked on it

Craig Mazin who developed Chernobyl is also the showrunner for The Last of Us - season 2 is out next year. He'd be perfect for an East Germany based spy series with a tone similar to Chernobyl combined with The Lives of Others

That scene in Chernobyl breaking down the explosion is one of my favorite scenes of all time. It's a subject matter that is very specific, they covered in enough detail to be legit, but glossed over enough to not loose the audience. Something that a producer would want in a TV show and an attorney presenting a case. Of course all of the underlying "In Soviet Russia..." type references of the State does no wrong while having it shoved in their face were priceless to me as well.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#266

Post by hughdbrown »

garyrob wrote: post #26
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #9

This is my semi annual plug for all of you to watch the fantastic and somehow forgotten FX network TV show, The Americans, A spy drama set in Washington DC in the 1980s about KGB “illegals” posing as travel agents. It’s way better than any basic cable TV show had any right to be. Plus, all seasons are streaming on Hulu, so you don’t have to worry about whether the story will be completed. https://www.hulu.com/series/…

I want to give some advice: Don't judge it by its first few episodes. When I first checked it out, the basic setup seemed rather inane and I stopped watching. Then, a couple years later, I needed something to watch during long exercise sessions and I checked it out again. It was getting much more interesting by the end of the first season. And every season got better and richer. By the very end, I experienced it as a…

Try this: look up the most highly rated episodes on IMDB and watch only those. Missing the crummy episodes usually does not interfere with understanding the story arc. Often, I set a minimum IMDB score that I will watch, like 8.5 or 9.0 to capture only the best. This works well with series that:

- take a year or two to find their footing or

- have a large cast (some mediocre) that get their own story lines of no consequence occasionally or

- introduce cast members that don't make it or

- implode towards the final season.

I have done this for many series that are somewhat uneven:

- The Americans

- How I Met Your Mother

- Fringe

- Orphan Black

- Halt and Catch Fire

- House of Cards (watching the ratings allows you to miss all of season 6)

- Arrested Development

- Bojack Horseman

- Veep

- 30 Rock

- Jane the Virgin

- Black Mirror

- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

- Suits

- Six Feet Under

- La Femme Nikita

- The Blacklist

- Peaky Blinders

- The Romanoffs

- Ozark

- Westworld (sometimes dropping episodes does not matter)

- Succession

- Borgen

And all of these series have lots of strong episodes.

Series I would not do this with:

- The Bear

- Breaking Bad

- Money Heist

- The Serpent

- Fleabag

- Chernobyl

- The White Lotus

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#267

Post by wildylion »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #205
wildylion wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure they don't? As in, 'you have 2 days to GTFO, or we'll land you in prison for a few years to think of your actions'. Happened many, many times since the start of this horrific war and many times before. Source: I'm one of the lucky ones who managed to GTFO from Russia and find a job abroad. Also, Russia is [contemplating]( https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/04/25/russia-reportedl... .) stopping issuing pas…

I believe the idea of not issuing passports is the opposite -> to get people to come back to Russia where they can face consequences?

"Either you stay the F out and become de-facto stateless, or you're going to prison". Simple as that.

I'm actually pretty surprised that Russia didn't do it yet, as Belarus did a while ago.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#268

Post by rotis »

topspin wrote: post #132
BWStearns wrote: post #5

I didn't know the GRU had an illegals program. I thought it was all SVR. Anyone know if that's a recent development?

Victor Suvorov wrote about GRU illegals 40 years ago in Aquarium. For all the shade thrown at his writing since, it sure has aged well. Here we are with bombings, poisonings, corruption and GRU agents creeping around in Europe today. He wrote that the traditional method to deal with traitors in the GRU is the headquarters furnace: wire the "guilty" to a gurney and feed them in alive. His writing about Soviet military…

Oh yeah the reports about Russian army from beginning of war in Ukraine read like someone copying his book Inside the Soviet Army. Which in turn reads like stories you heard about the Soviets in WW2.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#269

Post by carlosjobim »

twixfel wrote: post #175
carlosjobim wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars are never waged as responses to attacks or insults, they are waged when the rulers have determined that they will be profitable. Until then, all attacks or atrocities will be ignored. When it's time for war, the rulers will make up any kind of excuse, order the media to whip up the population to a war frenzy and mothers will cry tears of joy when their sons get sent away to die in agony in some forest or desert…

Haven’t you inverted it rather flagrantly? In this scenario it is Russia that attached the Czech Republic. > Wars are never waged as responses to attacks or insults, they are waged when the rulers have determined that they will be profitable It is a meaningless truism that nations don’t start wars they don’t think they can or will win. No need to dress that up as any sort of profound insight.

Nations don't start wars, rulers do. The rulers can still profit while the nation loses. That's the standard outcome of war, the nation will suffer greatly and lose immense amounts of human life and destruction, whether winning or losing the war. Even a nation who only wages war overseas looses much more than they gain, because of productivity that has to go to the war effort. It is only ever the rulers that have anything to gain from war. And of course those who enjoy war and battle for itself.

> In this scenario it is Russia that attached the Czech Republic.

It is the ruler(s) of Russia that has done that.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#270

Post by topspin »

rotis wrote: post #268
topspin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Victor Suvorov wrote about GRU illegals 40 years ago in Aquarium. For all the shade thrown at his writing since, it sure has aged well. Here we are with bombings, poisonings, corruption and GRU agents creeping around in Europe today. He wrote that the traditional method to deal with traitors in the GRU is the headquarters furnace: wire the "guilty" to a gurney and feed them in alive. His writing about Soviet military…

Oh yeah the reports about Russian army from beginning of war in Ukraine read like someone copying his book Inside the Soviet Army. Which in turn reads like stories you heard about the Soviets in WW2.

It did. Suvorov has said some cringy and contradictory things, but it seems to me that if you simply take what he has written at face value you'll be closer to right than wrong nearly every time.
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