181–190 of 371 posts
cant say im surprised honestly. as sad as it is, Messing with Putin himself rarely leads to a positive outcome.
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.
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."
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.
What's going on here with all the new accounts and dead comments?
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."
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/18/i-almost-died-...
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…
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 c…
It already happened there in 1990. That time the collapse of the soviet economy was in part caused by economic sanctions for the war in Afghanistan in 1979-1989: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War This time the sanctions are for the war against Ukraine, which started in 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War
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.
The bloodshed only happened in remote regions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Abkhazia_(1992%E2%80%93... The majority of population of modern Russia was unaffected. Probably for this reason Russians have not learned their lesson, elected Putin, and did nothing while he was transforming the country towards authoritarian dictatorship.
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?
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 anybo…
His constantly embarrassing exposes where he demonstrates how much money they've fleeced from the Russian people don't count? e.g.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE1iw4seYt0&list=PLuBu40P6jU...
Or his videos demonstrating widespread voting fraud that's keeping "Putin and Friends" in power?
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?
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 claim…
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The events in Belarus recently demonstrated that you are wrong. I ran a small (1 mln pageviews/month) online Russian-speaking community since 2003 and since 2014, my main preoccupation are Kremlin bots. The population in Russia is mostly anti-Putin, they just do not speak up, because the state made sure they feel isolated.