5 ms·

The Web of Death[1] by Buzzfeed lists all the people related to Russia who died in unexpected circumstances on the UK's soil in the last 15 years, together with

• neonate 8y ago
  Western media present this material as if "Russia" means the Russian government means Putin. But there is a large presence of Russian oligarchs and organized criminals in the UK, who do the things those types of people do. It doesn't make sense that all of it is being planned by the Russian state, let alone Putin personally.
  • microcolonel 8y ago
    I suspect that will only get worse with the torrent of "but muh Russian collusion"-type political speech which seems to come up every time people feel like blaming somebody else for their decision not to vote.
  • int_19h 8y ago
    There's no meaningful distinction between Russian government, Russian oligarchs, and Russian organized crime at this point.
    • neonate 8y ago
      That's not only false, but obviously false, since it's an extreme oversimplification of a situation with many players, competing interests, and so on. You won't find any serious scholar taking that naive a view, though plenty of journalists do. The question is where this fantasy of an evil monolith with a spidery mastermind comes from.
      • lambdadmitry 8y ago
        That's a direct outcome of the "vertical of power" concept. As soon as you position yourself as a strongman father of the nation, you also invite the blame. Can't have your cake and eat it, too.
      • int_19h 8y ago
        I didn't say it's a monolith, or there's a spidery mastermind. Rather, it's a sort of a swamp where ugly things move around all the time - today he is a mob leader, tomorrow he's an elected member of the parliament (real world example from my hometown) etc. The problem is that they keep their social connections as they move around, so in the end you end up with this weird network of "friends and colleagues" where, say, a high-ranked police official visits a funeral of his old and dear parliamentarian friend, back from the day when they were both mobsters.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• travmatt 8y ago
  I’d be interested in seeing one with the profiles of those Russians who died in America under suspicious circumstances.
  • krn 8y ago
    Mikhail Lesin, Putin's press minister from 1999 to 2004, was found dead in his hotel room in Washington, DC in 2015[1]: > The US government ruled Mikhail Lesin’s death an accident, but multiple intelligence and law enforcement officials suspect it was a Russian hit. > Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was murdered in Washington, DC, on the eve of a planned meeting with the US Justice Department, according to two FBI agents whose assertions cast new doubts on the US government’s official explanation of his death. > Mikhail Lesin’s battered body was discovered in his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015, with blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso. After an almost yearlong "comprehensive investigation," a federal prosecutor announced last October that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an "accident," and prosecutors closed the case. > “Lesin was beaten to death,” one of the FBI agents said. “I would implore you to say as much. There seems to be an effort here to cover up that fact for reasons I can't get into.” > He continued: “What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died. Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.” [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/putins-media-czar-was-murdered-just-before-meeting-feds https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/putins-med...
    • travmatt 8y ago
      Also Sergei Krivov. I believe most of the other people implicated as sources in Steele’s famous dossier also died shortly after it was made public, but I believe most happened outside of the United States.