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Does the Kremlin want Alexei Navalny to die in prison?
- lelag 6y agoA rare counter-example of Betteridge's law of headlines.
- dijit 6y agoI don't think so; Russian government doesn't need a martyr, they will discredit him thoroughly before they make any kind of move on him at this point. You see the same behaviour with Snowden and the US. The US security industry for sure would prefer this man to be quiet and away from any spotlight, but all they can do is make up some rumours about how he's just a disgruntled employee or maybe a pedophile fleeing for that reason or a rapist. Obviously it doesn't gain traction but I've seen those attempts.
- encryptluks2 6y agoThe US will do nothing except threaten more sanctions.
- jonnybgood 6y agoWhat else can the US realistically do about this situation?
- ainiriand 6y agoIt is not that they can, it is that the US used the freedom pretext to start wars all around. What about Russia?
- 0dayz 6y agoAh, yes let's bring freedom to a nuclear power, with no consequences for the us or the world. Regardless if your post is serious or not, this post is the dumbest "dare" to Americans I ever seen.
- ainiriand 6y agoYeah Afghanistan, Lybia, Syria are all much better now that there's "freedom".
- encryptluks2 6y agoThey could take out Putin if they wanted to and spread some rumor that it was a Russian dissident.
- jonnybgood 6y agoThat is absolutely not realistic.
- encryptluks2 6y agoWhy not?
- pjc50 6y agoMan has quite a lot of security against on-the-ground "deniable" attacks. Then you have the question of whether the surviving second in command decides to just eat the loss and surrender his country to the United States without firing a shot, or .. fire a shot. The bare minimum is probably the televised execution of all US embassy staff in Russia; the maximum retaliation is, of course, nuclear war.
- encryptluks2 6y agoWe're already at war with Russia, it is just a cold war involving cyberattacks and attacks on the US election system. With Russia moving troops to the border of Ukraine they are going to keep testing the US until we are forced to act. Better be on the preemptive.
- mekkkkkk 6y ago> until we are forced to act Are you suggesting that the Kremlin wants to escalate into full scale war with the US?
- encryptluks2 6y ago
- js8 6y agoI was born in socialist Czechoslovakia. Everybody hated Russians (they had an army stationed there), and everybody loved Americans. (This "everybody" excludes about 20% of the population that are authoritarian conservatives, who exist in similar numbers everywhere.) So what did the Americans do? In my opinion: It wasn't military invasion, it wasn't sanctions, it was they have built a better, more free, system (at least that's how it was largely perceived), and opened their doors for people who wanted to emigrate and live there. Often these were intellectuals, who then "spread the word" about how it works in the U.S. back to the land they were born. I think with America coming to neoliberalism in the 1980s, this approach was lost. (Freedom turned into an ideology, and that neutered the pragmatic consideration of different human values.) But in some places, it never really existed, in Latin America, or Middle East, Americans often supported dictatorships. So here you have it, this is what you can realistically do. Build a better system, create an example, let people (from Russia or elsewhere) come and see why it is really better.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoAbsolutely this. The US could accelerate Russia’s brain drain [1] using robust visa quotas and fast track immigration programs. This would be far more devastating for the future of Russia than any military action or sanctions. Very similar to what Great Britain is doing with Hong Kong. [2] [1] https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200402141401228 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202004021... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-hongkong-security-britain-china-idUSKBN29Y0Q1 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-hongkong-security-britain...
- js8 6y agoI think you totally misunderstood my proposal and twisted it into chauvinism. I don't want to destroy them, I want to (indirectly) help them. Failed states, especially those with nuclear weapons, are far more dangerous.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI believe "Russia the government" is beyond redemption, but "Russia the people" aren’t, therefore the only path to success is helping Russian citizens emigrate to a country with better prospects for their future. This is help for the people, even if it shifts geopolitical power long term. The idea that Russians will take better systems back to a brutal regime and instill democracy or other improvements seems unlikely considering those who are in power. Russia will fail eventually (as the USSR did before it), its only a matter of when.
- ainiriand 6y agoIt is interesting to see how the war with Syria started as a means to remove Al-Assad from power because of his veiled dictatorship and somehow there is people like Putin sitting in his throne for 2 decades and nothing happens.
- loopz 6y agoLook what happened in Syria, Libya, Yemen..
- Iv 6y agoTargeted sanctions work. Removing sanctions was the main goal of Russian "lobbying" (let's call it that way) of the Trump administration. Personally annoying leaders and oligarchs by preventing them to move around, if only to bring their kids to Disneyland, is not flashy but is convincing Putin's inner circle that he is turning Russia into a third world country. Hit at the wallet. Especially at the personal one.
- 3v1n0 6y agoProblem with sanctions is that most likely they only affect normal people who is not then able to rebel against their leaders. See Cuba or Venezuela, they live on sanctions for decades but show the oligarchs can live well on them, the people is struggling and has not any possibility to fight against their regimes
- Iv 6y agotargeted sanctions. "Here is a list of 20 oligarchs who can't travel to US and EU anymore and can't transfer funds there." There may be a few false positives but that's much better than blanket embargo on a whole population. And when you find a business front of one of these, you have a legal reason to destroy millions from their wealth. Angry oligarchs are probable more scary to Putin than protests in the streets of Moscow.
- CrazyCatDog 6y agoThat’s right, if you want the job done, you have got to call the United Nations—then and only then—might they write and send a stern, toothless letter.
- kenneth 6y agoRussia has a veto voice in the security council. Not really much the UN can do here. The way the UN is set up is entirely broken and there's very little the organization can do against authoritarianism.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Russia has a veto voice in the security council. Not really much the UN can do here. That seems like the kind of problem the UN would have run into and found a solution for within about the first 5 years it existed, instead of leaving it inaddressed for three-quarters of a century. Oh, that’s because it is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_Resolution_377 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assem...
- ptidhomme 6y agoWestern media building consent for a subsequent confrontation.
- anticodon 6y agoPaywall, but even the first few available lines of the article begin with lies: in a harsh penal colony It's not a harsh colony, there's even video available where Navalny lies on a bed most of the time, drinks tea, does nothing. Besides what's the point of Navalny dying in prison? He's not that popular in Russia. Here most people believe he's a crook and/or CIA agent. He's more popular among Russian emigrants. Here in Russia very few people believe him. It's an opposition figure that is actually helping Putin by being such an easy target, e.g. spending people donations on luxurious hotels in Thailand. Besides, if western readers/journalists could read Russian, they'd be flabbergasted by the bullshit Navalny says. Firstly, he's nazi and his political career started with nazi slogans (nobody wants to remember that now, though). Secondly, he's saying dumb populist bullshit. I listened to his "presidential programme" - it's for people with IQ of a room temperature. There's no substance in it.
- phpnode 6y agoWhich politician(s) do you favour if not Navalny?
- kolla 6y agoDoubt it matters, Russians have no choice. Putin will rule until he is dead.
- anticodon 6y agoIt's purely a Western (USA) view that this is a bad thing (although not even European leaders change that often). I'd love to see Putin rule for many more years because I don't see any sane alternative. Why would I want him to be replaced with somebody else, especially inept and low-brow Navalny?..
- gambiting 6y ago>> I'd love to see Putin rule for many more years because I don't see any sane alternative Does it ever occur to you that it's exactly by design?
- Yizahi 6y agoOf course not. Instead he will suffer there approximately the same as other inmates, maybe a more, and will be excluded from coordinating anti-putin politicians in the rigged elections. Since russian political field is thoroughly cleaned up now, and Navalny was the only anti-putin figure left, this will achieve what kremlin wants - some noticeable decline in the anti-putin voting this year. PS: I'm writing anti-putin because it is not clear that Navalny is actually going against the soviet system in general. For example he supported Crimea invasion, he supported Georgia invasion in 2008, he voluntarily invited russian terrorist Girkin a few years ago for the interview, and during that interview said that it is not a war crime to kill Ukrainian soldiers.
- stemc43 6y agoim surprised stackoverflow readers would buy political pieces like that. >deprived both of sleep and of medical care Thats exactly what us is doing in its prisons. How is he deprived? How is it any different from what his foreign handlers do at home? Was there a single article on torture Maria Butina had to endure in US prison? shame cheap pieces like that show up here.
- mam2 6y agoAll of russia supported crimea 'invasion'. Its been historically russian for centuries. And to be fair, the invasion was triggered by the plans of the us to bring warships in the black sea through nato alliance of ukraine. The narrative in russia is not the same than on cnn and to me is closer to what really happened.
- proxysna 6y agoYeah, they do want that. Tried to kill him multiple times using their FSB goons, almost succeeded. Now it's time for good old one - persecute on false charges, and let the penal system do its work. Not as effective or flashy as Nemtsov, or Politkovskaya, or Estemirova, or Litvinenko approach, but truly battle tested way of dealing with journalists or political opponents.
- dirktheman 6y agoWithout picking any sides here, I think it is somewhat funny that both parties in the comments think the other party is indoctrinated by state propaganda about their own country...
- mekkkkkk 6y agoIt is pretty funny. However it gets a bit skewed when you talk about Russian media vs "western media". One is largely state controlled with very rigid guidelines and directives and the other is an amalgamation of hundreds of outlets in dozens of countries, with differing viewpoints and generally good independence. Some might be louder than others, absolutely, but they can all be heard. I'm sure there is still some bias being applied, but the whole "russophobe" narrative is a bit tiresome and seems to be engineered by the Russian state to a large extent.
- dirktheman 6y agoI'm sure that Russian state owned media is way more biased than most Western media. However, if you factor in that for instance a large part of the US only watches Fox, OAN or Breitbart, I don't think one party is much better off in the news department. A lot of people have access to independent media, but actively choose not to use them.
- mekkkkkk 6y agoI'm not sure those conservative outlets are necessarily part of an aligned state agenda. Especially considering how they are directly opposed to the current administration. Also I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that both parties are equal, while also claiming that "Russian state owned media is way more biased than most Western media". My point is that there are no major alternative platforms in Russia. There's a reason why the few critical Russian news outlets locate outside of Russia.
- shashurup 6y agoI was always courious about this "state control". Seriously, I've heard this hundrends of times. And EVERY single person failed to explain how he thinks that happens. At the same time reading all this banned criticism almost always left the impression of very poor analysis of the situation, usually non constructive and biased. The "state controlled" part of media also feels biased but more often than not it looks like a better job done when it comes to the situation analysis.
- jules-jules 6y agoDo the US and UK Governments want Julian Assange do die in prison?
- puszczyk 6y agoWhataboutism. Even if the US and UK govt want Assange to die in prison does it give Putin’s government the license to torture Navalny?
- dracman 6y agoDoes the City of London want Julian Assange to die in prison?
- woofster 6y agoВсем привет, русские здесь?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- arcanon 6y agoYes, but the way Alexei is going about it made it awkward for them.