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Seems like a really easy way for other countries to hide attribution for their attacks by using something that everything will believe is just Russia "sending a

Seems like a really easy way for other countries to hide attribution for their attacks by using something that everything will believe is just Russia "sending a message."

trefoiled 5y ago
This is more or less my assessment. It's important to keep in mind that global geopolitics is a subtle game, especially when intelligence operations are concerned; sometimes things are exactly how they appear, but often they're very different from how they are initially reported. It often takes decades to find out what really happened. I don't think there's enough solid information to draw any conclusions about this specific situation, but I do think if Putin intended to get rid of Navalny permanently, he couldn't have picked a worse time to involve Germany in a high profile poisoning case when a pipeline (to Germany) crucial to the Russian economy was due to be opened.
- takeda 5y ago
  Well... did it affect anything with the pipeline?
- trefoiled 5y ago
  >Well... did it affect anything with the pipeline? Yes. The US has been threatening sanctions on Russian businesses to stop the pipeline since 2019. The US finally issued the sanctions on ships involved in the construction, using the poisoning explicitly as a justification.[1] A great deal of pressure was placed on Germany by the US to cancel it completely due to the poisoning, despite the several billion euros of investment already made by the country. The German government did not give in to the pressure.[2] [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/1/19/russias-gazprom-says-nord-stream-2-at-risk-after-us-sanctions https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/1/19/russias-gazprom-... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-politics-laschet-exclusive/exclusive-navalny-affair-no-grounds-to-cancel-nord-stream-pipeline-new-german-cdu-chief-says-idUSKBN2A51FL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-politics-laschet-... Edit: The US did not explicitly sanction entities involved in the construction of the pipeline because of Navalny, I got that mixed up with a European parliament push to do so. [3] [3] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210119IPR95904/parliament-demands-significantly-tighter-eu-sanctions-against-russia https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210119IP...
rdtsc 5y ago
That's a good point. It opens up a possibility for Russia's opponents to use any of these substances to assassinate someone with everyone believing it was the Russians. The Russians would deny it but nobody would believe them. Then obviously if that plan would leak, there is a risk of the previous attempts to now be pinned on this other party.

Seems like a really easy way for other countries to hide attribution for their attacks by using something that everything will believe is just Russia "sending a message."

trefoiled 5y ago

This is more or less my assessment. It's important to keep in mind that global geopolitics is a subtle game, especially when intelligence operations are concerned; sometimes things are exactly how they appear, but often they're very different from how they are initially reported. It often takes decades to find out what really happened. I don't think there's enough solid information to draw any conclusions about this specific situation, but I do think if Putin intended to get rid of Navalny permanently, he couldn't have picked a worse time to involve Germany in a high profile poisoning case when a pipeline (to Germany) crucial to the Russian economy was due to be opened.

takeda 5y ago
Well... did it affect anything with the pipeline?
trefoiled 5y ago
>Well... did it affect anything with the pipeline? Yes. The US has been threatening sanctions on Russian businesses to stop the pipeline since 2019. The US finally issued the sanctions on ships involved in the construction, using the poisoning explicitly as a justification.[1] A great deal of pressure was placed on Germany by the US to cancel it completely due to the poisoning, despite the several billion euros of investment already made by the country. The German government did not give in to the pressure.[2] [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/1/19/russias-gazprom-says-nord-stream-2-at-risk-after-us-sanctions https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/1/19/russias-gazprom-... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-politics-laschet-exclusive/exclusive-navalny-affair-no-grounds-to-cancel-nord-stream-pipeline-new-german-cdu-chief-says-idUSKBN2A51FL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-politics-laschet-... Edit: The US did not explicitly sanction entities involved in the construction of the pipeline because of Navalny, I got that mixed up with a European parliament push to do so. [3] [3] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210119IPR95904/parliament-demands-significantly-tighter-eu-sanctions-against-russia https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210119IP...

rdtsc 5y ago

That's a good point. It opens up a possibility for Russia's opponents to use any of these substances to assassinate someone with everyone believing it was the Russians. The Russians would deny it but nobody would believe them. Then obviously if that plan would leak, there is a risk of the previous attempts to now be pinned on this other party.