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Putin ‘purges’ 150 FSB agents in response to Russia’s botched war with Ukraine
- toomanyrichies 5y agohttps://archive.ph/SsPOS https://archive.ph/SsPOS
- mc32 5y agoAfter all, he did learn from Soviet history. Looks like he’s using Stalin’s template. What was his KGB nom d’espion in the DDR, again?
- BeetleB 5y agoComparing this to Stalin's purges is borderline offensive. The latter's purge affected almost all walks of society. I recall when I was in grad school I would read the biographies of famous physicists/mathematicians, and virtually all the Soviet ones had siblings or parents who had been killed in the Purge. It also crippled the Soviet army, which is why a much "weaker" Finland held its own when the Soviets attacked them - the majority of the senior, capable military leaders had either been killed or imprisoned in the Purge, leaving behind a rather incompetent military.
- eyelidlessness 5y agoIt’s also borderline offensive to treat Putin’s regime as anywhere near as transparent about how people from all walks of society are treated. Famous scientists and mathematicians just mysteriously fall from windows with no apparent explanation. People less famous either meet less notable ends or just aren’t there to be purged from anything worth purging in the first place. None of which is to say Putin’s regime is anywhere near the atrocity machine that Stalin’s was. That’s an extreme that’s hard to imagine and very exclusive. But this notion that Putin’s regime isn’t committing the kinds of mass violence on Russian society because it isn’t on full display is neglecting both how his own regime has operated as well as how most did/have since the 70s-80s. They just do it with secrecy and plausible deniability.
- GoodJokes 5y ago
- eps 5y agoWhich famous mathematicians fell out of windows recently?
- atoav 5y agoJust from the top of my head I recall 3 healthcare workers (was it doctors?) that have been critical of the national Covid response who fell from windows. A diplomat in the russian embassy in Berlin. More than one journalist¹ — the only reason there might be no mathematician recently might be that the soviet union had a bigger use for methematicians. ¹: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_i...
- thriftwy 5y agoFSB generals and state-owned companies' officials do routinely fall from windows, but I'm not sure I've heard that about doctors.
- atoav 5y agoI found the source for the health care thing: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/07/852319465/three-russian-frontline-health-workers-mysteriously-fell-out-of-hospital-windows https://www.npr.org/2020/05/07/852319465/three-russian-front...
- mcv 5y agoPutin is not Stalin, but he's certainly trying to be a good imitation. He admires Stalin and it shows.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- boomboomsubban 5y agoFiring people is "purging" now? Their source article only details two arrests, with twenty addresses being searched.
- thawaya3113 5y agoPurging means to remove. So yes? Firing has always meant purging. It’s the comparison to Stalinist purges that’s a problem.
- yakak 5y agoLarge numbers of people purged by firing don't properly go away so purges by a dictator usually get more brutal in their treatment of the purged over time.
- koonsolo 5y agoFiring does not mean sending people to jail because they did a bad job. Normally an employer can only fire you. But when your employer is also a dictator, you can indeed end up in jail for bad performance. So no, firing is not really a proper term.
- naoqj 5y agoBut are these people going to jail?
- faller 5y ago> But are these people going to jail? The first paragraph of the news piece states that "the head of the department responsible for Ukraine was sent to prison." Here's the second paragraph: > In a sign of President Putin’s fury over the failures of the invasion, about 150 Federal Security Bureau (FSB) officers have been dismissed, including some who have been arrested. I couldn't read more paragraphs as the article seems paywalled.
- 5y ago
- MrRiddle 5y ago
- thriftwy 5y agoEverything is, you just have to divide by π.
- SLWW 5y agoIt's just infuriating how they insult us thinking most people will be taken in by it. As an aside the idea that a war which is taking 1,000s of lives on both sides is somehow "botched" just because it didn't go the way anyone thought. And people wonder why traditional media is dying.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago> It's just infuriating how they insult us thinking most people will be taken in by it. Not just thinking. They are being taken in. Front page of Reddit today was a completely nonsense story from three old women talking about Russian soldiers stole their toilet seats to take home because they could not imagine the magic of flush toilets. Absolute propaganda.
- bartekrutkowski 5y agoI don't dare to speak about what is or isn't propaganda these days, but when I was a teen I had a chance to witness Russian army leaving their base in Borne Sulinowo, Poland in early 90's. They did in fact took toilets with them, along with things like radiators and, in some places, even bathroom tiles.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y agoOk. Except the video had “anecdotes” that they literally could not imagine and have never seen the concept of a flush toilet. Understood it so little that they wouldn’t believe Ukrainians would defecate inside their houses and then stole the toilet seat alone to make the same system work in their homes. It was absolute propaganda. https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/u192o3/babushkas_from_a_liberated_village_near_kyiv_tell/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/u192o3/babushkas_f...
- javajosh 5y agoIt seems strange to me that there aren't more defections. The West can offer a great deal of money to defectors, presumably, and if rumors of rampant Russian cynicism and greed are to be believed, why not just take it? (I'd also be curious to find out how many Russian pilots and tank crews have taken Ukraine up on it's $1M/$500k offer.)
- baybal2 5y ago
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoI don't think it's easy to pull off. Practically speaking, you need to know someone on the other side, convince them you are real, while hiding all these efforts from everyone else. A difficult task in a society full of distrust.
- euroderf 5y agoOTOH there are people paid to find defectors and exfiltrate them.
- spacemanmatt 5y agoOTOH there are people paid to find defectors and murder them
- dunefox 5y agoI think newspapers might be of help with something like this.
- throwaway7033 5y agoTaking money from the West doesn't keep you alive; if I were a Russian would-be defector I'd be worried about ending up like Alexander Litvinenko (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko).
- mushbino 5y agoThe last time they reported something like this, it turned out to not be true. So much wartime disinfo going around.
- yakak 5y agoWas it not? Putin and Trump seem to share the same playbook of doing both things to gauge response and cause confusion. It's pretty hard to ask Putin's upper staff whether the spent a few nights in jail.
- ehvatum 5y agoThe compulsion to equate Trump and Putin is, itself, propagandist.
- yakak 5y agoI think it is just logic that comparing/connecting international nationalists creates an implication in their belief system that comparing/connecting liberals or fiscal conservatives does not. (I suppose that may cause a Streisand effect.) Erdogan also has many identical campaign methods, can I compare him to one of these leaders but not the other and if so how does your nationality not play a role in your analysis?
- ehvatum 5y agoI say it for a very specific reason: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-campaign-democratic-party-fined-fec-clears-steele-dossier-author-of-wrongdoing/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-campaign-democr...
- a0-prw 5y agoLet's see how well "botched war" does in the coming weeks and months. There is a big, as in enormous, battle coming in Eastern Ukraine and if the Russian encirclement is successful, there will be very little between Kiev and Russia.
- zibzab 5y agoThis is probably one area where software projects and wars differ: When things go bad in a war, you can always throw more bodies on it to turn it around.
- mcv 5y agoI think that's about as successful in war as it is in software projects, except many of those bodies will end up dead. If there's one thing that the Russian invasion shows, it's the massive difference that morale makes. But also planning, coordination, logistics. You need to have soldiers who know what they're doing.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoUntil you can't.
- torginus 5y agoThis is not true. Most credible military analysts say that Russia's Achilles heel in this war is the lack of trained personnel in sufficient numbers.
- vintermann 5y agoOh no, you definitively can't. Not when you're the one invading. People always bring up WW2, but in WW2 USSR was being invaded, and had a lot of material support from the west. They could keep "throwing more bodies on it" because 1. Those bodies were still very motivated, since they were being invaded and, 2. They had useful equipment for those bodies, in significant part from western support (lend/lease etc. Ukraine is more like WW1 for Russia. That didn't end so well for the Russian leadership.
- ddaalluu2 5y ago
- chews 5y agoTech is part of the world... this is a war in the world. Maybe the SCADA explosions suits better?
- JoeyBananas 5y agofiring 150 people does not amount to a "Stalinist purge"
- throwawaymanbot 5y ago
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoPutin needs to be a bit careful here. Historically, when a dictator purges his security service, the survivors sometimes have doubts about their own futures. And the FSB is one of the few outfits that could orchestrate a coup against Putin, if they felt threatened.