4 ms·

So Putin has just very publicly demonstrated that assassination is a justified use of conflict resolution to the world (and Ukraine).

Arrath 3y ago
With this event being, what, the tenth time?
- willcipriano 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Targeted killings of foreign entities that have declared violent conflict seems somewhat different than killing a fellow political figure from your own country you just shook hands with.
    - mempko 3y ago
      Rational minds love rationalizing don't they.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - bsjaux628 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        At 115 deaths that implies very large hands. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37242239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37242239>
        willcipriano 3y ago
        A single row of my table contains: "Various, including high-value targets, 1000+ assassinated"
        dredmorbius 3y ago
        The specific claim I was responding to, clearly, was "It you want to claim the handful of suspicious deaths around Putin". The question isn't how many other parties have killed, though if you're going to go that route, we can add the the 300+ dead in the 1999 Russian Apartment Bombings,[1], the 3,404 civillian mortalities of the Russo-Ukraine war on Donbas (prior to 2022) and the 9,000 -- 40,000 UA civilians killed since 2022,[2] and the 30,000 civilian dead of the 2nd Russian-Chechen War.[3] Note that I'm specifically referring to civilian rather than combatant deaths. Many of the specific acts of violence against civilians by Russian-allied forces constitute war crimes. And yes, I'll anticipate that the US-Iraq War (2003--2011) in which the Lancet estimates over 600k excess violent deaths, and which was in my view a crime against humanity which I opposed then and now. But that wasn't the question. It was whether or not Putin is directly, through policy, and/or through practices responsible for only a "handful* of direct opportunistic deaths and assassinations of a principally political nature, in a way that none of the killings listed in the Wikipedia entry you submitted for US actions can be ascribed. And again, by no reasonable interpretation does that claim bear out. ________________________________ Notes: 1. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombing...> 2. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...> citing <https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/over-9000-civilians-killed-ukraine-since-russia-invaded-kyiv-2023-01-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/over-9000-civilians-kil...>, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#cite_note-16500people-74 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...>, and <https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/08/ukraine-civilian-casualty-update-14-august-2023 https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/08/ukraine-civilian-casua...> 3. Comprising the period 7 August 1999 -- 30 April 2009, and specifically excluding the earlier first Chechen war 1994--1996 with ~100k dead, but not on Putin's watch. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War>
  - hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
    It's funny. When you point something bad about Russia, the response is always "america does it too". Do you people realize how weak that makes you look? Imagine if when america does something bad, the response was "Russia does it too". Do you realize why that scenario sounds ridiculous? Because Russia doesn't matter.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      > Imagine if when america does something bad, the response was "Russia does it too". That was essentially the justification for the war crimes in Vietnam. Most recently I've seen it deployed in defence of cluster munitions[0] to be used in Ukraine. Your sarcastic reply entirely captures the issue. [0]https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/14/us-cluster-munition-transfer-ukraine-ignores-history-civilian-harm https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/14/us-cluster-munition-tran...
popilewiz 3y ago
[dead]
pengaru 3y ago
Prigozhin's no Jamal Khashoggi... this outcome for him seems nowhere near uniquely Russian, having attempted a failed coup d'etat.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Putin has just very publicly demonstrated that assassination is a justified use of conflict resolution to the world To an armed insurrection? It's sort of the default.
- yreg 3y ago
  Isn't sort of the default a trial? Especially if the leader has an absolute power over the police and the courts?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Especially if the leader has an absolute power over the police and the courts? He doesn’t. If he had, Prigozhin wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did. Putin needed to know that when he gave the kill order, it would be obeyed. The entire Russian state is in such embarrassing shambles that this isn’t an order he could confidently issue without serious concern that it would circle back on him. Hence the stab in the back; Moscow couldn’t survive a serious trial, a fact almost evidenced by the success of Wagner’s march.
    - yreg 3y ago
      I don't see how MoD's inability to scramble enough units in the area to stop the march is related to level of Putin's grip over the judges and legislators.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Putin's grip over the judges and legislators Judges and legislators don’t keep dictators in power, armies do.
dredmorbius 3y ago
Wikpedia lists, by my count, 115 assassinations since Putin effectively assumed power in 1999: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Russian_assassinations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Russian_ass...> Several of those are in Arabic / Islamic states (Syria, Afghanistan, etc.), but numerous others have occurred in Russia itself, in former Soviet states, and in independent and Western states including the UK, Turkey, and Germany. A large number appear to be political rather than military targets, notably of journalists and opposition politicians.

Arrath 3y ago

With this event being, what, the tenth time?

willcipriano 3y ago
[flagged]
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Targeted killings of foreign entities that have declared violent conflict seems somewhat different than killing a fellow political figure from your own country you just shook hands with.
  - mempko 3y ago
    Rational minds love rationalizing don't they.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- bsjaux628 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      At 115 deaths that implies very large hands. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37242239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37242239>
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        A single row of my table contains: "Various, including high-value targets, 1000+ assassinated"
        dredmorbius 3y ago
        The specific claim I was responding to, clearly, was "It you want to claim the handful of suspicious deaths around Putin". The question isn't how many other parties have killed, though if you're going to go that route, we can add the the 300+ dead in the 1999 Russian Apartment Bombings,[1], the 3,404 civillian mortalities of the Russo-Ukraine war on Donbas (prior to 2022) and the 9,000 -- 40,000 UA civilians killed since 2022,[2] and the 30,000 civilian dead of the 2nd Russian-Chechen War.[3] Note that I'm specifically referring to civilian rather than combatant deaths. Many of the specific acts of violence against civilians by Russian-allied forces constitute war crimes. And yes, I'll anticipate that the US-Iraq War (2003--2011) in which the Lancet estimates over 600k excess violent deaths, and which was in my view a crime against humanity which I opposed then and now. But that wasn't the question. It was whether or not Putin is directly, through policy, and/or through practices responsible for only a "handful* of direct opportunistic deaths and assassinations of a principally political nature, in a way that none of the killings listed in the Wikipedia entry you submitted for US actions can be ascribed. And again, by no reasonable interpretation does that claim bear out. ________________________________ Notes: 1. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombing...> 2. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...> citing <https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/over-9000-civilians-killed-ukraine-since-russia-invaded-kyiv-2023-01-17/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/over-9000-civilians-kil...>, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#cite_note-16500people-74 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...>, and <https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/08/ukraine-civilian-casualty-update-14-august-2023 https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2023/08/ukraine-civilian-casua...> 3. Comprising the period 7 August 1999 -- 30 April 2009, and specifically excluding the earlier first Chechen war 1994--1996 with ~100k dead, but not on Putin's watch. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War>
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
  It's funny. When you point something bad about Russia, the response is always "america does it too". Do you people realize how weak that makes you look? Imagine if when america does something bad, the response was "Russia does it too". Do you realize why that scenario sounds ridiculous? Because Russia doesn't matter.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    > Imagine if when america does something bad, the response was "Russia does it too". That was essentially the justification for the war crimes in Vietnam. Most recently I've seen it deployed in defence of cluster munitions[0] to be used in Ukraine. Your sarcastic reply entirely captures the issue. [0]https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/14/us-cluster-munition-transfer-ukraine-ignores-history-civilian-harm https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/14/us-cluster-munition-tran...

popilewiz 3y ago

[dead]

pengaru 3y ago

Prigozhin's no Jamal Khashoggi... this outcome for him seems nowhere near uniquely Russian, having attempted a failed coup d'etat.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> Putin has just very publicly demonstrated that assassination is a justified use of conflict resolution to the world To an armed insurrection? It's sort of the default.

yreg 3y ago
Isn't sort of the default a trial? Especially if the leader has an absolute power over the police and the courts?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Especially if the leader has an absolute power over the police and the courts? He doesn’t. If he had, Prigozhin wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did. Putin needed to know that when he gave the kill order, it would be obeyed. The entire Russian state is in such embarrassing shambles that this isn’t an order he could confidently issue without serious concern that it would circle back on him. Hence the stab in the back; Moscow couldn’t survive a serious trial, a fact almost evidenced by the success of Wagner’s march.
  - yreg 3y ago
    I don't see how MoD's inability to scramble enough units in the area to stop the march is related to level of Putin's grip over the judges and legislators.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Putin's grip over the judges and legislators Judges and legislators don’t keep dictators in power, armies do.

dredmorbius 3y ago

Wikpedia lists, by my count, 115 assassinations since Putin effectively assumed power in 1999: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Russian_assassinations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Russian_ass...> Several of those are in Arabic / Islamic states (Syria, Afghanistan, etc.), but numerous others have occurred in Russia itself, in former Soviet states, and in independent and Western states including the UK, Turkey, and Germany. A large number appear to be political rather than military targets, notably of journalists and opposition politicians.