4 ms·

Official documents confirm Navalny was poisoned in prison

47 points by acqbu 2y ago

benterix 2y ago
It's not a leak, Putin traditionally wants to indicate that it is he who ordered to kill him while officially saying he has nothing to do with this. It is a kind of game - it was the same with Prigozhin, Litvinenko and others.
kranke155 2y ago
The fact that such documents even exist is incredible. Did the Soviet Union keep any such records? Im assuming this is an important leak. What's frightened me the other day was to look at the BRICS bloc vs NATO in GDP adjusted PPP. BRICS is now the bigger bloc. China holds enormous manufacturing power, Russia is a petro state with a giant military complex being built for Ukraine (and presumably will be used elsewhere if they prevail there). Brasil is pretending to be non aligned but under Lula increasingly China friendly. Our luck is that India is unaligned. But it's impressive to go to GDP PPP and see what BRICS are now some of the biggest economies in the World. Russia is at the size of Germany.
- tokai 2y ago
  >Russia is at the size of Germany You cannot trust any numbers coming out of Russia. They stopped publishing a bunch of them, and those they give out are clearly doctored.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  This style of rhetoric around BRICS is just scaremongering. If BRICS is on track to be a major global bloc, then so is the QUAD and I2U2. In action, it's as detoothed as APEC because of mutual blunting by China and India. > Lula increasingly China friendly What tangible policy can you show for this? Not rhetoric - actual legislation. Rhetoric doesn't matter in hyperfederalized democracies like Brazil and India. > GDP adjusted PPP I've brought this up a number of times before, but GDP PPP in isolation is a bad metric, along with other GDP metrics. Fundamentally, the assumption that goods can be substituted might work for commodities, but in reality alll consumers do differentiate between products and value. Furthermore, PPP calculations are fundamentally flawed and a LOT of behinds the scenes politicking happens as countries try to change WB and IMF's PPP metrics to show their countries in a better light [0] [0] - https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/06/06/why-global-gdp-might-be-7trn-bigger-than-everyone-thought https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/06/06/w...
  - af78 2y ago
    > What tangible policy can you show for this? Not rhetoric - actual legislation. Does this qualify? “China and Brazil to launch 'Friends of Peace' platform to resolve 'Ukraine conflict'” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-and-brazil-to-launch-friends-of-peace-platform-to-resolve-ukraine-conflict/ar-AA1rjzkp https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-and-brazil-to-lau...
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      Not really, becuase that's not legislation. Furthermore, NATO+ Members like Switzerland joined that initiative and praised it as well [0]. I lean hawkish on China (as several on HN know), but Ukraine is a bad litmus test for validating nation's sentiments about China. The brutal honest truth is Ukraine has fought well, but they need to negotiate on terms that the international community provides, because everyone has a higher priority great power struggle to deal with. For most of the world, Ukraine is not their problem. Even Ukrainian leadership recognizes this and are leveraging China and India (companies owned by conglomerates from both countries are the largest employers in Ukraine) to try and find a middle ground with Russia [1] Countries line Brazil are regional powers, and they are negotiating on their terms - not in favor of one nation or the other. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/switzerland-praises-china-brazil-peace-plan-ukraine-2024-09-28/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/switzerland-praises-chi... [1] - https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-india-russia-narendra-modi-volodymyr-zelenskyy-vladimir-putin-peace-kyiv/ https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-india-russia-narendr...
      - af78 2y ago
        Ukraine did negotiate from 2014 to 2022 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_Format). Everyone knows what it lead to. It is now clear that, unless backed by strong security guarantees like NATO membership or non-NATO allied status, these so-called “peace initiatives” would amount to national suicide for Ukraine. This is why Ukrainians reject them. China and Brazil do not stand for peace. They are just on the other side.
- benterix 2y ago
  NATO is a military organization, BRICS is not. There is zero reason why India (or Brazil for that matter), not to mention South Africa would want to engage in any war with the USA or Europe. These countries have their own problems. The only country that is engaged in military warfare now is Russia because their leader lives in another epoch. As for China starting a war over Taiwan, I believe they learned a lot from Russia's mistakes and for now they are doing a lot to influence the Taiwanese using peaceful measures.
- tomalaci 2y ago
  I would take GDP numbers of BRICS countries with a giant mountain of salt. I remember there were research articles that claimed China's metrics were inflated every year that compounded to unrealistic/fake number. One such research did this by measuring power/electricity growth, I think via visible light during night-time from satellite images. Would be nice if someone could find the original article. Either way, when you inflate GDP metrics by few points it will compound over years and will create large gap between real and fake economy health.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/september/estimating-chinese-gdp-using-night-lights-data https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/september/est... https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.2.994 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.2.994
  - kkzz99 2y ago
    Actually, a lot of economists think that Chinese GDP is severely under-counted. https://asiatimes.com/2024/06/whats-the-real-size-of-chinas-economy/ https://asiatimes.com/2024/06/whats-the-real-size-of-chinas-...
- throwaway9524 2y ago
  You are right regarding China being a considerable opponent due to its manufacturing power but you are wrong about Russia. First it is a petrostate but one that is dependent on western equipment for continued extraction. Especially with natural gas it had to scale back a lot of projects due to sanctions. Second its military complex is only good at dumb ammunitions and outdated equipment fit for human wave attacks. Those may be working in Ukraine thanks to population advantage but they are not fit for a fight against NATO. And Russia is already experiencing worker shortage in manufacturing. I wonder how that "giant military complex" will fare after another mobilization drive.
  - kkzz99 2y ago
    >Second its military complex is only good at dumb ammunitions and outdated equipment fit for human wave attacks. This comment is not based on material facts. Russia has a lot of SotA military equipment. Including AD, EW, smart bombs, glide bombs, hypersonics and so on. These so called "human wave" attacks never happened and is a complete debunked meme.
    - polotics 2y ago
      If an only if you have the stomach for it, first hand accounts with vids of meat wave style attacks and more are available on Reddit, at ukraineconflict. So as they say: knock yourself out! :-)
      - kkzz99 2y ago
        I have been following the conflict since the beginning in 2014. I've probably seen more combat footage than you ever will. Most of the real footage is on telegram btw.
        kranke155 2y ago
        The human waves did appear to be real, even if they were convicts being used ? Pretty sure the videos are out there…
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Russia is facing: * 20% interest rates * 9% inflation * dropping demand for oil * increased supply from Saudi from oil to drop the price * increasing difficulty accessing any foreign currency including a big inflection point at oct 12 * a large labor shortage * accelerating military costs * about 50% of their reserve funds spent (there’s some accounting magic going on here; the book value is inflated by shares of state owned companies; the 50% here refers to actual cash and liquid assets) * No apparent will or capacity to exit this war which is now its economic lifeblood Imo we could see hyper inflation here within the decade
  - kranke155 2y ago
    I would make a soft prediction that if the Ukraine war ends, Russia will be welcomed into the fold and a lot of the sanctions will be slowly taken away in exchange for energy. So although Russia’s current situation isn’t great, I’m not sure this will hold up in 5 years.
    - aguaviva 2y ago
      Would you care to elaborate as to under what sort of agreement (specifically in terms of territorial arrangements, but also any other key concessions that come to mind) you see the war "ending" in the near term? And will Russia need to pay any sort of financial compensation to Ukraine, or will it simply be "welcomed into the fold"?
      - kranke155 2y ago
        If Trump wins, it seems like Russia will get all occupied territories, Ukraine will be offered a fig leaf of weak security guarantees. Russia will then likely be eased back into the intl. community with very little punishment by the Trump admin. This one of the Trump team's most consistent positions - that the Ukraine war is a nothingburguer that needs to "end" through concessions by Ukraine.
    - benterix 2y ago
      They already showed they are the single nation of the XXI century that is going to war with its neighbors and is sending nuclear threats everywhere. Once their mask fell off, who in their right mind would want to do anything to make them stronger? A whole generational attitude would have to change.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cheeseomlit 2y ago
I'm genuinely curious what the logic is behind Russia murdering someone (or attempting to murder, in the previous attempt) with a distinctively Russian nerve agent that would immediately implicate them as being involved- Was it done on purpose as an intimidation thing? Why not just push them out a window?
- dralley 2y ago
  Why do they care if they get implicated? For years the West provided essentially zero pushback against Russian assassinations even when they happened on German / UK / Czech / Bulgarian soil. And now an assassination is just a drop in the ocean of bad blood between the factions.
  - onemoresoop 2y ago
    > For years the West provided essentially zero pushback against Russian assassinations even when they happened on German / UK / Czech / Bulgarian soil That is not quite true, there was quite a bit of repercussions on Russia, lots of diplomats expelled, lots of agents investigated then arrested and so on.
  - benterix 2y ago
    It's a bit like asking what the Netherlands did after Russia shot down their civilian plane. Well, at that time they couldn't do much, but a few years later they are doing more than enough.
- acuozzo 2y ago
  > Why not just push them out a window? They did whatever was necessary to prevent him from becoming (the popular definition of-) a martyr. It worked. It would be interesting to break this down. One necessary action, I think, is to wait long enough for the person to no longer be a subject in the news.
dralley 2y ago
Funny how quickly any article related to Russia gets flagged off the front page.

47 points by acqbu 2y ago

It's not a leak, Putin traditionally wants to indicate that it is he who ordered to kill him while officially saying he has nothing to do with this. It is a kind of game - it was the same with Prigozhin, Litvinenko and others.

kranke155 2y ago

The fact that such documents even exist is incredible. Did the Soviet Union keep any such records? Im assuming this is an important leak. What's frightened me the other day was to look at the BRICS bloc vs NATO in GDP adjusted PPP. BRICS is now the bigger bloc. China holds enormous manufacturing power, Russia is a petro state with a giant military complex being built for Ukraine (and presumably will be used elsewhere if they prevail there). Brasil is pretending to be non aligned but under Lula increasingly China friendly. Our luck is that India is unaligned. But it's impressive to go to GDP PPP and see what BRICS are now some of the biggest economies in the World. Russia is at the size of Germany.

tokai 2y ago
>Russia is at the size of Germany You cannot trust any numbers coming out of Russia. They stopped publishing a bunch of them, and those they give out are clearly doctored.
alephnerd 2y ago
This style of rhetoric around BRICS is just scaremongering. If BRICS is on track to be a major global bloc, then so is the QUAD and I2U2. In action, it's as detoothed as APEC because of mutual blunting by China and India. > Lula increasingly China friendly What tangible policy can you show for this? Not rhetoric - actual legislation. Rhetoric doesn't matter in hyperfederalized democracies like Brazil and India. > GDP adjusted PPP I've brought this up a number of times before, but GDP PPP in isolation is a bad metric, along with other GDP metrics. Fundamentally, the assumption that goods can be substituted might work for commodities, but in reality alll consumers do differentiate between products and value. Furthermore, PPP calculations are fundamentally flawed and a LOT of behinds the scenes politicking happens as countries try to change WB and IMF's PPP metrics to show their countries in a better light [0] [0] - https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/06/06/why-global-gdp-might-be-7trn-bigger-than-everyone-thought https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/06/06/w...
- af78 2y ago
  > What tangible policy can you show for this? Not rhetoric - actual legislation. Does this qualify? “China and Brazil to launch 'Friends of Peace' platform to resolve 'Ukraine conflict'” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-and-brazil-to-launch-friends-of-peace-platform-to-resolve-ukraine-conflict/ar-AA1rjzkp https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-and-brazil-to-lau...
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    Not really, becuase that's not legislation. Furthermore, NATO+ Members like Switzerland joined that initiative and praised it as well [0]. I lean hawkish on China (as several on HN know), but Ukraine is a bad litmus test for validating nation's sentiments about China. The brutal honest truth is Ukraine has fought well, but they need to negotiate on terms that the international community provides, because everyone has a higher priority great power struggle to deal with. For most of the world, Ukraine is not their problem. Even Ukrainian leadership recognizes this and are leveraging China and India (companies owned by conglomerates from both countries are the largest employers in Ukraine) to try and find a middle ground with Russia [1] Countries line Brazil are regional powers, and they are negotiating on their terms - not in favor of one nation or the other. [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/switzerland-praises-china-brazil-peace-plan-ukraine-2024-09-28/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/switzerland-praises-chi... [1] - https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-india-russia-narendra-modi-volodymyr-zelenskyy-vladimir-putin-peace-kyiv/ https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-india-russia-narendr...
    - af78 2y ago
      Ukraine did negotiate from 2014 to 2022 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_Format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_Format). Everyone knows what it lead to. It is now clear that, unless backed by strong security guarantees like NATO membership or non-NATO allied status, these so-called “peace initiatives” would amount to national suicide for Ukraine. This is why Ukrainians reject them. China and Brazil do not stand for peace. They are just on the other side.
benterix 2y ago
NATO is a military organization, BRICS is not. There is zero reason why India (or Brazil for that matter), not to mention South Africa would want to engage in any war with the USA or Europe. These countries have their own problems. The only country that is engaged in military warfare now is Russia because their leader lives in another epoch. As for China starting a war over Taiwan, I believe they learned a lot from Russia's mistakes and for now they are doing a lot to influence the Taiwanese using peaceful measures.
tomalaci 2y ago
I would take GDP numbers of BRICS countries with a giant mountain of salt. I remember there were research articles that claimed China's metrics were inflated every year that compounded to unrealistic/fake number. One such research did this by measuring power/electricity growth, I think via visible light during night-time from satellite images. Would be nice if someone could find the original article. Either way, when you inflate GDP metrics by few points it will compound over years and will create large gap between real and fake economy health.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/september/estimating-chinese-gdp-using-night-lights-data https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/september/est... https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.2.994 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.2.994
- kkzz99 2y ago
  Actually, a lot of economists think that Chinese GDP is severely under-counted. https://asiatimes.com/2024/06/whats-the-real-size-of-chinas-economy/ https://asiatimes.com/2024/06/whats-the-real-size-of-chinas-...
throwaway9524 2y ago
You are right regarding China being a considerable opponent due to its manufacturing power but you are wrong about Russia. First it is a petrostate but one that is dependent on western equipment for continued extraction. Especially with natural gas it had to scale back a lot of projects due to sanctions. Second its military complex is only good at dumb ammunitions and outdated equipment fit for human wave attacks. Those may be working in Ukraine thanks to population advantage but they are not fit for a fight against NATO. And Russia is already experiencing worker shortage in manufacturing. I wonder how that "giant military complex" will fare after another mobilization drive.
- kkzz99 2y ago
  >Second its military complex is only good at dumb ammunitions and outdated equipment fit for human wave attacks. This comment is not based on material facts. Russia has a lot of SotA military equipment. Including AD, EW, smart bombs, glide bombs, hypersonics and so on. These so called "human wave" attacks never happened and is a complete debunked meme.
  - polotics 2y ago
    If an only if you have the stomach for it, first hand accounts with vids of meat wave style attacks and more are available on Reddit, at ukraineconflict. So as they say: knock yourself out! :-)
    - kkzz99 2y ago
      I have been following the conflict since the beginning in 2014. I've probably seen more combat footage than you ever will. Most of the real footage is on telegram btw.
      - kranke155 2y ago
        The human waves did appear to be real, even if they were convicts being used ? Pretty sure the videos are out there…
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jncfhnb 2y ago
Russia is facing: * 20% interest rates * 9% inflation * dropping demand for oil * increased supply from Saudi from oil to drop the price * increasing difficulty accessing any foreign currency including a big inflection point at oct 12 * a large labor shortage * accelerating military costs * about 50% of their reserve funds spent (there’s some accounting magic going on here; the book value is inflated by shares of state owned companies; the 50% here refers to actual cash and liquid assets) * No apparent will or capacity to exit this war which is now its economic lifeblood Imo we could see hyper inflation here within the decade
- kranke155 2y ago
  I would make a soft prediction that if the Ukraine war ends, Russia will be welcomed into the fold and a lot of the sanctions will be slowly taken away in exchange for energy. So although Russia’s current situation isn’t great, I’m not sure this will hold up in 5 years.
  - aguaviva 2y ago
    Would you care to elaborate as to under what sort of agreement (specifically in terms of territorial arrangements, but also any other key concessions that come to mind) you see the war "ending" in the near term? And will Russia need to pay any sort of financial compensation to Ukraine, or will it simply be "welcomed into the fold"?
    - kranke155 2y ago
      If Trump wins, it seems like Russia will get all occupied territories, Ukraine will be offered a fig leaf of weak security guarantees. Russia will then likely be eased back into the intl. community with very little punishment by the Trump admin. This one of the Trump team's most consistent positions - that the Ukraine war is a nothingburguer that needs to "end" through concessions by Ukraine.
  - benterix 2y ago
    They already showed they are the single nation of the XXI century that is going to war with its neighbors and is sending nuclear threats everywhere. Once their mask fell off, who in their right mind would want to do anything to make them stronger? A whole generational attitude would have to change.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

cheeseomlit 2y ago

I'm genuinely curious what the logic is behind Russia murdering someone (or attempting to murder, in the previous attempt) with a distinctively Russian nerve agent that would immediately implicate them as being involved- Was it done on purpose as an intimidation thing? Why not just push them out a window?

dralley 2y ago
Why do they care if they get implicated? For years the West provided essentially zero pushback against Russian assassinations even when they happened on German / UK / Czech / Bulgarian soil. And now an assassination is just a drop in the ocean of bad blood between the factions.
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  > For years the West provided essentially zero pushback against Russian assassinations even when they happened on German / UK / Czech / Bulgarian soil That is not quite true, there was quite a bit of repercussions on Russia, lots of diplomats expelled, lots of agents investigated then arrested and so on.
- benterix 2y ago
  It's a bit like asking what the Netherlands did after Russia shot down their civilian plane. Well, at that time they couldn't do much, but a few years later they are doing more than enough.
acuozzo 2y ago
> Why not just push them out a window? They did whatever was necessary to prevent him from becoming (the popular definition of-) a martyr. It worked. It would be interesting to break this down. One necessary action, I think, is to wait long enough for the person to no longer be a subject in the news.

dralley 2y ago

Funny how quickly any article related to Russia gets flagged off the front page.