11 ms·

Europe's most wanted man plotted my murder and that of my colleague

• sva_ 2y ago
  The life of Jan Marsalek would make for a good movie plot, but at the risk of glorifying the crimes he committed.
  • ez_mmk 2y ago
    There's king of stonks a German comedy series on Netflix inspired by Wirecard
  • MarcelOlsz 2y ago
    You can't make a movie about something without glorifying it. There's no such thing as an anti-war movie as Truffaut said.
    • insane_dreamer 2y ago
      not sure I agree with Truffaut; I think that Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, for example, are quite good at _not_ glorifying war
      • thomassmith65 2y ago
        Yes, it's hard to think of anything in 'Born on the Fourth of July' that would leave a viewer more enthusiastic about war. • The main character's enthusiasm to enlist is portrayed as irritatingly naive and ridiculous. • The combat centers around the main character accidentally killing innocent villagers and a fellow American soldier. • The main character winds up paraplegic, impotent, incontinent. And all this happens before Willem Dafoe even shows up.
        • MarcelOlsz 2y ago
          If brutality and cruelty didn't appeal to a certain type of person we wouldn't have war, fighting, or any of that stuff in the first place. For the same reason a brutal war movie motivates someone towards it, is the same reason watching UFC videos of guys faces getting rearranged motivates. It balloons up the part of you that believe they failed where you won't. That is why it "glorifies".
          • t-3 2y ago
            I don't think the egotistical notion that the viewer would succeed where others failed is even a thing, or that it takes a "certain type of person". It's just that violence is stimulating and fun to the perpetrators and witnesses. Civilization is not something innate, it's something that must be learned and maintained and practiced or else we lose it.
          • thomassmith65 2y ago
            There is a lot of truth to that, and it applies to many of the other films people have mentioned in this thread. It's easy to see why someone would find aspects of 'Saving Private Ryan' attractive (eg: Private Jackson, the sharpshooter), and it doesn't require much imagination to see how aspects even of Nazi villains can be attractive (they had the best uniforms). It's more difficult to see how 'Born on the Fourth of July' would leave anyone - even a sadist - enthusiastic about war. It's not like Kubrik's 'Clockwork Orange' in which some of the violence, in a sick way, empowers the main character. Instead, the main character pathetically bumbles into shooting people he doesn't mean to, is shot himself, and turns into an angry loser in a wheelchair (until he finds his calling as a peace activist).
            • shermantanktop 2y ago
              > they had the best uniforms And the fascists have the outfits But I don't care for the outfits What I care about is music And the communists have the music https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7A2-ACZhg_g https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7A2-ACZhg_g
              • 2y ago
      • matmatmatmat 2y ago
        Some more examples: Saving Private Ryan, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Deer Hunter. Personally, I would also include Schindler's List.
        • royal__ 2y ago
          The Thin Red Line
        • croes 2y ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film)
        • insane_dreamer 2y ago
          Saving Private Ryan, while it does give a particularly realistic view of storming Omaha Beach, and some other scenes, is also generally heroic -- the "good guys save their buddy from the bad guys" -- which serves to glorify war, giving it a "higher purpose".
        • card_zero 2y ago
          I suggest Grave of the Fireflies, which is entirely about children slowly starving to death.
      • rad_gruchalski 2y ago
        I’d also recommend The Saviour.
    • tschwimmer 2y ago
      If you watch Come and See and are excited about war afterwards, you aren't smart or introspective enough that external media has a meaningful effect on your thoughts anyway.
      • financltravsty 2y ago
        Or you're psychotic
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • mikrl 2y ago
      Starship Troopers is the darling du jour online for this phenomenon. A movie lampooning militarism, xenophobia and… armoured supersoldiers grinding through bugs and taking their resources? Sounds cool. Compare to games like Factorio and Helldivers 2. About 1% of the time I think “wait, am I the baddie?” and the rest is just raining down technologically enhanced Armageddon to further my mineral stockpiles.
      • worik 2y ago
        Starship Troupers, the book, was explicitly pro war.
        • astrange 2y ago
          The movie is not really based on the book. It's supposedly a parody of it, but the director literally did not read the book, so it's actually a parody of what he assumed it was about. (eg "service guarantees citizenship" is presented as a fascist idea the movie is parodying, but IIRC in the book you could get it by being a mailman.)
          • barrkel 2y ago
            It's less a parody of what the book was about and more a parody of Nazi Germany - and showing what great fun and how exciting war is to the kids.
            • lll-o-lll 2y ago
              It’s a send up and mockery of American culture around their military. It is parody, quite mean parody (as is typical of Verhoeven), and it wasn’t well received at the time (in the US). As an Australian, I laughed heartily, and considered it just deserts for that Simpsons episode. ;-)
              • etc-hosts 2y ago
                The movie is a commentary on the seductiveness of Fascism. Verhoeven is something of an expert on this, since he grew up in The Hague during Nazi occupation. There's an interview out there where he says when he making the film he was wondering if his movie was in-your-face enough about Nazis, to really make sure his movie wasn't too subtle or that people would miss the point he had the former Doogie Howser actor wear a SS officer's trenchcoat.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • jajko 2y ago
      Hollywood probably can't make one (and most recent US war movies are unwatchable outside US due to all over the top pathos that just looks ridiculous), but deeper topics and inconvenient stances are often better explored ie in European or other cinema. Do you feel ie recent All Quiet on the Eastern Front glorified war, or people involved? That book is even more powerful.
      • MarcelOlsz 2y ago
        The way I interpret the quote is that war always carries themes of heroism, sacrifice, adventure, etc. Ideas that always make it compelling. Even a film that portrays war in the most brutal unromanticized way still ends up glorifying it simply by engaging with these themes. What you go for is a "damn I never want to go to war" reaction but what you get is "sucks those guys died, would have been different if i was there though" and that is the "glorification". I think this is what Truffaut meant that it's a poor medium to convey conflict as the lens must glorify otherwise its not longer a movie, just footage.
        • esperent 2y ago
          > Even a film that portrays war in the most brutal unromanticized way still ends up glorifying it simply by engaging with these themes I think this is plain wrong. Unless you count "glorification" to mean anything that makes a subject compelling to watch. But I think that's stretching the meaning of the word past it's breaking point.
        • wqaatwt 2y ago
          At least people get a vague idea of what war really can be like. Very few people would be attracted by that violence unless it’s extremely romanticized. There were no war movies before WW1 and no major wars for a few generations so there were millions of extremely eager young men lining up in front of recruitment offices in Germany, Britain and France. They had zero idea what they were signing up for.
    • swat535 2y ago
      > There's no such thing as an anti-war movie as Truffaut said. This is an absurd statement, can you expand on this? Have you never seen The Pianist, Schindler's List, Come and See, ..?
      • MarcelOlsz 2y ago
        See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296082 Yeah I've seen all of those and I know a fair amount of people that those movie had an opposite effect on.
        • esperent 2y ago
          People are free to have any reaction to a piece of art. That said, if someone watches Schindler's List and comes away feeling that it glorified war, then I think they deeply - perhaps willfully - misunderstood the movie.
          • Paradigma11 2y ago
            Doesnt Schindler's List show the necessity of a righteous war to end the Nazi terror regime?
            • esperent 2y ago
              There's a difference between showing something to be necessary, or even "righteous", and glorifying it. But I'm curious which part of Schindler's List you got "righteous" from. It's not a vibe I got from watching it. Are you sure it's not just your prior judgement coloring your interpretation?
      • t-3 2y ago
        The horrors of war can be used an excuse for fighting wars. WMDs in Iraq, anyone?
      • archagon 2y ago
        I find myself returning to this Metafilter comment a lot over the years, from someone who survived war in Bosnia. (Warning: graphic content.) > I was conscripted into some faction of the Bosnian Army in order to "defend" our city. In truth, we had few arms or anything with which to defend. And as a very tall, largely starved girl, I wouldn't have made much of a soldier anyhow. So I was a "nurse." No training, of course. And no supplies, either. I was near the front line fairly often. There wasn't much you could do. > One day, some shell exploded right on or near two young soldiers and they were torn into dozens of pieces. I say "dozens" because it wasn't hundreds or millions - I'd seen that happen too, and it's totally different. You could count these pieces. They were big lumps. A fellow "nurse" and I were near enough that we got there before anyone else. There was no one to save. > As these soldiers were Bosnian Muslims whose bodies - what there was of them - would be returned to their families, we realized that we needed to collect these pieces to put the soldiers back together, kind of, because Muslims believe a body should be buried "whole" - to the extent that it's possible. With "only" dozens of pieces, it's kind of possible to do this. So we set about trying to match parts - one guy's leg get ripped off above the knee, but this leg has the knee attached, so it can't be this first guy's. That sort of thing. "Look," my fellow "nurse" said, "this one ate rice!" Rice was one of the few kinds of food that was readily doled out. Everyone hated it because they were tired of it, because it required a lot of water to cook (and no one had running water) and because it required a lot of heat to cook (and there was no gas and the trees were mostly gone and we'd already burned most of our books.) But we hadn't had rice in a while; this soldier must have been had some at home, stashed away. > This guy's stomach was blown up, so rice was all over the various parts of his body that came from his torso. And I remember being so happy, because the hardest things to connect to a specific person are internal organs, but this guy's organs had rice on them, so you could tell they were "his." Ones without rice were, presumably, the other soldier's. So the job of piecing together bodies was made much easier than it normally would have been, when you try to make each "body" weigh about the same, even if you know parts are mixed. Of course, I don't need to add that when something like this happens, it's not just people - and rice - everywhere, but uniquely awful smells, and the flies get there so fast I still don't know how they do it. > Later that day, I snaked my way to my aunt's, a few kilometers away. I remember smiling; I rarely smiled during the war. My aunt had made soup - good soup - and I ate a lot and told her and my cousins about my day. We all agreed it that things had gone pretty well, considering. I was pretty happy about piecing two young men together successfully because of the rice and having a stomach full of warm soup. > War is dehumanizing. If, as in the Okinawa quote, you still worry about getting shit and piss on you, if you can even still smell the rotting flesh, and if it bothers you enough that you consider not eating your rations, if you can still consider your situation to be something like "hell's own cesspool," well . . . then you're still pretty fucking lucky. People like to read about that stuff; that's why they make it into popular movies and comic books. > People don't make movies about the happiness of a young girl who finds she can reassemble people with ease, thanks to the fact that one of them ate a lot of rice earlier that day. Because it isn't very romantic or macho and it isn't full of hard-ass symbolism. > The thing about war, too, is that it affects many many more civilians than it does soldiers. The military-centric ideas in the article don't grasp that. War, according to romantic notions going as far back as the Greeks, is more about guys toughing it out than women and children left to pick up the pieces. https://www.metafilter.com/87979/Losing-the-War#2886398 https://www.metafilter.com/87979/Losing-the-War#2886398 This one, too: > I found that piece very hard to read - self-serving and smug in the sense of looking for romanticism. I reckon that, if the author had ever seen war, he'd be quite embarrassed by it. > Guess what - most people prefer the movie version of any human experience. War is mostly long, boring, cold, hungry and tedious . . . then every once in a while someone lobs a grenade at you or shells your house or a sniper's bullet pierces your arm or rapes and kills someone you know and you get hysterical . . . and then it goes back to being long, boring, cold, hungry and tedious for eons and eons. While I like a lot of the human experiences eschewed by many people I know, war is one in which the movie version is quite plainly preferable. https://www.metafilter.com/87979/Losing-the-War#2886358 https://www.metafilter.com/87979/Losing-the-War#2886358 There’s some amazing (and harrowing) content in her comment history — highly recommend giving it a read. It made me realize that even films like Saving Private Ryan present war as a titillating kind of hell. Something like Threads will probably come closer to the truth of it.
    • CamperBob2 2y ago
      Interesting. Did he say that before or after Paths of Glory came out?
      • MarcelOlsz 2y ago
        About 20 years after.
    • Archelaos 2y ago
      > You can't make a movie about something without glorifying it. There's no such thing as an anti-war movie as Truffaut said. Except when you are Kubrik.
      • etc-hosts 2y ago
        There are plenty of Marines who will tell you that they signed up for service after watching Full Metal Jacket.
        • etc-hosts 2y ago
          reading further, I think you were referring to Paths Of Glory. sorry.
    • croes 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film)
    • esperent 2y ago
      Lord of War. Everything in that movie is hyper glorified... And yet if you come away from it feeling that it glorified anything about the reality of what it portrayed, then you may need some lessons in media literacy.
      • southernplaces7 2y ago
        Lord of War is a bit tricky on that front. It seems to glorify the whole mess of international semi-licit arms trading and the people who do it (Cage's character), but under that what it really demonstrates is a man falling ever deeper into sad loneliness in between mostly hollow successes straddling a moral abyss. He resigns himself, almost through inertia, to continuing his business simply because by the end, he really has nothing else and knows how to do nothing else, trapped in a life now devoid of deeper warmth or meaning. The movie is bleakly depressing under its mockingly glorified surface shine.
    • carstenhag 2y ago
      The game "Spec Ops: The Line" begs to differ, and you don't even expect it.
  • einarfd 2y ago
    Jan Marsalek would make a great Bond villain.
    • 9dev 2y ago
      This. It’s just perfect. A brilliant sociopath who happens to be a technological genius with a lot of money, loves to play war, works as a Russian spy out of the dark, and plays the long game, while eluding the worlds police forces easily? How much better can it possibly get??
      • Klonoar 2y ago
        Where are you getting technological genius from…?
        • 9dev 2y ago
          I have read up a lot on Marsalek over the years. Not quite genius maybe, but definitely able to found a highly successful software development company while in high school, for example.
          • Klonoar 2y ago
            I'm saying that the article here calls that tech-genius label into question.
  • DaOne256 2y ago
    There are at least two Wirecard movies, one with the "Stromberg" actor and the other one is a documentation.
  • riffraff 2y ago
    This whole story read as a Guy Ritchie script
• daedrdev 2y ago
  I love how when the FT broke the story, the german government investigated the FT for attacking their champion. If they had instead investigated, Jan Marsalek, who seems to really be a foreign agent, he might not have evaded the authorities.
  • perihelions 2y ago
    https://www.ft.com/content/4ebd9032-d3d1-4a9e-976c-d1235448ee20 https://www.ft.com/content/4ebd9032-d3d1-4a9e-976c-d1235448e... ("German prosecutor drops Wirecard investigation into FT reporters") https://archive.is/l5j76 https://archive.is/l5j76 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737795 It's really astounding incompetence/dysfunction.
    • marcinzm 2y ago
      >It's really astounding incompetence/dysfunction. The word is probably "corruption."
      • cactusplant7374 2y ago
        It's only recently that Germany has considered Russia a threat. You would think Russia's attempt to destroy their economy would be a sign to move away from Nord Stream.
        • immibis 2y ago
          In both the USA and Germany, people in power do not care about the well-being of their country as long as they can enrich themselves. They even both use the same fearmongering about immigrants to get votes.
          • 9dev 2y ago
            I think the xenophobia is actually coming from the lower layers of the society, and are merely picked up and directed into political actions by cunning politicians. It’s like a stream of lava that flows where they guide it to and destroys anything in its path.
• thgsF179 2y ago
  This article needs an editor. I've no problems believing that Marsalek is a Russian agent, but Bellingcat is of course funded by the National Endowment for Democracy ... Scandals in Germany are frequent. Olaf Scholz was investigated in the cum-ex scandal, von der Leyen in the McKinsey German army affair (von der Leyen had ruined the German army and has now a big mouth for rearmament). In general and not related to these specific cases, certain actions by certain politicians are easier to explain if a third party has kompromat on them.
  • wadim 2y ago
    > but Bellingcat is of course funded by the National Endowment for Democracy ... Spooky! No need to be coy, say what you are implying. Additionally, do you have a source that they ARE being funded solely by NED (which is currently impossible anyway) and didn't just receive some funding that one time? Not sure what advantage they gain being such an obvious "CIA front", but I'm also not playing 5D chess.
    • 4hagstR 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • MaxPock 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • wqaatwt 2y ago
          Even if they receive support from CIA/MI6 what’s wrong about that? > peddle anti Russia propaganda Not sure what you are trying to say. Just reporting straight facts with no embellishment is more than enough to 100% discredit the Russian government (both domestically and internationally) in the eyes of any at least marginally sane person. The fact that this isn’t working says more about the people consuming that information than those doing the “peddling”. You are trying to push this stupid narrative that “both sides are bad so nothing means anything” which is just silly..
• worik 2y ago
  What clowns This what happens when despots concentrate power in their hands When professionalism matters less than loyalty, the professionals become scarce In the 1950s there was Soviet ideology that meant something. Now there is loyalty to Putin. Makes me weep to see the same thing happening in the USA. Ideology can be problematic (I do not miss the Bolsheviks) but loyalty to the Big Man is much more random, and worse
  • saalweachter 2y ago
    > In the 1950s there was Soviet ideology that meant something. You mean, after Stalin died in '53?
  • Ray20 2y ago
    >In the 1950s there was Soviet ideology that meant something. Now there is loyalty to Putin. No, there wasn't. Soviet ideology that meant something died under Lenin, and already Stalin in those aspects of loyalty to the Big Man were way more demanding and intolerant, then Putin.
    • wqaatwt 2y ago
      Lenin adopted (or lied about adopting) whatever policies he felt would allow him to get into power and then keep it. That was his only real ideology. Not that different from Stalin or Putin, I don’t really get why is that silly idea that Lenin was somehow “purer” still so ingrained…
      • Ray20 2y ago
        Lenin wrote, like, 20 billion books and articles about his ideology. And no, you generally doesn't need 20 billion books and articles to get into power and then keep it. Compare him with Stalin, who even read with difficulty, or with Putin, who wrote one and a half articles on history.
        • wqaatwt 2y ago
          In that sense perhaps he was more similar to someone like Hitler, that’s true. But the amount of content he published hardly related to his actual actions. He was a power seeking pragmatist above all else (ideological concerns were usually secondary).
• ctrlp 2y ago
  It struck me as stupid and pointless to poison Navalny. Why bother? His presence seemed a nuisance at worst and a useful foil at best. Is there just something in the Russia soul that can resist assassination plots by poison?
  • rat9988 2y ago
    It is for future navalnies.
    • lostmsu 2y ago
      Yes, I hope they learn that journalism doesn't work against mafia and will use gunpowder next time.
  • evertedsphere 2y ago
    pour encourager les autres
  • preisschild 2y ago
    Same reason they killed the pilot that defected to Ukraine in Spain: They want to deter future critics/defectors. Thats why their OPSEC for those operations is so bad: they want people to know it was them.
    • jajko 2y ago
      You can't make more visible public executions than throwing people out of windows in centers of cities. Modern public guillotine, gets a lot of press too. Message is clear to all, the goal is to be shocking and not subtle.
      • hermitcrab 2y ago
        You make it really obvious you did it. Then you deny you did it, just to further emphasize that you have all the power.
  • entropyneur 2y ago
• amarcheschi 2y ago
  This is well beyond worrying. Just today I was arguing with other people here on hn who told that the pro Russian candidate who was arrested was a bad sign for democracy. The guy that was sponsored by literally the Kremlin, who routinely does things like planning to kill journalists
  • inverted_flag 2y ago
    Russia is winning the information war, unfortunately.
    • pas 2y ago
      people don't really have an appetite for reliable information, they want vibes.
• jcmp 2y ago
  its crazy to me, how the author describes that they broke in his flat and stole an old laptop of a relative, like its an absolutly normal thing. He seems like he just accept its and moves on.
  • kdmtctl 2y ago
    He knows his risks.
• throwaway_20357 2y ago
  I am surprised Dobrokhotov was still traveling to Russia after the Navalny publication and Grozev felt safe holidaying in Bulgaria. There is this interesting FT interview from August '23 where he predicts Prigozhin's death and hints at changes to their security after they were declared "foreign agents". [1] https://archive.is/L6UNc https://archive.is/L6UNc
  • sofixa 2y ago
    > Grozev felt safe holidaying in Bulgaria While there are lots of pro-Russian people in Bulgaria at large, and specificaylly in politics (including the president), and significant Russian operations in the country, it's not like it's Belarus. There isn't significantly more risk for him there than in Romania or Austria or Slovakia.
• t_luke 2y ago
  The first paragraph misstates the nature of the Wirecard fraud. The money wasn’t ’siphoned off’, it never existed in the first place.
  • pas 2y ago
    probably there was both. Jan embezzled real money and then to cover that for a while they used the fake money, no?
• hermitcrab 2y ago
  Bellingcat have done some amazing work. Their book, 'We Are Bellingcat', is worth a read.
  • lawgimenez 2y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation.
• alephnerd 2y ago
  At least non-Russia aligned European nations have gotten the message over the past 2 weeks. I've been pessimistic about European nation's ability to coordinate after the initial Macron meeting after the MSC, but boy am I glad I was wrong. The UK, France, Germany, and other Western+Northern European nations have finally opened their eyes, and are starting to move to integrate European capabilities. The overtures to Turkiye, the removal of Germany's debt breaks on defense spending, the potential expansion of France+UK's nuclear umbrella, and the injection of interest and potential cash in Eutelsat OneWeb will help enhance European strategic autonomy. If a liberal rule based order is to exist, it must be protected by all it's members, and it's up to them to help course correct wayward members of that order.
  • vkou 2y ago
    Mark my words, in ten years, at least three out of Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Canada will have nuclear weapons. I am really excited to see a new chapter in nuclear proliferation unfold.
    • alephnerd 2y ago
      South Korea and Japan probably if a CN-JP-SK FTA is dead. I don't see Germany or Canada getting them as they lack domestically owned and manufactured delivery systems (eg. medium/long range ballistic missiles, domestically manufactured nuclear warhead capable jet fighters). This is why SK and Japan kept investing in ballistic missile and rocketry research. Pakistan did the same in the 1980s and North Korea in the 1990s. Nuclear weapons without delivery systems are functionally useless in a world where most nuclear powers have second strike and nuclear triad capabilities, so the deterrence aspect of nuclear weapons are DoA.
      • mkl 2y ago
        There are at least three German rocket companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Factory_Augsburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Factory_Augsburg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isar_Aerospace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isar_Aerospace, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyImpulse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyImpulse
• xutopia 2y ago
  I wished that this were a documentary in video format. It is fascinating what this article is saying.
• wildylion 2y ago
  Fuck. I was born and raised in Russia. And yet, I desperately wish for Russia to be nuked to shreds. Fucking wiped off the map.Made uninhabitable for centuries and left that way as a warning to future generations. I don't even know if there will ever be anything other than tyranny. And yes, my relatives and friends are still over there... Others have become emigrants and refugees... Fuck, sometimes I wish it all to just end. I never chose this. I and most of my circle didn't vote for this Hitler of modernity. I don't know, maybe I should have burnt myself on the Red Square? But what for?
  • yks 2y ago
    And the blight is spreading. The US have already fallen, Europe's chances are 50/50. The world is being robbed of the future that has liberty and pursuit of happiness in it — only to be replaced with "you die today, I die tomorrow" of the all-encompassing Russian prison law.
    • 9dev 2y ago
      Don’t buy into the sorrow. The USA has survived almost 300 years, and has seen a lot of bad shit. Europe is just pulling itself up. And even if it all isn’t enough, neither Putin nor Trump are going to get much older, and both are too full of themselves to start building up a successor. Have a little faith! Otherwise we’ve already lost.
  • honzabe 2y ago
    This is what despair looks like. I am not judging - I am from Eastern Europe, and I grew up in a country still occupied by Russians. Knowing that no matter what good I do, my life might be destroyed by Russia makes me feel all kinds of feelings too. It's hard to find solace, but one thing that helps me is that there is always a choice. They can destroy my life, but it is up to me whether I choose not to be like them. We all die sooner or later, but if I spend my life on the right side of the eternal fight between good and evil, I still win. I know I am not original, and I am probably not explaining it well, but it gives me a bit of tranquility. I hope it will help you too.
  • Const-me 2y ago
• CaffeineLD50 2y ago
  Wow. The headline seemed like click bait but seeing who is involved this seems to be no hyperbole. I'd say it takes balls of stainless steel to doxx Putin's hitmen. And he doesn't back down. This is next level bad-ass. Damn.
• ineedasername 2y ago
  What’s this half-baked spy thriller draft doing on HN’s front page? Plot’s a mess. I squinted at the Bulgarians intro but kept going—until, seriously, nerve toxin in underwear. If this is supposed to be an Austin Powers reboot, the whole script needs a rethink—though at least that’d explain the lack of coherence. Then again, filing the serial numbers off a beloved franchise to pitch fanfic probably won’t get far in an editor’s slush pile. Then again... again, maybe it’s not slush, just GPT slop, which honestly explains more than the Austin Powers sequel theory
  • etc-hosts 2y ago
    I usually mentally poop on anything written by Michael Weiss's media operation (theins.press is a Michael Weiss joint) but "placing Novichok in Alexai Navaly's underwear" is how Navaly was originally poisoned.
  • stef25 2y ago
    > nerve toxin in underwear. This fact came from one of the people who was involved in putting it there. Navalny phoned a Russian guy pretending to be another Russian official, asked him how this op went down and the dude said the toxin was in his underwear. You can see this all in the documentary. Your attitude is misplaced, so much that one wonders why you're posting this.
    • ineedasername 2y ago
      I'm sorry, I should have falsed my flag better. I was poking fun at reality for plagiarising the fabulists.
      • stef25 2y ago
        No clue what you're trying to say ...
        • ineedasername 2y ago
          reality plagiarising fiction writers. Because underwear toxin is bizarre to the point of "wait, was that from an Austin Powers movie?"
• uep 2y ago
  Lots of crazy stuff in here. > Initially, the FSB was mainly interested in getting its hands on our equipment, presumably in the hopes of confirming its hypothesis regarding our links with the CIA. > ... > The FSB officers feigned surprise and promised to return the missing items immediately but succeeded in doing so only after 40 minutes had passed. Although they failed to bypass the pin codes on the phones or computer, the Kremlin’s agents did manage to install a tracker on Roman’s laptop, which he discovered within minutes. > I had a weirdly similar experience shortly thereafter, not in Moscow, but — shockingly — in Berlin. Flying back from a screening of Navalny in New York and on the way to another one in the Hague, I was just passing via the German capital for a few hours to speak at a conference. The event was held at a pompous hotel in the city’s suburbs. > ... > During the event, I looked up the ownership of the hotel only to discover it was owned by a German, quite literally, “friend of Vladimir Putin”. I rushed out to get my suitcase, and the bellboy took a whopping twenty minutes to find it. On the way to the airport, I discovered a hard disk was missing from the suticase. I alerted the police who rushed to the hotel, only to be told that the security cameras had been down for maintenance. Does this imply that the conference was held at this hotel purely to get access to his devices? > The scheme was replete with cars bearing fake license plates, a route that avoided traffic surveillance cameras, and two speed boats that would need to be sunk at the end of the operation. > Later on, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) informed Roman that Kyiv’s intelligence services had gathered information showing that a Ukrainian criminal group had received an “order” from Moscow to kidnap him and take him to Russia. A reward of $50,000 was offered for his capture. > At one point, one of them even booked a seat next to him on a flight from Budapest to Berlin, wearing a hidden camera to record his screen while he texted me. Their attempt to get his smartphone pin code was off by only one digit. How many people were working full-time to get this guy?
  • 9471agsh 2y ago
    It does sound crazy. If they really wanted to kidnap him, they would have succeeded instead leaving so many clues. The SBU told him? I am shocked, shocked. Getting hands on electronic equipment is what any pro-Palestinian Western journalist is familiar with at airports etc.
• lawgimenez 2y ago
  I got lost in the article, but how did the UK intelligence got wind on the spies?