Oh shit they’ve got him.

    • fanbois [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Feels like this is the only lesson from this.

      The motherfucker was a real believer in… whatever variation of a liberal-fash ego trip he made up for himself. The russian state and judicial system fucked with him at every point of his attempt to stir the public or participate in politics and for some fucking reason he kept pushing his luck.

      Then they poisoned him with chemical weapon grade poison and almost killed him, then he got offered one last possible exit from ANGELA MERKEL herself. And he just went back. Commited to the bit till the end.

        • fanbois [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Googling that just brought up weird ass crank pages. Not that gang, sorry.

          Not that I don’t enjoy a good intelligence conspiracy, but I’ll go with Occam’s razor here. Russians poisoning a rowdy russian political activist with good old russian warcrime chemicals is as good as any explanation.

            • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              If Nalvany was poisoned this time it was almost certainly Russia, but I could also just see him dying. He’d already been poisoned, had complained about being denied outside food (and possibly wasn’t eating a lot of what they gave him for fear of being poisoned), had complained about the conditions etc. Not a combination that’s very conducive to good health.

              As for whether MI6 or someone else could have done this sort of thing in the past and had the capability… also almost certainly.

              I remembered this Channel 4 News fact check from after the Skripal poisonings here. The whole thing is an interesting read but main relevant points in broad terms are:

              • Basically any country with a chemical weapons program (including ‘defensive’ like everyone claims - in reality there is no difference) could make Novichok and similar agents usually linked to Russia. All it takes is time, effort, and the right lab. In fact, any country would want to do so at the very least to classify it, add it to a database, and work on potential protections.
              • One of its original chemists released information on its compound and processes publicly in the 90s. Russia eventually jailed him, but there’s no way foreign intelligence didn’t already have more than he published.
              • In the mid-90s the US involved itself in a ‘clean up’ operation at a site in Uzbekistan where various strains of Novichok were allegedly made, so probably had direct access to the work.

              That being said, I think the Salisbury poisonings were probably Russia too given the evidence that came out over time. Not that another explanation is impossible.

              Also, the history of Porton Down and the UK’s involvement in various off-book chemical weapon related stuff is long and extremely dark and shady - from Anthrax attacks, to the black market, to our probable involvement in the Apartheid regime’s genocidal chemical warfare programme Project Coast.

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Libs were always weird about this guy and sincerely believed he was a bigger deal than he was. Polls showed him trailing behind the Communist Party candidate and the financial minister

  • Great_Leader_Is_Dead@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    I’m curious why anyone really gives a shit about this, the likelihood this guy was ever gonna me a challenger to Putin at this point is, what? .000000000001%, if that. Surprised I’m seeing as many posts about this as I am.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Western liberals believed that Navalny was the opposition leader to Putin. He was always talked about in media as “the opposition leader”. Not “a opposition leader” but specifically “the”.

      This is important because it frames in people’s minds that he was the main opposition. It makes people think of it in a Republican vs Dems way.

      This framing is helped by the fact that the communist party is literally NEVER talked about in western media. They don’t exist as far as liberals know.

  • HexbearGPT [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    imagine this being your life: sitting in prisons waiting for the CIA to help install you as the president. then you just die. lmao couldn’t be me. what a dumbass.

      • VHS [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        racism aside… are liberals seriously approving the idea that the people were “free” under the absolute monarchy of the tsars? literally what is the point of liberalism in that case? they should be proud of the French Revolution and anti-monarchism

      • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        I’m a Russian lib

        Hmm

        I’m a… lib

        squidward-nochill

        notion that he’s a nazi is a Baptists and bootleggers collaboration between both western and Russian pro-war forces.

        Okay so I’ve seen the cockroach video. Can you explain why I shouldn’t believe he means what he said in that video?

        You could compare it to how Ukrainian libs allied with Ukrainian nationalists during the maidan.

        Well if I do that I just have to

        crab-party crab-party crab-party

        at this news. Allying yourself politically to fascists makes you a fascist.

        • Omniraptor [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          well Russian politics sucks what can I say. In the late oughts to early teens I think he really had a chance to ~do the funny~ but kinda chickened out. After 2011 he toned the nationalist rhetoric way down, tried to run for local office, failed miserably and the rest is history.

          Regardless he was still the most prominent/broadly unifying figure for anti Putin opposition of all stripes. Idk anyone who is more recognizable, maybe nemtsov but he was shot in 2014.

          and yeah I’m a mostly former lib, but as I mentioned in another comment, Communism has a really bad reputation inside Russia due to ongoing propaganda efforts from the government (who love blaming every possible internal problem on the Soviet legacy) and the ongoing ineffectiveness and hypocrisy of the CPRF.

          • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            I don’t know what to say other than ethnonationalists who call minorities cockroaches belong in the ground and that there is basically no good reason to support them or grieve their deaths.

            rip-bozo-grave

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        What was Navalny’s platform for domestic economic development, apart from fighting right-wing corruption which is the standard line for almost every neoliberal party in the Global South?

      • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        You could compare it to the CPUSA back in America in how it harms more than it helps.

        With the exception that the CPRF has a glorious past and has actually done stuff, unlike CPUSA. I think they haven’t done anything interesting since the 1930s.

  • sandinista209 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Libs gave an Oscar to a movie about a guy who said he’d have no problem working with fascists if it made sure his goals are met. Good riddance.

  • Kaplya [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Update: Yuliya Navalnaya made a surprise appearance at the Munich Security Conference to appeal to everyone to punish the Russian regime. (NY Times)

    Just hours after her husband was reported dead, Yulia Navalnaya made a dramatic, surprise appearance at a gathering of world leaders in Munich on Friday. Taking the stage, she denounced President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and vowed that he and his circle “will be brought to justice.”

    The diplomats and political leaders at the Munich Security Conference were already reeling from reports that her husband, Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian dissident, had died in prison under suspicious circumstances when Ms. Navalny stunned the hall by striding in. Conference organizers quickly wrapped up a session with Vice President Kamala Harris and turned the microphone over to Ms. Navalnaya.

    “We cannot believe Putin and his government,” Ms. Navalnaya told the audience. “They are lying constantly. But if it’s true, I would like Putin and all his staff, everybody around him, his government, his friends, I want them to know that they will be punished for what they have done with our country, with my family and with my husband. They will be brought to justice, and this day will come soon.”

    • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Yuliya Navalnaya made a surprise appearance at the Munich Security Conference to appeal to everyone to punish the Russian regime.

      What are they gonna do, double sanction Russia so that they have to pas their gas through two middlemen and ultimately eat the double markup themselves?

        • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          The yanks aren’t going to fund the slaughter in Ukraine this side of the election. The euros are in deeper and deeper shit every day and probably can’t give anything near what the yanks used to spend.

    • HexbearGPT [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      between this and the BS story about Russian space nuke national security threats, the US deep state is putting the full court press on politicians to keep funding the ukraine war.

      this is all war mongering propaganda.

    • Kieselguhr [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Munich Security Conference were already reeling

      Do you know if UKR+USA blowing up Nord Stream was on the agenda of this important German security conference? What did they say about that? Will they bring them to justice?

      • Sinister [none/use name, comrade/them]@hexbear.netB
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        9 months ago

        Actually the german green government will thank them for decarbonizing Germany and stopping evil putin to spreak his malignant influence into muh democratic society.

        Now they can import ethically sourced oil from the free and democratic state of qatar.