• M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Wait, am I reading this right that the plane was shot down by russian air defence? If this is backed up at all by anything like a russian source, then this will just further enforce option that russia can not be trusted to do anything it says and that putin is weak and threatened (both are true but I thought the kremlin would at least try to say/show otherwise).

    How does russia keep messing up this bad? I am constantly shocked and awed.

      • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, a pointless one that makes them look like predictable idiots. Most will not be unhappy at his death and those that would be are on russia’s side of this conflict. This (if it is what it looks like now) is like making a martyr just for assholes.

          • Elroy_Berdahl@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            Putin is killing people and the purpose of the window assassinations is meant to be clearly not an accident. The whole point is to send a message, not to try and fool people.

    • JohnBrownsBussy2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I don’t understand the logic here. When the putsch occured and then ignomously fizzled out, I saw Putin as weak for letting Pringles walk out with a (relative) slap on the wrist. Taking Prigo out of the picture was overdue. Obviously, anyone would feel threatened by an semi-autonomous mercenary army, so removing its leadership and breaking it up is just a rational course of action that probably should have been done sooner from that POV

      • ahornsirup@artemis.camp
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        1 year ago

        Putin absolutely couldn’t let Prigozhin walk, nobody could have. It’s not just about the semi-autonomous mercenary army, if a government lets someone get away with an attempted coup d’état they’d effectively encourage others to give it their best shot as well because there was no effective punishment. Assassination is, well, a very Russian approach to the issue, but every government on this planet would have taken some form of action.

        • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          You are absolutely right. The US would have an armed coup leader strung up so fast. Maybe not assassination style, but there would most definitely be a quick trial and execution. If the US government couldn’t catch the person, I imagine that assassination would be on the table.

        • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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          1 year ago

          It is the method used that has me baffled, if this happened as reported then they did not even try for any sort of plausible deniability.

          • ahornsirup@artemis.camp
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            1 year ago

            I’m not really surprised. They got more and more open about their assassination attempts for years. They’re not meant to covertly get rid of enemies, they’re very public warnings to other dissidents. It’s rule by fear.

            • Yondoza@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Russian assassination are pretty clear. Anyone with half a brain can put the pieces together, but there is just enough plausible deniability that there cannot be direct retaliation legally or politically. It is a clear threat but just barely veiled enough to avoid legitimate retaliatory action via legal or international responses.

              • Do you think if Putin goes on the record during his next q&a saying “little Ehrmantrotsky here just got what he deserved lol” that there’s any chance the RU ‘legal’ system is coming after him?? Shit I don’t know how to post pics here yet but really

      • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        If they took him out before the deal was made sure, this soon after just shows weakness and a lack of credibility. They did the equivalent to getting into a bar fight, talking it out instead and then in front of every one sucker punching the other guy.

        • Zrc [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          you know you don’t have to forcibly try to interpret every event as a sign of Russian weakness

          • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Losing multiple cities to a tiny domestic invading force of mercenaries after completely losing control of said force due to lack of command discipline, and finally only being able to force them to disband by threatening the families of the mercenaries involved isn’t exactly a sign of strength, though, is it? It’s not exactly what we’d expect of a professional modern military.

            It would be like if Erik Prince took his Blackwater army and started marching on Washington, capturing towns along the way, and the US army was helpless to stop them until the American government threatened to hunt down and kill the family members of Blackwater mercenaries.

            That would be considered unusual, and not really a sign of political or military strength.

            • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              If Erik Prince marched Blackwater through some American cities and – instead of sending the U.S. military to start a hot war on its own soil – American leadership pressured Prince and Blackwater to go home, would you be calling the president weak for not turning Virginia into a battlefield?

              • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                I would think American leadership completely dysfunctional if they allowed that situation to occur. If they did not have enough command authority to trust that the US military wouldn’t confront Prince with immediate and overwhelming force when ordered, the US would be a laughingstock. The scenario is borderline unimaginable in a developed country with anything resembling a modern political infrastructure.

                Don’t get me wrong. I love Russia. I was originally trained as a Sovietologist, when that was still a thing you could be an -ologist of. I could talk for hours about strategic weapons systems and Russian prep for NBC warfare and what the politics in the Kremlin were like under the troika approach and why the fascistic tendencies of Putin in rejecting Russian political history in favor of personal enrichment and plundering the nation have irrevocably broken Russian politics.

                But that’s for another day. Putin responded the way dictators in developing nations do, not like someone who actually has command and control over their modern military forces. I mean, it’s a Russian tradition to threaten the families of people who publicly disagree with leadership. In the US, the forces brought to bear against Blackwater’s attempted putsch would have been so overwhelming that his own men would have arrested him. But as much as I hate Blackwater and think Prince should probably be in prison for war crimes, their cadre was recruited from a different class of people than Wagner.

                • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  the US military wouldn’t confront Prince with immediate and overwhelming force

                  You realize that’s the worst-case scenario of the incident we’re talking about, right? A sane leader would want to avoid starting a pitched battle in their backyard at all costs, and that’s entirely independent of speculation about control over the military.

                  The scenario is borderline unimaginable in a developed country with anything resembling a modern political infrastructure.

                  We had a half-assed putsch of our own not even three years ago.

                  • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    A sane leader would want to avoid starting a pitched battle…

                    A competent government would have prevented it from occurring. The IS government is hardly a model of efficiency, and that goes double for the military. However, it doesn’t happen here because it’s not something that’s organizationally enabled. Blackwater would be slaughtered in hours, for instance. I absolutely hate Blackwater, I think Prince is a fascist just like Prigo who would absolutely pull a Wagner if he thought he could. He knows he’s better off using bribes to gain power and wealth.

                    And I wouldn’t call J6 a putsch if we’re using that term in context to describe a military invasion by heavily armed forces gone rogue. But even if we do, the point we are discussing is that it is characteristic of a crap-tier government to be unable to put it down. Trump left the US government almost unable to put down a riot that he invoked and that consisted of a few thousand angry but mostly unarmed rednecks. Again, it was on a different scale, but once a more competent government was in place we saw a thousand arrests, not a threat to kill the families of the J6 rioters. It was a planned violent coup, but the plan was absolute shit because the planners are absolute idiots.

          • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            They were losing a war to a bunch of tractors and their flagship was sunk by a country without a navy.

            It’s not Russian weakness, it’s Russian stupidity.

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      then this will just further enforce option that russia can not be trusted to do anything it says and that putin is weak and threatened

      If they let him live, they’re weak. If they kill him, they’re weak.

      During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

      parenti-hands

      • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        The USSR is not the russian federation and the later is an oligarchy. Why do you think such cold war arguments (that over simplify) have some sort of play in this conflict?

        I also noticed you skated right on by the “can not be trusted” part of my quoted text.

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Do you think I’m talking about the USSR, or about how American propaganda cultivates the mentality of “they are wrong no matter what they do”?

          • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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            1 year ago

            Your entire argument was about the soviet union and its cold war relationship with the US. I have had it up to my nipples here on how fixated you all are on the US, I am not from the US, I don’t like the US, I am sick of somehow having to explain to people who apparently think the US is evil but simultaneously think the world revolves around it.

            WE GET IT YOU ARE AMERICAN AND YOU ARE DIFFERENT BUT LIKE MOST AMERICANS CAN NOT STAND WHEN SOMETHING IS NOT ABOUT YOU.

    • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      The capitol riot was a threat to our precious democracy! / prigozhin’s coup attempt shows how weak putler is!

    • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      If this is backed up at all by anything like a russian source

      The Guardian is reporting this:

      The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but Prigozhin’s longstanding feud with the military and the armed uprising he led in June would give ample motive to the Russian state for revenge. Media channels linked to Wagner quickly suggested that a Russian air defence missile had shot down the plane.

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/aug/23/russia-ukraine-war-live-updates-drones-downed-moscow#top-of-blog