Oh shit they’ve got him.

    • fanbois [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      71
      ·
      edit-2
      10 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          40
          ·
          10 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
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              8
              ·
              10 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.

          • Kaplya@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            15
            ·
            10 months ago

            i don’t buy it either even though i’m still on the “prigozhin was a psyop” train

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    84
    ·
    10 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
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    65
    ·
    10 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
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      10 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
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    60
    ·
    10 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.

  • sandinista209 [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    57
    ·
    10 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.

      • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        58
        ·
        10 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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          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
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            20
            ·
            10 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

      • Kaplya@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        40
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        23
        ·
        10 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.