The General Russia Thread

What happened, as I recall, if that Elbakyan was a tankie, and somebody insulted her daddy Stalin one time too many. So she flipped out and decided to ban those awful, liberal, religious Russians from her website.

Edit: Oh, somebody also named a wasp species in her honour. She took an issue with that, because apparently the the species named after her wasn't glamorous enough.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 12th 2021 at 8:52:13 AM

I should note that the data theft by Russia was after Sputnik V was already in testing. I should also note that Sputnik V is not the only vaccine Russia is working on.

Might be Russia stole that to break IP for easy money with the third world than with the ones it was creating itself.

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

If the cyberattack happened after Sputnik V had already entered testing, then Sputnik's definitely Russia's own invention. Especially given that it is quite innovative, based on what we know - that idea I've mentioned of using two different viruses as vectors is apparently unique.

Navalny returned to Russia and got arrested for parole violation. Or something.

Putin's got another bunch of strongly-worded letters, and nothing really changed. It's not like Navalny is anything at all politically beyond an oppressed dissident with a moderate notoriety in Western Europe and the USA.

Makes you wonder then why Putin goes through all this trouble for someone so insignificant. First the assassination attempt, and now his arrest.

Is it even Putin or is it just local authorities and small time oligarchs trying to get Putin's favor?

Oh really when?

Kinda gutsy after they already tried to kill him.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Or disorganised. One KGB dude tried killing him, then another KGB dude's trying to one-up the previous one by taking him out of commission properly.

Almost certainly, it's the usual fustercluck where it's a bunch of Int Sec ghouls tripping over each other trying to gain Putin's favour.

Because it's most likely not Putin's personal initiative, but rather the doing of FSB on its own that he didn't really care enough about to stop. Or he's just paranoid. It's not like dictators are not known to be unreasonably and excessively paranoid and going with extreme prejudice after people who pose no actual threat to them.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 17th 2021 at 10:22:42 AM

Navalny had a clear opportunity to apply for asylum in the West or another country while recovering in Germany, but insisted on returning to the country whose government is so hostile to him that he was poisoned by it. And is likely to imprison him anyways upon return because they've done that plenty of times already.

I'm not sure whether he has Honor Before Reason or is just Too Dumb to Live.

Edited by FluffyMcChicken on Jan 17th 2021 at 10:30:52 AM

I'd say it's neither. Navalny's entire political thing is that he's a victim of oppression - he's got nothing else, no support among the working classes, no popularity with the elite, no political clout, no party to call his own. He's not even a bigwig in Russia's anemic opposition, he's just a minor celebrity whose entire claim to fame is that he's the current most often thought of example of modern Russian dissidents. So he needs that arrest, really. He needs the political spectacle and the oppression points. Because otherwise, he'd just be nobody.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 18th 2021 at 12:04:36 PM

Sure, buts it’s still choosing to be an imprisoned somebody in Russian rather than a free nobody in Germany.

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

You seriously believe that Putin has nothing to do with this?

Probably not.

Putin is notably disinterested in domestic Russian politics.

Don't mistake modern Russia or Putin for some other dime a dozen tinpot dictatorships or even older Cold War era police states, things are quite a bit different now.

Don't mistake that for any defense of Putin or saying he's anything resembling an innocent man but frankly he's not really in the business of assassinating dissidents.

Oh really when?

People have done much worse for fame and political clout than go to prison.

I don't think he's involved beyond giving everything his tacit approval. The random assassination attempt out of nowhere and the subsequent arrest sound like things that have been directly managed by random FSB goons without much long-term planning rather than the man himself. Putin's style of ruling is extremely hands-off, anyway, he's fine with just giving his underlings general directions and then doing nothing to manage their actions.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 18th 2021 at 3:09:39 AM

Judging by the news programms in Russia and how events go, i'd say, from my perspective, Putin is quite passive in politics department, and simply plays as a "Yes Man" to Russian conservatives and nationalists and endorse them, to keep himself popular. Putin only personally tends to step in, when the chance of him remaining in power are threatened.

And you know this because...? Just because Putin likes to present himself as above such concerns, doesn't mean that it is true.

It is inconceivable that middle man in the FSB ordered the assassination of Russia's most prominent opposition politician without backing from the top, or that some random prosecutor would arrest him when he returns while the Western press watches.

Maybe it wasn't Putin's initiative, but he will have been asked at some point to (probably verbally) sign Navalny's death sentence.

Most prominent opposition is a really generous term here.

Oh really when?

Why is it inconcievable? Putin has explicitly allowed such behaviour in the past. You do things in his name, you do what you want. And Navalny's not even close to being the most prominent opposition politician in Russia. He's merely the most famous Russian opposition politician in the Angloshphere/Western Europe, but that doesn't translate to much domestically.

Probably. So? I'm not saying Putin's innocent, I'm saying he's not specifically gunning for Navalny himself.

That's basically all Putin does nowadays, yes. He keeps appeasing the conservatives and that's it.

Edit - 'd.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 18th 2021 at 3:18:37 AM

Yeah it seems entirely possible that around 2000 Putin gave a blanket order to squash via all necessary means any opposition to him, with specific assassinations and arrests since then being done as part of following that general order.

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

The Kremlin likes to pretend otherwise, but his succeses point in another direction.

Me managed to get 27% of the votes in the mayoral election of Moscow in 2012. And this is just the official result, the true result was likely higher. At the same time the country witnessed the largest protests in its' recent history. He was also prominent enough to ban him from presidential elections since Putin feared that the result might be embarassing otherwise. He uncovered the corruption of Putin and his inner circle in videos that got a lot of attention in Russia. And most crucially, the assassination against him occured at a time when he was building a political alliance against Putin with many different actors, just when it looked like Belarus might see a revolution and there were protests again within Russia.

Is Nawalny a serious rival for Putin right now? Of course not. But knowing how paranoid Putin is, it is entirely plausible that he doesn't like taking chances.

"I don't think he's involved beyond giving everything his tacit approval."

That alone, of course, is enough to condemn him for.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Oh yeah.

This isn't really significant news (or even really news at this point - it's over a week old) but I'm posting it here for the "WTF" factor:

Moscow Times: Moscow ‘Stalin Shawarma’ Stand Ordered Closed After Outcry

I was shocked. I wasn't aware shawarma was a popular dish in Russia.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Oh man, shawarma is freaking everywhere in Russia. It's on every street corner, in multiple variants.

Some of them are even tasty, too.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 20th 2021 at 4:30:29 AM

To elaborate on the story of the Stalin shawarma - apparently, the provocative marketing strategy worked as well as those things usually work, and the runet folks took interest in the stall until the less memelord/dark humour crowd learned of it and blew a gasket. Anglosphere folks talk about Stalin's "rehabilitation" in the popular perception, but that's not really what's happening - 70% of Russians may think that Stalin's reign has been positive for Russia/USSR, but in the absolute majority of cases, what that means is that people simply believe that Stalin's reign, in the end, saw a great increase in the USSR's power, prosperity, prestige and not-getting-genocided-by-Nazis-ness. Russians en masse aren't trying to whitewash him or deny that he was a mass-murdering fuckhead. In the same way, the reign of queen Victoria can be said to have been a positive for Britain, despite all the colonial fuckery that the empire engaged in. So when people who aren't rural Soviet dinosaurs or alt-right fringe chuds see that somebody's trying to stick Stalin's face onto a stall, you get enough negative outcry for it to appear on national TV.

Honestly, I don't even see Putin's government trying to glorify or rehabilitate the USSR right now. He and the whole United Russia are very much silent and ambiguous on the topic, if anything, preferring to not talk about it at all with the exception of WW 2. I think this is mostly because they can't condemn Stalin and co. without alienating those rural Soviet dinosaur folks who by now comprise their main electoral demographic, and praising him would create a shitstorm from the rest of the country. Who's trying to glorify the ol' Dzhugashvili right now in Russia are the neo-Soviet tankies and the ultraright nationalists, both fringe movements, it's just that Putin and co. have notoriously always been very favourable towards those fringe movements as part of their strategy of lowest common denominator populism, so they aren't doing anything to stop that. Most of the time, I mean. The truly insane kooks, like the National-Bolsheviks and the right-wing militia folks, get broken up and carted off by the FSB just fine.

Edited by KnitTie on Jan 21st 2021 at 1:25:31 AM