Quote:
Originally Posted by Onkel Neal
Hah, I was in Moscow when that happened. I can't say any more.
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To that end there is a great lecture by Pozner which discusses how the west created Putin. You can see it here:
In general you could see that in part the foundations for the current environment in Russia were formed by that constitutional crisis which lead to Russia having a super-presidential republic and the 1996 elections where massive fraud was funded by privitising state property on the cheap in favour of key oligarhs such as Berezovsky who later would seek refuge in London.
But hey, Yeltsin was a good guy, wasn't he?
So undermining the young Russian democracy to support him must have been totally worth it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Onkel Neal
Navalny, victim of Putin's agents using nerve poison, returns to Russia, he's arrested. His wife arrested. His brother arrested. Over a thousand people demanding democracy in Russia, arrested. Subways and buses stations closed, restaurants and bars closed.
How long until the security forces under Putin's order get tired of attacking their friends and neighbors?
Mass arrests in Russia of protesters demanding Navalny's release |
Technically Navalny is not under arrest, he is being held under guard untill the court hearing on his breach of parole (I think?). As to the protestors they were charged with violating COVID-19 related restrictions on public gatherings.
But hey, lets support an authoritarian ethno nationalist who entered the politics by working the smear jobs as part of the intrasystem competition. And who embezles donations for legal representation of protestors (who he incited to protest outside of agreed upon time and place and thus created conditions for their arrest and the need to gather donations for their legal representation) to go on nice holidays.
What could possibly go wrong?
As to the security forces - this is unlikely, the security forces believe that they have a shared destiny with the elites and the Berkut purge after second Maidan did not help that. Same reason why Belorussian operatives are doing what they are doing. In general the scale of protest movement is fairly small, if only because it is winter time right now, so not a real threat right now.