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There are "elections" in Russia one month from now. Elections are a dangerous time for the power in place, even in Russia, because people can choose this time to protest. Putin just wanted to make it clear that no opposition will be allowed.
I'm not convinced that elections with Navalny dead a month before are going to be a substantially calmer affair than elections with Navalny alive. Nor that Putin would think yet another "sudden" death of someone who was already imprisoned would be a deterrent. He'd be throwing a spark into the crowd, not cowing them.
I give it about 50% "unintentional negligence", 50% "intentional negligence".
Now Dmitri Markov is also dead. The probability thatthey weren't both directly murdered is now very low...
I don't get that impression. There isn't really any speculation or suspicion even from ardent anti-government sources. Based on what I could scrounge up about any possible non-violent death causes, it could have been drugs. He was reported to have overdosed 2 years ago.
Yes he was a drug addict but he had been for years and he dies the same day as Navalny.
And now a pilot who defected to Ukraine and lived in Spain...
Well now that's just sloppy. Surely, if Putin was aiming to show off his power by killing Navalny and a few random minor dissidents exactly a month before the elections, he'd whack the pilot (literally who by the way? You're assuming I know every defector or critic ever by name) on the same day as well, not 4 days earlier?
Markov is known to me to have made exactly one (1) photo that made news as Putin regime criticism. You think Putin has a randomizer with tens of thousands of dissident names, and he just picks a random one when he feels like FSB doesn't have enough to do? I'm sorry, I can't explain your willingness to believe all those deaths have Putin in common in a more charitable way. Large business leaders, sure. Generals, why not (typically done after the war). Virtually no-name defector abroad or a photographer I never heard about? Are you aware there are other big opposition speakers besides Navalny? Why not them?
I think we won't be able to agree but it's still quite weird that 3 people opposed to Putin in a way or another die within a week... what's the probability that it happens at random?
I guess he cannot just choose to kill anyone, there are practical limits. They must have searched for the pilot since he defected.
About 60 million people are projected to die during 2024, worldwide. I don't know how many Putin dissidents there are that would make the news if they died. As a low ballpark, 10% of Russians would could themselves among the opposition, and assuming they are evenly represented among the famous... 0,1% of those would both make at least local news and have said something bad about the regime at least once? That's about 15 thousand.
60 million divided by ~50 weeks in a year, multiplied by 15000/8000000000 is 2,25 deaths we'd know about. The numbers are obviously pulled out of my ass, but hey, that's within an order of magnitude of 3 deaths in one week.
In any case I don't see how killing a random photographer and a minor defector would be useful for preventing unrest during elections, unless you just count everything Putin does as somehow mastermindedly directed towards any goals he might have. Protests are prevented through very obvious, above-board crackdowns on gatherings in public places (he does that too), not through the kind of massively plausibly deniable assassinations that you'd only be scared of if you see a FSBshnik with novichok behind every corner. The rank and file opposition isn't afraid of assassinations, nor should they. They should be afraid of cops coming for them openly and jailing them for army discreditation, LGBT propaganda or extremism. And they are.
Among those people who are projected to die, how many of them are not even in their fifties? Do you really believe the helicopter pilot wasn't murdered?
I can get that you believe it's independant from navalny's death, even if it seems unlikely to me, but to assume that he is just one of those people who would have died anyway is just ridiculous. If I want to be as sacarastic as you I can ask if you think that Prigozhin was also just some unfortunate accident? I mean there are quite a few plane accidents, so it's that impossible, I suppose
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