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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25223 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Now this is getting interesting

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13124393/Ukraines-spy-chief-says-Alexei-Navalny-died-blood-clot.html

Today, however, Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's GUR military intelligence service, suggested his death could be down to natural causes.

He told reporters: 'I may disappoint you, but what we know is that he really died from a blood clot. And this is more or less confirmed. This was not taken from the Internet, but, unfortunately, a natural [death].'

That makes no sense. Why would the Ukrainian chief of intelligence exonerate Putin and also put an egg on the face of all of the western allies that pearl clutched so hard? What are we missing?

While I don't really have an emotional commitment to whether Putin had Navalny killed or not, I think it should be pointed out that even back in the 50s the KGB was capable of killing people and making it look like an accident. I'm not sure if you've heard of the meme of the heart attack gun but actually there are two things this might refer to, One is the CIA version (https://allthatsinteresting.com/heart-attack-gun) which fired a frozen dart of water mixed with shellfish toxin, which as far as I know wasn't ever used. The other is the KGB version, which was used at least twice, including to kill the Stepan Bandera of occasional political controversy. The gun blew cyanide gas into the victim's face, killing them almost instantly and leaving traces that resembled a heart attack. The triggerman botched the Bandera assassination so the authorities weren't fooled into thinking it was an accident, but he had assassinated Lev Rebet two years earlier and had succeeded in fooling everyone then. If you want to read more about it here's an interview with the author of a biography of the assassin: https://huri.harvard.edu/news/man-poison-gun-qa-serhii-plokhii

Anyway, my point is that it's reasonable to assume Putin has ways of making deaths look accidental. That being said, I don't see any reason for the head of the GUR to say this unless he believed it to be true, honestly I'm surprised he'd say it even then, so I'm much less sure that Navalny was assassinated than I was. It's easy to get lost in the wilderness of mirrors and see spook shit where it doesn't exist, on the other hand it's quite a coincidence.

Ukrainians despise Navalny and his loyalists. They justify this with his Crimean position ("not a sandwich", a poorly developed milquetoast – from the Russian perspective – proposal to establish mutually agreeable conditions for a transparent do-over referendum on leaving Ukraine for Russia; which would of course have yielded an overwhelming "yes" from Crimeans, and would be illegitimate as per the Ukrainian law). But from what I can tell, this isn't the crux. They're only interested in allying with Russian "opposition" that supports AFU and advocates for the dissolution of the Russian Federation, to wit – regionalist activists (predominantly ethnic minorities); they consider any unified state dominated by ethnic Russians in anything like current borders an existential threat that would soon enough regress to the mean of infringing on their sovereignty under any rule. I believe this is the tacit consensus in the most concerned neighboring states, represented by Anna Fotyga in the European Parliament and other Western patrons of the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum.

Anyway, Navalny was, although ethnically at least half Ukrainian or something more complex, completely at peace with the continued existence of a Russian state (or more cynically – not interested in diminishing his potential domain), and thus an example of the "Russian democrat ends where the Ukrainian question begins" problem, as they put it. He was hated, and Budanov may be affirming Putin's narrative purely to encourage his compatriots, reaffirming that there's no common cause with the Russian opposition (to wit: "the war with Regular Orcs is not going badly enough to seek compromise with the Cuckold-Orcs, whom we loathe as much if not more").

Or whatever, he likely doesn't have any special insight into this case and Ukrainians make up intel a lot.

On the object level, I think it's plausible Navalny died "naturally" after months and months in the punitive isolation cell; it is a known torture/slow execution method. But also, he could have been offed as a gift to Bastrykin, who wanted him to die a great deal (there are such rumors that he asked for permission to commemorate his 70th anniversary) or as an early event in the upcoming elections.

People treat Putin as a highly rational, intelligent and well-calibrated person, but he's basically a psychopathic, out-of-touch grandpa who's got too high on his own supply. He's weird and he treats murders as a funny occasion, arranges them to happen on Special Dates, probably giggles when he gets the news. "But what about sanctions for Russia? What is the benefit?" Get real. Because he's playing a game.

I mean there are really two Navalnys. There is the western mass market patron saint of liberal democracy edition Navalny and then there is the real life Navalny. They have virtually nothing in common with each other and they are marketed to entirely different audiences so it doesn't really seem that weird that they should die of different causes as well. I doubt people that are following updates from Budanov are the sort of people that the state seeks to win over or that they will be overly concerned with how real life Navalny died regardless. Budanov probably just doesn't care.

Timing wise it doesn't make sense for Putin to kill him. He was in prison and didn't have any significant political support on the outside.

So the likely options are:

  • CIA / GRU / another western intelligence service killed him to get support in the west for more aid money. It did happen right around some votes, and Navalny wasn't likely to be of any other use to them.

  • Natural causes. Russian prisons probably aren't great for your health.

There's less egg on the face of western allies then you think. CNN will just ignore this. Reporters will still talk as if it's settled that Putin killed him.

The idea that the CIA or some other western service killed him is ridiculous. Carrying out something that risky just to make Putin look bad when he's already a global pariah makes no sense, likewise for the GRU although it's slightly less ridiculous (but still not realistic). Also the CIA is notoriously bad at carrying out assassinations, even pre-Church commission. If it wasn't a drone strike and their involvement is alleged to be more than supplying intel/weapons I'd be very skeptical of their involvement in any assassination.

Generally if the motive you're considering for an intelligence service to kill someone is a false flag to manipulate public opinion you're completely on the wrong track. The only time I can ever think of something remotely similar being confirmed to have happened is the Lavon affair conspiracy which was never carried out. The vast majority of the time assassinations occur it's because the regime sees the target as an enemy or annoyance and wants them to stop existing.

I think it seems rather foolish to make assumptions about how good the CIA is at secret assassinations, considering that by definition you only ever hear about the times they are unsuccessful. Even the rough number of attempts is totally invisible to you or I.

This is a cope explanation. Things get declassified, people talk, and the assassination plots we know about are not just the ones that publicly blew up but were dragged up during congressional investigations against the wishes of everyone involved. Not that the CIA is above lying to congressional committees, but I think it's a mistake to assume there are secret CIA assassination operations that are vastly more competent than the ones we know about. If you actually read about this stuff it just doesn't fit, the CIA as an organization simply can't get away with doing that kind of thing anymore, and even when it tried it was bad at it. The closest I can think of to an attempt to disguise the nature of an assassination is the CIA plot to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, wherein they planned to poison his toothpaste with something that would cause a death that looked natural (they never managed to pull it off).

CIA / GRU / another western intelligence service killed him to get support in the west for more aid money. It did happen right around some votes, and Navalny wasn't likely to be of any other use to them.

He was in the equivalent of a supermax prison. How many inmates in ADX Florence have been killed by foreign intelligence services?

He was in the equivalent of a supermax prison.

...in a country with a smaller economy than Italy's (notorious for losing mafia bosses from supermax). Russia can't afford to secure its jails from determined infiltrators.

CIA-proofing is probably not massively expensive when you already run an autocratic regime.

People tried to convince me in another thread that GDP and economy are not predictors of state capacity in specific niches. And Russia values its penitentiary system.

Either way, Harp is located in polar tundra and the only other industry in this small town other than the two prisons is a chromium ore mine and processing plant. There's a single road leading into the town. It's not exactly a place where a random outsider can move to and find a job, like Shane Bauer.

A valid argument but for wrong reasons. It's not about GDP, or being able to afford it. The USSR was poorer by GDP than Russia, but I doubt the CIA would be able to pull off an assassination in a Soviet gulag.

CIA / GRU / another western intelligence service killed him to get support in the west for more aid money. It did happen right around some votes, and Navalny wasn't likely to be of any other use to them.

No. (Assuming this story correctly quotes him,) Ukraine's spymaster of all people would then push the narrative that it was Putin.

I still believe the likely option is that Putin did it indirectly through conditions of his incarceration.

Timing wise it doesn't make sense for Putin to kill him.

Only true if Putin only orders assassinations when strategically necessary. But that doesn’t necessarily appear to be the case, see his regular assassinations of even minor nationalist figures as Ilforte has regularly documented, along with various other people who fall afoul of him even when they pose little apparent threat. By contrast, Navalny was legitimately popular with many Russians and many millions watched his YouTube documentaries about Putin’s embezzlement, his construction of huge mansions, his inner circle and so on. As long as he was alive (inside or outside the country) he posed more of a threat - even if it was a small threat - than most other figures the FSB has assassinated in recent years.

Honestly, whether Navalny was killed by Putin or not barely seems to matter to me, he's killing enough people in totally out-in-the-open ways (like a war of conquest) that one death more or less doesn't change the moral calculus.

I think people seize on deaths like this as an excuse to talk about that moral calculus, because they're rare and unusual enough to be newsworthy (or narrative-matching enough to be newsworthy). But whether the connection is real or not doesn't change much, I would think.

They are rare. Today's autocrats have nothing on the autocrats of 50+ years ago who imprisoned or murdered large swaths of their citizens and political opposition with impunity. Social media, smart phones, and the 24-7 news cycle means much more scrutiny on world leaders. And also the rise of the US as a 'world police'.

And yet China has the camps of Xiangjin for Uyghurs and barely got a sternly worded letter. I think the opinions of the world community are generally only important when the rest of the world doesn’t have as much to lose from doing the right thing. Any fear of backlash is probably overblown.

And yet China has the camps of Xiangjin for Uyghurs and barely got a sternly worded letter

Anti-chinese media in the west tried to meme those into another holocauster but their problem is nobody in the west cares about muslims, especially not Muslims in china.

Nobody not in the West cares either.

The Muslim world loves Chinese money way more than opposing the oppression of Muslims there.

In some sense, whether it was natural or not is inconsequential. He died in custody of a regime everyone is very well aware would have killed him if he had the ability to have any concrete political influence.

Westerners did their finger pointing like they would have done regardless of circumstance, Putin didn't say anything out of the ordinary, and all the threatened consequences for his assassination have already happened anyways.

In a way it would be fitting he died of natural causes when his death was already such a foregone conclusion for everyone. Still, nobody deserves to go like that, of course.

You think Putin doesn’t have the resources to murder someone and make it look like natural causes? He has access to tools you can’t possibly imagine. The doctors doing the autopsy don’t have to be in on it if they don’t know what to look for.

That was never for debate. I asked completely different questions in the post - what is the benefit for Ukraine of disclosing natural causes.

Maybe they don’t want Russia to think they’re onto them?

Navalny dying of unnaturally hastened natural causes, or some exotic poison that causes blood clotting, would be extremely plausible things out of the current Russian regime. Ukraine also probably has plenty of informants in Russian internal security, likely more and better placed than the CIA.

I do find myself wondering which of the COVID vaccines Navalny had taken. It’s almost more “scissor statement” than Navalny’s death itself.

Navalny returned to Russia and was arrested in January 2021, before the widespread vaccination in Western countries (Germany had just begun to vaccinate over-80s and medical personnel in late December), so it would be quite unlikely for him to have received the Western vaxx, at least.

Has Sputnik been linked to any side effects at all?

Putin ordering Navalny to be killed doesn't make a ton of sense given he posed no immediate threat and was safely rotting in prison. But obviously being in jail could have hastened Navalny's death by quite a bit. I think there were reports that he was denied needed medical care. There shouldn't be much of a question that Putin is certainly willing to assassinate people he views as a threat, as he almost certainly did with Prigozhin. Also, other dissidents like Girkin fear being offed as well.

Whether Putin directly ordered Navalny to be killed doesn't really matter that much, nor will it likely ever be definitively answered.

Putin ordering Navalny to be killed doesn't make a ton of sense given he posed no immediate threat

I think that Putin's thoughts are sufficiently inscrutible to not make judgements based on your attempts to empathise with him. For example, Putin may have used Navalny's death to send a signal to oppositionists ahead of the presidential elections - "Don't cause trouble, this is my show." Or he might not.

Killing an opposition leader is certainly the type of thing that people like Putin are likely to do.

Putin's thoughts are sufficiently inscrutible

You could say that about practically every leader, especially autocratic ones. Any speculation is necessarily low-confidence because of this, although examining motives and wargaming out possibilities still serves some purpose. E.g. we can probably be quite certain that Prigozhin was assassinated due to being a perceived threat, either directly or merely by what he represented. Offing him was the clear logical choice.

Putin may have used Navalny's death to send a signal to oppositionists ahead of the presidential elections - "Don't cause trouble, this is my show."

This isn't a bad idea either given that one opposition guy was gaining a bit of traction, although, yeah, still low-confidence.

You could say that about practically every leader, especially autocratic ones.

Indeed. I think it's a pretty unreliable way to make inferences about what happens in politics. Not coincidentally, it's often how conspiracy theorists reason.

This isn't a bad idea either given that one opposition guy was gaining a bit of traction, although, yeah, still low-confidence.

Yes, my point is that doubting that Putin had Navalny killed because it's hard to think up a motive is weak evidence, especially because it's easy to be biased - someone looking to condemn Putin can overrate the plausibility of such motives, someone looking to exculpate Putin can spend minimal time actually trying to think up possible motives. When someone says, "I can't see how..." I usually initially doubt that they looked very hard.

Yes, my point is that doubting that Putin had Navalny killed because it's hard to think up a motive is weak evidence, especially because it's easy to be biased - someone looking to condemn Putin can overrate the plausibility of such motives, someone looking to exculpate Putin can spend minimal time actually trying to think up possible motives. When someone says, "I can't see how..." I usually initially doubt that they looked very hard.

I think we're mostly in agreement here, and you're probably mostly just prodding me over the fact that I should have had a "low-confidence speculation" qualifier in my initial post above. I don't think speculating on a leader's actions is always low-confidence though. I have medium-high confidence that Putin had Prigozhin killed for a number of reasons.

Ukrainian nationalists don’t like Navalny because he defended the annexation of Crimea as likely permanent in any case.

The most common conspiracist take AFAIK seems to be that Ukraine infiltrated the jail and had him killed, perhaps to avoid some kind of West - Russia prisoner transfer deal that did nothing for Ukraine but may have benefited Putin in some way. But I expect Navalny was guarded by a higher quality than average prison staff, so an infiltration would be pretty surprising. In this scenario, presumably Putin would have to weigh accusing Ukraine of the plot against admitting that they were able to infiltrate a highly secure facility deep inside Russia.

I think it’s implausible that foul play wasn’t involved but the most likely scenario must surely remain that Putin killed him like he has so many critics before.

If we're going to entertain the idea that Russia is telling the truth (for once), it's only fair to entertain the idea that Ukraine is telling the truth too (for once).

Navalny's death never made sense to me from Russia's point of view. I suppose it doesn't have to make rational sense, given everything Russia is. But it's just lead to more sanctions and "proof" that Russia's enemies are right all along. An own-goal for no real benefit. Whereas discussing the idea that Russia didn't kill Navalny is instantly met with derision, how could you possibly be so naive, don't you know what a brutal thug Putin is, etc. I'm not invested in this idea, I suppose it's possible Putin really did have him killed. But it's also possible Navalny just died somehow.

Frankly, as part of the internet commentariat and peanut gallery, I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care. Supposing the worst-case and Navalny really was murdered in cold blood: so what? What am I supposed to take away here? This doesn't give me some newfound appreciation for the tyrannies of a soft dictatorship. It's not an act of war. It's not a provocation against the United States. It doesn't affect my life. I guess I feel mildly bad for Navalny, but he was playing the game and must habe known the risks. And my sympathy can only go so far, given that he has nothing to do with me or anything I care about.

Basically, I'm not interested in all of that, but I'm happy for him, or sorry that happened.

One perspective on Navalny death is that it was meant as a signal for Europeans: "Current regime feels itself strong enough to drop the act that a reset is at all feasible. Russia is winning in Ukraine and will dictate when and how the conflict ends. Putin is the only person Europe can negotiate with".

Ukraine would be interested in Europe not treating this signal seriously, saying it was just a clot helps. It's quite a stretch though.

Hardline Ukrainian pro-Ukrainians (as opposed to pro-Ukrainians of opportunity) mostly hate Navalny for supporting/not opposing Crimea's annexation back in 2014.

https://www.mk.ru/politics/2014/10/15/navalnyy-ne-otdam-krym-ukraine-kogda-stanu-prezidentom.html

"Let's not deceive ourselves. And my advice to Ukrainians to not deceive themselves either. Crimea is staying as a part of Russia and is never becoming a part of Ukraine again in the near future."

(when asked if he'd return it if he became president) "Is it a sandwich, to be passed back and forth?"

Predictably, Navalny has earned the nickname "sandwich" among a certain slice of people.

Huh, very surprising indeed. The possibilities I can see are:

  • He expects that Russia will produce such conclusive proof that it was a clot that even normies abroad will have to concede. In such a scenario, this is a very strong way to build a reputation for accuracy, and counter what seems like an emerging narrative even in the West that the Ukrainian government may be Baghdad Bobbing (I've seen a lot of palpable irritation about Zelenskiy's recent implausibly low figure for Ukrainian casualties, and before that the stories like the Kramatorsk air defence accident already strained the relationship). The latter purpose may be served even if no proof is forthcoming from the Russians.

  • The pro-Putin part of my family is convinced that Ukrainian intelligence somehow got to Navalny in the camp and assassinated him, because with the given timing (just before the Munich conference and as the aid vote in the US was heating up) it brought maximal benefit to them in terms of reinflaming Western sympathies. Perhaps this implausibly turns out to actually be true, and he thinks the Russians are about to produce a smoking gun and wants to get ahead of the story.

I also think that the current pearl-clutching narrative is robust enough against the clot scenario: "sent to the camps and died of stroke because of insufficient/denied medical aid" does not read much better than "deliberately killed". Also, clots that cause infarction elsewhere afaik can form as a consequence of various forms of otherwise non-lethal physical abuse, such as circulation cutting to limbs - in fact some form of "unintentional death as a consequence of intentional roughing up" is my own leading theory for what actually happened.

The articles I’m seeing now is that he was killed, under Putin’s orders, to prevent a prisoner swap. For example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/26/vladimir-putin-had-alexei-navalny-killed-to-thwart-prisoner-swap-allies-claim

This is Nordstream logic. If Putin wanted to stop the prisoner exchange he could have just ordered it stopped. Any subordinate that went ahead and did the exchange anyway would do so at great risk to themselves, since Putin does in fact have people killed.

Navalny’s widow says Putin had Navalny killed because Putin is a “mad mafioso” but I’m not aware of a pattern of such killings by Putin.

If this was a murder intended to stop the prisoner exchange then the most likely murderer is a state other than Russia and Germany. Very similar to Nordstream! The most likely scenario if halting a prisoner exchange was the goal would be that the Americans wanted to prevent the Germans from making a deal with Russia. Perhaps part of the deal even involved gas shipments.

"Americans have an agent in a Russian prison in the middle of shitfuck nowhere, specifically in the one Navalny was transferred to ~a year ago" sounds a bit less plausible than "Americans could blow up a pipeline in the sea".

He's been in jail for three years. How long does it take to turn a prison guard when you have the CIA's budget?

He's been in that specific prison for two months. If CIA could not only turn a prison guard on such a short notice, but also to coach them well enough to make it look like a medical accident - while Navalny was allegedly about to be exchanged, a valuable asset to watch and guard - well, I applaud them.

Navalny wasn’t some random penal colony inmate, he was - by virtue of being a prized bargaining chip, and because he was the most prominent critic of Putin still in Russia - surely guarded by higher quality personnel than the rest, likely directly by the security services.

Funny how Epstein could mysteriously kill himself but the media are so sure that there is conspiracy behind Navalny's death. Navalny was in line with American goals for Russia, breaking it down into ethnic components with Russia losing its empire. The US wants to hack away at the fringes of Russia. Ukrainian nationalists aren't exactly hyped about Russian slavic nationalism as it largely includes them.

Navalny was in line with American goals for Russia, breaking it down into ethnic components

What?

I'm getting tired of your low-information default twitter righoid takes, could you increase the quality of your commentary?

If you disagree with his take, explain why he's wrong. Don't just insult people for having takes you disagree with, even if you are emotionally invested in the topic.

I disagree with his method even more than with his take. On one level, his communication is wack: it is not clear whether he makes a claim about Navalny's own beliefs and/or policies and platform, or Navalny's ultimate consequences that he speculates were anticipated by some American minders from the deep state. (Thus, "What?")

On another, it is like that because he's not invested in making a worthwhile contribution and just verbalizes some vague "based Putin cringe national traitor opposition" sensibility, where the opposition leader must have something to do with the breaking down of our holy sovereign empire into ethnic republics. This is worse than nothing.

Cool, cool. Say that and not what you said.

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