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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25182 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?

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.

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