Any Russian critical of President Putin is now a potential enemy of the state
Natalia Arno was fully inside the hotel room before she noticed the smell. It was sickly sweet, like a cheap perfume at the drug store, only more nauseating.
It was May 2 2023, and Arno had arrived in Prague the night before, on part of a European tour. The Russian activist and non-profit director had been on the road, meeting with donors and organisers looking for ways to bolster democracy back in Russia. On the previous leg of her trip, Arno had felt a bit tired, like she was coming down with something. But now, after a day of meetings and a business dinner, she was full of her usual energy. She was just going back to her room to change into jeans, before meeting up for drinks with colleagues.
…
Three hours later, Arno woke up with an excruciating pain inside her mouth — a burning sensation so unbearable she could barely open it. Arno is no stranger to pain. When she was 13, she dropped a pot of boiling water, burning herself so badly she had to spend a month in a hospital where there were no painkillers. She gave birth to her son without pain relief and treats most illnesses with a cup of hot tea and honey. But this agony surpassed any she had ever experienced.
…
There are many ways to incapacitate an enemy. But, historically, few have proved so attractive to the Soviet and Russian security services as poisoning. Ever since Vladimir Lenin set up his poison factory, known as the “Special Room”, over a century ago, poisonings have become one of the Kremlin’s preferred ways to eliminate, cripple or terrorise enemies and critics. Over the decades, it has built up unrivalled expertise in the field.
The Cold War never actually did end, did it? The communist government fell, but the threat didn’t.
At any rate, there’s a robust defense against this sort of strategy–strength in numbers. Go ahead, try to poison all of us.
Communism was never the problem, Russians were.
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This seems racist and I can’t believe it’s so high upvoted. Sure, the unstable and corrupt leadership continued after the fall of the Soviet Union. But seriously?
They’ve been an incredibly brutal imperialist country for centuries now; the Soviet Union was just more of the same. I’m not saying it’s a genetic feature of all Russians, but something is clearly fucked up about the way they run their country when they can’t go few decades without committing literal genocide
EDIT: Some Russian genocides and ethnic cleansings over the years
Just to drive the point home, here’s a list of just the easiest to find genocides and ethnic cleansings perpetrated by Russians that I found with a minimum of searching based on what I remember from history. Note that there’s some overlap between these, so you can’t just sum the “victims” column to get a total victim count.
Date Event Victims 1785 – 2017 Chechen genocide 500,000 – 900,000 deaths 1800 – 1870 Circassian genocide 1,500,000 – 2,000,000 deaths 1850s – ongoing Cultural genocide by Russification in colonized areas Hard to estimate. Millions, with many minority cultures lost 1920s – 1930s Genocide of the Ingrian Finns Ingrian population reduced from 140,000 – 160,000 before the persecution to 19,000 today 1920s – ??? Ethnic cleansings on the Kola Peninsula Nordic population of the Kola peninsula dropped from 20% to 0.2% 1930 – 1952 Cultural genocide by forced migration in the Soviet Union 6,000,000 deported 1932 – 1933 Genocide of Ukrainians in the Holodomor 3,800,000 – 5,300,000 deaths 2015 – ??? Syrian, Russian forces carrying out ethnic cleansing around Aleppo, Turkmen accuse Russia of ethnic cleansing in Syria air strikes Tens of thousands displaced and/or dead 2022 – ongoing Genocide in the current Ukraine war ??? 2023 – ongoing Pogroms in the Caucasus ??? There is a book “Putin Country” on how rural Russia is every bit as fundamentalist in wanting the murdering of considered-reason, diverse-thinking, objectivity, etc, as the republican rural US is: it’s the same pattern, or antipattern.
Shit-education, combined with anti-intellect culture, combined with gang-style culture/values ( our gang wins, NEVER whistleblow, or we’ll ALL murder you for betraying the herd/gang!! ), and you produce such result.
The Mongol Yoke seems to have entrenched corruption, sociopathy, nihilism, etc, into Russian culture.
the Sovyet Soyuz ( union, I think ) Socialist … I don’t know what the P ( which is an R, in our alphabet ) stood-for, in CCCP … was continuing the abuse that had already been going on for ages…
and when you prevent uprightness from living, in a population, there are consequences, whether in the Eastern hemisphere or the Western, the Northern or the Soutern, it’s only appearances that differ, not the fundamental self/others/Nature/LivingSpirit set of relationships…
Gangs work to murder-out all which would compete against them, whether US, Russian, Chinese, Arab, Israeli, it doesn’t matter.
Abuse’s supremacy produces the perpetuation of abuse’s supremacy.
This is why the only method that could have worked, in Palestine, was having an absolutely neutral government ( which Hamas would never have tolerated, nor would Israel ), and to force absolute neutrality & properness, for a hard minimum of 2+ generations, until the grudge-enforcing generations were all retired-out-from all leverage & authority.
No other method could have worked.
The idiocy of people pretending that “no bullets fly, therefore this is what Peace means!”, and indulging in incredulity when grudge-violence erupts…
How can any self-respecting person stomach that dishonesty, I don’t know.
Humankind doesn’t have the spine to earn real integrity, and real-integrity is what it’d take to clean-up our own countries, let-alone derelict-abandoned countries, ruled by organized-crime…
Notice that the White-Blue-White Russians are city people, not rural: it’s cultural, same as in the US with democrats being city slickers.
it takes multiple generations of concerted, strategically-coherent force, to break the ignorance/prejudice/ideology-additions that rule our world’s people, including us.
IF any remnant of humankind survives this century, THEN maybe they’ll succeed in earning such integrity, & be able to continue living…
that’s a big if, though, now, with the global TANTRUM/POGROM that humankind’s setting-up to “deal with” God not catering-to our toddler-unconscious…
Sorry for the rambling, but it’s all inter-related, and you can’t fix anything in isolation, no matter which country it’s in…
_ /\ _
Putin, smiling from his throne of russian and non-russian skulls:“Might as well”
The Soviet Union didn’t really fall so much as they reshuffled positions and changed titles.
This is not even my final form yet!
There’s a really simple and effective solution. Deny entry to any russians with no long-term reason to stay.
FSB agents on a tourist visa? Deny.
Military-haircut men looking to open ‘high-tech business’ to buy electronic components and drone parts? Deny.
A young family of four fit guys looking to visit their grandma on a weekend? Deny.
Mail-in russian wife moving to live with her Spanish husband? I guess that should be allowed.
A non-fatal attack can serve as a warning — to its target and their circle. Strangely, poisoning can be even harder to prove if the target survives […]
That’s just sick. And in Prague, one of the safest cities in the world, of all places.
Why is considered Prague safe? It’s closer to Russian agents than, say, São Paolo or Vancouver.
Tourists ask if Prague is safe for a solo female traveller. Statistically, there is so little violent crime that you’re most likely to be safer there than in the capital city of whatever country/state you came from. Locals are generally accepting of anyone unless they go out of their way to provoke them.
However, Czechs are culturally quite opportunistic so you’ll need to take precautions against pickpockets and scammers but it’s quite easy and all explained on the Honest Guide YouTube channel.
As for Russian spies: it is hard to get statistics but there are definitely fewer than in Vienna, and I can imagine they can get you anywhere if they really wanted to. You’d need to be a very high-profile critic of Russia to become a target. The city is famously anti-Russia, having named the Russian embassy’s street “Ukrainian Heroes”. Still, there are scars of the Communist regime and some tourist trap stores sell Soviet-themed items to people who “don’t dare step further east into the former Eastern Bloc”.
📮
…and when that doesn’t work they shoot the dude full of holes in another European country.
sus.
