Russia, whose defense and security agencies are heavily focused on its war in Ukraine, has seen a recent upsurge in Islamist militant attacks.

Four knife-wielding prisoners claiming to be Islamic State group militants launched a deadly attack in a penal colony in southern Russia on Friday before being killed and their hostages released, officials said.

The attack left four people dead, while the four hostage-taking prisoners were “neutralized” by snipers, Russian officials said.

The attackers initially seized eight penal colony employees and four fellow inmates, according to Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Ser

  • andrew_bidlaw
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    3 months ago

    Can’t google it due to similarities, but it’s the second recent case of overtaking a prison by guys affilated with ISIS in a non-muslim region. With Krokus in mind it seems russian security forces struggle to prevent those, probably due to many of them rearranged to the ukrainian cause. If that war wouldn’t end soon, I suspect there would be even more sectarian violence in the future.

  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    What were the conditions in the prison? What were the prisoner’s demands?

    At least in the historical cases I’m aware of, when prisoners take hostages, they have demands related to their conditions. And gunning down those prisoners and their hostages while pretending they just decided to murder people for no reason after taking hostage is not an atypical response.

    From what I’ve heard, some Russian prisons are just as bad as American prisons, locking people in solitary for months to years at a time or in large rooms full of small cages.

    • lemmylommy@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Just as bad? I would rather spend my life in American Supermax than stay five years in a Russian penal colony.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        3 months ago

        This person desperately wants to talk about the U.S. to the point that they’re accusing me of whataboutism by talking about Russia in a thread about Russia.

        • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          I’m more familiar with prisoner abuse and prison riots in America than Russia, I don’t have much else to compare it to.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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            3 months ago

            This is what you said above:

            From what I’ve heard, some Russian prisons are just as bad as American prisons, locking people in solitary for months to years at a time or in large rooms full of small cages.

            If you’re more familiar with American prisons, then maybe what you have heard is not good enough and you should be equally familiar with both before making such statements.

            Russian prisons are far worse just going by per capita deaths.

            Read first, then comment.

            • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              Russian prisons are far worse just going by per capita deaths.

              Presumably, we are both working off non-academic, English-language sources targeting western audiences about Russian prisons. We don’t have credible numbers here.

              Hell we don’t even have credible numbers on American prisons given how they’re able to cook the books by moving people out of the prison before they’re declared dead or simply not reporting deaths to the Bureau Of Justice.

                • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                  3 months ago

                  Because if you knew what you were talking about, you’d be citing specific examples or academic works, and if you read Russian, you’d have primary sources.

            • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              I’m certain you’re not familiar enough with Russian prisons either given that you apply zero criticism to western sources about their enemies and cannot read Russian to interact with primary sources.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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                3 months ago

                Why are you certain of this? Please give evidence to back up this certainty. You claimed you weren’t familiar enough with them. Is this some projection?

                • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                  3 months ago

                  Please give evidence to back up this certainty

                  Here, lets test this, name something that is still widely reported by western sources about Iran, China, Cuba, Russia, or North Korea that serves the purpose of promoting hostile actions, that you know to be false. This should be trivial if you apply a little bit of critical thinking.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        People spend years in metal boxes without seeing another human, what we do to our prisoners literally causes PTSD and would be a war crime if done to POWs.

        And that’s the system acting entirely within the law as prescribed. There’s even more horrific cases of what guards regularly do to inmates on their own initiative.

        • lemmylommy@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Yes, it’s bad. But you get all of that and then some in Russian penal colonies.

          • Plopp@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            But that “and then some” could be video games and snacks, you don’t know! /s

    • Hubi@feddit.org
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      You have zero idea how bad Russian prisons actually are. Beatings, starvations and rape are considered normal in many places. There’s a reason many convicts would rather get sent to war. I’d spent the next 10 years in an American prison before even one year in a Russian one.

    • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      What were the prisoner’s demands?

      What I’ve read: automatic weapons and a helicopter

      Also: their religion to rule over the world

  • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
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    3 months ago

    Those poor innocent penal colony employees just trying to make money and live their lives! We should incessantly call for the destruction of the Russian Government every hour of every day until successful as it is clearly all their fault!

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      Or we should incessantly call for the destruction of the Russian government because it is an oligarchic dictatorship currently committing a lot of war crimes while invading a sovereign country and threatening other countries in Europe, along with nuclear sabre-rattling.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          I hope you aren’t saying that because you think that’s what I’m suggesting, because I do not think you are some sort of paid actor.

          And honestly, if Russia is paying people to spread Russian propaganda on Lemmy of all places, let them waste their money.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        I mean it is, but that’s also true of America. This is a war between two capitalist powers trying to do imperialism. The only stance that isn’t continuing the slaughter of the working class for the benefit of some oligarchs is peace as quickly as possible and opposing any means for your own government to prolong the war.

          • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            As someone who is not in a country supporting Russia, every thing you say to justify more death in Ukraine because “russia also bad” is whataboutism.

            You cannot affect what Russia does. You can (OK, if any of our representatives actually represented us) affect what your own country does.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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              3 months ago

              Also bad? Also along with whom? The subject of this post is Russia. We are talking about Russia because Russia is the subject. There is no “also” with Russia in this post.

            • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              I don’t understand. Who here is justifying death in Ukraine? I thought this post was about Russian penal colonies (in Russia, not Ukraine).

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                3 months ago

                Flying Squid, as someone not living in Russia talking to people who mostly don’t live in Russia, calling for the destruction of the Russian state, only serves to justify further weapons to Ukraine, spilling more Ukrainian and Russian blood.

                If we were in Russia, the situation would be reversed (we also might not even be having this conversation due to fear of reprecussion)

                • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  I have looked across the whole thread and see no justification of death in flying squid’s comments.

                  But since you mentioned it, I don’t understand your reasoning of “sending weapons to Ukraine results in spilling Ukrainian and Russian blood”. Ukraine is defending itself from a Russian invasion. The only one capable of stopping the war is Russia. It’s how invasions work. There is an invader and an invaded. The invaded has no choice but to defend themselves. The invader has 2 choices: keep invading ir stop invading.

                  Sending weapons to Ukraine means Ukraine is able to defend itself, signaling to Russia that they can’t invade other countries for free, which means Russia will be less capable to invade other countries. Which in turn means less blood spilled overall.

                  If you want the least amount of blood spilled, you should be advocating to send weapons to Ukraine.