Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
PAGE 586 of 1104
Even behind bars, the dissident leader was a threat to the corrupt Russian dictator.
By Anne Applebaum | February 16, 2024, 10:30 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/navalny-death-russia
-prison/677485/
Alexei Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021. Right before he boarded the plane, he posted a film titled “Putin’s Palace: The Story of the World’s Largest Bribe” on YouTube. The video, nearly two hours long, was an extraordinary feat of investigative reporting. Using secret plans, drone footage, 3-D visualizations, and the testimony of construction workers, Navalny’s video told the story of a hideous $1.3 billion Black Sea villa containing every luxury that a dictator could imagine: a hookah bar, a hockey rink, a helipad, a vineyard, an oyster farm, a church. The video also described the eye-watering costs and the financial trickery that had gone into the construction of the palace on behalf of its true owner, Vladimir Putin.
But the power of the film was not just in the pictures, or even in the descriptions of money spent. The power was in the style, the humor, and the Hollywood-level professionalism of the film, much of which was imparted by Navalny himself. This was his extraordinary gift: He could take the dry facts of kleptocracy — the numbers and statistics that usually bog down even the best financial journalists — and make them entertaining. On-screen, he was just an ordinary Russian, sometimes shocked by the scale of the graft, sometimes mocking the bad taste. He seemed real to other ordinary Russians, and he told stories that had relevance to their lives. You have bad roads and poor health care, he told Russians, because they have hockey rinks and hookah bars.
And Russians listened. A poll conducted in Russia a month after the video appeared revealed that one in four Russians had seen it. Another 40 percent had heard about it. It’s safe to guess that in the three years that have elapsed since then, those numbers have risen. To date, that video has been viewed 129 million times.
Navalny is now presumed dead. The Russian prison system has said he collapsed after months of ill health. Perhaps he was murdered more directly, but the details don’t matter: The Russian state killed him. Putin killed him — because of his political success, because of his ability to reach people with the truth, and because of his talent for breaking through the fog of propaganda that now blinds his countrymen, and some of ours as well.
He is also dead because he returned to Russia from exile in 2021, having already been poisoned twice, knowing he would be arrested. By doing so he turned himself from an ordinary Russian into something else: a model of what civic courage can look like, in a country that has very little of it. Not only did he tell the truth, but he wanted to do so inside Russia, where Russians could hear him. This is what I wrote at the time: “If Navalny is showing his countrymen how to be courageous, Putin wants to show them that courage is useless.”
That Putin still feared Navalny was clear in December, when the regime moved him to a distant arctic prison to stop him from communicating with his friends and his family. He had been in touch with many people; I have seen some of his prison messages, sent secretly via lawyers, policemen, and guards, just as Gulag prisoners once sent messages in Stalin’s Soviet Union. He remained the spirit behind the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a team of Russian exiles who continue to investigate Russian corruption and tell the truth to Russians, even from abroad. (I have served on the foundation’s advisory board.) Earlier this week, before his alleged collapse, he sent a Valentine’s Day message to his wife, Yulia, on Telegram: “I feel that you are there every second, and I love you more and more.”
Navalny’s decision to return to Russia and go to jail inspired respect even among people who didn’t like him, didn’t agree with him, or found fault with him. He was also a model for other dissidents in other violent autocracies around the world. Onl
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Oh noez! A hookah bar? How dare he!
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Putin will be fine. He will be your next President (with Mr ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ Trump being Putin's ersatz president, Putin's stand-in for the Inauguration in DC.)
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh noez! A hookah bar? How dare he!
https://www.politico.eu/article/mueller-refutes-trumps-no-collusion-no
-obstruction-line/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The List Is Long: Russians Who Have Died After Running Afoul Of The Kremlin
By Steve Gutterman | February 16, 2024, 16:41 GMT
Critics, journalists, and defectors have faced dire consequences after opposing Putin. From poisonings to shootings, mysterious falls from windows, and even plane crashes, there is a long trail of silenced voices.
https://www.rferl.org/a/enemies-kremlin-deaths-prigozhin-list/32562583
.html
Not included: 62 million Russians who were murdered by Russia before Putin became ruler.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Putin will be fine. He will be your next President (with Mr ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ Trump being Putin's ersatz president, Putin's stand-in for the Inauguration in DC.)
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh noez! A hookah bar? How dare he!
#NotMyPresident
You people are silly. You're going to cry about some Russian journalist, but Ted wants to throw Tucker Carlson in the gulag just for having a conversation with Putin.
The lack of self-awareness coming from the modern day left is shocking.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:In the Trilateral Statement, signed in January 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer the nuclear warheads to Russia for elimination. In return, Ukraine received security assurances from Russia, the US, and the UK. Completely unsurprising when the Leftists of the US and the UK hesitated, dithered, procrastinated, and did not honor their promise to Ukraine.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You people are silly. You're going to cry about some Russian journalist, but Ted wants to throw Tucker Carlson in the gulag just for having a conversation with Putin.
The lack of self-awareness coming from the modern day left is shocking.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trilateral-process-the-united-s
tates-ukraine-russia-and-nuclear-weapons/
The fundamental weakness of 99.999% of the Left is they cannot stop talking about diplomacy, legal procedures, court dates for the beginnings of trials, the appeals process, their feelings, etc. Eventually, the Left needs to stop talking, buy some steel-toed work boots, and kick the Nazis (or the Russians or the Trumptards) in the teeth, but the best leftists lack all conviction, while the worst Nazis (or Russians or Trumptards) are full of passionate intensity.
Nazis, Russians, or Trumptards can do tremendous damage before Leftists have gotten angry enough to finally go Nazi on the Nazis. Leftists have not yet learned from the Nazis how to routinely handle Nazis with the brutality Nazis deserve. Instead, the Leftists keep retreating behind the legal process rather than risk being seen as "bad". Leftists lack sufficient conviction to kill Nazis at the first signs Nazis are on the move. Nazis, Russians, and Trumptards don't have those scruples. See Trump for how easy it is to stymie the legal system that Leftists imagine will protect them from Nazis. Ukrainians sadly learned that when Russia attacked, the US and the UK would break the Trilateral Statement by not kicking Russia in the teeth with steel-toed boots.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:In the Trilateral Statement, signed in January 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer the nuclear warheads to Russia for elimination. In return, Ukraine received security assurances from Russia, the US, and the UK. Completely unsurprising when the Leftists of the US and the UK hesitated, dithered, procrastinated, and did not honor their promise to Ukraine.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You people are silly. You're going to cry about some Russian journalist, but Ted wants to throw Tucker Carlson in the gulag just for having a conversation with Putin.
The lack of self-awareness coming from the modern day left is shocking.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trilateral-process-the-united-s
tates-ukraine-russia-and-nuclear-weapons/
The fundamental weakness of 99.999% of the Left is they cannot stop talking about diplomacy, legal procedures, court dates for the beginnings of trials, the appeals process, their feelings, etc. Eventually, the Left needs to stop talking, buy some steel-toed work boots, and kick the Nazis (or the Russians or the Trumptards) in the teeth, but the best leftists lack all conviction, while the worst Nazis (or Russians or Trumptards) are full of passionate intensity.
Nazis, Russians, or Trumptards can do tremendous damage before Leftists have gotten angry enough to finally go Nazi on the Nazis. Leftists have not yet learned from the Nazis how to routinely handle Nazis with the brutality Nazis deserve. Instead, the Leftists keep retreating behind the legal process rather than risk being seen as "bad". Leftists lack sufficient conviction to kill Nazis at the first signs Nazis are on the move. Nazis, Russians, and Trumptards don't have those scruples. See Trump for how easy it is to stymie the legal system that Leftists imagine will protect them from Nazis. Ukrainians sadly learned that when Russia attacked, the US and the UK would break the Trilateral Statement by not kicking Russia in the teeth with steel-toed boots.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Sure buddy.
Tell us more about your support for the Nazis in Ukraine.
There's no reason to do anything but troll every post you make because you are a hypocrite to the core and nothing you say matters at all.
Have a great day.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:6ix, since you don't even know you are a Nazi, it is no surprise you would call the Ukrainians the Nazis.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Sure buddy.
Tell us more about your support for the Nazis in Ukraine.
There's no reason to do anything but troll every post you make because you are a hypocrite to the core and nothing you say matters at all.
Have a great day.
I'm sure Ukraine would have nuked the Russian Army if only Ukraine still had the nukes it gave away because the US and the UK said they would protect Ukraine from Russia. Biden took the easy way out by sending only weapons rather than directly using weapons on Russia. What Biden did was not anywhere near what was promised the US would do for Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, since you don't even know you are a Nazi,
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Sure buddy.
Tell us more about your support for the Nazis in Ukraine.
There's no reason to do anything but troll every post you make because you are a hypocrite to the core and nothing you say matters at all.
Have a great day.
Yeah. I don't. Because I'm not. You dumb fucking racist Democrat cunt.
Quote:
it is no surprise you would call the Ukrainians the Nazis.
I'm not calling all Ukrainians Nazis. I'm pointing out that the Ukranian army that you consistently cheerlead is made up of literal card-carrying fucking Nazis. This is a fact that even your Leftist shill media doesn't deny.
NBC News (March 5th, 2022): Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, even if Putin's 'denazification' claim isn't
Not acknowledging this threat means that little is being done to guard against it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-problem-vladimi
r-putin-s-denazification-claim-war-ncna1290946
Newsweek (June 6th, 2023): Why Have So Many Neo-Nazis Rallied to Ukraine's Cause?
https://www.newsweek.com/why-have-so-many-neo-nazis-rallied-ukraines-c
ause-opinion-1804642
You are a stupid, stupid man.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Nearly everything Applebaum writes is a joke. Or a lie.
Or sometimes both.
Yes, it's true that Navalny died in prison.
Governments should take better care of politically sensitive prisoners. Look at Gonzalo Lira. Or Jeffrey Epstein. Or Julian Assange.
Quote:
Weeks After US Journalist Dies In Ukrainian Custody, Biden Uses Navalny's Death To Push For More Russian War Funding
But Navalny was not poisoned in Russia. When he collapsed, the Russian hospital that treated him not only sent him for treatment to Germany, they sent original blood samples with him.
And Navalny was no folk hero. He couldn't scrape enough support together to get a representative in the Duma. And that "Putin palace" story? I think it was just a real estate development gone sour.
Applebaum specializes in evidence-free accusations.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME