Russian protests; Navalny sentenced to 30 months

[Kingpoleon]

President-elect Joe Biden's national security advisor Jake Sullivan called for the immediate release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was detained Sunday upon arrival at an airport in Moscow.

Earlier on Sunday, Navalny flew to Russia from Berlin, Germany where he had spent nearly half a year recovering since he was poisoned last summer. He was arrested at passport control.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/01/17/biden-national-security-advisor-calls-for-russia-to-release-navalny.html

[CumbrianLefty]

But......I thought Biden was just going to do what China and Russia told him??

[Cassius]

But......I thought Biden was just going to do what China and Russia told him??

I mean one of the Democratic Party’s major USP’s over the last four years has been to portray itself as the new receptacle for bovine, knuckleheaded Russophobia so not particularly.

Anyway, you’d think that foreigners who yearn for regime change in Russia would have learned to be very careful what they wise for, but apparently not.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Navalny is a deeply flawed man.

[CumbrianLefty]

But......I thought Biden was just going to do what China and Russia told him??

I mean one of the Democratic Party’s major USP’s over the last four years has been to portray itself as the new receptacle for bovine, knuckleheaded Russophobia so not particularly.

You know that and I know that, was just repeating one of the main Trumpoid attack lines.

[Crane]

Navalny is a deeply flawed man.

I hardly ever agree with you but yes. He is just as right wing as Putin. He just wants the power in different hands.

[Kingpoleon]

Navalny is a deeply flawed man.

If Putin invades Hell, I’ll say something nice about the Devil himself.

[PSOL]

The arrest drew a lot of buzz to the Palace project made by Navalny’s team. This was a shrewd political move that was very successful to one-up Putin.

[Kingpoleon]

The arrest drew a lot of buzz to the Palace project made by Navalny’s team. This was a shrewd political move that was very successful to one-up Putin.

It is rare for a politician to outmaneuver Putin - this after Navalny basically got a government official to admit to poisoning him over the phone seems to indicate that the West may have underestimated Navalny’s competency.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Navalny is a deeply flawed man.

If Navalny were a Western style liberal then he wouldn't have gotten anywhere in Russia.

The arrest drew a lot of buzz to the Palace project made by Navalny’s team. This was a shrewd political move that was very successful to one-up Putin.

It is rare for a politician to outmaneuver Putin - this after Navalny basically got a government official to admit to poisoning him over the phone seems to indicate that the West may have underestimated Navalny’s competency.

Putin might be competent but most decisions in Russia are made by the people around Putin and they're considerably less competent. When your system prioritizes political reliability over all else you inevitably get a lot of inept yes men who can't be trusted to make independent decisions.

I'm reminded of the Moscow mayor Sobyanin responding to protests of ~20,000 people with excessive brutality, so the next time 5 times as many people showed up. Soviet style tactics only work on an utterly broken people.

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/Nat_Vasilyeva/status/1352876582407442433

[CumbrianLefty]

Navalny is a deeply flawed man.

If Navalny were a Western style liberal then he wouldn't have gotten anywhere in Russia.

The arrest drew a lot of buzz to the Palace project made by Navalny’s team. This was a shrewd political move that was very successful to one-up Putin.

It is rare for a politician to outmaneuver Putin - this after Navalny basically got a government official to admit to poisoning him over the phone seems to indicate that the West may have underestimated Navalny’s competency.

Putin might be competent but most decisions in Russia are made by the people around Putin and they're considerably less competent. When your system prioritizes political reliability over all else you inevitably get a lot of inept yes men who can't be trusted to make independent decisions.

This is not just true of Russia, trust me.

[Horus]

Navalny seems to be the best Russia can offer right now. I wish him well.

[Tender Branson]

Russian opposition leader releases drone footage that purports to show Vladimir Putin’s alleged secret $1.4 billion Black Sea palace

A video uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday purports to show a secret $US1.4 billion palace on Russia’s Black Sea that allegedly belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Alexei Navalny, the Russian politician and Putin critic behind the video, alleges Putin and his billionaire friends secretly built the mansion using illicit funds. The Kremlin denies Putin has any connection the property.

The video, which has more than 70 million views, appears to show drone footage of a lavish mansion and expansive grounds with two helipads, an underground hockey rink, a sculpture garden, and more.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/vladimir-putins-secret-palace-black-sea-russia-video-2021-1

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/20/europe/putin-palace-navalny-russia-intl/index.html

MOSCOW — Protesters took to the streets Saturday in nearly 70 cities and towns across Russia calling for the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny — a massive show of defiance against President Vladimir Putin and his widening crackdowns against challenges to his power.

More than 1,850 people were detained, including Navalny's wife, Yulia.

The rallies — from Russia's Far East to central Moscow — came less than a week after Navalny returned from Germany, where he recovered from a nerve agent poisoning in August during a trip to Siberia. Navalny was arrested shortly after stepping off the plane.

Some 40,000 people participated in the Moscow protest, the Reuters news agency reported, while police said 4,000 people took part.

Tens of thousands of others joined protests across the country — sending a powerful message to the Kremlin on the reach and resolve of Navalny's network. It also underscored the pressure facing Russian authorities who must decide whether to keep Navalny behind bars.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-navaly-protests-putin/2021/01/23/0c2ddbbe-5b57-11eb-a849-6f9423a75ffd_story.html

[Tender Branson]

The Russian version of the Obersalzberg retreat ...

Berghof => Schwarzmeerhof (Black Sea Palace)

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Navalny is a deeply flawed man.

If Navalny were a Western style liberal then he wouldn't have gotten anywhere in Russia.

The arrest drew a lot of buzz to the Palace project made by Navalny’s team. This was a shrewd political move that was very successful to one-up Putin.

It is rare for a politician to outmaneuver Putin - this after Navalny basically got a government official to admit to poisoning him over the phone seems to indicate that the West may have underestimated Navalny’s competency.

Putin might be competent but most decisions in Russia are made by the people around Putin and they're considerably less competent. When your system prioritizes political reliability over all else you inevitably get a lot of inept yes men who can't be trusted to make independent decisions.

This is not just true of Russia, trust me.

If it isn't Putin's lackeys that are responsible then Putin has clearly lost his edge. A parade of boneheaded decisions have led to probably the biggest threat to Putin's rule since 2011.

I'm not sure if this is the biggest protest of Moscow but it's definitely the biggest protest outside of Moscow. Normally protests in Russia are either about highly local issues or they're entirely focused in Moscow (occasionally SPB) but Navalny has brought out people from nearly every city from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok.

Saint Petersburg:

https://twitter.com/msvetov/status/1352966769179308032

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352981831046594572

Ivanovo:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352912374840373249

Nizhny Novgorod:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352943979361431552

Izhevsk:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352946564294205440

Kazan:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352940420536348672

Astrakhan:

https://twitter.com/lpr_tw/status/1352979548426690561

Lipetsk:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352971435103416322

Ulan Ude:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352867522215870464

Yaroslavl:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352935615906664449

Chita:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352930241140948992

Krasnoyarsk:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352915736503721984

Irkutsk:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352869990152761344

Ekaterinberg:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352907756810985472

Vladivostok:

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352861085938888705

A mob even showed up to Yakutsk in the middle of a -50 snowstorm!

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352860440766902273

also America isn't the only country with horned shamans

https://twitter.com/civ_soc/status/1352956337320308736

[Beet]

I'm no fan of Putin but from what I've read about Navalny he's a racist/nationalist who has been hiding is true views since 2014 to curry favor with the West. He seems like a Russian Trump. I don't see why this guy of all people is the one to finally bring people out in the streets.

And say what you will about Putin, from a Russian perspective he's been the most successful Russian leader in a century. Russia was pretty much on a path of inexorable decline in the 20th century until he stabilized and reversed the situation.

[Astatine]

I'm no fan of Putin but from what I've read about Navalny he's a racist/nationalist who has been hiding is true views since 2014 to curry favor with the West. He seems like a Russian Trump. I don't see why this guy of all people is the one to finally bring people out in the streets.

And say what you will about Putin, from a Russian perspective he's been the most successful Russian leader in a century. Russia was pretty much on a path of inexorable decline in the 20th century until he stabilized and reversed the situation.

Yeah, Navalny is pretty much a Russian nationalist, which make up a significant share of the extremely diverse "anti-Putin coalition" in Russia which includes nationalists, socialists, conservatives, liberals, greens - who only have their detest of Putin in common.

From what I heard so far, it is not Navalny himself who is the reason for the protests, but rather a documentary on his YouTube channel that was released recently. It exposed large parts of Putin's corruption schemes. It's available with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI

Discontent with Putin and the "United Russia" (ER) party (of which Putin is nominally not a member, likely due to its unpopularity for being corrupt) has been growing over the years, and the release of this video was the last straw. A pension reform some years ago was extremely unpopular, and attempts to power-grab (reset of Putin's terms so he could serve beyond 2024) did not help Putin either - Just take a look at the opinion polls (yes, the opposition parties are OINO parties - opposition in name only - but a significant drop in approval for ER is definitely visible):



Now imagine, you're a Russian and are well aware of ER's corruption schemes, and an oppositional activist releases a video showing that Putin was involved in all of that - But gets detained the same day? Does that increase your trust in the state?
Large parts of the population live under rather poor conditions and the pension reform hit them hard - But in the meantime, the Tsar President built himself a castle for 100 billion rubels?

[Crumpets]

https://twitter.com/jason_corcoran/status/1353083506138742786

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1352938748179341314

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Putin is a sociopath who murdered his own people in the 1999 apartment bombings. I'd like to see him replaced, but hopefully by someone who wants to keep Russia independent instead of a "democratic" stooge like Yeltsin.

[GMantis]

Putin is a sociopath who murdered his own people in the 1999 apartment bombings. I'd like to see him replaced, but hopefully by someone who wants to keep Russia independent instead of a "democratic" stooge like Yeltsin.

What an interesting combination between a reasonable and a ridiculous opinion.

[CumbrianLefty]

This would be highly unsurprising news.

[CumbrianLefty]

Putin is a sociopath who murdered his own people in the 1999 apartment bombings. I'd like to see him replaced, but hopefully by someone who wants to keep Russia independent instead of a "democratic" stooge like Yeltsin.

i'm well aware of this allegation, but has it actually been proved beyond reasonable doubt?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Putin is a sociopath who murdered his own people in the 1999 apartment bombings. I'd like to see him replaced, but hopefully by someone who wants to keep Russia independent instead of a "democratic" stooge like Yeltsin.

i'm well aware of this allegation, but has it actually been proved beyond reasonable doubt?

Depends on your definition of reasonable doubt.

The Wikipedia article has a pretty detailed rundown. Very abbreviated summary: apparent apartment building bomb discovered before detonation, prompting a city-wide emergency and hunt for the perpetrators. Half a day later, after the perpetrators were identified as FSB employees, the narrative did a very abrupt direction change to "this was all a security exercise".