Watched this last night on YT. Worth it. The level of corruption and cronyism in Russian politics is out of this world.

Imagine the level of corruption when you can build a house worth 1.350 million dollars (1.35 billion for Americans)!

Have the YT link to share?

@ ~0:13 "On August 18th 2021, the court unlawfully arrested Alexey Navelny and sent him to prison".

What? What is this? How long have I been asleep?

- ed

I'm an idiot - I'm guessing this is a typo - should have been 'January', right?

I watched around 20 minutes till now. Seems like a professionally prepared documentary targeting younger Russian generation. Reminds me of a similar documentary by BBC some years ago. For sure a lot of effort has been put into the making of this.

I am not a Russian, but it looks to me even if all these allegations were to be true, still Putin remains the person that re-build modern Russia. This documentary can only make people in Russia like Putin even more. I will try to watch the rest next out of curiosity, but I doubt it will change my mind.

It is also heroic this guy takes a few months to recover and finds the energy to present so much well-researched evidence. I wounder because, I have seen the pattern in this documentary in some other documentaries before - last in one about Syria's Assad I watched - show some facts that are maybe true, then follow by a conclusion that me as someone who has no idea on those details cannot verify but is supposed to trust in context. Maybe these works on weak minds as they say in Star Wars. This is subtle propaganda in the making.

Not sure what is expected audience for such level of international manipulative politics here.

>I am not a Russian

What will you do with 15 roubles earned by writing this comment then?

Lol they are so desperate to hire trolls, is it Google translate or what?

It is really crazy how ugly and tasteless that whole thing is. You would think the most powerful man in Russia would have access to better designers.

I'm sure the access is there, but who would dare dispute Putin's tastes?

Dictator chic.

I wish one day the West is brave enough to freeze (or seize) assets of putin’s cronies (for example, a lot of them have real estate in Florida and London). But the West instead choses to punish the ordinary Russians and Ukrainians via non-personal sanctions like they did with Crimea.

You mean like the Magnitsky Act?

yes, this is an excellent example - we need more of that. And, btw, overwhelming amount of Russians support it.

Unfortunately they enjoy all the dirty Russian money flooding into the likes of London, don't they?

Russians are poor and don't get London floods.

Not the Russians who built Moscow-on-Thames.

When you investigate the case it turns the other way around. Bill Browder is a corrupt and Magnitsky was rightly in prison. The Russian prison conditions are bad, however I don't see the sanctions targetting the prison system in Russia (not even speaking about how widely this could be applied to most countries).

It's pretty hard to do anything to a kleptocracy where the leadership doesn't just pass on / accept any hardship to the locals if they don't care about them.

a lot of edoro’s members (putin’s) party would start leaving the party if there is a danger that they can’t go to their Miami’s houses anymore.

Leave the party for, what?

I'm not sure they have many other choices to maintain their power / assets at home / etc. I think most of them are effectively without much in the way of alternatives.

As it is infighting inside Russia can be pretty brutal / risky. I can't imagine losing any political clout would be a good choice.

too many of them have stolen enough to live comfortably even in US without having to work ever again. It has always been “Plan B” for many, so they can just take that.

It doesn't work like that in Russia, this is not the type of mentality. You have to keep returning favors one way or another and unless you risk your ass on American soil for the FSB you or your wealth won't last long.

That doesn't make sense.

You suggested they should freeze the assets of these guys ...

FBI/CIA probably tracks all of them and knows where they own things. It wouldn't be toooo hard to repossess or destroy.

Navalny is courageous.

He is inserting his head right back into the lion's mouth, having just recovered from the previous lion bite that miraculously missed the main artery.

Rat's bite. There was nothing lion about it.

A rat as big as a lion, though.

I think I found the palace on maps: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.4193687,38.2052689,844m/data...

People are looking at Belarus, where after half a year of protests, nothing has changed. 80% voted against the strong man, but he just laughs in their faces - what can you do to me? He just needs to pay his soldiers well.

Navalny is an incredible charismatic character and one of the few voices left who are still heard outside Russia (mainly because he managed to stay alive). It's been a crazy year for many but this is some next-level horror: Getting poisoned by the secret police, then gets help by bellingcat with counter-intelligence, chases his hunters and gets one of them to confess the whole scheme on an insecure phone call with a stranger, voluntarily travels back to his home country where he faces likely arrest, gets arrested fully knowing that while he is away his team will also publish what will lay bare Vladimir Vladimirovich's financial network. All during a pandemic when everyone is glued to the news.

It's not the best timing for the release of this and 2 days later would have been better. But I understand his team wants to release this ASAP considering where he is it's a critical and dangerous time for him.

The question is will the West (especially Europe) step up and start sanctioning the individuals in that network directly. I don't think this will happen and I think Navalny knows. A sensitive topic when what enables this are the tax havens in our own countries (Cyprus, Malta, City of London, Channel Islands, Switzerland). Also German ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on the board of Gazprom[1] the moment he stepped back from politics, or the Austrian politician who had Putin as a guest at her wedding[2]

[0] Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands:_Tax_Havens_a...

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/gerhard-schr%C3%B6der-russia-germany/a...

[2] https://www.thelocal.at/20180819/putin-brings-cossack-choir-...

I'm glad to see this story on HN. It's one of the biggest corruption reports ever in Russian history, from what I can think of (I'm not Russian, so my knowledge is limited), and it's a bit disheartening to see this story drown among all the attention Biden's inauguration is getting.

That this isn't on the front page is mind boggling. Several were up late last night binging on his videos.

1) Lift all Russian sanctions. Show the people it isn't about them.

2) Everyone who owns shares in a large index fund should find how they were shafted in the bribes and go after Putin's shells under RICO (and EU equivalents). Tell the Biden administration to GTFO - he did nothing in 8 years - the man is incompetent. Get real attorneys with Navalny moxie finding creative ways to impound everything that Putin's cronies own until three times the amount stolen is paid back.

2 cents from someone living in a post-soviet neighboring-to-Russia country.

What I hear very frequently (mostly) from Russian people is stuff like "not sure Navalny is clear himself" or "how come a random blogger know about / be involved in so much?" etc. Which then somehow invalidates all the vast amounts of proof of corruption, injustice, and plain incompetency going on.

Muddying the waters appears to be Russia's/Putin's weapon of choice. Russian information-bubble is strong.

Doesn't only apply to Navalny situation, of course. Same goes for the occupation of Crimea, striking of MH17, as well as lots of past crimes that the elite wants to sugar-coat for political reasons.

I guess the moral here is to take this into account when someone tells you how the situation in/with Russia is "actually not like the media portrays". (spoiler: it's likely even worse)

"both sides", "everyone does it", "they're all politicians", "this is normal" are all common refrains from people who wish to excuse poor behavior.

It's not just an issue with Russians. In the West, many liberals have been convinced Snowden and Assange are traitors for airing the government's dirty laundry and crimes - if you can convince them of that, it's not unbelievable to convince Russians Navalny is a traitor, too.

44.419426,38.205855

I am deeply sceptical that this property belongs to Putin. On paper it belongs to a Russian billionaire and he may even have invited Putin to his residence. But there appears to be no real proof given that Putin owns this property. Good propaganda piece though for raising anger. This will now be the 20th Putin Mansion if true.

Next up in this comment thread, China is treating the Uighurs well, the taliban is not so bad, and the climate is okay.

Whataboutism. If you have any proof that the accusations of Navalny are true, then come forward with it. Otherwise I just use Hitchen's Razor.

Sarcasm is a bit different that what aboutism, but I’ll grant you it’s not mutually exclusive. I pointed out other well known affairs that invested parties also would try to cast doubt on. Denying that the ruling Russian oligarch is corrupt is not credible without big proof, which was not provided.

I assume you think navalny faked his novichok poisoning or do you at least admit Putin is ruthless and attempts to poison his enemies.Putin’s henchmen poisoning navalny is fake in your opinion right?

Edit: ps please downvote me and this whole comment chain. This isn’t an appropriate chain for hacker news. A bunch of unsupported statements against widely believed concepts and also political of nature ? Got to have strong supporting material for that or it will devolve fast in here.

> Denying that the ruling Russian oligarch is corrupt is not credible without big proof, which was not provided.

It's about Putin and you need proof for this claim (against Putin) and not the other way around. Proving a negative is pretty much impossible in this case.

> I assume you think navalny faked his novichok poisoning or do you at least admit Putin is ruthless and attempts to poison his enemies.Putin’s henchmen poisoning navalny is fake in your opinion right?

Red Herring.

> A bunch of unsupported statements against widely believed concepts ...

Appeal to the people.

PS.: I downvote nothing.

The content of your replies really speak for themselves, all readers will be able to judge conclusively from what has been said so far.

The one part I want to clarify is the part about downvoting. That was addressed to readers in general, not you.

You can provide no evidence. The source provides no evidence, because it bases its article solely on Navalny('s allies). Navalny is Putin's political opponent and has therefore obvious vested interests and provides also no real evidence. So essentially what remains is a smear campaign.

Occam/Hitchen's Razor.

> The one part I want to clarify is the part about downvoting. That was addressed to readers in general, not you.

So you actually don't reply to my argument, but to your "audience", however technically replying to my post. You see the issue?