[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53091298
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maksym_Shapoval
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...
You might also be surprised to learn that Andrei Tarkovsky, director of the film Stalker (1979), didn't personally learn C++ and program S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (2007). Neither did Arkady and Boris Strugatsky who wrote the novel Roadside Picnic (1971) that all of these works, including Metro, are inspired by.
The Russian omnipresent assassination machine is as much a myth as its invincible military.
That said, the West keeps playing as if there's no hostile power trying to infiltrate everything it can, 30-50yo Russian males with unexplained biography gaps or no background checks at all still allowed to travel freely, establish businesses with sketchy financials and so on.
They got a prostitute the night before their botched Salisbury trip, rather than shag each other. The whole gay bit came from their Russian TV ruse appearance.
but plenty of not-men out there doing SVR work. Anna Chapman comes to mind, or the little lady who was making friends with the NRA and all of those GOP politicians...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Chapman
I'll grant you illegals in general, those are typically married couples.
And yes, I agree that Chinese nationals are to be treated with way more suspicion as well. Anyone with relatives in China can be pushed to do whatever CCP needs. Also everyone with official links to the CCP should be under 24/7 monitoring, something something "covert police stations" and Confucius Institute.
If I was Russian I'd never go above the 1st floor of any building, it would be ingrained in my culture.
Sometimes I think authoritarianism in the US can get pretty bad but then I read what goes on over there and I realize it's not even close.
For many, it happened in 2014 when the precursor of the current RU-UA war has started, with the (technically brilliant, admittedly) capture of Crimea, and the support of insurgency in western Ukraine.
Being a vocal critic of the Russian regime is and has been unsafe in Russia, for many years, and for obvious reasons. Look at the guy named Girkin [1]: a hugely prominent Russian nationalist and imperialist, who has actually fought on the Russian side in the RU-UA conflict, and only demanded more of the war, is under arrest. He happened to criticize the ineptitude of the Russian military too loudly.
Girkin had criticized the military for over a year, and suffered no consequences. He is said to have protectors among the security services. His troubles started only after he called for a new president for Russia, someone other than Putin – in Russia you can criticize the boyars, but you can’t ever call for the tsar’s removal.
or very far from that
Gonzalo Lira supports a lot of the same positions as Russian propaganda would like to promote.
I don’t know why anyone would expect him to remain free when he decided to stay in Ukraine after the invasion started when he continued to justify Russias brutal invasion of Ukraine.
He also said that he was fleeing the country too hungry after he got released on bail, so he clearly doesn’t make smart decisions.
I mean we don't really blame US or Britain for jailing openly (pro)Nazi propagandists operating inside their territories during WW2?
OTH few people are willing to justify Nazi Germany imprisoning/killing opposition activists in Germany.
Of course Ukraine is deeply flawed country in many ways (just like US/Britain/etc. were back then) that doesn't mean that the war itself is necessarily morally ambiguous or that Russia's action aren't wrong/evil.
>Of course Ukraine is deeply flawed country in many ways
The irony being that due to its history many of its flaws and values are very Russian in character. That includes imprisoning Lira for "informational terrorism".
I didn't realize that these Russian characteristics would be quite so popular on Hacker News though. Apparently freedom of speech isn't that important.
Equating squelching propagandists of the invaders of your country to limits on freedom of speech shows that you don't actually understand that freedom of speech is a right, but not an absolute one, merely a shorthand for saying that you can criticize the government without ending up in jail. And in that sense spreading propaganda for an active belligerent enemy goes well across the limits set on free speech because it falls under 'aiding and abetting the enemy'. At some point in the not so distant past that got you a cigarette and a bullet, in that order. Freedom of speech is very important, as is a sense of reality and proportionality.
Jailing a person who spreads the propaganda of the country that has invaded you, and also gives Russian intelligence the position of your military units?.
Absolutely the right thing to do.
As a sidenote, that dumbass was stupid enough to live-tweet his attempt to jump bail and illegally cross the border. But I would expect nothing less from someone who unironically went by the name "Coach Red Pill".
Personally I'm quite attached to freedom of speech (defined as "I think people who espouse views I despise should be allowed to do so"), but I know that many people aren't and they are extremely happy with both Ukraine and the west aping Russia.
The comparison to Glukhovsky really doesn’t work.
FWIW you can replace “Lira” with “The Amish” in this sentence and it’s still true. Hardly a justification for throwing someone in jail.
Leonardo di Caprio seems to believe at least the first half.
> When the war broke out, he started parroting Russian propaganda
This is more like it.
Mao believed in freedom of political speech. For views he liked. Stalin believed in freedom of speech. For views he agreed with. If believe in freedom of speech you either believe in freedom of speech for views that you despise or you don't believe in freedom of speech at all.
It appears you don't believe in freedom of speech at all.
some of whom have been murdered shortly after appearing on the list.
Yet not only she's still in parliament but she still running one of the opposition parties there.