sorry for this man, he could have shut up and live a decent live of sheeple (or better than that, had he stayed in germany), but he chose not to …
tip-to-the-hat
But…but the Russians have a great system for preventing shopping cart theft, and Moscow is a wonderful clean city, and…
He was an intriguing figure, as he made it a bit easier to imagine a future Russia as a free and open society.
I wonder what his private frame of mind was when he took the bold decision in 2021 to return from Germany to what he knew would be immediate detention in Russia. Was he guided by optimism, positioning himself to be the leader of a post-revolutionary Russia? Or was he guided by fatalism, thinking that he would always have to look over his shoulder abroad and that he might be slightly safer (or most useful as a martyr) if he was detained by Putin’s regime?
Since this thread lacks a news report link:
I take it he knew he was a marked man, that sooner or later he’d encounter a smear of some deadly toxin or a convenient high window and “lying low” would only delay it. So might as well go in and fight face to face the known consequences.
I’m sure he was thinking that it is rather hard to be a Russian politician when you live in Germany.
In that case, he made the wrong decision, wouldn’t you agree?
There’s a long tradition of politicians going into exile in the hopes of eventually returning.
For example, Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya lives in Lithuania.
I agree it is also hard to be a politician when you are dead. But it is not like being murdered was merely a hypothetical concept to him, and he obviously had access to a lot of intelligence we are not privy to and still made his decision, so it is hard to say from the outside exactly what he miscalculated.
He was brave, sure, but - “free and open society”? Navalny was no liberal. Just ask Georgians, or Crimean Ukrainians, or immigrants.
Anyone find out exactly what the weather was like when he “decided to take a walk outside” up there in the Arctic?
I don’t know why he would return to Russia after mocking their Secret Service and making a popular documentary. But I do not have his understanding, nor his courage.
well, Schröder pulled that one off, quite convincingly …
So did Lenin.
Isn’t it “tip-of-the-hat”?
He couldn’t have been surprised by this outcome of his return to Russia, so I’m also puzzled by his choice to come back. Maybe we’ll never know.
I heard it reported early this morning that the recorded temperature in the nearest town to the gulag was -5F, with a windchill factor of -27F.
ETA: I’m saddened by the news of Navalny’s death, but of course not surprised. My heart breaks for his wife.
How did he accidentally fall out of a window? Aren’t prison windows barred?
Perhaps just as well. It seemed like every couple weeks he’d have 15 years added to his sentence, And then getting to sent to the arctic, His only hope, as it were, would be an overthrow revolution or if Putin were actually terminally ill.
Nobody’s takin’ it to the streets. The revolution will not be televised as it will not occur.
Said well.
The New York Times asked a number of Russian commentators what they thought motivated Navalny to return to Russia.
Gift link:
Some people are now questioning the unbearable lightness of Tucker’s interview.