From [TBC] To The Polar Lands - Rolling Russia / "Near Abroad" News Thread

The guy who shot him died a couple of hours ago in hospital. It's rumoured that he's an ex Ukrainian National Guard soldier but that wouldn't tell us anything, if true. Hired killers often have a service background.

Died from what?

He was shot by Voronenkov's bodyguard during the attack.

What happened to the bodyguard?

He is fine, apparently. Was wounded but only lightly.

Seems more or less confirmed that the killer was ex-Ukrainian army now. The Kyiv police chief says they are working under the assumption it was a contract killing.

Separately, this is interesting:

http://www.rferl.org/a/former-ukraine-finance-minister-jaresko-to-manage-puerto-rico-financial-crisis/28387912.html

Natalie Jaresko, the former Ukrainian finance minister has been appointed by the US to overhaul Puerto Rico's budget. Expect lots of privatisation and cuts to services / pensions.

Local media and the nationalist MP Oleh Lyashko are claiming the killer was a member of the far-right / ultranationalist Azov battalion but again that doesn't shed much light on whether there was a nationalist motive, he was a hired gun or, as the eccentric Interior Minister claims, he was a Russian government plant in the Ukrainian militia. Hired gun is substantially more likely than anything else.

The big news over the last few days has been the Navalny protests centred around Medvedev. The numbers are still low - 10k-15k in Moscow - but for the first time they have been coordinated across the country in places as diverse as Tomsk and Makhachkala, adding up to an estimated 60k people nationwide. There is a profile of him here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-28/inside-alexei-navalny-s-long-shot-bid-to-beat-putin

He is still probably barred from standing for election but there is speculation that this might be reversed and that it could be better for him to stand and be defeated.

With perfect timing, Nadia Savchenko has given a pretty good reminder of why pinning your political hopes on unpredictable nationalists to fight oligarchy might not be the best idea. She is the Ukrainian pilot who was jailed in Russia, released to a hero's welcome, courted by politicians and hyped as a potential president by the western press.

In a phone-in, she agreed with a caller who claimed Ukraine was under 'the Jewish yoke' and she used it as a springboard for an antisemitic rant about how Jews have 80% of the power in Ukraine and she "doesn't like yids". This will hopefully be the end of the puff pieces about her but it's another depressing reminder that there are no easy saviours waiting in the wings.

Jesus that's messed up.

At least 10 people killed in two separate bomb attacks on the St Petersburg metro.

Reports that it could be three.

Seeing just one now.

Yes, there has been discussion of two devices that didn't explode but i think some of the confusion was initially caused by the practice of interchange stations having two names.

Poot is in StP to give a speech

That's an interesting choice to replace Scott Weiland.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/The_Wire_Poot.jpg
http://www.kshe95.com/sites/g/files/exi371/f/styles/large_730/public/article-images-featured/773541-386141.jpg?itok=NjWg4Rly

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/world/europe/chechen-authorities-arresting-and-killing-gay-men-russian-paper-says.html?_r=0

By ANDREW E. KRAMER
APRIL 1, 2017
MOSCOW — First, two television reporters vanished. Then a waiter went missing. Over the past week, men ranging in age from 16 to 50 have disappeared from the streets of Chechnya.

On Saturday, a leading Russian opposition newspaper confirmed a story already circulating among human rights activists: The Chechen authorities were arresting and killing gay men.

While abuses by security services in the region, where Russia fought a two-decade war against Islamic insurgents, have long been a stain on President Vladimir V. Putin’s human rights record, gay people had not previously been targeted on a wide scale.

The men were detained “in connection with their nontraditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such,” the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, reported, citing Russian federal law enforcement officials, who blamed the local authorities.

By Saturday, the paper reported, and an analyst of the region with her own sources confirmed, that more than 100 gay men had been detained. The newspaper had the names of three murder victims, and suspected many others had died in extrajudicial killings.

A spokesman for Chechnya’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, denied the report in a statement to Interfax on Saturday, calling the article “absolute lies and disinformation.”

“You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic,” the spokesman, Alvi Karimov, told the news agency.

“If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return,” Mr. Karimov said.

Yeah this is a horrible situation. Even if the details aren't entirely clear, dozens of people definitely seem to have been arrested despite no legal grounds for doing so and there are credible reports of assault/ torture, at the least, which reinforce the idea that Chechnya is a law unto itself.

The spokesman's quote is one of the most chilling things I've ever heard.

It is such a brazen admission of murderous intent, it seems quite shocking even by Kadyrov regime standards.

Long piece by Oliver Bullough on Ukraine, the UK, Yanukovich, Poroshenko, corruption, Panama papers, Hunter Biden, the Atlantic Council and more is worth a read:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/12/the-money-machine-how-a-high-profile-corruption-investigation-fell-apart

Reports are coming through suggesting that the suspected Moscow "Grand Theft Auto" killers have been caught.
They were apparently putting spikes on roads late at night and shooting anyone whose cars got stopped by them, for no apparent reason. Nothing was ever stolen. They were thought to have killed at least 14 people in the last few months. It sounds a bit like an urban legend but is supposedly 100% true.

..........

This gets stranger. The police appear to have arrested a gang of 'Islamist terrorists' from Central Asia for the crimes, with the leader being killed during an attempt to take him in.

Quite why a terror cell would have done all this and not bothered to tell anyone hasn't been explained.

― Wristy Hurlington (ShariVari), Thursday, 13 November 2014 13:59 (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

!!!!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/01/three-moscow-grand-theft-auto-gang-suspects-shot-dead-trying-to-flee-court

Ukraine revoked Misha Saakashvili's passport a few weeks ago and, to much mockery, has been beefing up border security with Poland in case he tries to get back in. He has, according to reports, literally just run through the line of border guards and broken back in. This is completely ridiculous/ amazing.

I heard that. He's stateless now isn't he?

Yes. He says that Ukraine revoked his passport illegally, they say he lied on his application for citizenship and that he failed to disclose he was under criminal investigation- which, tbh, everyone always knew.

He had to give up Georgian citizenship to take a place in the Ukrainian government. I assume he will be American before too long.

Aargh. A Krasnodar couple in their mid-thirties have apparently been arrested for killing and eating dozens of people over the course of twenty years.

The man lost his phone - which someone found and took to the police when they saw it had selfies of him posing with body parts.

Amazing reporting on the battle over a Kazakh oligarch's assets / the spies and counter spies brought in to fight it

https://amp.ft.com/content/1411b1a0-a310-11e7-9e4f-7f5e6a7c98a2

hey shari can you shed more light on the krasnodar killers? my bf does a murder podcast this’d be nice for

(apologies if it’s too soon and thus in bad taste)

Honestly, i don't think a lot more has come out yet, in terms of official statements. The main report was from a Russian site called Mash and most of the Western coverage has been, more or less, a verbatim translation. The only apparently developments are that the woman has been determined to be mentally competent and they have confessed to killing 30 people. The investigators are currently going through their freezer to determine how much of the meat is human.

The local tabloids have suggested that Nataliya had previously been a nurse but had been applying for jobs as a cook at local bistros (thankfully unsuccessfully). The man (Dmitry) is apparently an orphan who was adopted at the age of three - which i imagine will lead to speculation about the link between lack of affection in early years and psychopathy. Again, this is all from the tabloids to take it with a pinch of salt but the adoptive parents apparently had a biological child four years later and paid less attention to Dimitry. His adoptive mother died when he was fifteen and his father kicked him out of the house - around the same time he took up with Nataliya (who would have been in her early twenties). They're both described as heavy drinkers and it's thought that a lot of their victims would have been people they drank with.

What's the podcast btw?

it’s called Bloody Murder, and thanks that’s an effed up sounding story!

Ha I just mentioned this to my podcast friends and one was all "oh yeah I already heard about this" - its all over the news!

I'll definitely give the podcast a listen.

In other true crime news, Newsweek has a report on the Grand Theft Auto killings around Moscow:

http://www.newsweek.com/2017/10/06/death-russia-grand-theft-auto-killers-moscow-notorious-gang-673110.html

They're still a complete mystery - a series of terrorist attacks with no attempt at communicating a public message vs a series of robberies in which nothing was stolen vs something else entirely.

i've been enjoying The Putin Interviews on Showtime. that was cool to see him and Oliver Stone watch "Dr. Strangelove" together in part 2.

afterward Stone gifts the DVD to him but as they are departing Putin turns to the camera to reveal the DVD case was empty and jokes "Typical American gift". lol

Russian opposition figures say Ksenia Sobchak’s presidential bid is a Kremlin-organized sham.

Any thoughts on this 3d chess theory, SV?

I think Sobchak is probably entirely sincere and is an 'opposition figure' of sorts but it plays into the Kremlin's hands. She generally appears out of her depth in political interviews and represents everything the bulk of the country tends to resent about 'liberal' figures - ultra-rich jet-setting Muscovite, links to the corruption and chaos of the 90s, perception of snobbery, etc. The reason Navalny has been relatively successful is that he represents, for better or for worse, a break from that.

The nature of the presidential election process means that left-field candidates pretty much need the support of established political infrastructure to generate the 300,000 signatures required to be in the running and there's a strong suspicion that United Russia will help Sobchak along with that. I don't think it's a fix, as such, but it couldn't really be much better for Putin if it was.

Thanks. Could fathom why they offed Navalny like they did for obvious reasons, I cannot imagine they see Sobchak as a threat, and if anything, could (ab)use her to show they do allow opponents, they are a democracy etc. Especially in the light of the recent Navalny trial condemnations from the EU. Sobchak could be a perfect "See? She's running and we're not stopping here innit? Nothing to see here" candidate that will never amass an amount of votes that would mean something.

She is following a pretty familiar path - it was Prokhorov last time.

It’s a shame as the grass roots liberal / centre left parties made a pretty good showing at the local elections (albeit mostly in Moscow and on a tiny turnout) by engaging with communities, using the internet to ensure that voters were aware of issues and who their candidates were, etc. There was a sense that, at least to some degree, they were figuring out some quasi-effective strategies, as limited as their reach may have been. Sobchak tanks that by having no platform and offering no reason to vote for her other than as a vote against *whoever it may be* that is backed by United Russia.

I can understand why people are suspicious but never underestimate the egotism and general cluelessness of the kind of ‘liberal’ figures with the money and standing to make a challenge at the moment.

nuclear accident in September?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nuclearpower-accident/french-institute-suspects-nuclear-accident-in-russia-or-kazakhstan-in-september-idUSKBN1D92LJ

This is an obvious, blatant attack on the freedom of the press in the US.

Of course the US government is not forcing state media outlets from allied countries to register as foreign agents.

This is a dangerous precedent meant to silent critical media. https://t.co/ot9wBB5oRs

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 9, 2017

The implications for RT are probably quite minimal in reality - they can play the victim in the short term and possibly win a humiliating court case in the longer term.

The real impact is the 99.5% probably that Russia is going to extend its own foreign agent laws to the international media in retaliation - which is likely to mean RFE/RL, Radio Svoboda, etc journalists kicked out of the country or, at the very least, under pressure to disclose every contact they make to the government under pain of arrest.

It’s a terrible move for the US to make and will end up hitting state-funded American reporters hardest.

Xps,

Looks like there might have been a leak near the Mayak processing plant in September:

https://www.rferl.org/amp/report-russia-confirms-radioactivty-ruthenium-106-emanating-southeastern-urals/28865773.html

Some context on Mayak from a while back.

https://apnews.com/ba820f02074247fc8486b63b7c87d6cb/russias-nuclear-nightmare-flows-down-radioactive-river

Ozyorsk is still a ‘closed town’.

thanks

Poroshenko had Saakashvili arrested today. Misha’s supporters busted him out of the police van and whisked him off. No border can stop him, no jail can hold him.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gSdb2c0Eve4

Well, a prison probably could but not a two-door Ford transit, certainly.

In another bizarre twist, Jane Collins of UKIP - an MEP last seen getting rinsed for £358k in libel damages she claims not to be able to pay (having defamed a number of people wrt the Rochdale grooming saga) - has just turned up in Kyiv to defend Misha.

http://www.eurointegration.com.ua/news/2017/12/5/7074665/

Saakashvili is safely in jail, having been arrested by armed police at his home, and is now on hunger strike.

The Prosecutor General, Yuri Lutsenko, has said the Ukrainian authorities have taped evidence of him accepting money from ‘criminal gangs linked to Yanukovich’, which Misha says has been fabricated.

The nature of Ukrainian domestic politics means there is a reasonable chance it is true - but ‘criminal gangs’ and ‘linked to Yanukovich’ have extremely elastic meanings. Odessa, where he was governor, has a large and sophisticated organised crime network linked to the ports and Saakashvili was often rumoured to be working with them.

However, the shakeup of oligarchs, many linked to crime networks, has left former Yanukovich associates like Rinat Akhmetov closely allied with either Poroshenko or his rival Yatseniuk.

Nobody is innocent and picking on Saakashvili, who has about 3% support for his party nationally, looks like weakness. idk how much trouble his anti-corruption campaign was likely to cause but a high-profile ‘political prisoner’ with good ties to the US is the last thing a leader still needing massive financial and political support from the international community should be looking to get.

This is going on in the background:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/12/07/its-time-for-the-west-to-get-tough-on-ukraine/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.71994705e8db&__twitter_impression=true

"He is a super president and a super leader" - New "SuperPutin" exhibition opens in Moscow with the Russian leader portrayed in various heroic roles; from riding a bear to firing missiles in the colours of the Russian flag pic.twitter.com/LxQ9WZOxfD

— AFP news agency (@AFP) December 10, 2017