More of Kremlin’s Opponents Are Ending Up Dead

It's getting more like the DNC every week !

The NYT publishes a steady stream of articles like this one and it's difficult to take them seriously because they are always such blatantly biased propaganda efforts.

A representative sample:

Other countries, notably Israel and the United States, pursue targeted killings, but in a strict counterterrorism context. No other major power employs murder as systematically and ruthlessly as Russia does against those seen as betraying its interests abroad

So America's totally admitted and open drone strike program is "targeted killing in a strict counter-terrorism context" and not "systematic and ruthless murder against those betraying its interests". You say potato, I say potato.

Even the headline is open propaganda: "More of the Kremlin's opponents are ending up dead". So I expected to read news about someone who has newly turned up dead. But no: it's about someone who got sick with the symptoms of food poisoning and then recovered. Although he claims he was poisoned, there was no actual trace of any such poison so all we have is his word for it. The article then quotes an "authority" who says "If it’s a skilled job, that means it’s a state asset". But we already know this guy wasn't the target of a skilled job, otherwise he actually would be dead and not fully recovered from something that could easily have been ordinary food poisoning. Surely the mark of a skilled state assassination is that it works, or at least, the target is left in no doubt as to the source of the sickness?

The rest of the article is re-hashes of previous suspicious deaths, but almost always (with the exception of Litvinenko) without any evidence. An anti-doping official dies of a heart attack. Murder, or something that does sometimes happen to aging men who have just spent the day engaging in strenuous physical exercise? No answers are provided, just assumptions and implications.

On Magnitsky: "To date, five people who either handed over such information or were potential witnesses have died under mysterious circumstances that, in their sophistication, suggest state-sponsored killings. One of the victims was Mr. Magnitsky, whose death was hardly the stuff of cloak-and-dagger security operations."

So it says people involved in the Magnitsky affair suffered "sophisticated" deaths that "suggest" state-sponsored killings. It then immediately admits that one of those five didn't die in mysterious ways at all, but neglects to mention the very much obvious state involvement in his death: he was held in a Russian prison where he developed gall stones due to inadequate medical attention.

I'm completely sure the Russians do occasionally kill off people who get in the way of Russia's agenda. But when I read things like the above I know I'm reading something that's intended to influence my political views, not a neutral re-telling of events.

And before any idiots start up about paid trolls: no, I'm not Russian nor connected to Russia in any way. I'm a westerner who lives in Europe. I just despise western "holier than thou" propaganda. They think people can't see through it.