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Comment by L_226 | Hacker News Reader

I had thought it was going to be a fentanyl or carfentanyl aerosol spray, I suppose that might have rendered him incoherent sooner though. The use of VX seems like bragging really (as if the act wasn't already adolescent enough).

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Oh yeah... like using Polonium to kill Litvinenko... this is all about sending a message.

Or obscuring the source. If I wanted to cause a Chinese-North Korea conflict, I'd do it in a way that gives me enough time to tie up loose ends and points in a certain direction.

Same with Litvinenko. We will never find out the true story. Was it a message? Probably. But from who to who? Might have been FSB, but there were plenty of other parties that really didn't like Litvinenko and could have used Russian Polonium either to blame the FSB or to tell the FSB not to fuck with them, because they had the means to blame them for random hits (or a million other possible reasons).

> Might have been FSB, but there were plenty of other parties that really didn't like Litvinenko and could have used Russian Polonium either to blame the FSB or to tell the FSB not to fuck with them, because they had the means to blame them for random hits (or a million other possible reasons)

According to the book 'A Very Expensive Poison' by Luke Harding, the Polonium used in the Litvinenko assassination is only produced in one reactor in the world, located in Ukraine. It would have been almost impossible to obtain without FSB knowledge or collusion, leading investigators to believe that Putin had direct knowledge and/or approval.

Lugovoy, the murderer of Litvinenko is now a member or parliament in Russia with extradition requests of the UK being denied. It's pretty clear the assassination had the highest possible approval. Sometimes, things are exactly what they look like.

In fairness, Russia flat out deny ALL extradition requests for their own citizens.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/may/22/russia.lukehar...

A commendable stance, IMHO. (From a most uncommendable unregime).

They also have no extradition treaty at all with the US. Hence why Snowden is there, I guess.

It's certainly not legal loopholes that keep Snowden away from being handed over but a decision of one man. Russian constitution also has a lot of great things in it, like freedom of speech, freedom of association, two terms limit on presidency, immutability of borders and priority of international treaties - all of which were stomped when it became politically expedient.

Indeed, and the message was "I'm insecure about my position".

Someone insecure who does not retaliate is of little concern. Someone who can retaliate or do away with people in remote places using extreme methods is more about saying, "don't cross me or I will get you" and insecurity is kind of irrelevant at that point. It's more I don't want to get on this woman/man's bad side.

I'm also not sure it's plain insecurity. I'm sure there are people not too far removed from him who if they could, would try to get to him -however, he goes to extreme measures to ensure he neutralizes possible threats when identified --including relatives and "old hands".

Although, being such a tyrant (insecure as he might be) why doesn't anyone of the people at his core who live in fear for themselves and everyone else just go on a final mission against him? It's not like he's the only one armed --plus he'd have to remain awake 24x7.

It's probably a rare person who is sane, intelligent, capable of detailed planning, and willing to potentially have a really nasty and protracted death. It seems to me that far more often you have people who are deluded in some way and don't perceive risk (bad planners, may not be particularly mentally fit), rare cases of extremely violent mental illness (not sane, bad planners), the highly motivated fanatic (good planner, sane, tends not to be the most intelligent).

You need a lot of elements to come together to murder someone who is well protected and expects to be the target of violence, while having a state to protect them. The scary thing is that of course, sometimes, this does happen; when it does there is very very little that can be done to stop it, short of you aforementioned 24x7 sleeping cycle.

It reminds me of the Stauffenberg plot. And then there are the bodyguards who got Indira Gandhi --they did not care what happened to them, they "cared" about carrying out their mission. Although, it's quite possible both were equally motivated but one was just not lucky enough to carry things through.

The Stauffenberg plot is pretty much evidence that assassinating somebody protected by a large force is really, really, hard.

Not because that plot itself failed. But because it overshadows the truly impressive number of other attempts at Hitler's life, all failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassination_attempts...

That's the message we all got, but I think we can agree it wasn't the intended message. "I'm still in control, I can still reach out anywhere, and I don't care that people know it's me."

As you say, reasonably that translates into, "I'm insecure."

Emotionally insecure, sure, but extremely dangerous, obviously.

I doubt fentanyl would work in a public place. Wouldn't he just pass out from respiratory failure until paramedics (who are probably onsite at the airport) ventilated him ?

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