Comment by arkades | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arkades | Hacker News Reader

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> It doesn't always seem to kill the victim and makes it easy to identify the perps as state actors.

As others have said, identifying a state actor is a feature, not a bug. However, what others have neglected to point out, is that it's unreliable - and that is a feature, too. We can't easily identify the state actor. Polonium-210 pointed at Russia obviously, but Russia has also utilized dioxides (vs. Shchekochikhin), and opioids (fentanyl) (to wipe out the hostage-takers in the Dubrovka theater).

The result is that Russia sends a message: we will reach out and kill our critics and defectors.

Bullets don't have the same effect: a critic dies in his sleep. Was it a drop of fentanyl? Maybe. Maybe. The absence or presence of poison will be speculated on; the absence or presence of bullets is clear-cut.

Through the use of poisons which vary in their ability to point the finger at Russia, any death of a critic that could plausibly be linked to a poisoning now raises the specter of Russian intervention. The result is that their psychological warfare is extended far beyond their actual reach.

The KGB/FSB has always had a very significant attention to psych-ops. Their actions should not be interpreted strictly at face value.

Poison can also be deployed by untrained individuals coerced into service, and bypass metal detectors as well as bullet-proof vests used by paranoid targets.

And an obvious point: Russia wants important enemies to die slow, painful deaths, and to send a message that other enemies will suffer a similar fate. Killing Litvinenko or Skripal with a bullet to the head probably wouldn't have been satisfying or vengeful enough.

> Russia wants important enemies to die slow

I know this is a common oversimplification when talking about governments, but please, could we at last use "Kremlin" instead? Russia is a large country with many people just like us, who want to live, love and have a wonderful time. Sure, at times the public opinion is stirred when some atrocities are reported and you can hear some vocal groups online, but Russians are not different from any other nation in this respect.

Their leaders, however, are a different story. You could say Russians have had bad luck with respect to their rulers for centuries. When you look back at what Lenin, Stalin and others did, Putin starts to look like a savior. But they all have a certain attitude and ambitions. So could we please stop saying "Russia" when we don't mean Russian people at all, and common Russians are actually victims of bad policy of their rulers.

I see your point but "Kermlin" is a bit over specific - when people like Magnitsky get killed you know it's Russians but not whether the Kermlin or mobsters or what. Elements within Russia perhaps.

Seeing as Russia has been a democracy for 25 years, isn't this just absolving the Russian populace of any guilt or responsibility over their choice in government, or the actions of said government?

The same way most Americans don't approve of or want to be associated with Trump. Democracies allow more freedom of choice, but large minorities or even small majorities in democracies can be ruled by people they see as detrimental to the country or opposed to their own personal views.

I'm sure this is compounded by voter intimidation, limits on free speech, etc.

We have a long way to go in the US and Russia until every person is directly represented by either themselves or someone they ideologically agree with. Winner take all democracies are certainly better than aristocracies or dictatorships, but still result in the misrepresentation of huge portions of the population.

How democratic exactly do you think their election process is?

I do not know, do you? I'm guessing that neither of us have observed their election process in person, or are experts in the fairness of their, or any other democratic process. If you are, please school me, I'm a willing student.

I am a US citizen, my birth nation has "elected" two presidents who failed to win the popular vote. 2% of my fellow citizens are unable to vote due to felony convictions. On top of this, the practice known as gerrymandering is essentially carte blanche for a state's ruling power to ensure continuous victories due to the complicated nature of an inconsistent federalist voting system.

The US's election system has many issues, but Russia's system (at the present moment) is a complete charade.

At least with the US system, the rules and loopholes (as stupid as they are) are transparent, known, and understood ahead of time. There's no funny business behind the curtain.

In Russia, elections are secretly manipulated by the state. The US is a sometimes-dysfunctional democracy, but Russia doesn't have a democracy at all.

Well, to be a little bit pedantic, the USA doesn't have a democracy either, we have a representative republic.

You're speculating as to the state of Russia's democracy. Have you any specific proof of your allegations? I'm guessing your proof lays primarily with that which is published in the media, and the strong statements / research which come out of NATO and other anti-Russian establishments?

I can't believe people would vote for Trump, but let's face it, they did because they believed his economy promises. I can't believe people voted for Putin, but Russia's economy has flourished under his reign, before him, people literally starved to death. I can't believe people vote for Erdogan, but Türkiye's economy is magnitudes stronger and fairer than it was before the AKP reign. Perhaps these democracies are working as intended, and people just cast short-sighted, greed-driven votes?

It's just an abbreviation. People say "America", "Russia", or "China" when talking about their governments.

An unfortunate one though and akin to saying "white people" or "poor people". Sweeping generalities about mass groups of people although faster usually break down communication.

It's not at all the same thing. By "Russia" I mean "Russian state", not "Russian people".

Skripal didn't die, and his daughter also didn't die.

No, but they intended him to die.

Not sure about intentions, but I consider it largely established that they were poisoned.

Considering the poison is extremely deadly, that other uninvolved UK citizens died and were injured as a result of exposure, that the poisoning was almost definitely ordered or approved by Putin, and that Putin and other government officials have spoken at length about killing traitors no matter where they go, it seems very likely they intended to kill him but failed.

Just making him "really sick" doesn't make much sense, I think. Especially when you consider someone unrelated did die after being exposed.

Sure, somebody did something with a poison to get a couple of people sick and dead, for sure. Maybe the intention was to instill fear? To me that is just as plausible as a murder attempt. Also, you'd think that the Russian secret service is not as amateurish as to screw up a job that should be pretty easy for them.

And, well, I'm just not very convinced of the "almost definitely ordered or approved by Putin" part, nor the "Putin and other government officials have spoken at length about killing traitors no matter where they go" piece. I have never seen evidence of the former, and honestly never saw or heard the latter either.

> Russia wants important enemies to die slow, painful deaths

> wouldn't have been satisfying or vengeful enough

You know this how ?

> Russia wants important enemies to die slow, painful deaths > wouldn't have been satisfying or vengeful enough You know this how ?

Alexander Litvenenko springs to mind, followed by Viktor Yushchenko, Alexander Perepilichny, Anna Politkovskaya (later shot to death), Vladimir Kara-Murza (twice!), the Skripals, Georgi Markov (Ricin... nasty), Karinna Moskalenko, and on and on.

It's also asynchronous. You could place poison on a doorknob and be thousands of miles away before the incident happens.

I have a hypothesis that the polonium poisoners weren't planning on being detected.

Polonium has no side effects other than radiation poisoning which can't be detected outside the body. To diagnose it, one would have to go looking for trace amounts in the body or in contaminated areas. If the poisoners weren't aware of the extreme sensitivity of alpha-particle detection -- reliably accurate to the single particle level -- they might have thought polonium would be undetectable and untraceable. Or they might of thought nobody would ever think to look for it. By some accounts, they almost didn't.

You're spot on here. As I understand, the Russian state was quite surprised at the capabilities of Western detection science. It was certainly not common knowledge that low-concentration alpha emitters (still plenty poisonous) could be detected in blood, nor that the assassins could be tracked all the way back to Russia just from their limited exposure.

The science is actually old and certainly known to physicists around the world. Such detectors are readily available to university physics laboratories, for example. But if you don't have a physics background, it might never occur to you that such technology exists.

> opioids (fentanyl) (to wipe out the hostage-takers in the Dubrovka theater)

They used Carfentanil (100x more potent than fentanyl) to wipe them out. Unfortunately medics didn't have enough antidote on hand to reboot all people.

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