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Comment by nikolay | Hacker News Reader

I feel it like he needed the attention on him back (does anyone remember Pussy Riot anymore?) as we started to forget who he was. I wonder how many people will have to survive the most toxic gas - Novichok, - when regular people die daily from very benign poisoning in minutes? Is it because these political figures get special medical treatments unlike the regular folk or it's just all a cheap play?

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Are you suggesting that the novichok poisoning was faked? That seems less plausible than the alternative, that they just failed to guess the dose correctly, in an abundance of caution (trying to get him to die somewhere far from the scene of the crime).

It's not that they failed to guess the dose, it's likely that the rapid treatment saved his life:

> "a new and improved version of the Novichok agent, which has not been encountered in the world before", was used in Navalny's poisoning. This new type of Novichok is more toxic and dangerous than its previously known variants, but acts more slowly. It had been planned that Navalny would die on board the plane, but he had survived "thanks to a sequence of successful coincidences: the quick reaction of the pilot who made an emergency landing, and the doctors in Omsk, who immediately injected Navalny with atropine". [1]

[1] (German) https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/alexej-nawalny-so...

How is then this most toxic gas safer than other basic toxic ones you can brew even at home?! It's been hours from the time of his poisoning at the hotel to when he got to Germany and he was safe and sound like nothing's happened! Again, tens of thousands get into ICU and hundreds die from a simple acetaminophen overdose each year in the US alone [0]! Why would Putin use something, which such a poor track record of killing his enemies? Why can't they just use a sniper and get this over with?! Why use something, which even the brain-dead know will be linked to Russia?

[0]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15239078/

This is a nerve agent and is not ingested or inhaled, it is absorbed through the skin and is very deadly. There are sole antidotes but they don’t always work. It is used because beside western advanced hospitals it cannot be detected even at an autopsy. Navalny didn’t die because FSB used a small dose not to arise suspicion and make it look like he died of natural causes. Not sure what you’re barking at really, this is a very serious affair. The guesome death of Kashohgi was effective but left a huge stain on the Saudi prince that will forever stick, the poisoning of Navalny was supposed to subtle, his death may spark a riot

How can you compare Navalny to Khashoggi, who was cut in pieces and dissolved into the sewer?! The Turkish TV recently released the investigation footage - unimaginable brutality, tons of evidence, and NOTHING! Navalny is no threat to Putin. He wants to be perceived as one, but he is not. I am not an assassination expert, but I'm sure there plenty of ex-KGB people who can get rid of Navalny if Putin asks them. Car crashes, incidents, you name it - if he wanted him dead, he'd be dead long ago.

Thank you for the info about Novichok. It was airborne during Skripal's case, but now I see it was powder released into the air and not gas.

Did you miss the video where Navalny got an FSB officer to confess his involvement in the attempted murder on Navalny?

Yeah, and I don't buy it. It has two points - Navalny is important and the West needs to retaliate against Russia further and that Russian services are ineffective and outdated, i.e. undermine its credibility where agents could be called and reveal secrets over the phone without any authentication and authorization protocols.

How about Putin's palace? #FakeNews? Someone who's definitely not Putin spent $1.4 billion on this building despite all the evidence pointing at Putin? You'll need to employ some serious doublethink to continue on this train of thought.

Because this is straight from James Bond movies - when villains fail to kill him as they always give him a chance to escape.

They could easily kill Navalny with gun, bomb, polonium... But no, let's poison him with something that's very lethal but in such way that he lives.

IMO the likeliest explanation is the lethality of novichok is way overblown or generally misunderstood. Skripals' poisoning had a very similar progression (the two targets survived after a coma [0], another inadvertently exposed person survived, one has died). Most anecdotes about Novichok's incredible lethality are stories out of Russia where use of Novichok was merely alleged. It's weird they'd botch 2 high profile assassination attempts like this if upping the dose a bit guarantees death.

[0] I'm not too familiar with the exact mechanism that induces the coma. But common sense would tell me extended comas after which the patient makes a full recovery are an unusual phenomenon medically. Navalny's doctors seemed pretty unsure about his prospects too. Yet both Skripals and Navalny not only escaped death but had full recoveries from extended comas.

Bear in mind, lethality of weapons like these has been based on measuring the mortality _without_ treatment, and all who survived received prompt treatment.

Unfortunately Charley Rowley, who unwittingly discovered the container used by the Skripal’s poisoners, was not treated so promptly and later died

https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2018/04/06/myth-...

It seems like the quantity of the dose, location of exposure and duration of exposure can drastically change the outcome [1]. The woman who sprayed Novichok-laced perfume on herself died, but the man got it on his palms and immediately wiped it off, thereby surviving.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/novichok-how-are-vic...

The point is that you want to use right on the edge of what is lethal, so they don't die quickly. Its possible that its way less lethal than people think, but the standard explanation is that they are still in the process of figuring out how to do assassinations efficiently with it (guaranteeing a kill, but delayed enough that its harder to piece together how it went down).

If KGB can not do assasinations effectively ... There are a lot of people falling from high buildings but they seem not to attract too much attention. I really think that they don't want him dead. If they really wanted him dead he wouldn'n let go to Germany.

I won't be surprised if he's a puppet of Putin buying credibility with putting him in jail, failing to kill him, etc. I can expect anything from Putin.

I remember Pussy Riot, actually.

As we have seen in England, it is possible to be poisoned with Novichok and survive, depending always on the level of exposure.

It seems like the same cheesy play though. Pick one mystical toxin, which supposedly only Russia knows how to make although everybody knows how to identify it, and blame it on Putin! I am not a fan of Putin, but some people really think we're idiots - and, obviously, many are!

He was poisoned on a flight. The FSB officers hoped this gives them enough time for Navalny to die until help is available. To their surprise the pilot made an emergency landing and medical staff was standing by on the ground, they quickly recognized it’s poisoning and treated Navalny accordingly. Afterwards he was transferred to Germany to receive special care.

Not according to Navalny himself [0] - he claims the poison was put in his underwear in the hotel.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/21/navalny-russia...

If you look for sources carefully, you'll see two attempts.

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