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Comment by axiosgunnar | Hacker News Reader

The „excuse“ to hijack is probably bad on purpose, to add insult to injury.

Same goes for chosing a name of Jewish orgin (Ahmed Yurlanov) as the alledged sender of the bomb threat.

It‘s done basically to tease the EU, saying „look at how obviously fake our pretense to hijack your plane was, and you still won‘t do anything about it!“

Same story with the two Russian agents who murdered Skripal in the UK. When they were found on security cams walking around the cathedral (where Skripal was later murdered at) and questioned, they said they were a gay couple (from Russia of all places!) that were just on a touristic visit. They even cited that the cathedral is one if the most special because it‘s tower is built in a special way, ridiculous.

Again, it‘s adding insult to injury.

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> Same goes for chosing a name of Jewish orgin (Ahmed Yurlanov) as the alledged sender of the bomb threat.

Ahmed is Arabic, while Yurlanov is a generic Slavic name. I think the intent was to communicate Chechen not Jewish.

Not generic slavic surname at all but central asian/caucasus origin. Other than that you are right.

>When they were found on security cams walking around the cathedral (where Skripal was later murdered at) and questioned, they said they were a gay couple (from Russia of all places!) that were just on a touristic visit.

From what I remember Russia suggested that they might have been a gay couple, a claim which they rebutted almost more fervently than they did the claim that they were spies.

I figured at the time that along with the cringey interview they did were probably both punishments for being shit at their job.

>They even cited that the cathedral is one if the most special because it‘s tower is built in a special way, ridiculous.

It is a decent cathedral to be fair. Salisbury is very much the kind of place that appeals to Russians - hence why Skripal retired there.

> Salisbury is very much the kind of place that appeals to Russians

Why? I lived not very far from Salisbury for much of my adult life and rarely encountered Russians.

Russians have a thing for quintessential English chic things. It's the rosy image of the country from old Soviet English language textbooks coming to life.

It's a poor country and the UK makes it very hard to get a visa. Many more would come if it were easier.

I'm from not too far away also and to be honest Salisbury bores the hell out of me.

Just to clarify, Sergei Skripal is still alive, the assassination failed but instead did kill an unrelated woman later named Dawn Sturgess.

I thought the same at the time. Also the way they tried to murder Skripal, same like they did earlier with Alexander Litvinenko: by poisoning with Polonium.

They could have chosen many other ways which would look less spectacular and wouldn't put the suspicion so obviously on Russia. But obviously it was there intention that it was clear that they were behind it: both to scare any remaining dissidents and to impress some part of the Russian population with their power.

Skripal was poisoned with Novichok, not polonium.

If you don't actually know you're looking for a radioactive substance, poisoning someone with polonium might not be so "in your face" after all. They may have been going off previous successes (which, by definition, we wouldn't know about).

Ahmed Yurlanov is sounds more like a Chechen or Ingush name.

> It‘s done basically to tease the EU, saying „look at how obviously fake our pretense to hijack your plane was, and you still won‘t do anything about it!“

At least EU closed their airspace.

https://mobile.twitter.com/flightradar24/status/139752053792...

Russian spies and their coverups != Belarussian KGB\OAC and their coverups.

Russians have the ability act bold on purpose because of their oil and money. They have a massive propaganda machine that will scream all kinds of bs in all directions. Paid politicians all over the world will also side with Russia.

Belarus, does not have that kind of leverage. They have no propaganda machine to create coverups and have to act sneaky. Like with Pavel Sheremet's murder [3] in Ukraine, they organized it well enough to avoid detection up until 2021. Or a Minsk metro bombing [5] where they just grabbed some dudes and executed them not even a year later. They often fail ofc. They failed with a cover up of Alexander Taraikovsky's [0] murder and later with Raman Bondarenko's [1]. How they failed with staging a coup attempt with russian PMC soldiers shortly before the election[2] and released all "terrorists" a few months later without any punishment or comments [6].

Do not over sophisticate these people. Belarusian KGB today, in general, is not what it used to be even 20 years ago. Times of people dissapearing into thin air (Zaharenko, Zavadski, Gonchar to name a few [4]) are gone, just like most of the people who were able to pull off stuff like that. Today's state of it is due to negative selection where the most loyal get to the top, and not the most talented or capable.

[0] https://voicesfrombelarus.medium.com/what-we-know-about-the-...

[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-bandarenka-lukashenka/311691...

[2] https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-diplomats-meet-detained-vagn...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-belarus-journalis...

[4] https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/120000/eur4901320...

[5] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/minsk-bombers-executed-...

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/world/europe/belarus-russ...

Your narrative about Russian PMC staging coup attempt (link 2) isn't true. That was failed SBU operation.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2021/02/12/the-wagner-affair-in-b...

Not russian PMC staging, but state using PMC presence as a proof of a coup attempt. They used it to spin the narrative that protests were planned and funded from abroad.

>Belarus, does not have that kind of leverage.

Apparently it does now as Russia is forbidding EU fights into its airspace if they avoid Belarussian airspace. Russia and Belarus have disagreements, most of which seem to be due to the egos of their respective leaders, but it's foolish for the rest of the world to not recognize the special relationship between the two. Belarus is like the loud mouth scrawny kid on the playground who stirs up trouble because he knows his oversize muscular brother nearby will back him up in a fight.

Skripal is not dead?

No. He recovered from the poisoning.

> Again, it‘s adding insult to injury.

I think, here it is a case of overestimating their intelligence level.

Goondas running ex-USSR states are polar opposites of Western stereotype of "brilliant villains." For example Putin is said to be comically bad with arithmetics. Nasarbayev's verbal eloquence is so poor that regime lieutenants themselves often go on censoring him. Belarusian KGBs probably don't even know from where that Hamas comes from.

I'd say "shrewd, yes — smart, no" but the saying also goes "Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil."

i'm going with Hanlon's razor here

This exactly how it is. The way they covered up murders during protests is very descriptive of their ability to do such things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alexander_Taraikovsky

Surely Hanlon's "don't assume malice" falls down a bit in state sponsored assassinations?

Yes, but when the question is whether they’re deliberately giving the impression they’re incompetent to add insult to injury, I’m inclined to assume they’re just plain incompetent.

But they do that a lot in other contexts, like using novichok agents or traceable radioisotopes for state assassinations, then 'denying' it was them.

i mean the "getting caught out of own incompetence" part of course. a recent example was Navalny's call to his poisoner from the FSB. This was obviously NOT an intended leak

"Russia is poisoning people with Novichok" is this lovely meme that everyone seems to accept as Gospel; doesn't it seem they'd have had more success, at least? The targets and the evidence and the circumstances surrounding these incidents aren't as clear cut as the common interpretation, I think.

"Novichok" is a great boogeyman; no one's ever seen any but apparently everyone knows what it is, anyway.

Just because they're bad at it doesn't mean they aren't doing it. And that's assuming their intent is actually to kill, and not to just send a message.

>no one's ever seen any but apparently everyone knows what it is, anyway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novichok_agent#History_and_dis...

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