How They Tried to Kill Me
nplusonemag.com
nplusonemag.com
>“That is what drives us crazy,” the detective said. “You come here and act like you’re on vacation. Like this is some paradise. It doesn’t even occur to you to keep yourself safe. We have political killings here. The Russian special services are active in Germany. Your carelessness, yours and your colleagues, knows no bounds.”
It's very difficult to reconcile what seems like the safety of Europe with the reality of a war that is being fought online as much as on the ground. Journalists have always been targeted by authoritarian regimes, but the connectedness of the modern world makes them dangerous even outside after leaving the country. Clearly this is what the Russian state believes.
No punishment for planned/attempted murder.
The West is hopelessly naive about sophisticated and brutal adversaries like Russia and Iran.
Citation sorely needed
Without experience in this domain, I could fermi-guess optimal ones probably come from the few percentages of population who don’t suffer of PTSD after violence. So if you want a person of above average intelligence, who does not mind going to plausibly suicidal missions, and is able to keep it all together, AND has decided to take a career in cloak&dagger… I’d say such fields agents are not trivial to replace. Hence you probably want to issue the courtesy of returning opposing forces, rather than having to find a new field agent (or whatever they are called) or several.
So let’s not advocate for the left becoming authoritarian shall we? [parts of] Europe tried that already, it doesn’t work either.
This is an interesting statement to me, because the right uses very similar language in the opposite direction. To paraphrase: "we're playing by the rules while the left is using the federal government to silence political adversaries."
From where I sit, those statements don't seem entirely accurate, but they also are not mutually exclusive.
Yes, if only they frequented social media, they might have some clue what Chinese, Russian, and Iranian security services were up to. Alas for their naivete...
Most spies are known to the host nations as they work out of the embassy under cover jobs with standard diplomatic passports, therefore they have diplomatic immunity if they run into trouble and the best the host country can do is permanently evict them.
"How does it feel, I ask, to be here in absentia? Grozev laughs. After the Russians indicted him “in absentia”, he posted a selfie video from Palm Beach, Florida, against a sunset backdrop. “I said, ‘If this is absentia, it’s a pretty great place to be.’”
"Is Austria the least safe European country? “Yes,” he replies. “While we [Bellingcat] were investigating the Austrians, they were surveilling me and I wasn’t aware of that at the time. They were doing so explicitly at the request of the Russians. That is deep penetration.”
"He says the Germans advised him not to settle in Germany. He last visited Germany in 2020 under heavy guard as a witness in the prosecution of a Russian who had assassinated a Chechen exile. “We are also investigating examples of Russian security services penetrating German political circles,” he says. “France, I would not trust them: they don’t even trust themselves. The only place in Europe I can come to safely nowadays is the UK.”
"He is still angry, however, at London’s Metropolitan Police for cancelling his and his family’s attendance at the Bafta film awards this year. “Hearing it through the grapevine was offensive,” he says. “If there is also a risk to my family, they should tell me directly.”
"Both Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which is teeming with Russians, are off-limits, he adds. “Dubai is Vienna on the Gulf,” he says. “I have heard this warning from both the Emirates and Turkey — ‘Do not come here. We will try to protect you. We will never extradite you [to Russia]. But we can’t guarantee your safety.’”"
Grozen did his interview in the United States, where he is currently living. I suspect that the separation by the sea (English Channel for the UK and the Atlantic for the US) increases the security.
[1] (Paywalled) https://www.ft.com/content/03f220e1-6a7e-4850-bf4e-4b0f521d8...
Julian Assange, Shireen Abu Akleh, etc.
There’s a reason most mainstream media reporting is the equivalent of 2nd grade book report.
It's almost as if she had no idea that russian agents have been poisoning prominent people in foreign lands for the last couple of decades. Perhaps she thinks she's not prominent enough?
These poisonings target "prominent" people because they're supposed to make the news; they're meant as a warning. From that point of view, a journalist counts as "prominent".
It wasn’t that the idea of it “seemed crazy” to me. During my time at Novaya Gazeta, four of my colleagues were killed. I organized the funeral of Khimki journalist Mikhail Beketov, he’d been a friend. I knew that journalists got murdered. But I did not want to believe that they could kill me. I was protected from this thought by revulsion, shame, and exhaustion. It disgusted me to think that there were people who wanted me dead. I was ashamed to talk about it. Even with loved ones, let alone the police. And I felt how exhausted I was, how little strength I had left, that I wouldn’t be able to go on the run again.
During stalinist cleansings people almost always believed others were imprisoned/executed for a good reason, but they were innocent so this can't happen to them.
So journalists expect big political figures to be poisoned or killed, but not one of them.
Someone accidentally stepped on the toes of some lawless dirty-tricks entity. They realized this after the fact. But when they seemed to get neutralized with very evil but textbook action, they said, in desperation (close from memory) "But why would ___?! I don't have any enemies!"
I'm not sure, but I think, if they would've been asked just then, they might've contradicted what they'd just said, to tell you who probably did it, and why they might get any of that party's attention. That might've been some powerful psychology speaking just then.
I suspect they were verbalizing reversion to their self image, and how they wanted the world to be. Something like this just wouldn't happen to them, and they're not in that world of stepping on the toes of characters like this, and don't want to be.
(Also, in case of this journalist, note the bit about the German official with poor bedside manner, when speaking with a potential victim of a heinous crime. Maybe the official was interrogating, or angry, or that was just their manner. The journalist spoke of shame as a reason, which I guess might be the journalist's cultural upbringing about being tough and not being the oppressed, but the German also seemed to be shaming.)
I've seen this first hand. After a few missile alarms where everyone runs to shelters people start building confidence and stride gently. They assume that since they survived all the alarms, nothing will happen. I have that problem myself, I can't be legitimately afraid.
What is German media saying about this?
> We have political killings here. The Russian special services are active in Germany.
This quote is the reality. It is well known that we have Russian, Turkish, Iranian and other spies here, political killings happen from time to time and sometimes we even have terrorists registered as refugees because our Government has no IDs from them (this happened back when we had many refugees from Syria - some of them were IS-Terrorists)
We don't talk about America, we talk about Germany where the Military is a joke.
Recognizing an agent is also impossible, they can't stop illegal immigration how can they stop well trained and documented foreign agents?
@dang I realise you're probably incredibly busy, but are you able to remove the flag, please?
At least we should have some options to set with flagging.
(cargo cult) tagging @dang
It was always like that. For centuries.
I have heard stories about NKVD methods since childhood. The victims were my family members living in the estern Poland, after it was invaded by Stalin at the very beginnings of WW2.
What was happening before red revolution, during tsars rule, is in the literature.
It is funny how generations of intelligent, well-educated westerners live in denial, unable to admit that the barbarians have been always the neighbors. It never changed. The methods of .ru government never changed and the political whitewashing of it never changed.
PS. Ofc the first victim of Russian system is and has been the Russian citizens, murdered, robbed, brainwashed, dumbed down, manipulated and deprived. What is called by us "Stockholm syndrome" is a default life approach there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_from_St._Petersburg_...
Even a drunk driver, who hits a child, is seen differently than a sober driver who purposefully decided to run one down.
The moral equivocating is absolutely despicable.
Has the US killed children? yes! Was that ever the stated or unstated goal? Never.
I would add, contrary to that, physical eradication of certain parts of society has been and is the goal of Russian rulers. (Ukrainian hunger, Ukrainian dams in 1930s - the purge of Ukrainians didn't start February last year)
In addition to that, it's strictly forbidden to plunder or steal, or harm women, children and elderly in the Islamic jihad. Pretty high standards the USA cannot and would not even dream of achieving. Snowden revelations come to mind.
The US regime has (a) committed repeated genocides including children against Native Americans and black slaves (b) perpetuated the Jim Crow laws including terror, bombings and lynchings against the black population up through the 60s (c) invaded or directly supported lethal coups, dictators and genocides in Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Indonesia (d) overthrown governments and participated in assassination plots in South Vietnam, Congo, Iran (e) supported Saudi Arabia in their shameful war in Yemen. An incomplete list to be sure.
It's not that this is worse or better than [some other nation]. It's just that it's bad and pretending that the regime "meant well" is indefensible.
Do you want to spell out what countries, specifically, you have in mind here?
That isn't to mention CIA backed coups, etc.
Isn't it weird most Americans can't name, much less find on a map, the nations they are at war with?
It is really funny to see western leftist pointing American imperialism here and there and when obvious non-American imperialism start happening all the western leftists are trying to bend over backwards to justify how Russia is not doing imperialism, how SVR and GRU squads can't be compared to what CIA is/was doing. Their doublethink is palpable.
And one of the very core attributes of modern imperialism is using real faults in other nations to subvert, divide, and discredit local movements. It's hard to condemn another state without inadvertently contributing to your own state's nationalist propaganda.
But it was the exact opposite in reality. Notice how Germans hadn't said the same about other eastern european nations before 2022. Despite the fact that other nations were hit just as hard if not harder by Germany in WW2, and unlike Russians - didn't started the WW2 as allies of hitler.
Somehow the debt only applied to the authoritarian militaristic country that has lots of gas, not to its victims.
The historical self-depreciating rhetoric of some pro-russian Germans was used to justify siding with the bully against the victim because it's more profitable and historically it was the "realpolitik" choice.
Yes, imperialism is bad. But sucking up to imperialist regimes just because they aren't your own country isn't the answer. WTF people.
The point you're making seems good I just don't know why you're trying to make it to me is all.
Russia had more than it's fair share of heartache, but it is not an outlier in not having been through the Western European developmental pressure cooker.
Also traditional example is the feud between Greek city states and Persia (Which is documented in the painstakingly historically accurate movies such as ‘300’).
I’m not saying peoples are predestined to be forever in one system of governance, but the differences predate enlightenment way, way back.
As Timothy Snyder points out, Europeans didn't stop engaging in imperialist wars because they grew morals and humanist thought, they stopped engaging in imperialist wars because in the 50s and 60s they either lost them all, or knew they couldn't afford to win them.
Russia may or may not undergo the same development, but losing in their war of conquest over Ukraine is a prerequsite to any kind of progress in this area.
For example Winston Churchill lamented deeply the loss of India and considered Gandhi an annoyance.
Another reason was that the American system of rule based relations instituted after second world war meant former colonial masters could still economically utilize the raw inputs from their colonies without risk of losing the colony to another colonial power and hence being cut off from those markets and resources.
Before second world war any territories unable to defend themselves from european powers were more or leas up for grabs - hence you were afraid that giving your colony independence, another colonial power would have simply annexed them, thus you would lose the resources and the market.
The US rule based order was overall good for the world, regardless of so many documented events of behaving as dicks within it.
Racist thinking was prevalent and helped justify colonialism and humanism existing at the same time.
But you’re right, if Russia loses, everyone will win, even Russians.
Centuries ago all countries were committing atrocities and all kinds of large scale crimes one can imagine. You do not even have to go back that far.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/21/europe/russia-navalny-poi...
But could be warning as well, ofc. The point is, we don’t know. Whatever the outcome, it’s a show of force.
In the past they used radioactive poisoning which is pretty easy to trace back and caused collateral damage. That's problematic. Poison is very dependent on dosage and delivery without compromising the agent might be tricky.
Here are elite GRU assassins giving an interview to support their cover story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZatub49aIA
And Russia I think is the only country with a government poisoning lab and policy to do this stuff? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_laboratory_of_the_Sovie...
It was inevitable that they would also begin to target journalists who revealed human rights violations by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Technically, this is intriguing. Is Facebook compromised, or do you think they compromised her phone, or the phone or whoever she was talking to?