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Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

From what I can tell, he's accused strictly of speech crimes against Ukraine? For changing opinion on the war in 2023?

So maybe it's not so obvious who killed him after all.

You mean Ukrainians killed him? I am not sure about that. Does not make a whole lot of sense for Ukraine to kill him, since he is so unimportant compared to e. g. russian generals. Whereas if you insult Putin, the midget will of course set his hit men on people. That has been shown numerous times again and again and again. Most famous one is still Litvinenko, but remember how Anna Politkovskaya was killed, Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny, Yevgeny Prigozhin and so on, and so forth. The pattern is so clear really. It sounds more like russian bots trying to engineer the narrative towards "others did it", when all the facts are way too clear. See also Yuri in the 1980s foreseeing how an asset can be manipulated by the KGB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw - KGB/FSB run Russia. See yesterday how Nikolai Patrushev babbled about bringing war to Europeans.

I don‘t think Putin knows anything about him or is even aware of his existence. He’s living in a cloud castle fed by briefings from his administration. It‘s likely that nobody in Moscow cared so much about this poor guy - there exist more annoying and influential people to focus foreign intelligence effort on.

But Kadyrov clan is a different story. It‘s getting weaker, its leader has according to some sources serious health problems. Moscow isn‘t keen on seeing another Kadyrov in power in Chechnya. So Chechens are more eager to suppress any attacks on the clan that question its strength and authority.

Politkovskaya I think was killed on Kadyrov's orders, not Putin's. Putin and Ukrainian nationalists alike are far more angry at people they think have an obligation to be loyal to them, "traitors", than on random people who offend them.

He left a bad review at a hotel in Germany. I think it's safe to say Russia couldn't possibly have done this.

Even in this thread there are people calling him a traitor to Ukraine, and he was on the big list of enemies, many of which have been killed before. It doesn't seem so ridiculous to me.

Sure, Russia could have done this - particularly Kadyrov's people. But so could Ukrainian nationalists.

It's very ridiculous to think Ukraine would assassinate a critic (who has more vocally criticized Putin) on Polish soil.

It’s a war, par for the course to execute people for ”speech crimes” during such times.

We executed William Joyce and assassinated many like him, nobody seriously questions the morality of that. They deserved their fates a thousand times over.

Not commenting on whether or not this particular individual deserved their fate, but on a more general level.

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