Pugabe has almost killed corruption investigator Alexei Navalny

[ESay]

Yes, and as I understand, it was a kind of joke.
Irony, you know:

What do you mean? What joke?

No, I haven't read the book.

 

[Litwin]

Oil prices have fallen to the lowest since 1991 level . With cost of “black gold” at 15-23 dollars per barrel, the USSR economy collapsed, and the sovok itself collapsed, and the "golden" horde ("russia") budget can only be fulfilled only with oil price at $ 42.4 and higher.

 

[Litwin]

In Navalny’s long career as an opposition politician, he has faced constant harassment in the form of court cases and police raids. Sometimes, things got physical, such as when assailants threw a green antiseptic in his face in 2017 or when he suffered a mysterious “allergy attack” while in police custody last year. But somehow, he miraculously seemed to avoid landing in mortal peril — that is, until Thursday.
There’s no lack of powerful Russians who would be happy to see him gone. “This is a huge blow to Russia’s political system,” Alexei Venediktov, the editor of the Echo Moskvy radio station, said in a broadcast on Thursday. “But the beneficiaries are not difficult to find.”

The “beneficiaries” he and other commentators have pointed to are the rich and famous who have been targeted by Navalny’s corruption investigations and factions within the elite with ties to rival law enforcement structures vying for more influence.
But there’s also little denying that the timing of Navalny’s misfortune comes at a politically sensitive time for the Kremlin. In recent weeks, neighboring country Belarus has been rocked by large-scale street protests calling for the resignation of its longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko.
The uprising next door is exactly the kind of civic unrest that Putin, whose ratings are falling, considers an existential threat — and Navalny had been championing it on social media.

“The question playing out in front of our eyes in Belarus right now is: Can civil protest trump the strongmen with ties to the security forces?” said Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter.
“If it succeeds in Belarus, then it’ll inspire the opposition here and demoralize Putin’s strongman backers. It could also push Putin to reconsider his own political strategy beyond 2024,” when his current term is set to end.
Earlier this summer, Putin — having declared the worst of the corona crisis over — organized and won a vote on constitutional reforms that pave the way for him to remain president until 2036.
Though Putin’s power grab was contested by the president’s critics, there were no large-scale protests against it.

Alexander Murakhovsky, chief doctor at Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, where Alexei Navalny was admitted | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images
This was in large part because Navalny — arguably the only political player capable of organizing a nationwide protest — called for a boycott of the vote but did little more. Instead, he urged his supporters to focus their energy on regional elections in September.
More specifically, he has promoted a “smart voting” strategy designed to squeeze out Kremlin-backed candidates by consolidating support behind their biggest rivals. This was used in city council elections in Moscow last year, that led to pro-government candidates losing almost half of their seats — a victory Navalny’s team was hoping to repeat this summer nationwide in the run-up to important State Duma elections in 2021.
When Navalny fell ill, he was on his way back from a campaign trip to Siberia that included a stop in Russia’s third-largest city Novosibirsk, where 34 opposition candidates are running for 50 seats in the city council.
It’s a contest in which the opposition feels it can make real headway, as it taps into widespread discontent and anti-establishment in the Russian periphery. Sergei Boiko, the head of Navalny’s regional campaign office in Novosibirsk, came second in mayoral elections last year.


Who tried to kill Alexei Navalny?

 

[Litwin]

Moscow (AsiaNews) – A recently published book has generated a lot of buzz in Russia. Titled The Great Batu Khan, founder of Russian Statehood (Великий хан Батый – основатель Российской государственности), the tome is by Gennady A. Tjundeshev (Haramos), a historian at Khakassia State University (in Asian Russia, where Tatar-Mongols hail from). Its publication has revived the memory of the times of the "Tartar yoke", when Russia was under Asian rule for more than two centuries, between the 13th and the 15th centuries. It has also inspired some comparisons, especially with President Putin, who was re-elected on 18 March and has acquired the status of tsar and great leader. The great Batu Khan was the grandson of Genghis Khan, who, in 1240, imposed the dominion of the so-called "Golden Horde" on the principalities of ancient Kievan Rus, which disappeared from history as a separate entity. The Tatars were defeated for the first time in 1380 in the Battle of Kulikovo. Dmitry Donskoj, Prince of Moscow, led the way inspired by Sergius of Radonezh. Eventually, the city of Kyiv (Kiev) was against itself by the 17th century, but Asian domination ended only in 1480 thanks to the great prince Ivan III, father of the ideology of Moscow as the Third Rome. According to Tjundeshev’s interpretation, Russia has never freed itself from the legacy of the Tatar Khans; instead, it has made it the basis of its civilisation and state organisation. The idea is not particularly new. Napoleon, contemplating Moscow burning in 1812 from the walls of the Kremlin, uttered his famous words: “Scratch a Russian, you find a Tatar”. Many historians recognise the importance of the rule of the Golden Horde in the development of Russian society. The word money, dénʹgi (деньги), comes from Mongolian and survives in the memory of the taxes that Russians had to pay to the Khans to obtain formal diplomas, Jarliq (ярлык), which today means label, price tag, in modern Russian. Thus, today’s Russia is more the offspring of the Golden Horde than Kievan Rus. Tsar Ivan the Terrible, who conquered the last Kazan khanate in the 1500s, incorporated the main Mongolian leaders into the Russian administration. The tsar of "Holy Russia", to whom many today compare the reigning president (Ivan IV and Putin IV), dropped out of government for a whole year, putting one of his Mongol khans, Simeon Bekbulatovich, in his place. On 19 April, in an interview with Radio Svoboda, Tjundeshev reiterated his thesis. "The Golden Horde introduced the imperial spirit to Russia, and Batu Khan was the true founder of Russian statehood [. . .]. The mindset of Russians is mainly Asian. Even if the population is of European stock, only a small minority think within European parameters. This is why,” says the Tatar scholar, “it is so difficult for Russians to learn to be free; they always need a strong hand to rule them.” “In the Russian Duma everyone always votes as the president wants, like in the Kurultáj of Genghis Khan. The founder of the Mongol Empire at the beginning of the 13th century was in reality a very advanced man for his time, able to adapt to different situations and different cultures, including religions. From the Tatars come nations such as China, India, Turkey and Russia, which embrace different faiths like Confucianism, Islam and Orthodox Christianity.” According to the scholar, "Confucian ideas adopted by Genghis Khan spread to Russia: the family as the cell of society, the untouchability of the head of state, the verticality of power so dear to Putin". The Tatar spirit is very visible in the army and its initiation ceremonies (hazing), and in the legal field, where the will of the powerful reigns and presidential decrees are worth more than the existing Constitution. One example cited by Tjundeshev is the decree on "federal districts" of 13 May 2000 when, at the beginning of his first presidential mandate, Putin replaced elected heads of federal districts with presidential envoys in total disregard of the constitution. Russia’s international isolation, described recently by Putin adviser Vladislav Surkov as the only possible basis for the country's foreign policy, is also a throwback to the geopolitical conditions under the Mongols, who saw in every foreign power an enemy to annihilate, and often deemed treasonous the less loyal of their subjects. Thus, Russia’s inward turn is showing up in paradoxical and almost grotesque ways; one example is in the recent decision to shut down Telegram, an instant messaging service run by the brothers Nikolay and Pavel Durov, who have refused to give the Russian government its codes. Unfettered modernity is resisting Asian totalitarianism.