Post-Soviet Future

[Metsfanmax]

What would Putin gain by having Nemtsov gunned down in public? If he has that kind of power to order hits on opponents, surely he would also have the power to have Nemtsov just quietly disappear and have his body wash ashore a year or two later? A person simply vanishing is less likely to produce the recriminations and backlash a very public assassination does.

Concur with saxi on this one. Been rather shocked to see how many friends on social media just eat up the possibility that Putin did it without thinking it through.

[mrswdk]

What would Putin gain by having Nemtsov gunned down in public? If he has that kind of power to order hits on opponents, surely he would also have the power to have Nemtsov just quietly disappear and have his body wash ashore a year or two later? A person simply vanishing is less likely to produce the recriminations and backlash a very public assassination does.

To be fair, repeatedly eliminating opposition figures is going to generate a lot of attention however you do it. When Zhou Yongkang vanished from public view for months prior to his recent corruption trial, people spent the entire time speculating about where he was and what had happened to him. After the first month or so, it had become pretty obvious that he had been made to vanish rather than simply withdrawing while recovering from an illness or anything like that.

Maybe Putin simply likes to mix things up, keep people guessing. On Monday a bogus trial, on Tuesday a gruesome execution... what surprises will Wednesday bring?

[GoranZ]

Russian opposition leader and Putin critic Boris Nemtsov shot dead in Moscow. He leaves behind 4 children.

It's funny how Putin's opponents get eliminated. What a thug he is.

He was opposition leader His popularity was almost at 0% and almost no Russian would vote for him. But he was one of the western bribed opposition leaders.
Even without Putin in power, he didn't had a chance vs other non-western opposition leaders in Russia.
Openly opposing public opinion, being bribed by the West and openly admitting it, does create prerequisites for the outcome that happen. He had an abundance of enemies in every corner of Russia.
In this circumstances blaming Putin(evidence?) only demonstrates western desire to take Putin from power using undemocratic methods. Obviously you guys dont have a chance with democratic.
Maybe you think that Russia is Ukraine

[waauw]

Russian opposition leader and Putin critic Boris Nemtsov shot dead in Moscow. He leaves behind 4 children.

It's funny how Putin's opponents get eliminated. What a thug he is.

You have to put everything into perspective. Russia has a homicide rate almost twice as high as the US and Nemtsov was one of the only pro-western capitalists in Russia. This is not a very pleasant image to have in a deeply nationalist and anti-americanist country. Even Putin himself has trouble keeping check on the far-right.

Another thing to consider is, why would Putin want Nemtsov assassinated and not Gennady Zyuganov. The former didn't even receive 1% of the votes, while the latter had 17%.

Lastly, I really don't understand why the west is so desperate to get rid of Putin. Régime changes are extremely hard to predict and as it stands the alternatives are not positive for the west either. All 4 big parties in Russia want an expansion of military presence. The only thing they differ on is their socio-economic policy.

[DoomYoshi]

Re the Ukraine thing: if the US and EU had not fanned the original protests and facilitated the removal of an elected government from office, would there have been a huge backlash from government supporters that would give Russia space to start interfering in the way that it currently is? Highly unlikely.

Do you doubt that the Russians had boots on the ground within week 1 of the Euromaidan?

"if the ruskies had not fanned" etc.

That doesn't invalidate my point at all. Had the EU and US not interfered and pushed the old government from power, there would have been no impetus for Russia to go ape and start pushing back.

That doesn't mean that what Russia's doing is legal, but it's fairly obvious that if you oust a leader who is friendly with Russia and stick your own anti-Russia puppet in his place, sabotaging Ukraine's planned expansion of trade ties with Russia in the process, then Russia is going to get pissed off.

I think you have the history kind of skewed. Ukraine was taking early steps to join the EU, but the Oligarchs stopped it from happening. Before any foreign governments got involved, Azarov and Yanukovic made some terrible decisions which escalated the Maidan protests. The whole thing comes down to remarkably poor PR. Shoulda called in the Kardashians.

[saxitoxin]

What would Putin gain by having Nemtsov gunned down in public? If he has that kind of power to order hits on opponents, surely he would also have the power to have Nemtsov just quietly disappear and have his body wash ashore a year or two later? A person simply vanishing is less likely to produce the recriminations and backlash a very public assassination does.

Concur with saxi on this one.

Someone check Mets' account to make sure it wasn't hacked.

[saxitoxin]

The lapdog western press are already, in tightly synchronized fashion, whipping up the idea that Netsmov was killed by Putin - but without coming right out and saying so, giving them deniability to charges of conspiracy-mongering.

They're using all their regular tricks, including:

(a) [Washington Post] elevating the charges of partisans to headlines (the media outlet can later disclaim that they were simply making a factual quote of a third-party source, not an independent assertion)

(b) [ABC News] making patently fictitious claims ("a popular outspoken critic" -- Netsmov was not popular in Russia by any objective sense of the word)

The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest. Even large media corporations such as the BBC cannot afford to place reporters everywhere. They therefore concentrate their resources where major news stories are likely to happen: the White House, the Pentagon, No 10 Downing Street, and other centralised news 'terminals'. Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, points out that 'Professional journalism relies heavily on official sources. Reporters have to talk to the PM's official spokesperson, the White House press secretary, the business association, the army general. What those people say is news. Their perspectives are automatically legitimate.'

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/2002----.htm

[GoranZ]

Can we blame radical Islamist for killing of Nemtsov? Thats Westerns favorite suspect if there are no Russians around

BTW Which Western agency killed Mikhail Chechetov?
http://en.apa.az/xeber_ex-deputy_of_the ... 23744.html

[saxitoxin]

U.S. opposition critic Gary Webb ... shot twice in the head in 2004, death ruled a suicide ...

[mrswdk]

Had the EU and US not interfered and pushed the old government from power, there would have been no impetus for Russia to go ape and start pushing back.

That doesn't mean that what Russia's doing is legal, but it's fairly obvious that if you oust a leader who is friendly with Russia and stick your own anti-Russia puppet in his place, sabotaging Ukraine's planned expansion of trade ties with Russia in the process, then Russia is going to get pissed off.

I think you have the history kind of skewed. Ukraine was taking early steps to join the EU, but the Oligarchs stopped it from happening. Before any foreign governments got involved, Azarov and Yanukovic made some terrible decisions which escalated the Maidan protests. The whole thing comes down to remarkably poor PR. Shoulda called in the Kardashians.

Early steps which Ukraine decided to suspend in favor of deeper economic ties with Russia. That's what started the protests that eventually led to the ousting of Yanukovych.

[mrswdk]

Can we blame radical Islamist for killing of Nemtsov? Thats Westerns favorite suspect if there are no Russians around

Islamic extremism is also increasingly Russia and China's go-to scapegoat, it would seem.

And yeah, Islamic extremism has actually been named as a possible motive for this killing by Russia's Investigative Committee.