Election fraud allegations will erode Putin’s legitimacy | Russia | Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/9/22/election-fraud-allegations-will-erode-putins-legitimacy
@kravietz Perhaps you are right, but Navalny seems like a right-wing CIA/MI6 puppet like Juan Guaidó. A tool in the regime change warfare.
If there was a slightest hint of Navalny being controlled by a foreign power, you'd have Russian state media all over it for the last year. Instead, they sentenced him based on a decade-old economic case where his and his brother's crime was making profit on sales of wood. And the direct pretext for his jailing this time was that he wasn't present at the probation office while he was unconscious in a hospital due to poisoning by FSB.
@modrobert Murad Gazdiev and RT just recently published a video of alleged ODIHR "training for Russian opposition" that was set up so lame that even pro-government journalists were embarrassed. A couple of years ago they also produced an "intercept of CIA agents planning MH17 bombing" that resulted in similar facepalms (and even there they managed to include Navalny). So you should definitely take whatever RT posts with a pinch of salt.
@kravietz I have no doubt Putin go after his political opponents, but have serious doubts about Navalny. Perhaps I'm biased due to his neo-nazi background.
But he has no neo-nazi background. Once again, this is something that has been invented relatively recently by RT - they inflated a few of his comments from >10 years ago where he was critical of immigrants from Caucasus. His views back then could have been described as "nationalist" but even that would be a far stretch. You could say Dmitry Rogozin, a prominent Kremlin politicians and head of Roscosmos, has way more "neo-nazi" background than Navalny but somehow RT doesn't care.
And then you have Margarita Simonyan, head of RT, accusing Navalny of being "neo-nazi" because of his 2011 comments, while she makes rather disgusting and openly racist comments on regular basis - her husband made a whole racist sketch about Obama, she defended him and argued about "criminal negroes" being a plague in the US.
@kravietz I'm pretty sure the reason for leaking the footage of Navalny's organization taking money from MI6 was to hang him out and make him look bad, but all the persons involved are named, so it's pretty hard to dismiss as evidence, regardless of what you think about RT.
Then you have Ashurkov who is asking for money, and you have Ford barely saying anything apart from "yes, yes".
And that's it - there's *nothing* else in the video, all the rest is RT narrative.
Can you now see how you were manipulated into believing what you saw was:
> footage of Navalny's organization taking money from MI6
@kravietz No, I don't see any manipulation except story bias, if this video leak was fake it would have been debunked all over western mainstream media, but it was not mentioned anywhere except RT and perhaps push back (or grayzone).
Let's me take that into parts for you:
* There's evidence for Ashurkov meeting a former UK diplomat for fund raising
* There's no evidence of Ford having anything to do with MI6
* There's no evidence of Ford actually committing to any funding to Ashurkov
* There's no evidence of Navalny coordinating that with Ashurkov
But if all you were able to see there was:
> footage of Navalny's organization taking money from MI6
Then it's clearly a manipulation, and a quite effective one!
@kravietz Think I found the reason Navalny was initially being considered "useful" to the US: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW2632_a.html
"The West" doesn't care - US and Europe happily trade with Kremlin and buy their oil and gas. Germany just completed a new pipeline from Gazprom, Poland imports most of its coal from Russia, so someone lied to you.
The point Navalny was investigating in all of his publications was specifically that the massive amounts of money generated by Russian gas and oil industry is being stolen and turned into luxurious mansions, yachts and lavish lifestyle by people close to Kremlin.
@kravietz Interesting you brought up the election in USA, because if they really had democracy there it would most likely be a peaceful and prosperous country, but they have been controlled by the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) for several decades, maybe even longer, through lobbying and campaign donations (legalized corruption). Without war the only traditional industry they have left, defense/military with domestic production can't survive, so they will have to find new countries to invade and more military bases (besides the 800 based they currently have abroad).
Nonetheless, Americans had the freedom of first electing Trump and then removing him in elections. They changed their Congress completely as well. Russians didn't have this freedom since 1999.
@kravietz The president doesn't have much power in USA, that's one of the reasons not much changes between elections. If you want to know where the power is, follow the money. A good read on the subject is 'Giants' by Peter Phillips. The permanent state is controlled by oligarchs.
@modrobert
This again assumes Navalny is the only opposition politician in Russia, and that he will be somehow automatically made president to replace Putin.
He won't. Or he will, we don't know. In most countries this is decided in elections, and the most fierce fight for presidency we just saw recently in the US.
But there *was* that fight in the US. And the problem of Russia is not Putin or Navalny, but that after 1999 there was no way to tell any of them "you're wrong, go away".