The State of Affairs in Russia

[CountDeMoney]

What are we looking at now?

Sometimes those little flag toons Spellus posts are decipherable, and then sometimes they're like--

http://youtu.be/Ubckx7X2Nd4

[Syt]

I generally like Polandball comics, but that one is weird.

[Liep]

Call off the search; one of the arrested Chechens has confessed to the murder. Shame on all you who thought Putin was behind this. Shame.

[CountDeMoney]

"...and they drag out a badly beaten bear, who is screaming, 'OK, I'm a rabbit! I'm a rabbit!'"

[CountDeMoney]

6th suspect in Boris Nemtsov's killing dies in suicide, report says

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/07/europe/russia-nemtsov-murder-arrest/index.html

Beslan Shavanov, 30, was holed up in a building in Grozny when police arrived to arrest him Saturday afternoon, Russia 24 reported. Police surrounded the building and Shavano tried to escape, throwing a grenade at police officers before blowing himself up, the station said.

[alfred russel]

Call off the search; one of the arrested Chechens has confessed to the murder. Shame on all you who thought Putin was behind this. Shame.

I doubt the Chechens could have pulled this off single handedly. I expect evidence to soon turn up of assistance from homosexual activists, ukrainians, and the syrian opposition. They all have the motive to discredit Putin, and it would take such a coalition to pull off such a daring attack.

It goes without saying that such a coalition could only be put together by the CIA.

[Martinus]

Meanwhile, the propaganda aimed at foreign consumption (RT leading the field) doesn't seem so much to tout the Gospel According to Vladimir, but rather obfuscates and blurs what's truth and what's spin with the aim of creating a climate of distrust of all media - and paid cohorts and useful idiots in the comments sections of news sites are fostering the climate of not believing anything the media say on certain topics, or that all media have a dark agenda and shouldn't be trusted (unless you're a self proclaimed harbinger of truth with a YouTube channel of badly edited videos that unmask the TRUE TRUTH).

Plays also into the notion that if there are "two sides", the savvy person ought to seek the truth somewhere inbetween them - very prevelent these days. There is a positive allergy to stating that one side is more or less the good guys and the other more or less the bad guys no matter what the situation. That way the propogandist can shift the goalposts simply by persistantly making outrageous claims - sure, they are extreme, but the assumption becomes that their opponents are equally extreme and the truth lies in the middle.

Though ISIS and Putin are, between them, putting some strain on that ...

Yeah, "the truth lies somewhere in the middle" is one of the most harmful and widespread fallacies of the modern world.

24/7 news programmes are one of the reasons - you need to provide content and nothing gives you the content for "free" like getting a proponent of some policy or stance and then putting him in the same room as someone who believes exactly the opposite.

[Syt]

Kadyrov opening his big trap again:

http://tass.ru/en/russia/781728

Chechen leader says he knows Nemtsov murder suspect as "true patriot of Russia"

Ramzan Kadyrov said Zaur Dadayev would have never taken a single step against Russia

MOSCOW, 9 March. /TASS/. Chechnya's head Ramzan Kadyrov has ordered a probe into the past of a former Interior Troops officer, who alongside several other suspects has been charged with the murder of Russian politician Boris Nemtsov. Also, Kadyrov shared his personal impressions of the arrested ex-officer on his page in the social network Instagram.

The man in question, Zaur Dadayev, on Sunday pleaded guilty to complicity in Nemtsov's murder. Moscow's Basmanny Court ordered he, among five suspects in the case, be remanded in custody till April 28.

"I have known Zaur as a true patriot of Russia," Kadyrov wrote down. According to his post, before leaving the military service Dadayev had the rank of a lieutenant and held the position of a battalion's deputy commander in a regiment of the 46th separate operative brigade of Russia's Interior Ministry troops.

"Zaur was one of the bravest men in the regiment," Kadyrov said. "He displayed particular courage in an operation against a large group of terrorists near Benoi. He was awarded the Order of Courage, and medals For Bravery and For Services to the Chechen Republic. I am certain that he was sincerely dedicated to Russia and prepared to give his life for the Motherland. The real reasons and motives behind Dadayev's dismissal from the Russian Interior Ministry troops are unclear to me."

"I have instructed Chechnya's Security Council Secretary Vakhit Usmayev to conduct a thorough investigation of Zaur Dadayev's resignation and to scrutinize his behavior and morale on the eve of leaving the service," Kadyrov said. "In any case, if Dadayev's guilt is established in court, it will have to be admitted that by taking a human life he committed a grave crime. But I must say once again that he would have never taken a single step against Russia, for the sake of which he had risked his own life for many years. Beslan Shavanov, the man killed during an attempt to detain him, was a brave soldier, too. We hope that a thorough investigation will follow to show if Dadayev is really guilty, and if yes, what was the real reason behind his actions.".

I guess Kadyrov will be disposed of very quickly when he's no longer of use to Moscow, but for the time being he keeps the Chechens in line (mostly).

[Tamas]

He didn't get the memo.

[Tamas]

Meanwhile, the propaganda aimed at foreign consumption (RT leading the field) doesn't seem so much to tout the Gospel According to Vladimir, but rather obfuscates and blurs what's truth and what's spin with the aim of creating a climate of distrust of all media - and paid cohorts and useful idiots in the comments sections of news sites are fostering the climate of not believing anything the media say on certain topics, or that all media have a dark agenda and shouldn't be trusted (unless you're a self proclaimed harbinger of truth with a YouTube channel of badly edited videos that unmask the TRUE TRUTH).

Plays also into the notion that if there are "two sides", the savvy person ought to seek the truth somewhere inbetween them - very prevelent these days. There is a positive allergy to stating that one side is more or less the good guys and the other more or less the bad guys no matter what the situation. That way the propogandist can shift the goalposts simply by persistantly making outrageous claims - sure, they are extreme, but the assumption becomes that their opponents are equally extreme and the truth lies in the middle.

Though ISIS and Putin are, between them, putting some strain on that ...

Yeah, "the truth lies somewhere in the middle" is one of the most harmful and widespread fallacies of the modern world.

24/7 news programmes are one of the reasons - you need to provide content and nothing gives you the content for "free" like getting a proponent of some policy or stance and then putting him in the same room as someone who believes exactly the opposite.

Yeah.

Believing your nation's own narrative to events is the only possibly correct have one have averted many a disasters in the 20th century.

[Syt]

So yeah, they're playing the Islamist angle on the Nemtsov assassination:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/one-of-nemtsov-murder-suspects-served-in-chechen-police-unit/517141.html

Suspect Charged With Nemtsov Murder Was 'Devout Muslim'

Russian authorities on Sunday charged two men over the killing of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov and said one of them was a former senior policeman from the mainly Muslim region of Chechnya who had confessed to involvement in the crime.

The two were among five men, all ethnic Chechens, frogmarched into a Moscow courtroom on Sunday, forced by masked security officers gripping their bound arms to walk doubled over, a reporter at the court said.

The men stood in metal cages as television crews were ushered in to film them.

Nemtsov was shot dead on the night of Feb. 27 within sight of the Kremlin walls, in the most high-profile killing of an opposition figure in the 15 years that President Vladimir Putin has been in power.

Judge Natalia Mushnikova ordered that all five men should remain in custody.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a Putin ally, said the former policeman, Zaur Dadayev, was a pious Muslim who had been angered by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Nemtsov, a liberal, had defended the cartoons after Islamist gunmen killed 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris in January. Russian investigators said last week they were looking into the possibility that Islamist militants had killed Nemtsov.

"All who know Zaur confirm that he is a deep believer and also that he, like all Muslims, was shocked by the activities of Charlie and comments in support of printing the cartoons," Kadyrov wrote on his Instagram account.

Kadyrov described Dadayev as "a true patriot of Russia" who had received several medals for bravery but had subsequently resigned from his Interior Ministry regiment for reasons the Chechen leader said were unclear.

There have been cases in the past where employees of Russian law enforcement agencies have been prosecuted after moonlighting for organized crime groups.

Confession

"Dadayev's involvement in committing this crime is confirmed by, apart from his own confession, the totality of evidence gathered as part of this criminal case," Mushnikova told Sunday's court hearing.

The other man charged is Anzor Gubashev. The three other suspects are his brother Shagid Gubashev, Ramzan Bakhayev and Tamerlan Eskerkhanov. Previously, investigators said they only had two suspects in custody.

Separately, Russia's Interfax news agency, quoting a Chechen law enforcement source, said a man killed in a standoff with police in the Chechen capital Grozny late on Saturday had also been wanted by police in connection with Nemtsov's killing.

When police arrived at an apartment block, the man threw one grenade at officers and then blew himself up with a second, Interfax said.

Some associates of Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy prime minister who became a Putin critic, say the Kremlin stands to gain from his death. Russian officials deny involvement and Putin has condemned the killing.

The court hearings on Sunday were given extensive coverage on state-controlled media, and presented as proof the authorities were conducting a thorough investigation — not the cover-up some of Nemtsov's friends say they anticipate.

But associates of Nemtsov say they will not be satisfied unless prosecutors track down whoever orchestrated the killing, rather than just the people who pulled the trigger.

There was no word from investigators on who the suspects were alleged to have been working for.

Several other high-profile killings in Russia, including the 2006 shooting of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, have been attributed to gunmen from Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus region, while those who ordered the crimes were never firmly identified.

Chechnya has seen violent separatist insurgencies over the past two decades. It is now firmly under the control of Kadyrov, a former rebel who changed sides and pledges loyalty to Putin.

[Zanza]

 

[Syt]

I wonder if the suspects will turn out to be operating alone, or hired by:
- Islamists/IS
- CIA
- Ukraine
- NATO
- Moldova/Georgia/another small country with a grudge
- Zionist World Government
- Gay Lobby
- Google

[Syt]

Though I'm surprised they have some warm bodies to show to the cameras instead of producing some corpses and pinning it on them. This ought to be a good propaganda show when it comes to trial (unless the suspects commit suicide in jail).

[Liep]

It's been a while since we've had a proper Russian show trial, it's always good fun to see the accused in those glass boxes.