this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
303 points (97.8% liked)

World News

39019 readers
2681 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The last time I met Evgenia Kara-Murza, it was a grim day in early March. The timing couldn’t have been worse. As we spoke, Alexei Navalny’s coffin was being lowered into the frozen ground in a Moscow cemetery. Meanwhile Evgenia’s husband, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was still incarcerated in a Siberian prison cell almost identical to the one in the Arctic Circle in which Navalny had been found dead, presumed murdered.

The prospects were so grim and the news from Russia and Ukraine so unrelentingly depressing, it feels almost unimaginably miraculous six months later to see Evgenia walk into the lobby of a London hotel, this time with Vladimir right next to her. Six weeks ago, he was in a Siberian gulag. Today, he’s a free man on a trip to London with his wife and their youngest son, nine-year-old Daniel, the result of the largest prisoner exchange between Russian and the west since the cold war.

Most people he met in the Russian prison system, “the police officers, prison officials, judges, prosecutors, they don’t believe in anything”. Most are not pathological sadists, he says, they were just doing a job. “But the Alpha Group, the FSB special unit that was escorting us, I saw ideological hatred. They believe in this stuff and that’s even scarier.”

Kara-Murza’s grasp of history underpins his certainty that Putin’s regime will collapse – quickly and without warning. “That’s how things happen in Russia. Both the Romanov empire in the early 20th century, and the Soviet regime at the end of the 20th century collapsed in three days. That’s not a metaphor, it was literally three days in both cases.” He believes passionately that the best chance of a free and democratic Russia and peace in Europe rests on Russia’s defeat in Ukraine.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] NegativeInf@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] PauloPelle@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yee; gonna have to go for the heart me thinks.

[–] DeanFogg@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

Whoops hydra heart it's got multiple hearts