Friday, December 01, 2006

Rodina's Kiss

A lot of people that have been critical of Russia or opposed to Russia's ambitions have been poisoned or disposed if as of late. People are talking about the very brutal and nasty murder of the former FSB agent Alexander Litvenenko in Britian. On the heels of his foul end, Yegor Gaidar, the former prime minister of Russia, seems to have been poisoned as well. When added to do the recent death of Anna Politkovskaya, things are getting spun as increasingly bleak. While Charlie Stross has fretted over the idea of a dirty nuke in Britian, Randy has worried about nuclear terrorism and the future.

I am more worried about what this means about Russia. I also have to note that there was another individual that was nearly bumped off by an oddball poison: Viktor Yushchenko. He's not exactly marked as a friend to the Russian Federation, now is he?

Part of the reason that I haven't commented yet is that I cannot see where this is all going. It doesn't make a lot of sense, really. Why kill a semi-nut case? Litvinenko is on record saying 9/11 ws actually a Putin plot. The Eurasian Daily Monitor has been arguing that those that killed or poisoned a lot of the above are agents of a faction trying to force Putin to stay in power past the end of his constitutional allowed term (que?!). Another view expressed by the Putin administration is that it is someone out to discredit the Putin administration. Litvinenko himself accused Putin of ordering his death on his death bed. None of these make a lot of sense.

Charlie did make the accusation that this was obviously meant as a message to someone. Was it to the West? And was it meant to say, "We can bring in radioactive materials under your noses?" Or was it to dissidents of the Russians? We will kill you in horrible ways, so sit down and SHUTTUP! Or was it to Putin's crew? Or someone else? There was a message. It was probably recieved.

Something strange and terrible is afoot in Moscow, I fear.

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