Clumsy Russians…or a touch of murder

 

"Putin Forever" by BakeNecko, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Putin_Forever.jpg

So there seem to be a lot of clumsy Russians out there. They keep falling from high places.

Most recently, this included a high ranking diplomat at the Russian Embassy in Berlin (as of the time I’m writing this, he still hadn’t been named) who apparently “jumped or was pushed” from the embassy and died in the street below. Or maybe he was dead before he hit the ground. No one seems to know for sure.(1)

Several news reports indicate that the man was the son of a general in the Russia security service, the FSB, formerly the KGB.(2) This comes on top of a variety of other, curious cases of people jumping out of windows. For example, three doctors who dared to question of the official narrative about Covid in Russia similarly fell out of windows.(3)

So what is going on? Well, clearly, doctors and diplomats, or even KGB agents, aren’t going to be as clumsy (or as suicidal) as all that. And they’re probably not regularly practicing their parkour on quite such a regular basis.

But…officially sanctioned state executioners…particularly when they’re Russians…could be that clumsy. They could be sufficiently crude to kill in ways that leave their fingerprints all over the scene of the crime. Or, maybe they want to leave their traces behind, as a warning to anyone else who might get out of line. I remember hearing someplace that in the 1960s and 1970s, the KGB used very large, very soft-nosed bullets at very close range on defectors and others of whom the agency wished to make an example. Gruesome wounds, you see, was the idea. 

Or maybe they simply didn’t give a damn. Maybe they figured that there was no reason to practice concealment. After all, we seem to be entering an age in which Western governments don’t have a lot of say in such matters, not even when the assassinations are carried out in broad daylight and in their home territories. The Russians poisoned Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Alexei Navalny, and doubtless many others …and all these events were known to be assassinations or assassination attempts. Yet, in spite of much press coverage and considerable popular outrage, not much has been done about them. There were a few pious expressions of diplomatic protest, but otherwise…

So, maybe the Russians just assumed that they could get away with whatever, and no one would be able to do anything about it.

But, the point is that something odd is going on. Nations use “targeted killings,” a.k.a., assassinations, all the time. But as a rule, they try not to leave too many big signs about with “We Were Here!” written on them in bright neon colors. Even the murder of Trotsky, which was pretty darn blatant, had at least some patina of “plausible deniability.”

Not like today…

What does it all mean? Well, obviously, I’m not at all sure. But I’m guessing that the Russians, or more particularly their intelligence services, have either decided that the West is so flabby that they no longer have to worry about public relations. They may kill without concern. They can leave poisoned defectors, and British policemen, in the streets of London with perfect safety, because what is a Brexited Britain going to do about it? Or what is America, hopelessly infested with QAnoners and Trumpsters, going to do about it? Probably very little.

Or…or…it means the KGB/FSB, and its masters in the Kremlin, have finally abandoned the role of security and intelligence agency, spying and killing for the greater good of a common state, and become wholly something else, and something far more crude…

It has become, instead, the leg-breaking and neck-breaking operation of a criminal syndicate.

It has become, in effect, the enforcement arm of a crime family…one headed by Putin and his people.

Either way, we confront a new and extraordinary danger—i.e., people, who are armed and trained and deadly…who are ruthless and without compassion…

And will happily murder anyone for any reason…knowing that almost surely, they will get away with it.

Which means, in turn…

If we are to survive and prosper in this strange new world…we must help them rethink that latter assumption. And give them good reason to know that murder for political, economic, or ideological reasons, is still murder.

And that justice will be done…

No matter how divided or confused we may appear to be.

But really, and truly, are not.

~mjt

p.s. The dead diplomat has been identified as Kirill Zhalo

~m

Sources:

1. https://www.thedailybeast.com/son-of-top-russian-fsb-figure-alexey-zhalo-is-reportedly-dead-after-fall-from-window-at-embassy-in-berlin?ref=scroll

2. https://www.reuters.com/world/diplomat-found-dead-outside-berlin-embassy-was-russian-secret-agent-der-spiegel-2021-11-05/ and https://www.thedailybeast.com/son-of-top-russian-fsb-figure-alexey-zhalo-is-reportedly-dead-after-fall-from-window-at-embassy-in-berlin

3. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/europe/russia-medical-workers-windows-intl/index.html

Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker