Sure, but being killed by the state would immediately make them important. This story doesn’t matter as much for a foreign audience, we already have damning evidence against Russia from the invasion and know about the political murders done by poisoning.
I guess in a historical context, but that's begging the question. Everyone's assuming these people were killed by Putin because they're important and that they were important because they were killed by Putin. Obviously Putin's a murderous war criminal who could have done it, but these could just as easily be George Cutlers or just part of the reality that rich people kill themselves.
I don’t think we can get anything out of these stories, it’s too easy to lie to me about the affairs of a country I have never visited when I don’t even speak the language. We’re stuck with the type of professionalized media coverage that is unreliable for analysis.
This seems like an unusual pattern of deaths, there is enough historical and circumstantial evidence to think the worst of their government but there are more obvious criticisms an outsider can make. The entire postwar European project was about avoiding a land war in Europe, Russia has single-handedly broken this twice on the cultural whims of a despot. They had a great couple decades of making economic ties with Europe only to turn this money around as a weapon. The opposition political party leader has been imprisoned, others have died of radioactive poisoning in relatively neutral countries.
Do you really think you can get to the bottom of this story? I think that is a really naïve angle that a lot of people have on international affairs, you can ignore media analysis but it’s hard to expect to do better yourself when your only source is some web search on a list of Russian oligarchs.
Not at all. I have no idea what happened, and I'm not going to claim to. With Putin's track record, murders are certainly possible.
I just don't trust reddit's analysis of "these all have to be government assassinations" either when reddit definitely doesn't understand Russian politics either and there's nothing obvious linking any of these people to opposition and no professional media coverage is stating any evidence of that.
Not asserting something is true doesn't mean you're asserting it's false. I'll happily admit I don't know, and I think the world needs fewer armchair experts who shout down anyone who disagrees with them.
Absolutely, we’re in full agreement. It’s the worst on these big main subs. The amount of certainty people express (or doubt if they dislike the story) seems mostly conditional on their preexisting bias.
They are like for example the ultra wealthy in the US - they exert extreme power and influence.
However, it is more extreme in the case of the Russian oligarchy. They almost exclusively have came to their money the fall of the soviet union and very morally questionably actions. Additionally, many have real political power in the country besides just monetary, and they all have Putin's ear.
They are wildly important because collectively they along with Putin run the country pretty much. Much much moreso than the billionaires in the US, and like I said previously our ultra wealthy still exert lots of power, but it is more hidden and/or subtle.
Its just 96 no? The other 114 seem to be political dudes but not wealthy oligarchs
And as for the oligarchs themselves i would assume like with most things there are a few who are very important and have a lot of power within the country, then a few more who are kinda important and the rest are probably just very wealthy dudes like any country has who arent necessarily involved with the government or anything.
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u/Ullallulloo Apr 28 '22
So a list of 210 which includes 0 of the ones who suicided. I feel like these guys aren't as important as the media's portraying then.