In October 2002, Putin sacrificed 130 Russian civilians to prevent an opposition leaders from gaining popularity.
🧵This wasn't a mistake - it was a preview of how his regime would operate. Here's what happened:
When terrorists seized Moscow's Dubrovka theater with 912 hostages inside, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and Moscow's mayor Luzhkov attempted negotiations to free women, children, and the elderly - until Putin asked them to stop
Putin personally intervened - not to help save lives, but to stop these negotiations. His chief of staff later admitted why: Putin feared Nemtsov's approval ratings would rise if he successfully freed the hostages.
Instead of continuing talks, Putin ordered a gas attack on the theater. The gas knocked out everyone inside - both terrorists and hostages. 130 civilians never woke up because they weren't given the antidote in time
As hostages later recalled, "The entire theater suddenly started snoring." The unconscious terrorists were executed on the spot, while rescue workers were unprepared to treat hundreds of civilians exposed to the unknown gas.
Putin's former chief of staff Voloshin told Nemtsov directly: "Putin was tracking the polls. He saw your approval ratings climbing rapidly during negotiations. That's why he ordered you to stop."
When Nemtsov asked if Putin had considered that stopping negotiations could lead to deaths, Voloshin's answer was chilling: No. The only concern was political ratings.
This incident better than anything shows Putin's core nature: maintaining power trumps human life. Not just for enemies, but for Russian citizens too. This same calculus drives his actions today.
After building Russia's largest company and losing it to Putin's regime, I share insights on how his regime really works. Follow for more
*an opposition leader [singular - because primarily it was Boris Nemtsov at this time]
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Under Kadyrov's control, Mariupol's steel plants are being gutted and sold for scrap. Here's how Putin's favorite warlord profits from occupation 1/9
2/9 Kadyrov’s men have plundered the city’s two steel mills – Azovstal and Ilyich Iron and Steel Works – stripping them of millions of dollars' worth of equipment and scrap metal, which is shipped to Russia wsj.com/world/russia/r…
3/9 Mariupol’s mayor Vadym Boychenko, who has been exiled from the city since it was invaded, says the materials are being used by Russian companies to produce cars and trucks
Meet Ilan Shor, the Kremlin’s new favorite oligarch in Moldova.
This fugitive tycoon, convicted in the "theft of the century", is now at the center of unprecedented meddling in Moldova's pivotal elections.
1/9 Here’s what we know about him, thanks to @dossier_center
2/9 Shor made his first millions running duty-free shops in Chisinau. Then, remarkably, at just 24 years old with zero banking experience, he became chairman of Moldova's largest bank - Banca de Economii.
3/9 From this position, he engineered what Moldovans call "the theft of the century." Through a web of fraudulent loans, he stole $1 billion from three banks. It was an unprecedented scale: 12% of Moldova's entire GDP vanished overnight.
France just broke a crucial barrier for Russian deserters.
For the first time ever, an EU country has welcomed soldiers without papers - and it could change everything about Putin's war.
🧵Here's why this matters:
Since the invasion, several European countries have – to varying degrees – made it very difficult for Russian citizens to escape the country and avoid being dragged into Putin’s war machine
The Netherlands, for example, stopped granting visas to Russians in 2022, while Norway recently denied the asylum claim of a military-aged man on the basis that Putin claimed mobilization was over
Soviet psychiatry was notorious for being weaponized against political dissidents.
Now, Putin is reviving this practice, with nearly 50 sane critics currently subjected to forced "treatment".
Here are the stories of some of them:
Think about that. People are being sent for "treatment" under the "fake news" law. In other words, they're being declared mentally disabled for telling the truth about the war, for disagreeing with the regime.
It's is a monstrous practice. People are beaten, humiliated, pumped full of personality-destroying substances. The goal is not just to isolate, but to completely break a person. And while a prison sentence eventually ends, "treatment" can go on indefinitely.
Complete collapse of law and order. Putin was already recruiting convicts to fight his war in Ukraine. Now, he’s expanded that to anyone facing charges.
🧵Both short and long-term consequences of this will be catastrophic. A closer look:
As of this month, anybody charged with a crime in Russia can sign a contract with the Defense Ministry in exchange for the charges being dropped, under a law signed by Putin last Wednesday.
In the short term, it means the Russian army is going to get a numbers boost. Convicts were already being sent to the front, so given the choice between going to war, and going to war with a criminal record, people will tend to choose the former
After serving almost two years in jail for a picture his daughter drew, single father Alexey Moskalyov was released yesterday. His child met him at the gates of the prison 1/7
In 2022, 13-year-old Masha Moskalyova drew an anti-war picture in class, showing a Ukrainian woman shielding a child from missiles. The school principal reported her to the police 2/7
Alexey Moskalyov’s social media accounts were found to contain anti-war posts and caricatures of Putin. He was initially fined about $300, but was later charged with ‘discrediting the army’ – which carries a prison sentence. 3/7