![]() People have received jail sentences for protesting the war. People have already received lengthy jail sentences for, quote-unquote, "delegitimizing" the armed forces. This is happening at a time when dissent has been criminalized. You have to understand that this is happening not in a vacuum. Whether or not the Kremlin is responsible, is it helpful for Putin to have people believe that if you speak out of turn, you might wind up dead? But we can be absolutely sure that people in the Russian business community are taking note and being extra, extra, extra careful now in terms of what they're saying about the war, about Putin - which they've already been careful before the war, but now I'm sure they're being doubly, triply so. And then, you know, one after another, a couple of Lukoil managers turned up dead.Īgain, these are things that might be coincidental. There were two men who were very high-ranking managers in the oil company Lukoil, and it was one of the only Russian companies that, in February of 2022, came out against the war while everybody else was quite silent. Is criticism of Putin a common thread here? SHAPIRO: In the case of Pavel Antov, the man who died in India, earlier this year, he denied posting an anti-war message on WhatsApp. SHAPIRO: How big are the air quotes around that word, coincidences? And if you talk to anybody who has ever worked in intelligence or the security services in America or in other countries, they'll tell you that coincidences like this have to be very carefully planned. And Vladimir Putin seems to be making that very clear with a string of these coincidences. If anything, it has become even more dangerous, domestically and abroad, for Russian oligarchs to oppose Vladimir Putin, to speak out against him. You know, the West hasn't made it that easy for Russian oligarchs to peel off from Vladimir Putin. The West wants to seize your yachts, and open windows are an existential threat. SHAPIRO: I don't want to make light of a situation where people are dying, but it seems like a tough time to be an oligarch. JULIA IOFFE: Thanks so much for having me, Ari. ![]() Julia Ioffe is a founding partner and Washington correspondent for the news site Puck, and her analysis of Russia has been a must-read ever since Putin invaded Ukraine. In fact, just two days before Antov's death, someone traveling with him died in the same hotel of an apparent heart attack. ![]() Others tumbled downstairs or have been struck with fatal illnesses. At least a dozen Russian businessmen have died mysteriously in the last year. ![]() Sausage magnate Pavel Antov fell to his death in India on Christmas Eve. It’s not a college lecture, sure, but maybe at least let the expert get a word in? “Otherwise,” Ioffe wrote, “don’t waste my fucking evening.” O’Donnell, at least, played the good sport on Twitter, linking to Ioffe’s original article on the matter, calling it the “best thing” he read on the subject, and adding, “Thanks for joining us.This recent headline might sound familiar - Russian oligarch dies after hotel fall. She proceeded to make a simple, bullet-pointed list of arguments that would never be allowed on cable television because they reveal an ability to think outside a black or white, good or bad, America or Russia dichotomy. In a post for the New Republic, Ioffe insisted, “god damn it, I know my shit.” Obama’s decision to not meet with Putin one-on-one, she wrote, was a good one, but it was larger than Snowden. The segment, mercifully, ended, but the fight did not. In general, people who haven’t been to Russia tend to overestimate their abilities.” Ioffe added, “We really overestimate Putin’s abilities.” O’Donnell, voiced raised Newsroom style, stressed Putin’s all-consuming power and exclaimed, “Let’s not be ridiculous about this!” and “We’re getting absurd now!” To which Ioffe asked, “Have you reported out of Russia?” “But I think you do overestimate the Russians. “They had and still have complete power over his every breath,” especially Putin. Russia had “complete, total, absolute control over that outcome,” he said. “There was really nothing the Russians could do,” said Ioffe, which really set O’Donnell off. She argued that Snowden was a “headache” for Russia, but that the country could not let him go once the Bolivian plane thought to be holding him was downed in Austria. First, Ioffe, a Moscow-based “expert” (her word) on Russia, appeared on the show. MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell and New Republic journalist Julia Ioffe had it out last night in a most entertaining fashion over Russia’s handling of the Edward Snowden case, ending in a withering blog post in which the writer called the talking head an “angry grandpa” and accused him of “O’Reilly”-ing her.
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