Probably just standard operating procedure for the GRU.

An ostensibly normal reason behind the deaths for the state media to report (illness or fell out of window) while still getting the message across to everyone?

Has Trump said anything about this?

"Sorry to hear about Novichok, know him well, great guy".

or maybe

"People are saying that Novichok almost killed that guy in Russia, he sounds like a bad hombre".

There is a long tradition of using poison as a method of assassination, stemming not only the times of the CCCP, but stretching centuries back into Russian history as a way to carry out murder plots.

The secret services during the CCCP had their own facility (the Kamera) to research agents, methods of delivery and conduct testing on humans (prisoners most likely). The work is rumored to have picked up again in the 90s, and we know the Russians used poisons to kill dissidents and rebel leaders in the early 2000s.

There is also the infamous assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and the case of the world's most radioactive blanket (at the time at least). The story is a good read for people imagining Hollywoodesque assassins trained to the fingertips, telling more a story of ignorance and blunders. The reality of such conspiracies seems to more Kafka than spy thriller.

Someone used the phrase “Capable of Implausible Denial” about this, no one believes the denial, which is the whole point of it.

Some do, which is enough. Get a few percent to believe it in across the countries you engage in such activities in and it is often enough to sidetrack the debate. That the denial is implausible means it will only be believed by people who are ignorant or willfully ignorant, and they yell the loudest.

In CCCP times they used communists, modern Russia uses nationalists to the same effect.

I think he just gets a kick out of doing things with only the faintest shred of deniability, safe in the knowledge that no one will really call him out on it. It's "Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes" as political strategy. My favourite was when he auctioned off the company of the (then) richest man in Russia after giving him a showtrial and 8 years in jail and used two Swedish guys no one had ever heard of to buy it. The Swedish guys' company was literally registered to a shed.

Stealing Robert Kraft's super bowl ring right off his finger was pretty good too.

Lol that superbowl ring story is amazing. I wonder if the kleptocrat in him legit thought it was a tribute offering, or he just felt like showing up an American billionaire because he can.

I think Putin is very self aware and gets off on making people deny reality because they're scared of him. That it became a matter of state was probably icing on the cake. For a much darker example read this https://www.gq.com/story/moscow-bomb...hkin-and-putin (though I don't think it's clear that Putin was the driving force behind this one).

Oh sure Putin is going to start a war cause Kraft demands his ring back. Hes a little dicked bully.

Eadgbe, it's clearly him showing him up.

lot of good hard working wonderful people yes.

but idk man the language is absolute dogshit to listen to compared to several other eu languages

Not Russian but Soviet, there was also the assassination of Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov with ricin by the Bulgarian secret service in 1978 (fired from an umbrella no less, in true James Bond villain style).
The Bulgarians allegedly asked the KGB for assistance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov

Weirdly, the cyanide gas pistol used in Thunderball (to eliminate the French NATO pilot so the SPECTRE double can replace him on board the RAF Vulcan bomber) was a real KGB assassination weapon used in the murders of two Ukrainian nationalist leaders in the late 1950s, the idea being that it would look like a heart attack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohdan_Stashynsky

But these days Putin doesn't want it too deniable. He wants everyone to know who did it.

Agreed. Random murders/disappearances don't have quite the same effect and could definitely be done that way if he wanted. He wants it known.

The poisonings/bizarre deaths serve as a warning to others. He absolutely wants it known.

Why, yes. Yes, he has. He says there's no proof and anyway China is a much bigger threat than Russia.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54039710

Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza (He survived two poisonings by Putin in Russia) is in Germany announcing Magnitsky sanctions by Germany.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/r...alny-poisoning

"The Foreign Ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, US and the EU have issued a statement condemning the poisoning of Alexei Navalny."

AP is now reporting that Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Soviet-Era nerve agent.

Link to AP article here.

Novichok is originally a name for a nerve agent program started in the Soviet Union, and a series of agents developed in this program were referred to as "novichoks".

Science Direct article on the Novichok program and the weapons it developed here. (It's science, but it is also bloody good reading for anyone interested in a bit of cold war arms race and secret weapon programs).

The poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in March 2018 was also done with a novichok nerve agent. Investigations revealed the assassins to be an active members of the Russian military intelligence service (GRU), colonel Anatoliy Chepiga and Dr. Alexander Mishkin, a doctor working in GRU's main directorate. Skripal was, as some you might now, a former GRU officer who was in the 90s and early 2000s working as a double agent for the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/w...-novichok.html

"News: Navalny is awake, spoke to a German prosecutor and vows to return to Russia to continue his work, according to a senior German official."

That's about the most Russian thing I have heard.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54163389

Hes awake from the coma now, and claims he will return to Russian soon.

Is he taking the train?