from Hacker News

The Russian Federal Guard Service officer who worked with Putin and fled Russia

by krn on 4/5/23, 1:26 AM with 27 comments

• by throwaway290 on 4/5/23, 2:42 AM

  A riveting read. Waiting at the airport for delayed departure, with your wife and daughter, while they are starting to search for you...

  To me as a Russian (though I read the English translation) the part where he really never talked about it with mom rings true sadly. Watching TV is a good indicator too.

  Also, made me feel a bit better about not thinking a war would begin, contrary to US intelligence, if even this guy (who saw Putin in person many times apparently?) did not see it coming.

  I worry about this guy and his family by the way. I almost wish he didn't go public and draw attention for his family's sake. But I applaud the move.

• by exabrial on 4/5/23, 2:44 AM

  This was probably the most fascinating thing I’ve read to to bottom in several years

• by orloffm on 4/5/23, 7:55 AM

  "Honestly, I’d hoped there would be people who, at least in private conversations, would say something like, ‘Guys, this is war; people are dying.’"

  This is just so naive. And people in the US Secret Service casually discuss how bombing Syria is wrong? Of course it's like that in those circles, people are selected by that criteria.

• by memalign on 4/5/23, 8:55 AM

  Is this website a legitimate source? I did some cursory searching about it but it didn’t give me confidence.

  I guess this 2018 article from the AP gives it _some_ legitimacy… https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ap-top-news-london-i...

• by southernplaces7 on 4/5/23, 4:13 AM

  Given the well documented long reach of Russia's security services when it comes to viciously killing people they or Putin don't like even in other countries, I really hope this guy takes major steps to protect himself and his family. I hope some government in the west is even willing to help him on that front, especially now.

• by beardog on 4/5/23, 3:29 AM

  I'm shocked that Putin seems to never use the internet or a phone. That indicates he feels he can trust his inner circle to feed him correct information. Russia may be more politically stable than one might assume.

• by bitsinthesky on 4/5/23, 5:28 AM

  I'm most surprised that Western think-tanks wouldn't hire him. Seriously? Passing up a Russian patriot from Putin's security elite because they already have Russia Experts? Makes little sense to me.

• by secondary_op on 4/5/23, 9:03 AM

  This smear content is produced by Khodorkovsky [1], oligarch in exile who is now for many years after release from jail in 2013 on a mission to destabilise Russian society trough various NGO and nonprofits.

  In comparison, USA with its national state security policy and foreign power would never allow for any individual to destabilise country from foreign land for so many years.

      NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but in a materially inconsequential way. Their real contribution is that they diffuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer between the government and the public, between empire and its subjects. They have become arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators. In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They're what botanists would call an indicator species. It's almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the US preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go in and clean up the devastation. In order to make sure their funding is not jeopardized and that the governments of the countries they work in will allow them to function, NGOs have to present their work in a shallow framework, more or less shorn of a political or historical context. – Arundhati Roy, the Indian writer, about the NGO influence in India.[2]
  

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky

  [2] https://socialistworker.org/2004-2/510/510_06_Roy.php#Top

• by HiHelloBolke on 4/5/23, 3:05 AM

  He's a plant. And this will eventually help putin to explain his decisions to Russian people - that he was misled by his inner circle