[HN Gopher] Metro 2033 author Dmitry Glukhovsky sentenced to 8 y...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Metro 2033 author Dmitry Glukhovsky sentenced to 8 years in prison
        
       Author : mrzool
       Score  : 136 points
       Date   : 2023-08-13 19:23 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.pcgamer.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.pcgamer.com)
        
       | ajuc wrote:
       | This is what freedom of speech is all about, not insulting the
       | minorities you dislike.
        
         | Mountain_Skies wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | wkat4242 wrote:
       | Wow, it's brave that he took a stand like this. Even though he's
       | not in the country. Kudos!
       | 
       | Ps great books too.
        
       | The_Colonel wrote:
       | Russia's sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss is worrisome.
       | What can bring some hope for the future? I mean Russia is not
       | going to become a western style democracy anytime soon, but some
       | kind of normalization would be welcome. Maybe after the current
       | generation of the KGB guard Putin/Patrushev/Bortnikov... retire?
       | They're all in their 70s ...
        
       | egoregorov wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | 0xDEF wrote:
         | Ah the good old classic of accusing Russian dissidents of being
         | Jews or crypto-Jews. A tradition as old as Stalin.
         | 
         | FYI Dmitry Glukhovsky is neither Jewish nor Israeli.
        
           | egoregorov wrote:
           | [flagged]
        
             | Claude_Shannon wrote:
             | Your dog whistles are as subtle as brick to the head.
        
               | 0xDEF wrote:
               | He also conveniently made comments pretending to be
               | Ukrainian but spelling it "Kiev".
        
               | cpursley wrote:
               | Russians don't make a big stink when people call Mahskvah
               | "Moss-COW". The word policing in the English language
               | world is insular and annoying (especially considering
               | their extreme lack of foreign language competency).
               | Different languages have different pronunciations of
               | place names; get over it.
        
               | egoregorov wrote:
               | when i die i pray to be reborn as a ukrainian
        
               | egoregorov wrote:
               | what is your position on the israeli occupation of
               | palestine and syria?
        
             | ifdefdebug wrote:
             | Unclear to me why you bring up Israel in this context other
             | than provoking a flame session.
        
       | secondary_op wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | Eddygandr wrote:
       | Key bits of info here:
       | 
       | > Glukhovsky was found guilty of posting text and video messages
       | on his social media channels accusing Russian soldiers of
       | committing crimes in Ukraine. Prosecutors dismissed Glukhovsky's
       | allegations as fake.
       | 
       | > Fortunately for Glukhovsky, he is not actually in Russia, and
       | was sentenced in absentia. His current whereabouts are unknown.
       | 
       | Thankfully he isn't anywhere to be found, hopefully he made it to
       | a safe country.
        
         | riku_iki wrote:
         | still a big hit on someone's life with being forced to abandon
         | own country and go through all asylum and adaptation process
         | somewhere else..
        
           | jacquesm wrote:
           | It beats the alternatives by a considerable distance.
        
           | Guthur wrote:
           | [flagged]
        
             | some_random wrote:
             | There is no UA murder list.
        
               | justsomehnguy wrote:
               | [citation needed]
        
               | riku_iki wrote:
               | citation not usually needed for random fantasy in
               | internet.
               | 
               | Person who made allegation is supposed to bring proof.
        
               | pydry wrote:
               | I think theyre referring to
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrotvorets
               | 
               | some of whom have been murdered shortly after appearing
               | on the list.
        
               | riku_iki wrote:
               | there are thousands people on that list, many are
               | participating in questionable activities, of course some
               | got murdered, but majority just arrested and put to
               | trial.
        
           | nine_k wrote:
           | That big hit happened at the end of February 2022, not now,
           | especially for males in the age range fit for military
           | service.
           | 
           | For many, it happened in 2014 when the precursor of the
           | current RU-UA war has started, with the (technically
           | brilliant, admittedly) capture of Crimea, and the support of
           | insurgency in western Ukraine.
           | 
           | Being a vocal critic of the Russian regime is and has been
           | unsafe in Russia, for many years, and for obvious reasons.
           | Look at the guy named Girkin [1]: a hugely prominent Russian
           | nationalist and imperialist, who has actually fought on the
           | Russian side in the RU-UA conflict, and only demanded more of
           | the war, is under arrest. He happened to criticize the
           | ineptitude of the Russian military too loudly.
           | 
           | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Girkin
        
             | pydry wrote:
             | It's not exactly safe in Ukraine either. American blogger
             | Gonzalo Lira is under arrest for essentially an identical
             | crime, dubbed "infoterrorism".
        
               | dralley wrote:
               | You misspelled "sending pictures of Ukrainian military
               | equipment to Russian intelligence"
               | 
               | As a sidenote, that dumbass was stupid enough to live-
               | tweet his attempt to jump bail and illegally cross the
               | border.
        
               | riku_iki wrote:
               | > under arrest for essentially an identical crime
               | 
               | or very far from that
        
               | _kbh_ wrote:
               | > It's not exactly safe in Ukraine either. American
               | blogger Gonzalo Lira is under arrest for essentially an
               | identical crime, dubbed "infoterrorism".
               | 
               | Gonzalo Lira supports a lot of the same positions as
               | Russian propaganda would like to promote.
               | 
               | I don't know why anyone would expect him to remain free
               | when he decided to stay in Ukraine after the invasion
               | started when he continued to justify Russias brutal
               | invasion of Ukraine.
               | 
               | He also said that he was fleeing the country too hungry
               | after he got released on bail, so he clearly doesn't make
               | smart decisions.
        
             | OfSanguineFire wrote:
             | > He happened to criticize the ineptitude of the Russian
             | military too loudly.
             | 
             | Girkin had criticized the military for over a year, and
             | suffered no consequences. He is said to have protectors
             | among the security services. His troubles started only this
             | summer just after he demanded a new president for Russia,
             | someone other than Putin - in Russia you can criticize the
             | boyars, but you can't ever call for the tsar's removal.
        
             | riku_iki wrote:
             | yes, and multiple opposition leaders been killed even
             | before that, while west was paying hundreds billions to
             | Putin for oil and gas.
        
             | depereo wrote:
             | Did you mean 'support of insurgency' in eastern Ukraine?
        
               | riku_iki wrote:
               | support by shipping tanks and personal.
        
             | logdap wrote:
             | [dead]
        
           | Eddygandr wrote:
           | Oh of course, the title made me think he was already in some
           | gulag somewhere though.
        
             | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
             | The Russians are known to reach out, after dissidents
             | living abroad, though.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | binarypop wrote:
       | This is the reason why we can't do anything in Russia. The power
       | here is trained to find the growth points of potential protest
       | organizers and destroy them at the stage of origin. Recently,
       | Navalny was tightened by measures in prison and extended his
       | term. Any organizer of the rally is put on a pencil and special
       | forces come to it and his relatives and knocks out the doors. The
       | rest understand that jokes are bad. All social networks and
       | Russian chats are now supervised by Putin's close associates.
       | They have access to correspondence in chats and SMS and there are
       | special algorithms that can find these points in the field. No
       | jokes. You will be caught when you are still small and raped in
       | prison if you continue to bend your line. Even Navalny, who was
       | simply a tremendous popularity among young people in the late
       | 10s, can no longer do anything with this.
       | 
       | What else to expect from the country of total repressions and
       | terror in the past and the country in which power is privatized
       | by oligarchs from the special services. The only achievement of
       | Putin is his psychopathic ability to isolate and destroy people.
       | Well, clearly working on psychology clinging to the vile
       | historical past in which one of the relatives or relatives of
       | friends could be in the frosty camps of the Far North (read at
       | your leisure about USSR concentration camps). They don't just do
       | anything with this but on the contrary the Kremlin propagandists
       | encourage not to be forgotten so that people do not relax and
       | knew "their place". Any public protest in large cities now use
       | face recognition alghorithms + phone location.
       | 
       | And for each oligarch there is a folder with crimes - otherwise
       | you simply will not become an oligarch without gluing like in
       | typical Italian movie about the mafia. To not jump from the boat.
       | The exception is Oleg Tinkov - a kind of punk in Russian
       | business.
        
       | wetpaws wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | sixQuarks wrote:
       | Why is this getting so much publicity when youtuber Gonzalo Lira
       | was jailed by Ukraine for "insulting" Ukraine by critiquing the
       | western-led proxy war?
       | 
       | This guy tried to seek asylum in Hungary but was caught and is
       | now probably in jail, unlike Dmitry Glukhovsky who is not even in
       | Russia and will not see jail time.
       | 
       | We've sent over $100 billion to support the proxy war and most
       | Americans don't realize how corrupt and undemocratic Ukraine is.
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/15ev00r/right...
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adxDhyq8pms
        
         | 0xDEF wrote:
         | Gonzalo Lira is an American sex tourist turned pro-Russian
         | propagandist.
         | 
         | Why should an American citizen be entitled to move around
         | freely in Ukraine and report Ukrainian military locations to
         | Russia?
        
         | logdap wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | moribvndvs wrote:
         | For other readers:
         | 
         | Gonzalo Lira is a far right vlogger that has been accused of
         | being a pro-Putin propagandist. It's not my intent to convince
         | you he is or isn't, but I have a big fucking problem with OP's
         | naked attempt at false equivalence.
        
           | oaththrowaway wrote:
           | I don't know anything about Gonzalo, but are you insinuating
           | that it's okay for people to be locked up because they are
           | accused of being pro-Putin?
        
           | slily wrote:
           | Swap the politics and it looks exactly the same. Solely based
           | on your comment anyway, I don't know either character. You
           | should be aware of your own bias. It is disturbing to see
           | Western "liberals" justify persecuting their political
           | opponents.
        
           | simonh wrote:
           | It looks like Lira is a grade A scumbag, but he seems to be a
           | very careful scumbag. If he's being persecuted for voicing
           | opinions, no matter how distasteful, that's a problem.
        
       | dralley wrote:
       | "for criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine"
       | 
       | IMO that context deserves to be in the title, as it was in the
       | original headline. I don't quite understand why it was left off
       | when posted here.
        
         | Axsuul wrote:
         | Also he's not currently in Russia.
        
           | riidom wrote:
           | Conveniently placed on the very bottom of the article. Cheap.
        
           | londons_explore wrote:
           | Uncited too...
        
         | mschuster91 wrote:
         | HN submissions are limited in title length
        
           | Loughla wrote:
           | Metro 2033 author Dmitry Glukhivsky receives 8 years for
           | criticizing Russia.
           | 
           | There, I did it.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | mvdtnz wrote:
             | Receives 8 years of what? That is much less clear.
        
               | BWStearns wrote:
               | Free ice cream.
               | 
               | "Receives $X years" Is an idiomatic way of expressing
               | prison terms. Same kind of thing as saying "20 to life".
        
           | dralley wrote:
           | There are ways to shorten that headline that don't leave out
           | such critical details.
        
         | DotaFan wrote:
         | It wasn't hard to guess tho.
        
           | thfuran wrote:
           | If you think that's true, you pay far more attention to
           | Dmitry Glukhovsky than average.
        
       | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
       | As someone who remembers well the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
       | Soviet Union, and lived in Russia for a period during the
       | tumultuous 90s, it's really sad to me how the hope of that era
       | (despite the fact that it could easily be argued that what
       | happened in the 90s really set the stage for today's government
       | in Russia) has devolved into the autocratic dystopia that is
       | present day Russia (and China, for that matter).
       | 
       | Sometimes I can't decide if Gen X in the US was the luckiest or
       | unluckiest generation. On one handed we got to spend our teens
       | and 20s during the 90s, one of the most hopeful/optimistic
       | periods in human history (fall of the Iron Curtain, US budget
       | surpluses, rise of the Internet), but on the other hand we got to
       | see it all reverse in a scant 20 years: liberal democracy
       | teetering across the globe, climate change not being some far off
       | thing but an immediate concern, unimaginable wealth inequality,
       | the rise of technology as a force used to destroy our social
       | fabric, and just generally feeling so many people be
       | angry/scared/depressed all the time. Hopefully "this too shall
       | pass".
       | 
       | Edit: since many people seem to be misunderstanding what I was
       | saying: yes, I know Russia was a complete, corrupt shit show in
       | the 90s - I saw it first hand, and it was really, really sad.
       | What I meant is that there _was_ a ton of hope by many people (at
       | least the Russians I knew /lived with in Moscow) when communism
       | first fell that they would be able to transition to a successful
       | democracy. Much of the sadness was that potential never came to
       | fruition.
        
         | lucubratory wrote:
         | "Hope of that era" is an unusual way to describe the largest
         | single spike in deaths of despair in human history.
        
           | 0xDEF wrote:
           | >the largest single spike in deaths of despair in human
           | history
           | 
           | 1990s Eastern Europe was bad but this is extreme revisionism
           | and exaggeration.
           | 
           | The despair and famines caused by Stalin, Hitler, Mao all
           | caused far more deaths.
        
             | shakow wrote:
             | > The despair and famines caused by Stalin, Hitler, Mao all
             | caused far more deaths.
             | 
             | That's true, but if you take the demographic residue, the
             | fall of the USSR is the only time, safe for the worst year
             | of the stalinist purges, to make it dive into the negatives
             | : https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/burckina_faso/26952019/74
             | 305...
             | 
             | It's hard to visualize how big of an impact it had on
             | Russian society as a whole.
        
             | lucubratory wrote:
             | "Deaths of despair" is a defined term that includes three
             | causes of death: suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholic
             | liver disease. 1991 was the largest spike in deaths of
             | despair in human history and the whataboutism and
             | borderline Holocaust revisionism of implying Hitler's
             | genocide was primarily drug overdoses, alcoholic liver
             | disease, or suicide (!) is morally abhorrent. You could
             | have just looked up a term you didn't understand rather
             | than rushing to argue, and in the process arguing that
             | Hitler's victims killed themselves.
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | secondary_op wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
           | kspacewalk2 wrote:
           | That doesn't make much sense, because in the 90s Russia was
           | not the authoritarian dystopia it is now, so good how is one
           | projecting experiences from the 90s by observing that obvious
           | fact?
        
             | dralley wrote:
             | It should be noted that 90s Russia a bit of a dystopia for
             | many, many other reasons, regardless of the temporary
             | relaxation of authoritarianism in their government.
        
           | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
           | All your comments are blatant Russian propaganda, with
           | vulgarities thrown in for good measure...
        
         | yhavr wrote:
         | > during the 90s
         | 
         | > one of the most hopeful/optimistic periods in human history
         | 
         | I first thought that you were American, but then I read more
         | carefully
         | 
         | > and lived in Russia
         | 
         | Sorry, but how can you combine "90s" and "optimistic" if you
         | witnessed it by yourself? For post-soviet people it was a
         | nightmare, it was a total collapse of their world, with
         | oligarchy, banditry, miserable salaries (or no salaries at
         | all). I was a kid during that time, but I'm pretty sure nobody
         | was giving a flying duck about US budged surpluses, and people
         | wasn't able to admire the rise of internet, because they got it
         | only in 00s.
        
           | nine_k wrote:
           | Why, the 1990s were the time when Communism finally fell, and
           | something closely resembling a Western system (if you squint
           | just right) was being built.
           | 
           | Also, times of tumult like the 1990s are always times of
           | opportunity for those who has the energy and connections.
           | Huge businesses have been built in Russia during 1990s, and
           | many of them were built honestly, so to say, not by
           | plundering some Soviet-era resources. Some obvious examples
           | familiar for the IT crowd would be Yandex, Kaspersky, ABBYY.
        
             | yhavr wrote:
             | The system wasn't even close to the Western one. On the
             | opposite, it was raise of lawlessness and crime. Yes,
             | people had connections, connections with mafia. Either for
             | paying racket, or even participating in their business. It
             | was extremely hard to be a fair player (western style) that
             | time.
        
               | nine_k wrote:
               | But look! A parliament, with actual-looking elections!
               | Actual-looking (though of course rigged) presidential
               | elections! Free to open your own business! (Well, subject
               | to dealing with mafia and corrupt police.) The influx of
               | the Western merchandise, and of the Western media! And
               | the Communist rule most obviously gone!
               | 
               | It was quite different from Soviet times, different
               | enough to keep an illusion of things going in the right
               | general direction in a sufficient number of people,
               | especially in large cities, despite impoverishment and
               | wars. The powers that were pushed the idea that it's
               | either these transient problems, or the Communist rule
               | back! (Which was ironic since many of them used to be
               | high-ranking Communist leaders.)
               | 
               | After that, the mafia and KGB have completely overtaken
               | the dominant heights, including the president office, so
               | they strangled non-systemic local corruption. Oil prices
               | also helped. The economy was growing. Some time in 2005,
               | life in Russia might look genuinely _attractive_ , if you
               | happened to live in Moscow. Much like life in Shanghai
               | might look fantastic, rich and free in 2005, too,
               | compared to the times of the Great Leap.
               | 
               | But the authoritarianism bomb kept ticking.
        
               | yhavr wrote:
               | Yes, and empty shelves in the shops, and absence of
               | salaries, joblessness. Maybe in the beginning some people
               | really believed in the changes, but they quickly got
               | disillusioned.
               | 
               | The thing is, under commies people were brainwashed that
               | they live in the best country in the world. It wasn't
               | some kind of evil dystopia with everybody suffering. Yes,
               | they were poor, but they didn't know life outside do
               | compare to understand their poverty. The state gave
               | everybody the bare minimum to live. The state gave the
               | clear direction and meaning of life. Even now there are
               | plenty of (older-ish) people who feel nostalgic about
               | that times!
               | 
               | edit: I agree that in 00s the situation became better,
               | but that's the point, that life in 2005 != 1994.
        
         | mamonster wrote:
         | Hope in Russia in the 90s:
         | 
         | -Pay a policeman 250 bucks to bury the guy you killed and make
         | up the paperwork
         | 
         | -Oligarchs like Abramovich buying up privatization vouchers
         | from poor grandmothers and factory workers who didn't know what
         | a stock was and were starving.
         | 
         | -Yeltsin being drunk 24/7 and fucking everything up.
         | 
         | -Any big city being filled with gangs made up of disgruntled
         | Afghan/Chechnya veterans.
         | 
         | - The start of the massive HIV epidemic because all the
         | healthcare and tracking went to shit (Russia has about 1-2% of
         | the population that is HIV positive, which is 4-5x of most
         | european countries).Also start of the turbo drug problems in
         | Russia.
         | 
         | 99% of the Russian population at the time did not understand
         | what free markets/liberalism/democracy meant. Those that
         | understood are now the guys you see on Forbes lists and in
         | government.
        
           | saiya-jin wrote:
           | That's still a failure firmly within russia as a state. That
           | its population was so utterly fucked up after 70 years of
           | hardcore oppression, lacking any kind of critical thinking,
           | self-sufficiency (tell me what to think and who to vote, I
           | prefer drinking more vodka) is not a failure of west.
           | 
           | The expectation that west would baby sit every single step
           | this naive and messed up country would do is dangerously
           | naive, since it wouldn't be possible for numerous reasons.
           | Any direct help offered was promptly stolen without trace (we
           | talk about billions to prevent bankruptcy of the state, IIRC
           | something around 7 billions USD never to be seen again, and
           | state went bankrupt of course).
        
             | yhavr wrote:
             | Not 70 years, not oppression. Oppressed Ukraine had
             | cossacks who even managed to make their own short-lived
             | state in the middle ages. Oppressed Baltics joined EU after
             | the USSR fell. The problem is, russian nation never had a
             | (stable) democracy since the fall of Novgorod (~1500). It
             | always quickly turned into an imperial autocracy where the
             | russians were the titular nation who receives all the
             | benefits.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | mushbino wrote:
         | Hope in Russia in the 90's? That's not what you're saying is
         | it? Yeltsin staged a coup with the help of the US, leading to
         | the largest drop in life expectancy in recorded history, and a
         | never before seen rise in crime, and massive inequality with
         | the rise of the oligarchs thanks to the Chicago School
         | economists who implemented shock therapy.
        
           | 0xDEF wrote:
           | >Yeltsin staged a coup with the help of the US
           | 
           | A blatant lie that keeps getting repeated. Yeltsin hired some
           | American campaigners and advertisers because he wanted a loud
           | Western-style election campaign. It's funny how Yeltsin
           | having American campaign/advertising advisers has been spun
           | into claims that the US did a coup in Russia.
        
             | orbital-decay wrote:
             | That's a strawman. Those 3 PR clowns and another British
             | consultant weren't working for the US government and didn't
             | do anything useful for Yeltsin anyway, Filatov basically
             | carried the campaign on his own (not without the huge
             | amount French/German loan money stolen by Yeltsin and paid
             | to the Gusinsky and co). The actual US involvement was in
             | lots of the NGO work, openly sold under the guise of the
             | fight against the communist reaction, paid with US
             | taxpayers money. Which it actually was! No argument against
             | that, Zyuganov and the return of communism/nomenklatura
             | were genuine threats. The only problem was that people now
             | wanted Yeltsin out because he was _even worse_.
             | 
             | Clinton/Gore administration openly aligned themselves with
             | Yeltsin/Chernomyrdin, their "friendship" with the autocrat
             | was a big and visible thing. They ignored all the red flags
             | and helped to create the problem they tried to "fight"
             | later, despite of the existence of much more prominent
             | politicians who were clean and principled enough (ex.
             | Nemtsov, who was hugely popular before that campaign and
             | publicly declined to run for the president when he heard
             | about Clinton's support for Yeltsin).
             | 
             | Regardless of the extent of the actual involvement (it was
             | probably not that strong), it was enough for many in Russia
             | to despise them and call it a collusion, which it at least
             | partly was - absolutely open and marketed as something
             | noble, without any conspiracy. Denying that is silly.
        
             | saiya-jin wrote:
             | Everything is a coup,conspiracy or similar if things are
             | not to your liking... but yeah dealing with official
             | russian news you'll get significantly more truth if you
             | simply negate everything they say, lie is official tool and
             | all sides understand that.
             | 
             | One thing west didn't properly grok - russia was never your
             | friend. Never, ever. There was no period where this was
             | true, not even in 90s, not when we talk about people on
             | top. Paranoid suspicion and fear of losing power to steal
             | and control entire country was too much for those in power.
             | Especially since now you could actually steal last bolt and
             | nut, unlike during communism where everything was state
             | owned by definition and you competed only for power trip
             | and some basic benefits on top of what many others had.
        
           | yieldcrv wrote:
           | Oligarchs inspire me, its like so many random people in that
           | society understood capitalism more than educated economists
           | in the West
           | 
           | The accounting gimmicks, the revenue streams, the segregated
           | assets, I learn so much replaying what oligarchs did when the
           | state had to divest of everything
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | Did the US really help Yeltsin? I thought Gorbachev was
           | highly praised by the west.
        
           | FreshStart wrote:
           | The killing fields of that ideology had ripe harvests..
           | Insane that people can still revive all that, while other
           | hate crime ideologies stay dead one disproven.
        
             | logdap wrote:
             | [dead]
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | stefan_ wrote:
           | Who gives a fuck, it secured the freedom of 150M others and
           | guess what, they went on to eclipse Russia. Crime, oligarchs,
           | Putin - they made their choice.
        
           | kspacewalk2 wrote:
           | If shock therapy was actually implemented, we'd see results
           | similar to Poland. Instead, the requirements were pushed out
           | and Russia became a mafia state.
        
             | pydry wrote:
             | 640% inflation and -10% GDP growth?
             | 
             | Yeah, it wasn't far off that.
        
       | davidgerard wrote:
       | this is a reblog of https://apnews.com/article/russia-crackdown-
       | navalny-court-dm...
        
       | pphysch wrote:
       | How realistic would a political prisoner swap of Navalny and/or
       | Glukhovsky for Assange be?
        
         | wetpaws wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | DaOne256 wrote:
         | Assange sits in a british prison. I think you mean Snowden?!
        
           | pphysch wrote:
           | Pardoning Snowden in return for pardoning Glukhovsky would
           | make sense, since neither is currently in captivity.
           | 
           | But both Navalny and Assange are actual political prisoners
           | in similar situations, so couldn't they be swapped &
           | liberated (in exile)? Seems it would benefit the popularity
           | of Western leaders.
        
             | londons_explore wrote:
             | Snowden is 'worth' far more to the USA than Glukhovsky is
             | to Russia.
        
               | mushbino wrote:
               | "Freedom of speech". US is no better than Russia.
        
               | mrighele wrote:
               | Cases like Assange's or Snowden are famous because they
               | are a rare event.
               | 
               | And they are still alive. Had they done the same to
               | Russia they would have been poisoned with novichok or
               | polonium, or they would have fell from a window, or ...
               | 
               | How many journalists have been killed for criticizing the
               | POTUS ? [1][2]
               | 
               | How many for criticizing the war in Afghanistan, or Iraq
               | ?
               | 
               | What about human rights advocates ?
               | 
               | Has any doctor been killed for criticizing the federal
               | response to Covid-19 ? [3]
               | 
               | The US have their fair share of problem regarding freedom
               | of speech, but they are really not at all at the same
               | level as Russia.
               | 
               | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_kil
               | led_in_...
               | 
               | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_kil
               | led_in_...
               | 
               | [3] https://www.vox.com/2020/5/6/21248553/coronavirus-
               | russia-doc...
        
               | londons_explore wrote:
               | Careful - with that kind of attitude you'll end up on a
               | no-fly list...
        
               | JohnBooty wrote:
               | In what country on earth is divulging classified
               | information (ala Snowden) protected under "freedom of
               | speech?"
               | 
               | Criticizing a war is not even remotely in the same league
               | as divulging classified information.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | zlg_codes wrote:
               | Snowden exposed the twofacedness of America's leadership,
               | in a way that can't be easily swept under the rug. He's a
               | whistleblower and people appear to care more about his
               | revelation of information than the information itself,
               | which is damning.
               | 
               | Maybe if America ran a proper ship, things wouldn't get
               | released.
        
               | vetinari wrote:
               | It is not for criticizing; the first sentence of TFA says
               | "accusing Russian soldiers of committing crimes in
               | Ukraine." So, libel.
               | 
               | Libel isn't free speech either.
        
               | dralley wrote:
               | > It is not for criticizing; the first sentence of TFA
               | says "accusing Russian soldiers of committing crimes in
               | Ukraine." So, libel.
               | 
               | He shared a video of Russian troops committing crimes, in
               | Ukraine. Which they are - both in that video and
               | thousands of others besides. Truthful statements are not
               | libel.
        
               | pphysch wrote:
               | > Truthful statements are not libel.
               | 
               | But they might impact national security.
        
               | dralley wrote:
               | In approximately the same sense that reporting about Abu
               | Ghraib could be considered to impact American "national
               | security", or sharing videos of abuses by Israeli
               | soldiers in Gaza could be considered to impact Israeli
               | "national security".
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | What most countries consider libel _is_ free speech in
               | the US, which is why the US standards for libel,
               | especially against public figures, is higher than most
               | other countries.
               | 
               | Specifically, the First Amendment protection of free
               | speech (and the identical rules incorporated against the
               | states by the 14th Amedment) are why, among other
               | impacts:
               | 
               | (1) In the US, falsity is an element of libel, rather
               | than truth being a defense (or, in some foreign
               | jurisdictions, not even necessarily being defense
               | always.)
               | 
               | (2) In the US, libel against public figures (either in
               | general, or limited purpose public figures within the
               | scope in which they are public figures), requires the
               | plaintiff to prove actual malice on top of the elements
               | of libel that apply in other cases.
        
               | mjan22640 wrote:
               | It sounds like if the war crimes Glukhovsky criticized
               | were classified, you would approve of his sentencing.
        
               | pphysch wrote:
               | How so?
        
               | logdap wrote:
               | [dead]
        
       | Arch-TK wrote:
       | "Glukhovsky was found guilty of posting text and video messages
       | on his social media channels accusing Russian soldiers of
       | committing crimes in Ukraine."
       | 
       | He literally posted a video of Russian soldiers committing crimes
       | in Ukraine. I love the word play here. "Accusing."
       | 
       | "How dare you accuse me of murdering that man by showing everyone
       | a video of me murdering that man !? I am taking you to court for
       | slander!"
        
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