@Rulle_Kebab
Thanks for the input.
Maybe you are just too paranoid?
If a guy who is best known for exposing corruption gets picked on by the government, and when this government has a decent history of corruption and trying to strangle opposition, "paranoia" - if you need to call it that - is what your country needs. Not willingly buying into flimsy arguments why the guy deserves to be locked away. If you don't understand that, then you are at least partially just the tool certain authorities want you to be. The prime reason of democracy not correctly working.
Though I can understand you: there are no criminals or wrong-doers in Russia until they are part of its authorities and especially among opposition to those authorities, those latter are all saint and honest. My foot!
I never said so or even insinuated so. And I surely don't think so. And of course it is possible Navalny is the villain here. But from what I have gathered so far: Not in my book, for all the reasons mentioned so far.
Divide et impera. I sure would too... if I were an idiot of naivety or a hater of my own country.
Now you didn't even try to argue.
If any of those people appeared in the U.S. with the same things they say here, they'd be in jail next day for 150 years.
You pretty much can say whatever you want in the US unless you directly agitate people to commit crimes.
But even if that were so, or even if Navalny broke a law - so what? What happens in the US is not the holy determinator of what is right or wrong. Neither are laws. Morality is. The actual consequences of different actions and attitudes are. What you want is. And I take it you don't want Russia in its current state. But it is my opinion that if you allow authorities/the media whoever to discredit the opposition just for them being opposed in a drastic manner or for them being financed by foreign organizations and if those authorities/media are freaking known to be corrupt to the bone - you give them the perfect and traditional tools to strangle this opposition in the public eye. And they will do so. They always do. It just is too effective not too, as you personally demonstrate.
Russia has no privilege to solve such inner matters by itself, because even the man who prepared armed coup, Khodorkovsky, is strongly supported and advocated by the West, which means constant political and media pressing, not too mention terrorists and mafia corruptionists sitting in London as "political asylum".
I don't know about that. I do know that Western countries are no angels, that there is enough to be criticized in London, Washington or Berlin. But that doesn't make Russian issues less pressing. And for the reasons mentioned that never should be a blank check to agitate against people with good intentions just because they are financed by foreign money. Foreign interests very well can correspond with national interests.
You said you are socialist-minded. So are you aware that Lenin was financed by German money and that he because of that was accused of being a puppet of foreign forces, an enemy of Russia, too?
Lenin was financed by German money because it was in Germany's interest to have the Russian empire fall. But it was also in Russian interest because the Russian empire was a backward and authoritarian mess. And in the end, Lenin was no puppet of the Germans by any stretch.
Accordingly, yes, America has a interest to weaken the Russian state. But I dare to say - you do, too. It needs to be weaken, it needs to feel forces of the people angered by corruption. Not stability. It needs to be scared! Otherwise the authorities will just continue to play the Russian people - simply because they can and profit from it.
