[Kapura]

The part that really got to me was this paragraph:

>“That is what drives us crazy,” the detective said. “You come here and act like you’re on vacation. Like this is some paradise. It doesn’t even occur to you to keep yourself safe. We have political killings here. The Russian special services are active in Germany. Your carelessness, yours and your colleagues, knows no bounds.”

It's very difficult to reconcile what seems like the safety of Europe with the reality of a war that is being fought online as much as on the ground. Journalists have always been targeted by authoritarian regimes, but the connectedness of the modern world makes them dangerous even outside after leaving the country. Clearly this is what the Russian state believes.

[0xDEF]

I remember a few years back Iran send assassins to kill Iranian dissidents in Germany, Austria, and Belgium. The assassins were caught and politely returned to Iran on a private plane.

No punishment for planned/attempted murder.

The West is hopelessly naive about sophisticated and brutal adversaries like Russia and Iran.

[qingcharles]

Is it possible they had diplomatic passports?

Most spies are known to the host nations as they work out of the embassy under cover jobs with standard diplomatic passports, therefore they have diplomatic immunity if they run into trouble and the best the host country can do is permanently evict them.

[selectodude]

It’s not naïvety, it’s that that west would appreciate the same treatment when they send spies and assassins, which they do.

[fsloth]

Exactly. It’s a newtonian game where an action creates a counter action. “You take off one of our field agents, we take off one of your. You return our agent to us, we probably return your agent to you” I have no idea of the recruitment pool but I would imagine operatives who can perform assassinations and are not total loose cannons are in finite supply.

Without experience in this domain, I could fermi-guess optimal ones probably come from the few percentages of population who don’t suffer of PTSD after violence. So if you want a person of above average intelligence, who does not mind going to plausibly suicidal missions, and is able to keep it all together, AND has decided to take a career in cloak&dagger… I’d say such fields agents are not trivial to replace. Hence you probably want to issue the courtesy of returning opposing forces, rather than having to find a new field agent (or whatever they are called) or several.

[vxNsr]

Again it is extreme naïveté, those assassins when caught are summarily executed. Iran will pick people off the street, accuse them of working for Israel and kill them, just to send a message to their own people. They’re not politely returning western assassins.

[lordlimecat]

And it's your belief that the State Department-- let alone the CIA-- are totally ignorant of what Iran does to its staff?

[vxNsr]

Nope, I think the politicians at the top are hopelessly naive or simply too maliciously self involved to care. And are more concerned with appearances than any of the values they claim to espouse.

[bee_rider]

I don’t think it is naivety really, Western countries mostly don’t have to “send messages” to their own citizens. Summarily executing assassins or random people you claim to be assassins is just throwing away negotiating chips.

[sinkwool]

Or maybe they manage to recruit some of the spies/assassins to work as double-agents?

[selectodude]

Another distinct possibility.

[y-curious]

> which they do.

Citation sorely needed

[selectodude]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nuc...

[fmajid]

That was by Israelis, not Western Europeans.

[tim333]

The US tends to use drones these days eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasem_Soleimani

[dash2]

When has the West sent assassins to Iran or Russia?

[olegious]

The West prefers more refined tactics like missiles- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Soleima...

[Aeolun]

What’s the point? Assassinate one dictator and in a few months they’ll have a new one, or the country devolves into a hell of fighting for the next 5 years until one can crown themselves king.

[jackmott42]

It is more general than the west, it is that Good people are naive. They don't understand how many people are willing to lie and kill to get even petty gains from it. The USA is struggling with this asymmetry internally right now too. We are slowly and politely trying to prosecute people who attempted to overturn an election while they incite civil unrest and pass laws protecting themselves from prosecution

[Swizec]

Part of the problem is that if you do it their way, you become them. What’s the point of winning if you get the same outcome as not winning? USA doesn’t need a left/center authoritarian regime just as much as it doesn’t want a right authoritarian regime.

So let’s not advocate for the left becoming authoritarian shall we? [parts of] Europe tried that already, it doesn’t work either.

[eclecticfrank]

Integrity is often confused with naivety in light of desired animalistic revenge.

[bee_rider]

It is good to be thorough with this stuff, and sometimes that means things go more slowly than we’d like. But the end result is that nobody reasonable could think it is a partisan witch hunt. It might be the case that a significant chunk of the populace is unreasonable, but that isn’t something that can be solved by changing courtroom procedures.

[Ancapistani]

> The USA is struggling with this asymmetry internally right now too. We are slowly and politely trying to prosecute people who attempted to overturn an election while they incite civil unrest and pass laws protecting themselves from prosecution

This is an interesting statement to me, because the right uses very similar language in the opposite direction. To paraphrase: "we're playing by the rules while the left is using the federal government to silence political adversaries."

From where I sit, those statements don't seem entirely accurate, but they also are not mutually exclusive.

[lordlimecat]

The idea that the CIA is naive to what Russia does is pretty amusing.

Yes, if only they frequented social media, they might have some clue what Chinese, Russian, and Iranian security services were up to. Alas for their naivete...

[vxNsr]

It’s truly shocking how much misinformation people will believe because it jives with their current beliefs.

[Aeolun]

Do you have a source for that? Because the story as told seems vanishingly unlikely. Maybe nothing could be proven but that they were there illegaly?

[generic92034]

And how would the inevitably resulting prisoner exchange later benefit anyone?

[foldedcornice]

This matches with an account by Bellingcat reporter Christo Grozev, who was interviewed by the Financial Times [1]:

"How does it feel, I ask, to be here in absentia? Grozev laughs. After the Russians indicted him “in absentia”, he posted a selfie video from Palm Beach, Florida, against a sunset backdrop. “I said, ‘If this is absentia, it’s a pretty great place to be.’”

"Is Austria the least safe European country? “Yes,” he replies. “While we [Bellingcat] were investigating the Austrians, they were surveilling me and I wasn’t aware of that at the time. They were doing so explicitly at the request of the Russians. That is deep penetration.”

"He says the Germans advised him not to settle in Germany. He last visited Germany in 2020 under heavy guard as a witness in the prosecution of a Russian who had assassinated a Chechen exile. “We are also investigating examples of Russian security services penetrating German political circles,” he says. “France, I would not trust them: they don’t even trust themselves. The only place in Europe I can come to safely nowadays is the UK.”

"He is still angry, however, at London’s Metropolitan Police for cancelling his and his family’s attendance at the Bafta film awards this year. “Hearing it through the grapevine was offensive,” he says. “If there is also a risk to my family, they should tell me directly.”

"Both Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which is teeming with Russians, are off-limits, he adds. “Dubai is Vienna on the Gulf,” he says. “I have heard this warning from both the Emirates and Turkey — ‘Do not come here. We will try to protect you. We will never extradite you [to Russia]. But we can’t guarantee your safety.’”"

Grozen did his interview in the United States, where he is currently living. I suspect that the separation by the sea (English Channel for the UK and the Atlantic for the US) increases the security.

[1] (Paywalled) https://www.ft.com/content/03f220e1-6a7e-4850-bf4e-4b0f521d8...

[5e92cb50239222b]

https://archive.is/TOJCx

[sharts]

Journalists have always been targeted by all regimes, “authoritarian” or not. When puppet masters are questioned by journalists, their lives are materially affected.

Julian Assange, Shireen Abu Akleh, etc.

There’s a reason most mainstream media reporting is the equivalent of 2nd grade book report.