[denton-scratch]

Considering that she's presumably well-informed about global affairs, her resistance to the idea that russian secret services might be out to kill her, and especially her refusal to believe she might have been poisoned, is rather striking.

It's almost as if she had no idea that russian agents have been poisoning prominent people in foreign lands for the last couple of decades. Perhaps she thinks she's not prominent enough?

These poisonings target "prominent" people because they're supposed to make the news; they're meant as a warning. From that point of view, a journalist counts as "prominent".

[neilv]

I don't know about the veracity of this particular story, but I've seen something like that denial before.

Someone accidentally stepped on the toes of some lawless dirty-tricks entity. They realized this after the fact. But when they seemed to get neutralized with very evil but textbook action, they said, in desperation (close from memory) "But why would ___?! I don't have any enemies!"

I'm not sure, but I think, if they would've been asked just then, they might've contradicted what they'd just said, to tell you who probably did it, and why they might get any of that party's attention. That might've been some powerful psychology speaking just then.

I suspect they were verbalizing reversion to their self image, and how they wanted the world to be. Something like this just wouldn't happen to them, and they're not in that world of stepping on the toes of characters like this, and don't want to be.

(Also, in case of this journalist, note the bit about the German official with poor bedside manner, when speaking with a potential victim of a heinous crime. Maybe the official was interrogating, or angry, or that was just their manner. The journalist spoke of shame as a reason, which I guess might be the journalist's cultural upbringing about being tough and not being the oppressed, but the German also seemed to be shaming.)

[invalidname]

There's a cognitive dissonance of "this won't happen to me" that comes from years of walking on the line. She faced a lot of danger and intimidation and survived it. This created a survivor bias that made her discount the immediate danger.

I've seen this first hand. After a few missile alarms where everyone runs to shelters people start building confidence and stride gently. They assume that since they survived all the alarms, nothing will happen. I have that problem myself, I can't be legitimately afraid.

[yorwba]

From the article:

It wasn’t that the idea of it “seemed crazy” to me. During my time at Novaya Gazeta, four of my colleagues were killed. I organized the funeral of Khimki journalist Mikhail Beketov, he’d been a friend. I knew that journalists got murdered. But I did not want to believe that they could kill me. I was protected from this thought by revulsion, shame, and exhaustion. It disgusted me to think that there were people who wanted me dead. I was ashamed to talk about it. Even with loved ones, let alone the police. And I felt how exhausted I was, how little strength I had left, that I wouldn’t be able to go on the run again.

[SXX]

While she is not a noname journalist I doubt many people from Russian anti-war community would recall her name before this investigation. There are few dozens of journalists and media figures well known in Russia opposition, but she was never one of them.

So journalists expect big political figures to be poisoned or killed, but not one of them.

[troglotit]

Not exactly "prominent". It's just "department of poisioning" of GRU should rationalize their finances, so they need to show "results", i.e. just poison "enemies of state", even if you're helping LGBTQ kids, or small ethnic group, e.t.c.

[dralley]

Julia Ioffe has talked about some of the less-lethal intimidation tactics that are used against foreign journalists in Russia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1HWNcLDK88&t=5610s

[fsloth]

It’s really easy to be in a state of denial to anybody. Health issues especially. It’s not a character flaw, just common human nature. It’s really damn hard to perceive your own positin objectively.

[ajuc]

> her resistance to the idea that russian secret services might be out to kill her, and especially her refusal to believe she might have been poisoned, is rather striking.

During stalinist cleansings people almost always believed others were imprisoned/executed for a good reason, but they were innocent so this can't happen to them.