[roenxi]

The article also doesn't really outline anything that makes sense as a motive. I'd imagine there are a number of artists in Poland critical of ... pretty much anyone you care to name but especially the Russian leadership. Artists are hard to please.

The article seems to be hinting this was a Russian or Belarusian assassination, which might be true. Sounds like someone assassinated him. But if so there is a big hole to fill in the story on what a plausible reason is. Based on this my first guess would be that something in his private life spilled over, but I expect there is a section of the story that isn't in the news right now.

EDIT Also related only by the vaguest vibe, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeiweiCam is more what I'd expect for artistic dissidents and is truly remarkable modern art.

[zerobees]

> The article also doesn't really outline anything that makes sense as a motive.

That is the whole point. You can't maintain a dictatorship if you let people get to the point of being a clear threat, because sooner or later, someone could slip through the cracks and take you out. You can't keep the leash this loose.

As a dictator, you must go after people for seemingly small things, such as merely expressing the wrong thoughts, making the wrong kind of art, and so on. That sends a message to everyone that even small transgressions carry an unacceptable risk, so if your neighbor keeps criticizing the government, maybe you should report them, not join their discussion club that may become a real political movement.

For a while after the revolution that established your regime, people are on their best behavior because you just finished summarily executing hundreds of thousands or millions for having the wrong views. But both in Russia and in China, it's been a long time since that happened, few people remember Stalin or Mao, and so you need to keep sending behavioral nudges in a different way.

Also, modern-day Russia embraces a "budget" / "disposable asset" approach to terrorism. If you're important enough, they will send an elite squad to poison you. If not, they literally recruit people on the internet to beat you up, set a warehouse on fire, etc. So you also have to look at developments like as something that's cheap and largely risk-free.

[roenxi]

You can. Prigozhin, for example - the Russians have had an actual quasi-military revolt in recent times from someone who was publicly telegraphing that he didn't agree with the decisions being made by leadership. He was almost certainly assassinated by the Russians too. But that illustrates how real a threat has to be before it actually matters.

If this guy was having that sort of impact on the Russian discourse then the article is definitely missing a lot of important information.

[plaidthunder]

B-but Curtis Yarvin said that dictato-err, "kings" are better for freedom because they don't need to care what the public thinks! /s

The people in the tech industry who have cheered on mafia style government in the USA should move to Russia and get a taste of what it looks like in its advanced stages.

[Barbing]

Would it make sense to a government like that to assassinate one critic at random periodically just to keep fear high?

RIP

Edit: didn’t see him holding satirized pictures of that president, almost withdraw the question

[roenxi]

No. And pretty obviously not, look at the response. For people to hear about political assassinations it has to make the news and be widely discussed. There isn't any point murdering artists to "keep fear high", that just gives them something to create art about.

The usual tactic is to brand people as troublemakers then try and limit the news coverage they get. Or hit them with a smear campaign which is cheaper, easier and less likely to attract negative publicity like an assassination would. As a bonus the smear approach also directly discredits the message they were spreading.

[Barbing]

While this did make the news I suppose not widely enough.

Have you seen this kind of reporting?-

> Russia is ramping up its attempts to kill opponents in Europe, intelligence officials say https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/russia-ramping-attempts...

Could they please get back to smearing (or even… ADDING value to the world! once they have a better leader for their good people)

[cubefox]

> The article also doesn't really outline anything that makes sense as a motive.

False. The article makes it very clear what would make sense as a motive here.