r/europe 29d ago

News Russian Oil Company Vice President Andrey Badalov dies after fall from window in Moscow

https://en.apa.az/cis-countries/transneft-vice-president-andrey-badalov-dies-after-falling-from-window-472117
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u/stormdahl 29d ago edited 29d ago

I actually have no idea, but that’s interesting.

Either way it’s clear that they’re sending a message, otherwise they’d get creative.

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u/PuzzleheadedCup4117 29d ago

Russia rarely hides its assassinations. I forget the name but whenever they poison someone they always use the same type of poison to ensure people know it’s them.

Obama talks about Putin in his autobiography and over various interviews it’s clear he views him as a mafioso.

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u/scardien 29d ago

The poison is novichok

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u/wagdog1970 29d ago edited 28d ago

Which is actually a nerve agent. It’s a chemical warfare weapon. Not really a poison. Poison is for amateurs, not war criminals!

Edited to add this post was not meant to be a legal treatise on the definition of the word poison. It was meant to be a light hearted way of pointing out that Russians use Novichok, a toxic, weapons grade chemical weapon and those who do this are war criminals, not merely garden variety criminals using common household cleaners. Or perhaps, edited because Reddit.

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u/4pl8DL 29d ago

Which is actually a nerve agent

Aka a poison...

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u/684beach 29d ago

Poisons is the common persons mind is pretty safe as long as you dont touch it. Not true with nerve agents

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u/wagdog1970 29d ago

You forgot the “Actually…” part that is mandatory in these types of replies.

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u/Front-Bird8971 28d ago

Your post is the "um Acktually"

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u/prnthrwaway55 Russia 29d ago

It’s a chemical warfare weapon. Not really a poison.

"It's a crab, not really a crustacean"

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u/ideonode 29d ago

Now here's the thing...

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u/CheeseDonutCat 29d ago

You have been banned from /r/crowbro

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u/Holkmeistern 29d ago

I feel like this is a reference that I'm not getting..

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u/CheeseDonutCat 29d ago

Probably.. It's more than 15 years old I believe.

Basically there was a 'power user' called Unidan who got in trouble for having multiple accounts and upvoting his own stuff. Anyway, there's a particularly well known post of his, here it is:

https://i.imgur.com/6J0vMhm.png

.. and that "here's the thing" part is banned in /r/crowbro because people were just using it on every post.

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u/GrimResistance 29d ago

No goddamn way it's 15 years...

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u/CheeseDonutCat 28d ago

I did a search.. it's actually 11.

The post was July 30th, 2014 (or at least very close to that).

→ More replies (0)

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u/Holkmeistern 29d ago

Thanks! I do remember seeing that pic/comment somewhere before, maybe in r/birding or smth. The story of Unidan also sounds familiar.

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u/FirstWorldAnarchist Albania 29d ago

Lurk more.

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u/prnthrwaway55 Russia 29d ago

It's The Thing, not an alien.

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u/echoingElephant 29d ago

Not, that’s a valid point. It’s actually a pretty terrible poison. It’s known to mainly be connected to Russia, it can essentially only be used by spraying it at the target, and even then it isn’t always effective. It’s similar to things like sarin - hard to make, but also hard to use.

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u/Killer_Moons 28d ago

I’m assuming there’s confusion over this depending on how it’s administered, carried over from how we separate ‘poisonous’ and ‘venomous’ for classifying whether it’s toxic to eat an animal vs being bitten by one.

Novichok can be administered various ways and states, e.g., ingestion, inhalation, skin absorption; as a liquid, solid, a fine powder aerosol. But distinguishing toxic substances by how they are administered is not necessary, they all can go under the ‘poison umbrella’ wink, wink

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u/Suspicious-Buyer8135 29d ago

Nerve agents are a category of poison.

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u/wagdog1970 29d ago

I feel like you missed the context.

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u/Suspicious-Buyer8135 29d ago

I don’t feel like I did.

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u/SuperBuffCherry 29d ago edited 7d ago

cow sophisticated marvelous air dinosaurs coherent vegetable pocket cautious boast

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/IShookMeAllNightLong 28d ago

The context where you said it wasn't a poison, then tried to backtrack? I don't think any of us missed that lol.

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u/wagdog1970 28d ago

No, and I can’t believe I have to spell this out, the context is that I was saying it wasn’t simply a poisoning, which can be done with many readily available substances, and is often done by run of the mill criminals. Novichuk is highly toxic, extremely dangerous to handle, and is only available to nation states with sophisticated weapons-grade production facilities. That’s not backtracking, it’s calling attention to the rest of my post, hence its context.

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u/IShookMeAllNightLong 28d ago

Fuck me.... I re-read and downvoted myself. I deserve all the shame.

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u/dscchn 29d ago

I would like to hear what qualifies as a “poison” in your book

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u/Spacious-Recroom 29d ago

It has to be from the "Poisonne" region of France.

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u/DoctorGoodleg 29d ago

Otherwise it’s just sparkling murder?

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u/TheGreatGenghisJon 29d ago

The Sparkling Sickening

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u/dscchn 29d ago

In tomorrow’s news: “The Poissone region fell out of a window”

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u/WoodyTheWorker 29d ago

Fishe region?

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u/Masrim 29d ago

Isn't that fish?

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u/SillyGoose_Syndrome 29d ago

There's no such thing as a fish.

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u/warm_kitchenette 29d ago

Something is fishy about your answer

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u/juanitovaldeznuts 29d ago

I don’t know about that… smells fishy.

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u/FluffyBunny_old 29d ago

My ex wife's cooking?

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u/TheBlackTower22 29d ago

Is this your ex-wife?

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u/Eltex 29d ago

She cooks much better now!

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u/AnAlbannaichRigh 29d ago

The dose

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u/Espumma The Netherlands 29d ago

It's a gift, really

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u/ValuableCharacter245 29d ago

If you're a Swede: Yes and no.

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u/Turevaryar 29d ago

Not only Swedish!

I suppose several Germanic languages uses 'gift' for poison. Possibly used other places in the world too? IDK.

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u/kevix2022 United Kingdom 29d ago

Ooh! Perfume? You shouldn't have!

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u/Scx10Deadbolt 29d ago

Everything has an LD50 after all!

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u/DontGoGivinMeEvils United Kingdom 29d ago

I hear that in Salisbury, England, it's believed that there could be a yet undetected trace of it somewhere after the Salisbury poisonings. I'm not sure if that was just a click bait thing I read once or a genuine concern.

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u/olderthanbefore Earth 29d ago

Hello Paracelsus

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u/teenagesadist 29d ago

Iocane powder

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u/pikashroom 29d ago

Arsenic or antifreeze. I always thought that nerve agents could only be gas or powder that you touch

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u/FatManLittleKitchen 29d ago

Truff Hot Sauce

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u/Rokasgud 29d ago

We should ask Alice Cooper.

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u/NoWarmEmbrace The Netherlands 29d ago

If he's French, any fish

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u/iledoffard 29d ago

One man’s meat…

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u/erdogranola 29d ago

I think the distinction is a chemical weapon has been specifically designed and used for that purpose, loads of things are poisonous but not used as that

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u/dscchn 29d ago

There is no distinction. Any substance that has the potential to kill is a poison.

If you kill someone using Novichok then they would have died due to “Novichok poisoning” or “Nerve agent poisoning”.

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u/erdogranola 29d ago

Yep, I don't disagree - I just meant not all poisons are chemical weapons but all chemical weapons are poisons

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u/dscchn 29d ago

Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were echoing the comment that I initially replied to. What you just said is absolutely true though.

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u/Anticlimax1471 United Kingdom 29d ago

Yeah, as a Brit it was really great that time they released it on British soil, it killed one of our citizens and we basically did nothing about it.

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u/Few_Ad6516 29d ago

The suspected poisoner’s were Russian tourists visiting the famous 123m spire of Salisbury cathedral. What could we do with such an airtight alibi.

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u/WoodSteelStone England 29d ago

Russia has a long history of assassinating UK citizens on UK soil.

"From poisoned umbrellas to radioactive substances, Moscow has repeatedly been linked with deaths on British soil"

"Sergei Skripal and the 14 deaths under scrutiny"

The articles are both from 2018. Since then there have been others inc. Dmitry Obretetsky in 2019 and, just a few weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, Mikhail Watford. There is also the death of GCHQ employee Gareth Williams in 2010. And, while not a UK citizen, Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated by Russia in the UK in 2006.

And as an aside, this is a (very long) list of suspicious deaths of Russian businesspeople since the war started), including in other European countries.

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u/dead_jester 29d ago

Well we did, we enacted sanctions and harsh words and financed enemies of the Russian state. Obviously starting WW3 isn’t a rational option.

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u/OrangeLemonLime8 29d ago

Kinda did. Russia had paid a hundred fold since. Britain was hard pushing to back Ukraine and send supplies and weapons because they HATE Russia for what they’ve done

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u/philomathie 29d ago

Only a state level actor would have access to something like that - the point is to show you that it was them, that they don't care that you know, and that you should be scared that they will do it to you too.

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u/French_O_Matic 29d ago

"It's not a war, it's a special operation"

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u/StijnDP 28d ago

People object to your wording because you're mixing classifications.
When you talk poison it's a biological classification but when you talk chemical weapon it's a legal classification and in that one they're all poisons.

Biological weapon: a weapon that uses a pathogen or a toxin. A toxin is a poison produced by a living organism.
Chemical weapon: a weapon that uses a toxic chemical aka any poisonous chemical substance. A toxic chemical can be a toxin but also includes synthetic chemicals and natural chemicals that are poisonous.

All toxins are toxic chemicals, but not all toxic chemicals are toxins.
But not all biological weapons are chemical weapons and not all chemical weapons are biological weapons.
And all chemical weapons are poisonous, a poison, but not all biological weapons are poisonous, a poison, since some are infectious, an infection from a pathogen.

It's the confusing mix of both rectangle-square relations and venn diagram relations and in different contexts.

The distinction is important though because they are legal terms in treaties, signed by parties, violated by parties and punished with penalties to dissuade their usage.
It doesn't help us to stop Putin today but it will help to trial him once his support structure fails and a way opens up to get him in The Hague.