This is easily one of my favorite stories of 2020, which means I'm nowhere near the appropriate Russian level of jadedness. (To be scrupulously fair, there's a whole pan-Slavic spectrum of jadedness and I don't really know where the Russians fall on it per se.) Is the agent still alive?
That was amazing. Navalny is incredible. The detail about the FSB putting the Novichok in Navalny's underwear is hilarious, as is them sending a team to the hospital to wash them. Only thing I find a bit confusing is that there was a previous story, also broken by Bellingcat, that had the FSB put it in Navalny's Negroni when he'd asked for a Bloody Mary and was told that they were out of the ingredients. He took one sip of the Negroni and thought it was the nastiest thing he'd ever tasted so didn't finish it.
Clearly Navalny has brass balls and that's why the plot failed.
Someone famous-for-Russia has just been arrested outside the Lubyanka for standing there holding up a pair of blue boxers.
This is absolutely bonkers. I can't wait till they make a movie about Navalny!
I'm bummed that they're keeping ajay so busy that he can't comment on this thread. I suppose it's for a good cause.
I assume he's still providing Welsh subtitles for porn movies.
Are we sure this isn't all a big joke? There's even a part where one says "Omsk" and the other says, "Do you mean Tomsk?"
Only thing I find a bit confusing is that there was a previous story, also broken by Bellingcat, that had the FSB put it in Navalny's Negroni when he'd asked for a Bloody Mary and was told that they were out of the ingredients. He took one sip of the Negroni and thought it was the nastiest thing he'd ever tasted so didn't finish it.
Well, negronis are pretty gross.
How did they know he was going to wear that pair of underwear?! Did he not pack any extra clean underwear?
Is anybody else picturing Alex Baldwin listening to a patronizing lecture from Fred Thompson about how Russians don't leave the house with more than one change of underwear?
Well, negronis are pretty gross.
Someone is wrong on the internet.
Oh well, just means more Campari for the rest of us. Unless your objection is to the gin or sweet vermouth, in which case I really don't know what to say.
I think gin and ice is still considered a martini in some parts of the country.
Well, you should have told us you had tonic. Opens up a whole universe of possibilities: gin and tonic, two gin and tonics, etc.
And right on cue, it's time to start drinking.
I thought we were only mentioning the spirits.
Campari is a liqueur and vermouth is a fortified wine. Just harmless little mixers.
All I've done all damn year is drink Campari cocktails. Especially during those terrible hot months. Negroni, boulevardier, old pal, americano, plain old Campari and soda and start again from the top. There must not be any FSB agents in the house.
If I don't have any Campari in the house, maybe FSB agents drank it all?
We might have a bottle of sweet Vermouth because of Manhattans, but we don't have any bourbon or rye. In support of the European Union in these trying times, we have only Irish whiskey.
I realized I had a bit of a problem with pandemic liquor buying when I woke up to a crash in the middle of the night and found that my upper bar shelf had collapsed, taking the lower shelf with it and sending liquor and broken glass everywhere. Fortunately liquor bottles are sturdy and most survived, but since then I've been shooting for no more than a bottle or two of most things at a time. Can't apply that to whiskey, though. Need to have a suitable mix of sipping and mixing sorts from three continents (technically one continent and some islands - Britain, Ireland, Japan, Islay, etc).
10: my guess is that the would be killers sprayed all his underpants, not knowing which pair he would wear. The agent on the call took part in the clean-up, so he did know which pair Navalny eventually wore, although only after the fact. Navalny apparently sent some things to the hotel laundry, so it's possible either that they gained entry to his room or that they paid off the laundry.
Hotel laundry staff being accustomed to accepting payment for dirty undertrousers.