Russia's doping program is run by the same FSB team that poisoned Navalny

https://theins.press/en/inv/291614

by dralley • 3 months ago

99 66 3 months ago

theins.press

konart• 3 months ago

FSB's Second Service are also the ones who deal with the internet shitshow now.

https://meduza.io/en/news/2026/04/16/report-fsb-unit-linked-...

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/15/russian-websites-b...

alephnerd• 3 months ago

First there was Nemtsov, then there was Navlany. Wonder who's next.

Funny thing is, if 1999 went differently Lukashenka actually had a shot at being in the Kremlin today.

varispeed• 3 months ago

Imagine if all Russians put their energy into making world a better place, instead of killing their neighbours, raping, stealing and corrupting. Sad.

lifestyleguru• 3 months ago

The west is secretly in love with this malevolence, that's why.

Svoka4• 3 months ago

Yup, they call it 'mysterious russian soul', while it just a blatant disregard to human life

Mikhail_Edoshin• 3 months ago

Or maybe Westerners stop lying that much.

nullorempty11• 3 months ago

hm, not much would change. - we'd still see palestine destroyed - iran bombed - iraq bombed - lybia bombed - afganistan bombed - lebanon bombed

Imagine if all countries would put their energy into building peace and prosperity. That would make a difference.

Svoka4• 3 months ago

ah, here comes whataboutism. And you are correct. It would be great if russia didn't destroy Afghanistan and Syria.

Also, equating conflicts is a very shallow and inadequate manipulation tool. For example, russians razed dozens of cities in Ukraine, establish torture and rape chambers, use rape, torture, execution of POW as policy today.

"all wars are bad" doesn't mean that whatever russia does is way worse.

gljiva4• 3 months ago

Actually, a lot would change. Each one of the Ukrainian lives destroyed is a whole life destroyed. A damaged car is a setback for a family. There are whole cities and villages razed in Ukraine, fields polluted or rigged with explosives. Countless lives lost; each person's story and potential ended by some Russian's "command-following" drone or missile strike.

No, Russia isn't the only one, but _is_ a cause of a lot of suffering and resources wasted.

drdaeman3• 3 months ago

s/Russians/humans/. Absolutely nothing special about Russians here.

tim3336• 3 months ago

The killing the neighbours thing seems a bit more prevalent there than other developed countries.

andrewinardeer• 3 months ago

I can play this game too.

Imagine if all Americans put their energy into making world a better place, instead of killing their neighbours, raping, stealing and corrupting. Sad.

gavinray3• 3 months ago

I don't condone doping in tested sports, but I think there needs to be recognition that preventing athletes from modifying their biochemistry turns most sports into a genetic lottery showcase.

Here is what I mean:

Suppose that two men are born, with identical brains, but very different bodies. Both of them have a single desire: to be the fastest sprinter in the world.

Man A)

- Predominantly fast-twitch muscle fiber composition

- Possesses ACTN3 RX genotype [0]

- Testosterone, Growth Hormone, IGF-1 levels at the very upper end of reference range

Man B)

- Predominantly slow-twitch muscle fiber composition

- Possesses ACTN3 XX genotype

- Clinically deficient values of Testosterone, Growth Hormone, IGF-1. Prone to musculoskeletal injuries, possibly connective tissue disorders.

If these two men live an identical life, and put the same amount of effort into training, the second man still has no hope of making it to the Olympics.

Even doping would only be able to correct for hormonal deficiencies, not the genome-level disadvantages for power performance compared to the other athlete.

A truly "fair" sport would pit competitors against each other who had near-identical genetic and physical traits.

The Olympics is just watching the people who won genetic lotteries.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11014841/

speedgoose2• 3 months ago

Yeah so athletes with more money and better access to doping products win instead.

Hard pass.

kelipso3• 3 months ago

Also will encourage athletes to give themselves long term health issues for short term performance gains.

drdaeman3• 3 months ago

At least that produces tangible value for the rest of us this way.

Current idea of sports is that athletes wreck themselves for mere performance value (and money to the people who set it up, with a bit trickling down to athletes for enabling it all). As far as I understand, nothing they directly do is otherwise reusable to anyone else.

I’d rather watch a live commercial for human enhancement industries. At least that’s something that eventually becomes available to everyone.

bigyabai2• 3 months ago

Most sports are a genetic lottery showcase regardless of how many drugs you take.

gherkinnn• 3 months ago

So the olympic games do pit near-identical competitors against each other.

The Olympics is just watching the people who won genetic lotteries.

So? The olympic games should be the pinnacle of human performance (fed by their nation's interests). Of course it is lotteries all the way from the genetics, to what country you're born in, right to the national lottery putting money in to sports.

Your alternatives are either a proliferation of categories or random people assembling every four years to roll dice to determine the winner. Neither is exciting.

timnetworks• 3 months ago

Olympics are literally a showcase of the genetic lottery. We can have Testtube Olympics alongside Special Olympics if there is sufficient interest.

MengerSponge• 3 months ago

1988 All-Drug Olympics (SNL Weekend Update sketch)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAdG-iTilWU

hananova• 3 months ago

No, the olympics are a doping competition, and a meta-competition of “who is better at not getting detected.”

In general, the statement “if they got a medal, they cheated” is true so much of the time that it becomes a sensible default assumption. And it sucks for the few that didn’t cheat.

mirekrusin• 3 months ago

It’s best of competition, not everybody at the same time on finish line equity gathering.

Rekindle8090• 3 months ago

What's the point of this post? You're missing the forest for the trees. It's like saying racing is driver against driver, not driver and car against driver and car. Motivation has NEVER made up for physical fitness, never will, and never should. The olympics are about the human body first.

gavinray3• 3 months ago

  > What's the point of this post?

I don't see the Olympics as a particularly "fair" sport in the first place, in the sense of "fair" meaning "without favoritism" because physical capability is a vast spectrum.

dmurray• 3 months ago

A truly "fair" sport would pit competitors against each other who had near-identical genetic and physical traits.

That's what the Olympics is. The men's 100m final pits against each other the fastest 8 men who are in their physical prime, full of fast twitch muscles, with West African descent. With some minor noise.

If you want to watch people from other genotype buckets run 10-50% slower, you can watch the women's event or the Paralympics or, like, the All-Vietnam U-16 event. It seems churlish to complain that not every bucket is on TV at a convenient time for you.

nradov2• 3 months ago

There's no inherent reason that the second man couldn't make it to the Olympics in the air pistol event.

mmooss• 3 months ago

preventing athletes from modifying their biochemistry turns most sports into a genetic lottery showcase.

Genetics are necessary to a point, and are not at all sufficient.

Any follower of a sport knows of athletes with incredible genetic blessings who accomplish little or nothing because they lack the hard work, discipline, focus, skill, emotional management, teamwork, etc. to succeed. And that sample omits far more athletes whose non-genetic limitations caused them to drop out or fail out before making it to the level where public is aware of them.

At the same time, the GOATs (greatest of all time) in many sports were not particularly blessed genetically, relative to other top atheletes:

* Football / soccer: Lionel Messi: 5'7", ~160 lbs., and had growth hormone deficiency [0], and is small, and not particularly fast or strong. "Messi’s “software” is what often gives him a head-start on those who physically should have the better of him." If you're interested, this article describes it in some detail: [1]

* American football: Tom Brady was notoriously unathletic, setting records for poor performance in the NFL's scouting 'combine' where draft prospects are compared in standardized tests. Also didn't have a strong throwing arm.

* Basketball is an exception: Michael Jordan was supremely athletic.

* Baseball: Babe Ruth was overweight, not known to be particularly fast or athletic, and played a position for relatively poor athletes who could hit: right field (gets the fewest plays, usually doesn't require more than running to a spot and throwing).

* Hockey: Wayne Gretzky was relatively small, not very fast, didn't have a hard shot.

* Tennis? Boxing? Cricket? Rugby?

These people are far more athletic than ordinary people, of course; I'm comparing them to other professionals in their sports.

[0] Wikipedia

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/4008225/2022/12/16/lionel-m...

scihuber• 3 months ago

More scary articles I think:

https://theins.press/en/inv/290235 - Lost in translation: How Russia’s new elite hit squad was compromised by an idiotic lapse in tradecraft https://theins.press/en/inv/287837 - The mob’s humanitarian backdoor: Ramzan Kadyrov’s mafia connections reach deep into German critical infrastructure

RomanPushkin• 3 months ago

How it is hacker news now?

bigyabai2• 3 months ago

Christo does excellent investigative journalism, his curiosity is well aligned with many of the people on this site.

hax0ron33• 3 months ago

I always wonder about Navalny - why did he go back to Russia? Did he really believe that he could do some kind of Nelson Mandela thing? Or that the Russian people would flock to his cause? I believe that the man was an idealist, I don't think you expose yourself to that much danger without being an idealist at least on some level or thinking that the possible personal rewards make the danger worth it, and I don't get the sense from Navalny that he was after personal rewards primarily. But with his experience in Russian politics, I feel like he should have known that the chance that his return to Russia would bring about any serious political change was extremely small. Not returning to Russia would have hurt his chances of causing political change as well, since that would have made him seem like just an agent of the Western powers. But returning to Russia at the cost of his life also did not accomplish political change.

halJordan• 3 months ago

I think you just have to accept that he was built different from someone like you. I think it's kind of a form of disrespect to say "why would someone do that?" We know exactly why he did it, he had a level of passion you don't. It's okay for you to not be passionate about anything on the level of giving up your life, but you shouldn't act like that doesn't exist or is an odd weird thing you're could never understand

hax0ron33• 3 months ago

I know it exists. I'm asking why he went on an extremely dangerous mission that had very little chance of success instead of using his energy on something that would have been more likely to achieve success, or on something that would have been equally unlikely to achieve success but at least would not have been extremely dangerous.

robbiewxyz• 3 months ago

I've wondered the same. A look at his contemporary media quotes gives maybe a hint. From Navalny: "It is difficult for me to understand exactly what is going on in [Putin's] mind. [...] 20 years of power would spoil anyone and make them crazy. He thinks he can do whatever he wants."

If this quote is genuine, as opposed to wistful, it suggests Navalny's evaluation of Russia was that Putin couldn't, in fact, do whatever he wanted there. As best I can tell, such an evaluation would have been pretty damn close to completely inaccurate.

The choice to return to Russia as a catastrophically-failed gamble based on that premise is what makes the most sense to me.

nullorempty11• 3 months ago

Did he have a choice but to go back? Opposition taking money from interested parties has a long history. Lenin was provided with financial support by the germans. Revolution is business, people pay revolutionaries and opposition to do what they do, and once they take the money they need to deliver.

Navalnyj had very low popularity at home. He was mostly a made up hero for the western audience.

Ordinary russians not only gave no-f-f about Navalnyj but considered him a traitor or a trojan horse.

BoneShard• 3 months ago

yeah, low popularity, got almost 30% in unfair Moscow mayoral elections. Go fuck yourself murzilka.

PearlRiver• 3 months ago

Sport fan clowns always say you have to separate politics from the Olympics. Well guess what my own country is sponsoring athletes because the whole fucking show is just a way for countries to show off. Not sure what we are showing off to be honest- although I did clap for the nice Somali ex refugee lady who is now a professional athlete.

Russia's doping program is run by the same FSB team that poisoned Navalny

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