A top Russian defence official has been found dead after apparently falling from the 16th floor of a high-rise apartment in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Russian media outlets reported.
At around 8 a.m., the body of a woman was found by police on the sidewalk in front of a tower block in the Kalininsky district. The woman was identified as Marina Yankina, 58, head of finance and procurement for the Russian Defence Ministry’s Western Military District, one of five arms of the Russian armed forces.
It sounds as though she would have been well-placed to either facilitate corruption or catch it. My guess is that was not helping enough to facilitate corruption and so she was helped to a rendevous with gravity. I've seen reports that the Russian government has chosen to turn its gaze away from corruption and thievery in military procurement, possibly believing that some goods getting through is better than none at all. Because if they arrested all of those guilty of corruption, there would be nobody left.
I finally was nudged by this post to satisfy something I've wondered about for a bit: when in history were so many folk tossed from windows that a new word for that was actually needed?
ReplyDeleteTurns out, just two incidents, but oh how pertinent to today's Russia. From etymonline.com:
"A word invented for one incident: the 'Defenestration of Prague,' May 21, 1618, when two Catholic deputies to the Bohemian national assembly and a secretary were tossed out the window of the castle of Hradschin by Protestant radicals (the pair landed in a trash heap and survived). It marked the start of the Thirty Years' War."
Another one! It must be a thing that they do. I have lost count of how many. If there are any Russi here, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Putin is a criminal and a murderer.
ReplyDeleteAlso i am tired of russian paranoia and delusions of intellectual superiority. Take a look at any map.
You, Russia, have control over all of Siberia. And you do this? You should be ashamed. Of course i support Ukraine!
But no, we have to wait until this thug finally dies. It could be tomorrow, it could be 20 years.
@Sikandtake
ReplyDeleteThat was one of my favorite Steven Jay Gould "This View of Life" columns in Natural History: "The Diet of Worms and the Defenestration of Prague" where he starts out with his glee as a young child reading 'The Diet of Worms" and imagining, the obvoous :-)
It's available in his book "Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms"
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57233.Leonardo_s_Mountain_of_Clams_and_the_Diet_of_Worms