Last April, Vladimir Putin visited the campus of Bauman Moscow state technical university, set on the banks of the Yauza River in the east of the city and home to some of the country’s brightest scientific minds.

He toured the campus, met undergraduates and boasted about Moscow’s ambitious plans for space missions to the moon and Mars. “You have everything it takes to be competitive,” Putin told the students.

What the Kremlin readout of Putin’s visit did not mention was a secret faculty inside the university, known simply as Department 4, or “Special Training”.

  • Zorque@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    Where in my comment did I back Russia?

    You’re right, you didn’t explicitly back them.

    It doesn’t have to be run by the Russian government to be affected by it. This article is about election meddling, not deep state conspiracy stuff. Do you deny that meddling? That it has had a serious impact on the US and a wide array of other countries?

    Intentional destabilization while not mucking about with actually controlling it is often times even worse, especially when it comes to as influential country as the US.

    That doesn’t mean they have no culpability… but as I said, it’s not a vacuum. There’s always more than one factor, and ignoring any in favor of only one is intentional ignorance of the worst kind.

    • Riverside@reddthat.com
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      15 hours ago

      Do you deny that meddling? That it has had a serious impact on the US?

      Yes! I explicitly said that it’s mostly a conspiracy theory, backed by no serious evidence.

        • Riverside@reddthat.com
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          8 hours ago

          No, there is substantial evidence for Russian meddling in such countries’ elections. Do you think there’s election meddling by the EU in said countries?