The demonstrative murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on February 27, 2015 near the Kremlin walls became a landmark event in the history of late Putinism.
The top leaders of the ruling organized crime group, by the very choice of the place of reprisal against their irreconcilable opponent, openly admitted their crime. “We killed, sir, we can repeat it,” they said without hesitation to their stunned fellow citizens.
But this did not exhaust the significance of February 27th. From the very first days of the official “investigation,” a conflict within the ruling elite, including its security elements, became obvious. For the first time, Putin was challenged within the system of power itself.
Russian security forces (primarily the FSB) used the murder of Boris Nemtsov, which they themselves organized, as a trigger to launch a frontal attack on Putin’s Kadyrov project, which they were strongly opposed to from the very beginning. They were never able to come to terms with the loss of Chechnya as a zone of their unlimited and uncontrolled power over the life and death of any of its inhabitants. Having quickly arrested several Kadyrovites involved in the crime, investigators boldly indicated their interest in Kadyrov’s immediate circle – Geremeev and Delimkhanov. And they even undertook an expedition to Chechnya, during which they shot one of the suspects while trying to detain them. The main goal of the coordinated attack by the security forces was to maximally discredit Kadyrov in the public sphere, and through him, Putin, who patronizes him, if he refuses to hand him over.
But Putin could not hand over Kadyrov. Closing the Kadyrov project under pressure from the security forces would be an official recognition of Russia’s defeat in the second Chechen war and the announcement of a third. This is a return to 1999 in a much worse starting position and, in addition, a complete political delegitimization of Putin as the “savior of the fatherland in 1999.” Putin managed to stop the security forces’ attack on Kadyrov at the cost of legal absurdity. The organizer and customer of the murder was named as Geremeev’s driver, who fled from the investigation. But the security forces did not abandon their plans.
Putin has not forgotten anything and, apparently, has not forgiven anyone. His reaction to the “rebellion” was a large-scale restructuring of the security forces and the creation, essentially, of his own personal guard, led by his loyal Zolotov (350,000 fighters).
Almost four years have passed. It seems that December 31, 2018 is destined to become another important date in the history of Putin’s Judoheria. For almost a month now, during the investigation of a series of explosions in Magnitogorsk, we have been observing a stubborn confrontation between the same power institutions as in 2015 - Putin and the FSB.
Official structures controlled by Putin, including the Investigative Committee and federal TV channels, assure us that on December 31 there was a domestic gas explosion. The FSB is increasingly leaking through its channels (the specially created resource “Baza”, etc.) information about a series of terrorist attacks being prepared by the Islamist underground in Magnitogorsk, the most dangerous of which the security officers managed to heroically prevent. Now it’s not even so important what actually happened there (I will express my point of view below). The political meaning of this war of versions is important.
The Putin myth, as we know, was originally created by Kremlin scoundrels after a series of house bombings in the fall of 1999, attributed to Islamic terrorists.
After that, each subsequent large-scale terrorist attack in Russia became a new injection of political Botox for Little Tsakhes, who hatched from a television test tube. The myth of the Father of the Nation was strengthened in the popular consciousness, the powers of the bearer of the myth were expanded, and repressions against all those who doubted intensified.
Terrorist attacks and their correct propaganda coverage for many years served the good cause of forming the given cliches of mass consciousness.
This was the case until the crash of the A321 passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31, 2015. Unexpectedly, all the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts from day one were aimed at maintaining the version of a technical malfunction, and not a terrorist attack. Only the international nature of the investigation forced the Kremlin to silently agree, in the end, with the obvious - it was a terrorist attack.
Why did the Islamist terrorist attacks, which served it so faithfully for a decade and a half, become objectionable to the Russian propaganda machine? Why did Putin’s muzzle makers begin to shy away from them?
And all because in September 2015, Putin’s concept of the fight against Islamist radicals changed dramatically. From now on, he decided to fight them not in domestic toilets, but on the far borders of our Motherland, long before they could strike at Russian territory or at Russian aircraft.
Moreover, this deceitful meme about the “distant frontiers” became the official justification for the Syrian military adventure, which pursued completely different goals. Here I will limit myself to one quote from this text:
We must kill them on distant lines so that they do not come to us. The highest officials of the state who repeat this mantra by heart are either deliberately lying or trying to deceive themselves. We got into the thick of a medieval religious war. Our Shia Orthodox Crusade will not reduce the number of Sunni radicals. On the contrary, their number will increase sharply in Syria, Iraq and throughout the world. Including on the territory of Russia. Jihad is a network structure, an ideological brand. Potential terrorists do not need to crawl to us through the Caucasus and Central Asia. They have been among us for a long time and their number is growing.
They have been among us in Magnitogorsk for a long time, and their number is growing. Such news not only does not fit into the world picture of Putin’s propaganda today. On the contrary, she brings it down, discrediting the former alpha male, who has already lost his mythological self. Therefore, all institutions and characters who have remained loyal to him will stubbornly defend the version of a gas leak.
But the FSB, even more decisively than three years ago, continues to pursue its independent line, engaging new media that are increasingly closer to the mainstream.
The FSB is not concerned about the reputation of Putin’s “fight against terrorism on distant frontiers.” On the contrary, this concept aroused their rejection from the very beginning, just like Putin’s Kadyrov project. Kadyrov's offshore took away power and huge money from the security officers in Chechnya. And the shift in priorities towards the “fight on distant frontiers” reduced the power, financial, and political resources that the FSB as an agency had saddled with during its fascinating twenty-year fight against terrorism throughout Russia.
I promised to express my version of the tragic events in Magnitogorsk. It is very simple, and even everyday.
In Magnitogorsk The same thing happened that had been happening all these twenty years during high-profile terrorist attacks.
House bombings that brought Putin to power. The explosion of a house in Volgodonsk was officially announced by the speaker of the Duma two days before the tragedy. Who the real serial killers were who ordered these explosions became extremely clear after their failure in Ryazan, where ordinary perpetrators (officers of the central apparatus of the FSB) were grabbed by the hand.
"Nord-Ost". The surviving terrorist Terkibaev, a recruited intelligence agent, emerged from the building unharmed and free, then managed to give a sensational interview to Novaya Gazeta, and only after that was liquidated. And one of the organizers of the terrorist attack, Elmurzaev, headed the security service of Prima Bank, protected by the special services, in whose cash-in-transit vehicles the terrorists moved around Moscow.
Beslan. Among the Beslan terrorists there were several people, including one of their leaders, Khodov, who were released from prisons and detention centers shortly before the attack on the school. Persons detained Russian intelligence services as suspected terrorists, can be found alive at large only in one capacity: as recruited agents of these intelligence services.
Volgograd. October 2014. One of these agents, Dmitry Sokolov, the common-law husband of the suicide bomber Ziyalova, was at the center of the Volgograd legend of the security forces. Our glorious authorities informed us every day that the ring of persecution around the elusive chief demolitionist of the Makhachkala sabotage and terrorist group was inexorably shrinking and he was about to be captured. But why did they have to squeeze this ring with such heroic efforts, if they themselves unclenched it? He was already in their clean hands. They themselves spoke about this by posting on the Internet photographs of him in front and his profile during his arrest. As the honored Volgograd security officer Sergei Vorontsov admitted on the air of the Week program: “Yes, he was detained, we controlled him, but we couldn’t keep track of his every move.” In the end, after the bus explosion, he was arrested again (once again!). Then, like a sack, they were thrown together with four unknown people into some house on the outskirts of the city, in which, according to legend, they were all destined to die live on federal television channels “in the process of arrest.”
Saint Petersburg. 2017. After the explosion in the St. Petersburg metro, we again heard from a “source from the special services” the same painfully familiar Volgograd legend - yes, we played an operational game with the terrorists, but they were out of our control. And it was broadcast not on some marginal website, but on the pages of the systemic pro-Kremlin Kommersant.
This is how the classic corporate style of the FSB evolved over decades in its “fight against Islamist terrorism.” The same template was worked out until it became automatic. Each mega-terrorist attack is an explosion of a hellish mixture of real Islamic fanatics, provocateurs-agents and heads of the regional and central level of the FSB, playing an “operational game” with them. When and where this game gets out of control, or seems to get out of control, depends on specific political attitudes or departmental interests.
Everything apparently happened in much the same way in Magnitogorsk. Why should things have happened differently there? As in any large Ural city with a sufficient number of migrants from Central Asia, Magnitogorsk had underground Islamist cells, which have significantly expanded over the past three years. Local security officers played some kind of “operational games” with them...
The only unusual thing was the rapid appearance of Putin at the scene of the tragedy, who flew in to mourn with the FSO employees. Maybe some kind of operational game was being played with him too?
One way or another, the war over the interpretation of the Magnitogorsk tragedy continues. I think that the FSB will win in it and the cause of the explosion will be called a terrorist attack. The FSB behaves in the information field much more assertively than three years ago. The Special Department already knows that Little Tsakhes has lost three magical hairs. Unfortunately, Russia never found a Hero who would tear them out publicly. They were simply eaten by the mold of Time.
Ethnologists believe that about a year should pass from the loss of sacredness by the leader of the Aryan tribe to mass protests, so serious unrest among the lower classes of the tribe is not expected until late autumn.
But who told you that the top - this collective dollar trillionaire armed to the teeth - will passively wait for their fate for a whole year?
They will be proactive, trying to create a new post-Putin myth by the fall. In order to intercept the protest agenda, this myth must, along with something sovereign, include as an absolutely obligatory element a certain simulacrum of social justice.
The kleptocrats are unable to offer any social justice to the country they have gutted. But they can flatter the masses: preemptively “lead” social protest and appoint several hundred of their fellow accomplices (possibly including the first person) “oligarchs who robbed the people.” The sacred sacrifice will prolong the agony of the zombie regime for several more years.
The most pressing problem of the apical Transit 2019 will be the formation of a much more solid corps of new Ulyukaevs, Belyovs, Shestuns...
“- Vladimir Vladimirovich, do you understand that we are approaching war?
- Yes. And we will win it."
Let me continue discussing the problem already raised in my . The fact is that it is becoming more and more relevant and, in my opinion, central in world politics, and will remain so until it leads in its natural development to one of the following two events:
a) the beginning of a nuclear war;
c) preventive sanitation of a person who relies on his foreign policy to nuclear blackmail of the personalist regime of Vladimir Putin.
During the nuclear era (1945–2018), the behavior of Soviet/Russian leaders on the world stage became extremely aggressive and dangerous when they were filled with morbid fantasies about their ability to win a nuclear war over the eternally hated West.
These periods were relatively short: recent years the life of Joseph Stalin, a couple of years (1961–1962) of the reign of Nikita Khrushchev. The third such period lasts unusually long, more than 4 years. Somewhere by 2014, a narrow group in the Russian military-political leadership (Putin, Nikolai Patrushev, Valery Gerasimov) came to the conclusion that, being inferior to the West at times in everything (economically, technologically, militarily at all stages of potential escalation conflict), Russia is nevertheless capable of winning a hybrid war against the West, led by the United States, the scenario and rules of which the Kremlin itself will determine.
By Victory the Kremlin understands the restoration of at least the “Yalta” zone of their omnipotence in Europe, the self-liquidation of NATO as a result of the inability of this organization to fulfill its obligations under Article 5 of its Charter, a demonstration of the incapacity of the United States as the “leader of the free world” and, accordingly, the withdrawal of the West from world history. And what tools, besides its famous “spirituality,” could a state that is many times inferior to NATO in everything use for a successful confrontation with the NATO bloc and the annexation of the territories of its member countries?
Only nuclear weapons. But, you ask, isn’t it generally known that in the field of nuclear weapons, Russia and the United States, just like half a century ago, are in a stalemate with the doctrine of mutual assured destruction and, therefore, the nuclear factor can be excluded from strategic calculations? The fact is that this is not entirely true, or rather, not at all true. In an acute geopolitical situation, a nuclear power focused on changing the existing status quo, possessing superior political will for such a change, great indifference to the value of human lives (its own and others) and a certain amount of adventurism, can achieve serious foreign policy results with just the threat of using or very limited use of nuclear weapons.
Taking a fraer "weakly" - this is the formula for Victory, rooted in the customs of the St. Petersburg gateway, only instead of a Finn, now the gopnik has a nuclear bomb
Putin has long observed his Western partners and deeply despises them. How else could he treat them if the chancellors and prime ministers of great Europe were lining up to serve as lackeys at his gas stations for a pitiful remuneration of a couple of million euros a year? Or after Putin and Bashar Assad, with one chemical strike, deceived Western leaders as suckers, replacing the agenda of the Syrian crisis, turning Assad in the eyes of the world community from an executioner into a respectable statesman engaged in the noble cause of chemical disarmament? Putin then miscalculated Barack Obama with his red lines, and believes that he miscalculated all his former partners in the G8. Putin is convinced that he will outmaneuver his rivals in potential military conflicts that will arise on the way to his Victory - despite the fact that the Russian Federation is far inferior to NATO in the field of conventional weapons and is not superior to the United States in the nuclear field.
Putin will play with them, raising the stakes, threatening to use nuclear weapons, and they, he believes, will falter and retreat at the critical moment. To take the fraer "weakly" - this is the formula of Victory, rooted in the customs of the St. Petersburg gateway, only instead of the Finn, now the gopnik has a nuclear bomb.
In recent years, Putin has more than once painted apocalyptic pictures of a nuclear strike in his speeches and video interviews. And, as one observant commentator rightly noted, he talks about this every time with obvious lust. Judge for yourself: look carefully, for example, at his face in the film “World Order 2018”, when he declares to Vladimir Solovyov that he does not need a world without Putin in power. Yes, precisely without Putin in power. Vyacheslav Volodin explained to us that Russia today is Putin in power. Judging by the frequency and emotional intensity of public statements, nuclear war becomes for Putin’s subconscious the same dominant erotic idea-fix as Putin’s famous copulation of nits.
Before our eyes, live victory is entering its second acute phase. November 25, 2018 is a date no less important than February 20, 2014; medals will also be stamped with this date on the reverse. Maybe even in heaven, where caring father The nation has already sent us all so that we don’t just die like our enemies. So far, the highest point of live victory was the spring of 2014. The military thinker turned out to be right when he said: “They won’t shoot at us when we stand behind their women and children.” After Putin’s Crimean speech, it seemed that the whole country with flags, banners, icons, portraits of the Tsar, and St. George’s ribbons knelt in front of the residence in Novo-Ogarevo. New geopolitical exploits were expected: Novorossiya, the dismemberment of “this ugly product of the Brest Peace” - Ukraine, the protection of compatriots in the Baltic states. And, finally, in response to the inarticulate bleating from Brussels and Washington - a striking question: “Are you ready to die for Narva?”
But something didn’t work out then, and everything went completely wrong. The majority of the Russian population of Ukraine rejected the idea of the “Russian World” and remained loyal to the Ukrainian state and its European choice. Appeared Ukrainian army, which did not exist in February 2014. The radiant Novorossiya has shrunk to a gangster stub in the Donbass. The gradually awakened West stationed several battalions in the Baltics, designed to symbolize NATO’s readiness to fulfill its obligations under Article 5 of its Charter.
The situation in Russia itself was not at all victorious. The mass euphoria of “Krymnash” gradually eroded and certainly did not develop into support for a large-scale war in Ukraine. The ruling kleptocracy did not at all intend to go to Putin’s paradise in friendly ranks, rightly believing that it was in this Putin’s paradise that it lived until Putin’s victory jeopardized the huge holdings accumulated together with Putin in the American and British jurisdictions. But as if out of nowhere, a completely new influential interest group emerged - the soloists of foreign policy talk shows raging on television around the clock: Sheinin, Skabeeva, Kiselev, Soloviev. Thrust into television by the victorious demons, they now themselves shape the consciousness of the ruling victorious demons.
After several years of hesitation, Putin has decided on a new serious escalation in his hybrid war with the West, which he expects to win
Let's return to the "naval battle" on November 25, 2018. The significant event was not the clash in the Kerch Strait itself, which could, if desired, be described as a regrettable border incident, but the subsequent statements and explanations from the Russian side. Moscow de facto declared the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov its territorial waters, once again violating several international agreements, including the 2003 agreement between Russia and Ukraine on cooperation in the use Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.
Essentially, this means the annexation of the Sea of Azov and the blockade of a large part of the Ukrainian coast, which in a military sense creates the preconditions for its capture. It is politically significant that for the first time the Kremlin committed an act of aggression against Ukraine, not hiding behind any “ichtamnets” or “little green men,” but openly, in front of the whole world, under the flag of the Russian Federation.
The West took the incident seriously. So seriously that for three or four days he could not develop a clear consolidated position. The first instinctive reaction of Europeans was to ignore the scale of what had happened, limiting themselves to inarticulate muttering and calls to live together. Donald Trump continued to demonstrate his special relationship with Putin in the same vein. Kremlin propaganda did not hide its glee at such a sluggish reaction from the West. Only the second-rank officials of the American administration, Kurt Volker and Nikki Haley, gave harsh assessments of the escalation of Putin’s aggression, but it was they who became the moral leaders of the American and Western political class at a critical moment. They completely turned the situation in the West not in Putin’s favor.
As Trump was led to the plane carrying the American delegation to the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, he, to his consistency, continued to talk about a very relevant and timely meeting with Putin the next day. Half an hour later, the famous tweet was sent from the presidential plane. This was followed by a unanimously approved resolution of the US Senate, a statement by the G7, new statements by NATO, the EU, and European leaders. The style of these documents is such that Volker and Haley could already rest easy. Trump canceled his final press conference in Buenos Aires. The official reason is grief for the passing of the 41st President of the United States. But the same circumstances did not prevent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from giving a detailed interview to CNN in Buenos Aires.
This interview was extremely harsh towards Putin, to whom Pompeo presented an ultimatum - return Ukrainian captured sailors and captured ships to their homeland. When asked about canceling the Trump-Putin meeting, Pompeo pointedly repeated twice: “I was part of that decision.” The Kremlin's Operation Trumpnash is over. The personal fate of the American president, who has now become completely useless for Moscow, no longer interests anyone in the Kremlin.
So, after several years of hesitation, Putin has decided on a new serious escalation in his hybrid war with the West, in which he expects Victory. The West, after several days of hesitation, did not succumb to blackmail and did not surrender Ukraine to the aggressor. This is good news. For Ukraine. For Russia. For peace.
Vulnered – including personally – Putin will in the foreseeable future take the next step in aggravating the military-political situation. This is bad news. The nuclear blackmailer must be stopped at the distant approaches to the fatal rung of the escalation ladder. Each new step is another step towards disaster. In the Soviet Union, a similar situation arose twice. Both times it was resolved in one way or another by the actions of the immediate circle of the first person. The ideal would be to remove this problem by a mass anti-war movement in Russia. But the third and last peace march in Moscow was the funeral of Boris Nemtsov.
In the country's information field, news negative for the Kremlin has recently appeared with increasing frequency. Before the passions surrounding the publication of the “Kremlin List” and the defeat of Russian mercenaries in Syria had died down, a scandal erupted with cocaine found in the Russian Embassy in Argentina. Isn't this flurry of news evidence of the imminent collapse of the Putin regime? About this, as well as about what the notorious “black list” of Putin’s friends means for the Russian “elite”, what happened to the Kremlin’s “Novorossiya” project, why “Putin’s Russia” needs to participate in the Syrian conflict, and what the future awaits representatives of the closest circle of the current authorities, the famous journalist and political figure Andrei Piontkovsky said in his interview with Russian Monitor.
— Andrei Andreevich, the last few weeks have been characterized by the fact that one negative news for the Kremlin appears in the information space after another, and sometimes not just one news, but several are published per day. The increased tempo seems to signal an imminent climax, is that so? Is it possible to say that the moment of arrival of the notorious “black swans”, which you also spoke about, has begun in Russia?
“A series of these failures is a manifestation of the deepest strategic crisis of Putin’s criminal system of power. The collapse of all its foreign and domestic policies. This happens in any country that suffers military defeat. And for 4 years now we have been in a state of so-called hybrid war with the whole world, and this is not my term, this is the term of the Kremlin propagandists. From the very beginning they talked about the fourth World War as revenge for the lost third Cold War.
First, the regime suffered a fundamental metaphysical defeat in Ukraine. Remember that Kremlin euphoria in the spring-summer of 2014: “Russian World”, “Novorossiya”, “10-12 new regions of Russia”? Putin’s criminal calculation was to unleash an ethnic war between Russians and Ukrainians. He hoped that the Russian-speaking population, ethnic Russians, would support the Nazi concept of the “Russian world.” Putin, in his April 2014 direct line, stated that the Kremlin’s sacred duty is to protect not Russian citizens (any state is obliged to protect its citizens), but so-called compatriots, ethnic Russians around the world. These are the slogans under which the Second World War was unleashed. world war, an exact copy of the foreign policy of the German Reich of the 30s of the last century. So his calculation completely failed. The majority of the Russian population of Ukraine rejected this fascist concept, people remained faithful to the Ukrainian state and its European choice. Russians and Ukrainians are fighting together in the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Putin’s occupiers. “Novorossiya” has shrunk to the gangster “Lugandonia”. And one of the reasons, most likely the most important, for unleashing the Syrian adventure was the desire to divert attention from the Ukrainian failure.
— Andrei Andreevich, it’s interesting that lately, despite the fact that we seem to have elections, so-called, right around the corner, Putin, until today, before his notorious “message” from the President of Russia, was practically not heard or seen. What is this connected with?
This is due, first of all, to the monstrous military defeat on the night of February 7-8 near Deir ez-Zor. Now that some time has passed, we know both the intent of the operation and how it went. Those Russian military personnel who are the main waste material in Putin’s hybrid war died. They are mercenaries of a private military company, and the Russian leadership is formally not responsible for them.
But from intercepted telephone conversations between the owner of the company Prigozhin and the presidential administration, we now know that this adventure was started on the direct orders of Putin. Your authors in Russian Monitor and I talked about this several times - Kremlin propagandists, a few days before the tragedy, blabbed about their plans in an article in Expert. They talked about how to “squeeze out” the American occupiers and conquer oil plants. The idea was very simple: to seize the plant, which is controlled by the Kurds, and their headquarters, where there are American advisers.
They thought that the Americans would simply run away, but they launched a crushing counterattack, demonstrating that their military machine was simply in a different league compared to the Kremlin’s capabilities in the Middle East.
You understand that in any other country, the loss of hundreds (and now it is clear that there were about three hundred so-called 200s, and the same number of 300s) military personnel as a result of a mediocre and deceitful operation, and the subsequent refusal of the state from these military personnel would cause a grandiose political crisis - the departure of the entire government, the president. National mourning would be declared.
For Putin, what happened turned out to be a very unpleasant blow. He cowardly hid for several weeks, all his planned trips and participation in the election campaign were cancelled.
Finally, today, he addressed Federal Assembly. It was a terrible sight. A bald old man who was constantly coughing climbed onto the podium and waved his nuclear pussy in front of the whole world for two hours, demonstrating old horror cartoons. With enormous enthusiasm, Crimea Put In told how he could destroy the United States. Sorry, but this has been known since 1962, since Cuban missile crisis. Just like that, the USA is no less guaranteed to destroy the USSR (Russia).
The only thing scarier and more disgusting than Crimea Put In himself was his “elite,” who interrupted the crazy boss with a standing ovation.
It is Russia's political class that is responsible for the country's catastrophe. Well, what complaints can be made to ordinary people who, firstly, have little knowledge of what is happening, and, most importantly, they have no opportunity to influence the situation?! Several hundred or a couple of thousand representatives of the so-called elite (they all gathered to announce the message) know the state of affairs very well, and if they swallow this behavior of the first person, it means that the country is doomed, and there are absolutely no feedback connections in it.
I agree with you that there are constant collapses that threaten the power of Putin himself. By the way, elections have nothing to do with this, because the issue of power in Russia has always been decided not at elections, but within the circle of the “boss.” I do not rule out that he will eventually lose power for purely physiological reasons due to the collapse of his personality, but I am afraid that this will not change anything in the country. Where are the people who can pick it up and pursue some meaningful policy? If they swallow the military "Pusima" in Syria. And there is a double “Pusima”, because practically in the same days the Israelis destroyed half of Syria’s air defense, and, probably, again the curvature of the Earth prevented our military experts from opposing them with anything.
Here's another scandal - a cocaine scandal. What is this? What version could there be here, because we hear them quite a lot now.
- Well, this is the classic concept of post-truth. Do you remember how Moscow tried to explain the crash of the Malaysian plane? Literally in the same program, Kiselyov’s first story was that the airliner was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter, and immediately after it, with the same seriousness, a demonstration of diagrams from the general headquarters that was shot down by a Ukrainian Buk. And today dozens of versions are urgently thrown in to confuse the situation.
12 suitcases of cocaine in the Russian embassy in Argentina indicate it was involved in systematic drug trafficking. The frantic activity of Patrushev, who flew yesterday, apparently, to help Rybka, is incomprehensible. The fish is another “black swan”, to use your terminology. In general, morally and ideologically, the government is simply falling apart before our eyes, but I, its opponent, have no optimism about this, because I see the insignificance of the entire elite as a whole and its complete lack of state thinking. Very difficult times await us.
— By the way, about the elite. Before the publication of the so-called “Kremlin list,” you said and wrote that Russian oligarchs actively tried to lobby for their non-inclusion in this Kremlin report. Is the activity of these characters in Washington somehow noticeable now?
— You see what’s the matter: the interim result on January 29 was very unexpected. Everyone was included, but the most valuable information - hundreds of pages of financial intelligence data on each of the 210 people included in this list - is classified. This is apparently the result of some kind of deal that three Russian intelligence agency leaders who arrived in Washington just the day before the list was made public managed to conclude. Once again, and I think for the last time, they managed to separate their counterparts, and perhaps they wanted to be separated if they were Trump and Tillerson - the two people who are the only ones in Washington opposing the general anti-Putin mood of the American establishment. The fact that the financial information is still classified prevents two fatal blows for the entire Russian bureaucracy. Russian society is already aware that the entire elite steals. However, the publication of detailed data (names, appearances, passwords), including Putin frontmen like Roldugin, will intensify the state of chaos that is now experiencing Russian society. The second blow may be even more important: once these hundreds of pages are made public, there will be no need for any new sanctions or political decisions. The United States has anti-money laundering legislation, and any provincial prosecutor can bring a case that will lead to the freezing of stolen assets, and then to their confiscation. Let me remind you, and we have talked about this more than once, that we are talking about an astronomical figure of $1 trillion. By the way, even as if ahead of the Americans, Great Britain has already moved along this path, where there are approximately half a trillion in Russian assets. They demanded that all Russian swindlers, starting with the current First Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov, explain to the British competent authorities the origin of the funds with which their property in the UK was purchased. All this further thickens the atmosphere of complete failure and collapse of the regime that is now emerging in Russia.
The fact is that it is becoming more and more relevant and, in my opinion, central in world politics, and will remain so until it leads in its natural development to one of the following two events:
a) the beginning of a nuclear war;
c) preventive rehabilitation of the personalist regime of Vladimir Putin, which relies in its foreign policy on nuclear blackmail.
During the nuclear era (1945–2018), the behavior of Soviet/Russian leaders on the world stage became extremely aggressive and dangerous when they were filled with morbid fantasies about their ability to win a nuclear war over the eternally hated West.
These periods were relatively short: the last years of the life of Joseph Stalin, a couple of years (1961–1962) of the reign of Nikita Khrushchev. The third such period lasts unusually long, more than 4 years. Somewhere by 2014, a narrow group in the Russian military-political leadership (Putin, Nikolai Patrushev, Valery Gerasimov) came to the conclusion that, being inferior to the West at times in everything (economically, technologically, militarily at all stages of potential escalation conflict), Russia is nevertheless capable of winning a hybrid war against the West, led by the United States, the scenario and rules of which the Kremlin itself will determine.
By Victory the Kremlin means the restoration of at least the “Yalta” zone of their omnipotence in Europe, the self-liquidation of NATO as a result of the inability of this organization to fulfill its obligations under Article 5 of its Charter, a demonstration of the incapacity of the United States as the “leader of the free world” and, accordingly, the withdrawal of the West from world history. And what tools, besides its famous “spirituality,” could a state that is many times inferior to NATO in everything use for a successful confrontation with the NATO bloc and the annexation of the territories of its member countries?
Only nuclear weapons. But, you ask, isn’t it generally known that in the field of nuclear weapons, Russia and the United States, just like half a century ago, are in a stalemate with the doctrine of mutual assured destruction and, therefore, the nuclear factor can be excluded from strategic calculations? The fact is that this is not entirely true, or rather, not at all true. In an acute geopolitical situation, a nuclear power focused on changing the existing status quo, possessing superior political will to such a change, would O with greater indifference to the value of human lives (our own and others) and a certain amount of adventurism, serious foreign policy results can be achieved simply by the threat of using or very limited use of nuclear weapons.
Taking a fraer "weakly" - this is the formula for Victory, rooted in the customs of the St. Petersburg gateway, only instead of a Finn, now the gopnik has a nuclear bomb
Putin has long observed his Western partners and deeply despises them. How else could he treat them if the chancellors and prime ministers of great Europe were lining up to serve as lackeys at his gas stations for a pitiful remuneration of a couple of million euros a year? Or after Putin and Bashar Assad, with one chemical strike, deceived Western leaders as suckers, replacing the agenda of the Syrian crisis, turning Assad in the eyes of the world community from an executioner into a respectable statesman engaged in the noble cause of chemical disarmament? Putin then miscalculated Barack Obama with his red lines, and believes that he has counted all his former G8 partners. Putin is convinced that he will outmaneuver his rivals in potential military conflicts that will arise on the way to his Victory - despite the fact that the Russian Federation is far inferior to NATO in the field of conventional weapons and is not superior to the United States in the nuclear field.
Putin will play with them, raising the stakes, threatening to use nuclear weapons, and they, he believes, will falter and retreat at the critical moment. To take the fraer "weakly" - this is the formula of Victory, rooted in the customs of the St. Petersburg gateway, only instead of the Finn, now the gopnik has a nuclear bomb.
In recent years, Putin has more than once painted apocalyptic pictures of a nuclear strike in his speeches and video interviews. And, as one observant commentator rightly noted, he talks about this every time with obvious lust. Judge for yourself: by looking carefully, for example, at his face in the film " World order 2018", when he declares to Vladimir Solovyov that he does not need a world without Putin in power. Yes, precisely without Putin in power. Vyacheslav Volodin explained to us that Russia today is Putin in power. Judging by the frequency and emotional intensity of public statements, nuclear war is becoming for Putin’s subconscious the same dominant erotic idea fix as Putin’s famous copulation of nits.
Victory before our eyes live enters the second acute phase. November 25, 2018 is a date no less important than February 20, 2014; medals will also be stamped with this date on the reverse. Maybe even in heaven, where the caring father of the nation has already sent us all so that we don’t just die like our enemies. While the highest point of victory live It was spring 2014. The military thinker turned out to be right then, declared: “They won’t shoot at us when we stand behind their women and children.” After Putin’s Crimean speech, it seemed that the whole country with flags, banners, icons, portraits of the Tsar, and St. George’s ribbons knelt in front of the residence in Novo-Ogarevo. New geopolitical exploits were expected: Novorossiya, the dismemberment of “this ugly product of the Brest Peace” - Ukraine, the protection of compatriots in the Baltic states. And, finally, in response to the inarticulate bleating from Brussels and Washington - a striking question: “Are you ready to die for Narva?”
But something didn’t work out then, and everything went completely wrong. The majority of the Russian population of Ukraine rejected the idea of the “Russian World” and remained loyal to the Ukrainian state and its European choice. The Ukrainian army appeared, which did not exist in February 2014. The radiant Novorossiya has shrunk to a gangster stub in the Donbass. The gradually awakened West stationed several battalions in the Baltics, designed to symbolize NATO’s readiness to fulfill its obligations under Article 5 of its Charter.
The situation in Russia itself was not at all victorious. The mass euphoria of “Krymnash” gradually eroded and certainly did not develop into support for a large-scale war in Ukraine. The ruling kleptocracy did not at all intend to go to Putin’s paradise in friendly ranks, rightly believing that it was in this Putin’s paradise that it lived until Putin’s victory jeopardized the huge holdings accumulated together with Putin in the American and British jurisdictions. But as if out of nowhere, a completely new influential interest group emerged - the soloists of foreign policy talk shows raging on television around the clock: Sheinin, Skabeeva, Kiselev, Soloviev. Thrust into television by the victorious demons, they now themselves shape the consciousness of the ruling victorious demons.
After several years of hesitation, Putin has decided on a new serious escalation in his hybrid war with the West, which he expects to win
Let's return to the "naval battle" on November 25, 2018. The significant event was not the clash in the Kerch Strait itself, which could, if desired, be described as a regrettable border incident, but the subsequent statements and explanations from the Russian side. Moscow has de facto declared the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov its territorial waters, once again violating several international agreements, including the 2003 agreement between Russia and Ukraine on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.
Essentially, this means the annexation of the Sea of Azov and the blockade of a large part of the Ukrainian coast, which in a military sense creates the preconditions for its capture. It is politically significant that for the first time the Kremlin committed an act of aggression against Ukraine, not hiding behind any “ichtamnets” or “little green men,” but openly, in front of the whole world, under the flag of the Russian Federation.
The West took the incident seriously. So seriously that for three or four days he could not develop a clear consolidated position. The first instinctive reaction of Europeans was to ignore the scale of what had happened, limiting themselves to inarticulate muttering and calls to live together. Donald Trump continued to demonstrate his special relationship with Putin in the same vein. Kremlin propaganda did not hide its glee at such a sluggish reaction from the West. Harsh assessments of the escalation of Putin’s aggression by the second row of the American administration Kurt Volker and Nikki Haley, but it was they who became the moral leaders of the American and Western political class at a critical moment. They completely turned the situation in the West not in Putin’s favor.
As Trump was led to the plane carrying the American delegation to the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, he, to his consistency, continued to talk about a very relevant and timely meeting with Putin the next day. Half an hour later I was off the presidential plane. This was followed by a unanimously approved resolution of the US Senate, a statement G7, new statements by NATO, the EU, European leaders. The style of these documents is such that Volker and Haley could already rest easy. Trump canceled his final press conference in Buenos Aires. The official reason is grief for the passing of the 41st President of the United States. But the same circumstances did not stop Secretary of State Mike Pompeo CNN.
This interview was extremely harsh towards Putin, to whom Pompeo presented an ultimatum - return Ukrainian captured sailors and captured ships to their homeland. When asked about canceling the Trump-Putin meeting, Pompeo pointedly repeated twice: “I was part of that decision.” The Kremlin's Operation Trumpnash is over. The personal fate of the American president, who has now become completely useless for Moscow, no longer interests anyone in the Kremlin.
So, after several years of hesitation, Putin has decided on a new serious escalation in his hybrid war with the West, in which he expects Victory. The West, after several days of hesitation, did not succumb to blackmail and did not surrender Ukraine to the aggressor. This is good news. For Ukraine. For Russia. For peace.
Vulnered – including personally – Putin will in the foreseeable future take the next step in aggravating the military-political situation. This is bad news. The nuclear blackmailer must be stopped at the distant approaches to the fatal rung of the escalation ladder. Each new step is another step towards disaster. In the Soviet Union, a similar situation arose twice. Both times it was resolved in one way or another by the actions of the immediate circle of the first person. The ideal would be to remove this problem by a mass anti-war movement in Russia. But the third and last peace march in Moscow was the funeral of Boris Nemtsov.
Andrey Piontkovsky – political expert
