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Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Russ on December 11, 2007, 06:47:15 AM

Title: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc) other countries too
Post by: Russ on December 11, 2007, 06:47:15 AM
Heavy Metal Fanatic To Succeed PUTIN As Russian Leader

Russia's RIA Novosti reports: The man backed by Vladimir Putin for next year's presidential election is a heavy-metal-loving 42-year-old whose surname comes from the Russian word for 'bear'.

First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was nominated by the ruling United Russia party and three other smaller pro-Kremlin parties on Monday afternoon. President Putin later said on national television: "I have known Dmitry Medvedev well for over 17 years, and I completely and fully support his candidature."

The man who may well become leader of the largest nation on Earth said he had spent much of his youth compiling cassettes of popular Western groups, "Endlessly making copies of BLACK SABBATH, LED ZEPPELIN and DEEP PURPLE."

All these groups were on state-issued blacklists during Medvedev's Soviet-era schooldays.

"The quality was awful, but my interest colossal," he said.

Medvedev went on to boast of his collection of DEEP PURPLE LPs, saying that he had searched for the albums for many years.

"Not reissues, but the original albums," he added, concluding that, "If you set yourself a goal you can achieve it."

Read more RIA Novosti.
Title: Re: Heavy Metal Fanatic To Succeed PUTIN As Russian Leader
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2007, 07:31:31 AM
Woof Russ:

That is some fascinating personal data on the new man.

Here's Strat on the big picture as they see it:

Marc
---------------

Geopolitical Diary: The Course of Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ended the mystery by formally endorsing First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev as his successor. Given Putin's genuine popularity with a majority of the population, along with his hammerlock to the levers of power, his endorsement is tantamount to Medvedev's election. Now the speculation has turned to precisely whether Putin will continue to pull the strings, and if so how he will do it.

We suspect that Putin will continue to pull the strings and that he is smart enough to figure out how he will do it. These are interesting but ultimately not important questions. The reason is that the process Putin initiated when he replaced Boris Yeltsin was inevitable. If Putin had not done it, someone else would have. And given the dynamics of Russia during that period, the only place that person would have come from was the intelligence community. To take control of the catastrophic reality of Russia, you had to be closely linked to at least some of the oligarchs, have control of the only institution that was really functioning in Russia at the time -- the security and intelligence apparatus -- and have the proper mix of ruthlessness and patience that it took to consolidate power within the state and then use state power to bring the rest of Russia under control.

The Soviet Union was a disaster. The only thing worse was Russia in the 1990s. The situation in Russia was untenable. Workers were not being paid, social services had collapsed, poverty was endemic. The countryside was in shambles. By the end of the 1990s Russia was either going to disintegrate or the state would reassert itself. The functional heart of the Soviet system, the KGB, now called the FSB, did reassert itself, not in a straight line. Much of the FSB was deeply involved in the criminality and corruption that was Russia in the 1990s. But just as the KGB had recognized first that the Soviet system was in danger of collapse, so the heirs of the KGB had recognized that Russia itself was in danger of collapse. Putin acted and succeeded. But it was the system reacting to chaos, not simply one man.

Which means that while the personal fate of Putin is an interesting question, it is not an important one. The course has been set and Medvedev, with or without Putin, will not change it. First, the state is again in the hands of the apparatus. Second, the state is in control of Russia. Third, Russia is seeking to regain control of its sphere of influence. Medvedev, or any Russian leader who could emerge, is not going to change this, because it has become institutionalized; it became institutionalized because there was no alternative course for Russia, the fantasies of the 1990s notwithstanding.

It is important to remember one of the major factors that propelled Putin to power -- the Kosovo war. The United States went to war with Serbia against Russian wishes. Russia was ignored. Then at the end, the Russians helped negotiate the Serb capitulation. Under the agreement the occupation of Kosovo was not supposed to take place only under NATO aegis. The Serbs had agreed to withdraw from Kosovo under the understanding that the Russians would participate in the occupation. From the beginning that did not happen. Yeltsin's credibility, already in tatters, was shattered by the contemptuous attitude toward Russia shown by NATO members.

It is interesting to note that on the same day Putin picked Medvedev, the situation in Kosovo is again heating up. NATO is trying to create an independent Kosovo with the agreement of Serbia. The Serbs are not agreeing and neither is their Russian ally. Putin, who still holds power, is not going to compromise on this issue. For him, Kosovo is a minor matter, except that it is a test of whether Russia will be treated as a great power.

Whether Putin is there, Medvedev is there, or it is a player to be named later, the Russians are not kidding on Kosovo. They do not plan to be rolled over as they were in 1999. Nor are they kidding about a sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union. They are certainly not kidding about state domination of the economy or of the need for a strong leader to control the state.

The point is that the situation in Russia, down to a detail like Kosovo, is very much part of a single, coherent fabric that goes well beyond personalities. The response that Russia made to its near-death experience was pretty much its only option, and having chosen that option, the rest unfolds regardless of personalities. Putin has played his role well. He could continue to play it. But the focus should be on Russia as a great power seeking to resume its role, and not on the personalities, not even one as powerful as Putin, and certainly not Medvedev.
Title: Re: Heavy Metal Fanatic To Succeed PUTIN As Russian Leader
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2007, 09:07:44 AM
I just noticed that this is NOT the Russia thread :oops: 

I have locked this thread and posted its contents on the Russia thread.
Title: PUTIN gives $150K to down and out MMA fighter
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 14, 2014, 12:14:30 PM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1990285-how-russian-president-vladimir-putin-changed-one-mma-fighters-life?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial&hpt=hp_t2
Title: Re: Russian Leaders (Putin, Medvedev, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2014, 10:24:42 AM
thread now unlocked.
Title: Re: Russian Leaders (Putin, Medvedev, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2014, 10:48:02 AM
OK, NOW it should show up.


BTW, this could be a good thread for those humorous comparison fotos of Putin and His Glibness.
Title: Re: Russian Leaders (Putin, Medvedev, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: ccp on March 15, 2014, 11:01:38 AM
Works now.  I was going to note 50 of the 150 K is tax money.  It is amazing.  Guy gets 150 K and the government moves in and says 50 of them is "mine".

To think these guys fight like this for a measly 6K.

If any athletes deserve a big payday for a days work it is these people.

For certain many will wind up like Jerry Quarry.

It is amazing how much these guys can take.  The only way to stop them is to knock or strangle them unconscious or break or nearly break an arm or leg.
Title: WSJ on Putin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2014, 01:02:06 PM
With his speech annexing Crimea and saying Russia had no more territorial ambitions, the markets breathed a sigh of relief. But don't get your hopes up in the long run. Vladimir Putin needs conflict with the outside world, specifically the United States.

He has lived a more dangerous political life than is appreciated. His first two elections were manipulated but not entirely unfree. He felt obliged to honor the Russian constitution to step down in 2008, though he managed to install a flunky in the presidency and then win the office back in a 2012 election widely seen as fraudulent, bringing thousands of protesters into the street.

President Putin hails the treaty making Crimea part of Russia, March. 18. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

At any point had these machinations gone wrong, he would have been out and the sine qua non of legitimacy for any successor government almost certainly would have been to bring him up on murder charges, the most serious involving the 1999 apartment bombings that killed nearly 300 ordinary Russians, blamed at the time on Chechen terrorists. Few believe that story anymore.

Mr. Putin long ago gave up the option of happy retirement from politics.

Which brings us to the oligarchs. Mikhail Prokhorov owns the Brooklyn Nets. Alexey Mordashov owns a Pennsylvania coal mine and steel mills in Michigan and Mississippi. Vagit Alekperov and Leonid Fedun own the LUKoil chain of U.S. gas stations. Dmitry Rybolovlev owns Donald Trump's former palace in Miami.

Russia's oligarchs own even more property in Europe, from London mansions to European football clubs to large industrial complexes and airlines, not to mention yachts and personal aircraft and bank accounts. These assets are also assets for Western leaders looking to corral Mr. Putin, but they are wasting assets given the direction Russia is heading.

Mr. Putin is using the Ukrainian crisis to crack down on the last of the independent media at home. He has jailed or intimidated dissenters and potential political rivals. He sent out word years ago to his entourage to reduce their overseas holdings to reduce foreign leverage over his regime.

If the West wants to do more than just go along for the ride—the policy of the past 15 years—the time to act is now while some semblance of an independent elite still exists. Block Russia's energy exports. Freeze its overseas holdings. Piecemeal actions just play into Mr. Putin's hands, giving him a cost-free Great Satan to justify his deepening dictatorship.

Forgive a Hitler analogy. In November 1941, engineer Fritz Todt, whom Hitler greatly admired, told the führer the war no longer could be won militarily and must be ended politically. As Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw tells it, Hitler listened carefully and then answered: "I can scarcely still see a way of coming politically to an end."

He meant he could scarcely see a political solution that wouldn't be an end to Hitler. Luckily for Hitler, by the time Todt spoke, German society was fully militarized. The secret police were everywhere. All media were under Nazi control. The only elite left were an elite fully compromised by their own participation in Nazi crimes.

As far as we know Hitler has not been reincarnated in Vladimir Putin. Indeed, part of Mr. Putin's dialogue with the West has been a sotto voce claim to be a bulwark against a greater evil. In his press conference the other day, he might have been speaking of Russia, not Ukraine, when he warned-slash-pleaded: "This kind of chaos is the worst possible thing for countries with a shaky economy and unstable political system. You never know what kind of people events will bring to the fore. . . . Some upstart nationalist or semi-fascist lot [will] sprout up."

But look for the ride to get increasingly bumpy from here on. Mr. Putin faces election in 2018—and it's hard to believe he won't try to avoid it. Too many indicators are headed the wrong way: a decline in Russia's energy clout, capital flight and a failure to create a modern economy welcoming to global investors. He will also likely try to negate the constitution that would end his rule in 2024.

He can't kid himself that the apartment-bombing mystery will not at some point reignite, despite the murder or disappearance of Russian officials and dissidents who insisted on investigating an alleged ex-KGB role. And don't overinvest in talk of Russia's "legitimate interests." Russia's regime has interests but those interests are dictated by the nature of its regime. Its neighbors would not clamor for NATO membership if Russia were not ruled by an unpredictable kleptocracy. Mr. Putin would not fear his neighbors becoming prosperous and modern if he didn't fear his own citizens' demands for the same.

Even the most hard-headed (and forgiving) realist by now must suspect that Mr. Putin is destined to become increasingly a source of instability rather than of stability.
Title: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Russian Leader: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин
Post by: DougMacG on March 24, 2014, 11:15:32 AM
From the previous post, WSJ:  "Even the most hard-headed (and forgiving) realist by now must suspect that Mr. Putin is destined to become increasingly a source of instability rather than of stability."

Interesting POTH today: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/world/europe/3-presidents-and-a-riddle-named-putin.html?_r=0  
"3 Presidents and a Riddle Named Putin"

I would note that it was not one of the three Presidents, but a VP named Cheney who got him right from the start.

Pres. Reagan said: Mr. Gorbchev, if you seek peace, prosperity... open this gate... Tear Down.This Wall!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjWDrTXMgF8

Pres. Obama said: We who lead the United States and the free world are committed to unilateral disarmament and drawing meaningless, rhetorical lines in sands.  Mr. Putin, I will have more flexibility after my reelection.  Have At Our Allies!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsFR8DbSRQE
Title: Putin the Morlock vs. the Eloi in Chief
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 24, 2014, 04:20:00 PM
http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/pre-and-postmodern-poseurs/?singlepage=true
Title: POTH Friedman" The morning after the morning after.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2014, 08:16:48 AM
One thing I learned covering the Middle East for many years is that there is “the morning after” and there is “the morning after the morning after.” Never confuse the two.

 The morning after a big event is when fools rush in and declare that someone’s victory or defeat in a single battle has “changed everything forever.” The morning after the morning after, the laws of gravity start to apply themselves; things often don’t look as good or as bad as you thought. And that brings me to Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea.

The morning after, he was the hero of Russia. Some moronic commentators here even expressed the wish that we had such a “decisive” leader. Well, let’s see what Putin looks like the morning after the morning after, say, in six months. I make no predictions, but I will point out this. Putin is challenging three of the most powerful forces on the planet all at once: human nature, Mother Nature and Moore’s Law. Good luck with that.

Putin’s seizure of Crimea certainly underscores the enduring power of geography in geopolitics. Russia is a continental country, stretching across a huge landmass, with few natural barriers to protect it. Every Kremlin leader — from the czars to the commissars to the crooks — has been obsessed about protecting Russia’s periphery from would-be invaders. Russia has legitimate security interests, but this episode is not about them.

 This recent Ukraine drama did not start with geography — with an outside power trying to get into Russia, as much as Putin wants to pretend that it did. This story started with people inside Russia’s orbit trying to get out. A large number of Ukrainians wanted to hitch their economic future to the European Union not to Putin’s Potemkin Eurasian Union. This story, at its core, was ignited and propelled by human nature — the enduring quest by people to realize a better future for themselves and their kids — not by geopolitics, or even that much nationalism. This is not an “invasion” story. This is an “Exodus” story.

 And no wonder. A recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek noted that, in 2012, G.D.P. per person in Ukraine was $6,394 — some 25 percent below its level of nearly a quarter-century earlier. But if you compare Ukraine with four of its former Communist neighbors to the west who joined the European Union — Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania — “the average G.D.P. per person in those nations is around $17,000.” Can you blame Ukrainians for wanting to join a different club?

 But Putin is also counting on the world doing nothing about Mother Nature, and Mother Nature taking that in stride. Some 70 percent of Russia’s exports are oil and gas, and they make up half of all state revenue. (When was the last time you bought something that was labeled “Made in Russia”?) Putin has basically bet his country’s economic present and future on hydrocarbons at a time when the chief economist of the International Energy Agency has declared that “about two-thirds of all proven reserves of oil, gas and coal will have to be left undeveloped if the world is to achieve the goal of limiting global warming at two degrees Celsius” since the Industrial Revolution. Crossing that two-degrees line, say climate scientists, will dramatically increase the likelihood of melting the Arctic, dangerous sea level rises, more disruptive superstorms and unmanageable climate change.


The former Saudi oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, once warned his OPEC colleagues something Putin should remember: “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.” It ended because we invented bronze tools, which were more productive. The hydrocarbon age will also have to end with a lot of oil, coal and gas left in the ground, replaced by cleaner forms of power generation, or Mother Nature will have her way with us. Putin is betting otherwise.




How do you say Moore’s Law in Russian? That’s the theorem posited by Gordon Moore, an Intel co-founder, that the processing power of microchips will double roughly every two years. Anyone following the clean power industry today can tell you that there is something of a Moore’s Law now at work around solar power, the price of which is falling so fast that more and more homes and even utilities are finding it as cheap to install as natural gas. Wind is on a similar trajectory, as is energy efficiency. China alone is on a track to be getting 15 percent of its total electricity production by 2020 from renewables, and it’s not stopping there. It can’t or its people can’t breathe. If America and Europe were to give even just a little more policy push now to renewables to reduce Putin’s oil income, these actions could pay dividends much sooner and bigger than people realize.

The legitimacy of China’s leaders today depends, in part, on their ability to make their country’s power system greener so their people can breathe. Putin’s legitimacy depends on keeping Russia and the world addicted to oil and gas. Whom do you want to bet on?

So, before we crown Putin the Time Person of the Year again, let’s wait and see how the morning after the morning after plays out.
Title: Re: POTH Friedman" The morning after the morning after.
Post by: DougMacG on March 26, 2014, 10:04:27 AM
"The morning after the morning after."  A cliche on a cliche.  I can't read NYT Thomas Friedman from the old neighborhood without wondering if this column is really his or from this random generated Friedman column site:  http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/about.php  Go back and click Generate column more than once to get the humor in it.

"How do you say Moore’s Law in Russian? ... solar power, the price of which is falling so fast that more and more homes and even utilities are finding it as cheap to install as natural gas. Wind is on a similar trajectory, as is energy efficiency."  

Moore's law involved a doubling of price-performance every 18 months.  There is no similarity here.  Most (all?) solar manufacturers in the US are bankrupt while gas and oil producers are growing by leaps and bounds.  It was the surge in natural gas production that brought down US CO2 emissions!  A little irony for the global warming crowd.

Europe needs gas.  Ukraine needs gas.  Natural gas from Russia is Ukraine's no. 1 import.  Russia escalates the price and we give the difference in financial aid.  Our money goes to Russia and finances cross border tyranny.  Sound familiar?!

(http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt114/dougmacg/b2220f6d-5f2f-4e07-ba3f-fdf8eddbc04a_zps4c4aa21d.jpg)

(http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2014/03-overflow/20140322_chart.png)

Ukraine Sees Gazprom (Russian energy) Charging 37% More for Gas in Q2
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-09/ukraine-sees-gazprom-charging-37-more-for-gas-in-second-quarter.html

Let's just replace that with solar panels and windmills.  The weather forecast in Kiev is cloudy with a light wind diminishing during the coldest part of the night.  Good luck cooking your meals and heating your homes with wishful thinking.

How does such a great thinker, 3 time Pulitzer Prize winner, not see the leverage Russia has right now over Europe with energy?
Title: Comparing Putin and Baraq
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2014, 09:22:54 PM
A few of these are cheap shots but overall rather potent:

http://www.tomatobubble.com/putin_obama.html
Title: Re: Comparing Putin and Baraq
Post by: G M on March 26, 2014, 09:53:05 PM
A few of these are cheap shots but overall rather potent:

http://www.tomatobubble.com/putin_obama.html


Heh.
Title: WSJ: The Putin Temptation
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 10, 2014, 08:19:07 AM
The Putin Temptation
Admiring a demagogue because he looks 'decisive' is dangerous.
By
Daniel Henninger

April 9, 2014 7:31 p.m. ET

The most dangerous word in human discourse is "but." What lies on the other side of "but" can be a place one doesn't want to be. So it is with some of the post-Crimea thinking about Vladimir Putin.

Nigel Farage is the leader of the United Kingdom's Independence Party. Speaking of Russia's Putin recently, Mr. Farage said: "I don't like him, I wouldn't trust him and I wouldn't want to live in his country. But compared to the kids who run foreign policy in this country, I've got more respect for him than our lot."

It is a view one hears, often sotto voce, among sophisticated people in the U.S. and Europe. "I don't approve of what Vladimir Putin is doing in Crimea and Ukraine, but . . . he is decisive."

Was there ever an indecisive demagogue?

Others go further: Mr. Putin's decisive seizure of Crimea was "understandable." This is the view expressed by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

The Putin temptation is a toxic but familiar political virus that is infecting reactions to the crisis in Ukraine. The virus often appears when it looks like the democracies have become too disorganized or weak to . . . make decisions. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had admirers in the U.S. and England in the early stages of their resolute careers. That was before their centrifugal aggressions passed beyond the realm of manly respect.


The temptation to admire a Vladimir Putin for what looks like decisiveness reflects a tension between the performance limits of democratic systems and those governments that are no longer answerable to their populations.

It is easy to appear to be a decisive national leader if, like Mr. Putin, the head of state is able to tell those who disagree with him to shut up or get beaten up or imprisoned or killed. Ignoring the crude truths of political life in Moscow today, or Berlin and Rome back then, is another variant of the same temptation to admire a demagogue's monomania.

Further evidence of Mr. Putin's fantastic leadership skills is also found in the results of independent polls, which report that his illegal annexation of Crimea and threats against independent Ukraine have the overwhelming support of the Russian people. And that they also admire Mr. Putin, who is restoring "respect" for Russia.

The weight of public opinion in Russia is no accident. Mr. Putin's decisive actions on behalf of his imperiled, Russian-speaking victims in Crimea, Ukraine, Moldova, and soon the Baltics are being supplemented in Moscow by a sophisticated, Goebbels-like brainwashing operation.

Over the years, Mr. Putin has put virtually all media, especially television, under his effective control. What the Russian people read, hear and see is a nonstop river of anti-U.S. and anti-European propaganda. People who have lived in Russia recently say there has never been anything like the virulence of this invective, not even during the Cold War years.

No one in the free world should want to be party to such massive falsity.

Still, there is the reality: The demagogues show up when the democrats become weak. Since the end of World War II, the traditional political leader of the Western democracies has been the president of the United States. Policy differences aside, U.S. presidents from Truman through George W. Bush have been willing to lead, period. Now comes Barack Obama.

The famous oxymoron, "leading from behind," emerged from the White House foreign-policy shop during the Libyan crisis. This notion is sometimes attributed to Mr. Obama's leadership idiosyncrasies. That's wrong. It summarizes the explicit, thought-out strategy of the Democratic Party's current generation of foreign-policy intellectuals.

The U.S. "leads" by stepping aside and letting others—the Europeans, the United Nations—organize major foreign-policy initiatives. The Obama administration assigned Europe the task of weaning Ukraine away from Russia and bringing it into the European Union. The non-result was predictable: Western Europe's leadership didn't do it because they can't.

They are too militarily weak, and too economically selfish and politically disorganized to lead as one. So no one leads. Now, instead of fashioning a substantive response to the threat Vladimir Putin poses, the Western democracies are blaming each other for their failure to respond.

Yes, no serious person actually admires a country that is run with thugs, a controlled media and opponents in prison, but. . . .

But nothing. There are two systems of government available: some version of ours or some version of propagandized authoritarianism—Mr. Putin's system. If you want to live in a country with one foot in both systems, move to Turkey. For the rest of us, the answer is: Elect a democratic leader more appropriate to the times we live in.

The reality remains that only one country's people elect a leader in no small part for the role he will play beyond its borders—the United States. For a frustrated world grasping at desperate solutions, the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign to succeed Barack Obama can't start soon enough.
Title: Putin's judocracy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 16, 2014, 02:21:29 PM
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/15/vladimir_putin_and_his_judo_cronies_russia_martial_arts
Title: Interesting interview w Putin (check out comments on Hillary)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2014, 10:56:55 AM
http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/22441
Title: Re: Interesting interview w Putin (check out comments on Hillary)
Post by: DougMacG on June 05, 2014, 12:20:19 PM
http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/22441

Spoiler alert.

" It’s better not to argue with women. But Ms Clinton has never been too graceful in her statements. Still, we always met afterwards and had cordial conversations at various international events. I think even in this case we could reach an agreement. When people push boundaries too far, it’s not because they are strong but because they are weak. But maybe weakness is not the worst quality for a woman."
...
"Someday I will indulge myself and we will laugh together at some good joke. But when I hear such extreme statements[comparing Russia now to Hitler in the 1930s], to me it only means that they don’t have any valid arguments."
Title: Can Putin Survive?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2014, 06:30:44 AM
Can Putin survive?
Russia's strongman is far from finished, but events in Ukraine have weakened his position.
George Friedman | 23 July 2014
comment 6 | print |

There is a general view that Vladimir Putin governs the Russian Federation as a dictator, that he has defeated and intimidated his opponents and that he has marshaled a powerful threat to surrounding countries. This is a reasonable view, but perhaps it should be re-evaluated in the context of recent events.

Ukraine is, of course, the place to start. The country is vital to Russia as a buffer against the West and as a route for delivering energy to Europe, which is the foundation of the Russian economy. On Jan. 1, Ukraine's president was Viktor Yanukovich, generally regarded as favorably inclined to Russia. Given the complexity of Ukrainian society and politics, it would be unreasonable to say Ukraine under him was merely a Russian puppet. But it is fair to say that under Yanukovich and his supporters, fundamental Russian interests in Ukraine were secure.

This was extremely important to Putin. Part of the reason Putin had replaced Boris Yeltsin in 2000 was Yeltsin's performance during the Kosovo war. Russia was allied with the Serbs and had not wanted NATO to launch a war against Serbia. Russian wishes were disregarded. The Russian views simply didn't matter to the West. Still, when the air war failed to force Belgrade's capitulation, the Russians negotiated a settlement that allowed U.S. and other NATO troops to enter and administer Kosovo. As part of that settlement, Russian troops were promised a significant part in peacekeeping in Kosovo. But the Russians were never allowed to take up that role, and Yeltsin proved unable to respond to the insult.

Putin also replaced Yeltsin because of the disastrous state of the Russian economy. Though Russia had always been poor, there was a pervasive sense that it been a force to be reckoned with in international affairs. Under Yeltsin, however, Russia had become even poorer and was now held in contempt in international affairs. Putin had to deal with both issues. He took a long time before moving to recreate Russian power, though he said early on that the fall of the Soviet Union had been the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. This did not mean he wanted to resurrect the Soviet Union in its failed form, but rather that he wanted Russian power to be taken seriously again, and he wanted to protect and enhance Russian national interests.

The breaking point came in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution of 2004. Yanukovich was elected president that year under dubious circumstances, but demonstrators forced him to submit to a second election. He lost, and a pro-Western government took office. At that time, Putin accused the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies of having organized the demonstrations. Fairly publicly, this was the point when Putin became convinced that the West intended to destroy the Russian Federation, sending it the way of the Soviet Union. For him, Ukraine's importance to Russia was self-evident. He therefore believed that the CIA organized the demonstration to put Russia in a dangerous position, and that the only reason for this was the overarching desire to cripple or destroy Russia. Following the Kosovo affair, Putin publicly moved from suspicion to hostility to the West.

The Russians worked from 2004 to 2010 to undo the Orange Revolution. They worked to rebuild the Russian military, focus their intelligence apparatus and use whatever economic influence they had to reshape their relationship with Ukraine. If they couldn't control Ukraine, they did not want it to be controlled by the United States and Europe. This was, of course, not their only international interest, but it was the pivotal one.

Russia's invasion of Georgia had more to do with Ukraine than it had to do with the Caucasus. At the time, the United States was still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Washington had no formal obligation to Georgia, there were close ties and implicit guarantees. The invasion of Georgia was designed to do two things. The first was to show the region that the Russian military, which had been in shambles in 2000, was able to act decisively in 2008. The second was to demonstrate to the region, and particularly to Kiev, that American guarantees, explicit or implicit, had no value. In 2010, Yanukovich was elected president of Ukraine, reversing the Orange Revolution and limiting Western influence in the country.

Recognizing the rift that was developing with Russia and the general trend against the United States in the region, the Obama administration tried to recreate older models of relationships when Hillary Clinton presented Putin with a "restart" button in 2009. But Washington wanted to restore the relationship in place during what Putin regarded as the "bad old days." He naturally had no interest in such a restart. Instead, he saw the United States as having adopted a defensive posture, and he intended to exploit his advantage.

One place he did so was in Europe, using EU dependence on Russian energy to grow closer to the Continent, particularly Germany. But his high point came during the Syrian affair, when the Obama administration threatened airstrikes after Damascus used chemical weapons only to back off from its threat. The Russians aggressively opposed Obama's move, proposing a process of negotiations instead. The Russians emerged from the crisis appearing decisive and capable, the United States indecisive and feckless. Russian power accordingly appeared on the rise, and in spite of a weakening economy, this boosted Putin's standing.

The Tide Turns Against Putin

Events in Ukraine this year, by contrast, have proved devastating to Putin. In January, Russia dominated Ukraine. By February, Yanukovich had fled the country and a pro-Western government had taken power. The general uprising against Kiev that Putin had been expecting in eastern Ukraine after Yanukovich's ouster never happened. Meanwhile, the Kiev government, with Western advisers, implanted itself more firmly. By July, the Russians controlled only small parts of Ukraine. These included Crimea, where the Russians had always held overwhelming military force by virtue of treaty, and a triangle of territory from Donetsk to Luhansk to Severodonetsk, where a small number of insurgents apparently supported by Russian special operations forces controlled a dozen or so towns.

If no Ukrainian uprising occurred, Putin's strategy was to allow the government in Kiev to unravel of its own accord and to split the United States from Europe by exploiting Russia's strong trade and energy ties with the Continent. And this is where the crash of the Malaysia Airlines jet is crucial. If it turns out -- as appears to be the case -- that Russia supplied air defense systems to the separatists and sent crews to man them (since operating those systems requires extensive training), Russia could be held responsible for shooting down the plane. And this means Moscow's ability to divide the Europeans from the Americans would decline. Putin then moves from being an effective, sophisticated ruler who ruthlessly uses power to being a dangerous incompetent supporting a hopeless insurrection with wholly inappropriate weapons. And the West, no matter how opposed some countries might be to a split with Putin, must come to grips with how effective and rational he really is.

Meanwhile, Putin must consider the fate of his predecessors. Nikita Khrushchev returned from vacation in October 1964 to find himself replaced by his protege, Leonid Brezhnev, and facing charges of, among other things, "harebrained scheming." Khrushchev had recently been humiliated in the Cuban missile crisis. This plus his failure to move the economy forward after about a decade in power saw his closest colleagues "retire" him. A massive setback in foreign affairs and economic failures had resulted in an apparently unassailable figure being deposed.

Russia's economic situation is nowhere near as catastrophic as it was under Khrushchev or Yeltsin, but it has deteriorated substantially recently, and perhaps more important, has failed to meet expectations. After recovering from the 2008 crisis, Russia has seen several years of declining gross domestic product growth rates, and its central bank is forecasting zero growth this year. Given current pressures, we would guess the Russian economy will slide into recession sometime in 2014. The debt levels of regional governments have doubled in the past four years, and several regions are close to bankruptcy. Moreover, some metals and mining firms are facing bankruptcy. The Ukrainian crisis has made things worse. Capital flight from Russia in the first six months stood at $76 billion, compared to $63 billion for all of 2013. Foreign direct investment fell 50 percent in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013. And all this happened in spite of oil prices remaining higher than $100 per barrel.

Putin's popularity at home soared after the successful Sochi Winter Olympics and after the Western media made him look like the aggressor in Crimea. He has, after all, built his reputation on being tough and aggressive. But as the reality of the situation in Ukraine becomes more obvious, the great victory will be seen as covering a retreat coming at a time of serious economic problems. For many leaders, the events in Ukraine would not represent such an immense challenge. But Putin has built his image on a tough foreign policy, and the economy meant his ratings were not very high before Ukraine.

Imagining Russia After Putin

In the sort of regime that Putin has helped craft, the democratic process may not be the key to understanding what will happen next. Putin has restored Soviet elements to the structure of the government, even using the term "Politburo" for his inner Cabinets. These are all men of his choosing, of course, and so one might assume they would be loyal to him. But in the Soviet-style Politburo, close colleagues were frequently the most feared.

The Politburo model is designed for a leader to build coalitions among factions. Putin has been very good at doing that, but then he has been very successful at all the things he has done until now. His ability to hold things together declines as trust in his abilities declines and various factions concerned about the consequences of remaining closely tied to a failing leader start to maneuver. Like Khrushchev, who was failing in economic and foreign policy, Putin could have his colleagues remove him.

It is difficult to know how a succession crisis would play out, given that the constitutional process of succession exists alongside the informal government Putin has created. From a democratic standpoint, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin are as popular as Putin is, and I suspect they both will become more popular in time. In a Soviet-style struggle, Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov and Security Council Chief Nicolai Patryushev would be possible contenders. But there are others. Who, after all, expected the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev?

Ultimately, politicians who miscalculate and mismanage tend not to survive. Putin miscalculated in Ukraine, failing to anticipate the fall of an ally, failing to respond effectively and then stumbling badly in trying to recoup. His management of the economy has not been exemplary of late either, to say the least. He has colleagues who believe they could do a better job, and now there are important people in Europe who would be glad to see him go. He must reverse this tide rapidly, or he may be replaced.

Putin is far from finished. But he has governed for 14 years counting the time Dmitri Medvedev was officially in charge, and that is a long time. He may well regain his footing, but as things stand at the moment, I would expect quiet thoughts to be stirring in his colleagues' minds. Putin himself must be re-examining his options daily. Retreating in the face of the West and accepting the status quo in Ukraine would be difficult, given that the Kosovo issue that helped propel him to power and given what he has said about Ukraine over the years. But the current situation cannot sustain itself. The wild card in this situation is that if Putin finds himself in serious political trouble, he might become more rather than less aggressive. Whether Putin is in real trouble is not something I can be certain of, but too many things have gone wrong for him lately for me not to consider the possibility. And as in any political crisis, more and more extreme options are contemplated if the situation deteriorates.

Those who think that Putin is both the most repressive and aggressive Russian leader imaginable should bear in mind that this is far from the case. Lenin, for example, was fearsome. But Stalin was much worse. There may similarly come a time when the world looks at the Putin era as a time of liberality. For if the struggle by Putin to survive, and by his challengers to displace him, becomes more intense, the willingness of all to become more brutal might well increase.

George Friedman is the founder and CEO of Stratfor, the global intelligence website. This article has been republished with permission of Stratfor.
Title: The Putin Murders
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 09, 2014, 09:04:52 PM
Reliability of this site completely unknown:

http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/putinmurders/
Title: Putin eyes some , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 20, 2015, 02:12:11 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhnyOIFAq98&feature=youtu.be
Title: Putin & Prospect Theory
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 15, 2016, 09:24:35 AM
Interesting look at Putin and the risks he takes.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/putin’s-prospects-vladimir-putin’s-decision-making-through-the-lens-of-prospect-theory
Title: Re: Russian Leaders Putin's net worth may be $100-200 billion?
Post by: DougMacG on August 16, 2016, 02:49:48 PM
Vladimir Putin may be the richest man in the world.  Not easily verified or verifiable.

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/celebrity/how-vladimir-putin-stashed-away-a-secret-70-billion-personal-fortune/

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040716/vladimir-putin-richest-man-world.asp
Title: Re: Russian Leaders (Putin, Medvedev, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 16, 2016, 03:47:11 PM
And  , , , he has interesting friends , , , http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/08/16/trump-campaign-plays-russian-roulette-in-plain-sight/?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=top-stories&utm_campaign=homepage&utm_term=Glenn%20Beck
Title: Putin with his Akita
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2016, 10:38:48 PM
https://www.rt.com/news/370170-akita-dog-putin-yume/

I forget, what kind of dog does Obama have?  Do we have any pictures or footage of the two of them together?
Title: Re: Putin with his Akita
Post by: G M on December 18, 2016, 12:58:55 PM
https://www.rt.com/news/370170-akita-dog-putin-yume/

I forget, what kind of dog does Obama have?  Do we have any pictures or footage of the two of them together?


(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/36/4b/a3/364ba38f644447549b104f3a63e7bc3e.jpg)

Looks more like a pitbull to me.

(http://i40.tinypic.com/iw7ji8.jpg)

Couldn't find a more recent picture of Obama and his dog for some reason...
Title: Putin and the Russian Apartment House Bombings
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 04, 2017, 07:48:35 AM
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible
Title: WSJ: The Real Vladimir Putin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 08, 2017, 01:48:26 PM

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Updated Feb. 7, 2017 7:08 p.m. ET
165 COMMENTS

While Donald Trump is at it, he might do Vladimir Putin the additional favor of endorsing December’s Rosneft deal.

That transaction was supposed to be a spectacular demonstration of Russia’s appeal for Western investors despite sanctions. It hasn’t exactly worked as planned. Murky though the details are, Russian pockets appear to have supplied much of the money and taken much of the risk to elicit the participation of two big outsiders, the Qatar Investment Authority and Anglo-Swiss mining giant Glencore.

But Mr. Trump could always pipe up and say the deal passes the smell test. After all, the West engages in some dodgy deals too.

OK, that was a joke. But Rosneft matters. The deal is part of Mr. Putin’s strategy, more desperate than it seems, to renormalize relations with the world after Russia’s invasion of its neighbor Ukraine.

We’ll differ slightly from those who think Mr. Trump’s comments to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, in which he pooh-poohed Mr. Putin’s reputation as an alleged murderer, reflect some consistent and coherent Trumpian worldview.

The comments were just unwise, spoken by somebody with a thin grasp of his circumstances. Mr. Trump, clumsily, was actually keeping up a longstanding U.S. policy of covering up for Mr. Putin.

Yet here’s the ironic result. Mr. Trump has himself become the occasion for sliding sideways into the official public realm the most explosive Putin secret of all. How many CIA chiefs and top diplomats have passed before Congress since 1999 and yet never were asked about Ryazan? That’s the Russian city where an alleged Chechen terrorist bombing campaign came to an abrupt end after Mr. Putin’s own security officials were caught planting a bomb in the basement of an apartment block.

A search of congressional hearing transcripts finds only three mentions of Ryazan over the decades. When I once put the question informally to an ex-top national security official, all I got was a studiously blank stare and a claim not to remember seeing any reports on the subject.

Then came President Trump. Lo, in a nationally broadcast hearing, Florida Republican Marco Rubio put to Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson a direct question on the “incredible body of reporting” suggesting the apartment bombings were carried out by the Putin regime.

Mr. Tillerson, a private citizen, was exactly the wrong person to ask. But he gamely admitted to being aware of the reports. “Those are very, very serious charges to make,” he said, adding, “I understand there is a body of record in the public domain. I’m sure there’s a body of record in the classified domain.”

Now confirmed as secretary of state, Mr. Tillerson will be back many times before the Senate, and presumably Mr. Rubio will ask him what he now believes after seeing classified documents.

This may be a turning point.

Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all wanted things from Mr. Putin and had a firm policy of ignoring Ryazan. They needed to preserve Mr. Putin’s acceptability as somebody Western leaders could meet and deal with.

Suddenly, a major U.S. political party, the Democrats, has a direct partisan incentive to dispense with the shroud of silence. Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday: “I want to know what the Russians have on Donald Trump.”

She and her colleagues, especially members of the Democratic foreign-policy establishment, will eventually figure out the real question they should be asking is what the CIA has on Mr. Putin that can be used now to tar Mr. Trump.

The emergence of ugly truths, let’s be clear, would be a profound inconvenience to Western leaders, who, on balance, have preferred being able to deal with Mr. Putin rather than having to treat him as untouchable.

Mr. Trump turns out not to be such a break from his predecessors after all. He wants to do deals with Mr. Putin too. But with his untamed, careless mouth, he has contributed to what was probably inevitable anyway. The murders of Alexander Litvinenko, Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov, the apartment bombings that killed 293 and injured hundreds more, all this was not going to be swept under the rug forever. Mr. Putin’s bid for rehabilitation is not going well. Witness Russia’s weak and counterproductive but necessary demand that Fox News “apologize” for the O’Reilly comments. Witness the recent and comical dog-and-pony meeting between Mr. Putin and Western parties in the Rosneft deal, aimed at manufacturing an impression that everything is hunky dory for investors in Russia.

Read a certain way, Mr. Trump’s comments make him the first U.S. president to admit Mr. Putin’s real nature. One theory is that Russian power grouplets are committed to Mr. Putin come hell or high water. This is debatable. If Mr. Putin’s fate is pariah-hood, quite a few powerful Russians may wish not to share it.
Title: WaPo: Trump's Putin Expert on Putin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 02, 2017, 10:58:34 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2017/03/31/trumps-new-russia-expert-wrote-a-psychological-profile-of-vladimir-putin-and-it-should-scare-trump/?utm_term=.e09e81f7271f&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
Title: Putin with Megyn Kelly
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 03, 2017, 11:34:13 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/06/02/megyn-kelly-saw-an-aggressive-sarcastic-and-peeved-vladimir-putin-that-behavior-could-hurt-him/?utm_term=.f119c20bdb64&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
Title: Putin and the Moscow bombings
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 23, 2018, 08:12:27 AM
moscow-bombings-mikhail-trepashkin-and-putin
Title: Putin's KGB Records
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 08, 2019, 06:49:17 PM
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/11/04/putins-kgb-declassified-record-show-that-he-was-no-high-flier-but-a-solid-b-a68024
Title: WSJ: Putin's Assassination Playbook
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2020, 10:52:35 AM
Putin’s Foreign Assassination Playbook
Evidence shows the FSB organized a daytime killing in Berlin.
By The Editorial Board
Feb. 18, 2020 7:25 pm ET

When rogue states like Russia wreak havoc on foreign soil, they often work through proxies and deny responsibility. But occasionally the veil slips, as when evidence emerged this week that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) planned and carried out an assassination in Germany last summer.

Last August German authorities arrested a Russian citizen after he murdered a Chechen separatist seeking asylum in Berlin. On Monday the investigative outlet Bellingcat published a report, based primarily on cell phone metadata, showing that “the main security service of the Russian state plotted, prepared, and perpetrated the 2019 extraterritorial assassination.” Further, “both the FSB and Russian police were aware of the true identity of the detained killer but chose to lie to the German authorities.” The investigators also argue persuasively that the assassin, who spent significant time at FSB installations, is a former Spetsnaz officer.

A German federal prosecutor pinned the killing on Moscow in December, and Berlin expelled two Russian diplomats as punishment. Russia denies involvement and retaliated by expelling a pair of German diplomats. The two countries are still cooperating on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which would deepen Europe’s dependence on Russian energy. By contrast Western countries expelled more than 100 Russians diplomats after the 2018 poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom. That attack left an innocent Briton dead and several hospitalized.

Some in Europe, notably French President Emmanuel Macron, are portraying Moscow as a reliable diplomatic partner after years of isolation brought about by its 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are also courting Moscow. Mr. Trump even wants to invite authoritarian President Vladimir Putin back into the G-7 club of democracies.

The timing couldn’t be worse. Mr. Putin’s approval rating—registering at a relatively low 68% in January, according to the Levada poll—gets a lot of attention. But only 35% of Russians say they trust Mr. Putin, down from 59% in November 2017.

As the Russian people sour on his rule and he schemes to stay in power beyond his current term, which ends in 2024, Mr. Putin may try to rally domestic support with more imperialism abroad. Rewarding Moscow now without meaningful concessions or changes to its behavior will encourage more recklessness.

Title: GPF: Rumors of Putin ill health
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2021, 01:45:34 PM
January 27, 2021
View On Website
Open as PDF

    
Brief: Rumors of Putin’s Health
Though he plans to run in the presidential election in 2024, he can’t stay in power forever.
By: Geopolitical Futures

Background: Russian President Vladimir Putin has been the official and sometimes unofficial head of state for some time now. And though he plans to run in the presidential election in 2024, he can’t stay in power forever. The question of succession is therefore on the minds of many Russians, especially as rumors swirl about Putin’s health.

What Happened: Ukrainian intelligence said in a recent document that Putin was having physical difficulty performing basic public functions, leading to an unofficial transfer of power to an eventual successor. This isn’t the first time the topic of Putin's health has been raised in the media. Just last November, British tabloids published pictures of the president looking sickly, which the Kremlin denied.

Bottom Line: The Ukrainian intelligence service also noted the obvious – that Putinism will outlast Putin, and that Russia’s security needs are such that anyone who succeeds him will still try to keep Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of influence and thus out of the West’s. But the issue of succession is still important inside Russia. A Czech news agency recently published an opinion that Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is likely to become president after Putin. Putin himself never answers questions about his succession, and even though he is legally allowed to run again, social tension fueled by the attacks on Alexei Navalny is growing, his health concerns notwithstanding. Either way, Moscow will need to make sure the power transfer is as painless as possible
Title: Putin, friend of Israel
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 24, 2022, 11:53:06 AM
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/helsinki-summit-proved-russia-to-be-ally-of-israel-563183?fbclid=IwAR2cnHbEFha_-YiLSY9DFtoe28F-nz-KyKp1qOWRcOWzmSNB38CVjoO_8kY
Title: Putin speaks in 2017
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 04, 2022, 02:08:13 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=tlaHubJ-fKk&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3S4eM08WXwTVmFyx0M-kiPLd6zwM_rtmGSSxH0TiCMtmZNDDJRjHZhXyY
Title: Rumint about taking Putin down
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2022, 08:31:45 AM
https://nypost.com/2022/03/20/russian-elites-planning-to-overthrow-putin/?fbclid=IwAR2m1YybffqEzVV6bNJkI6Hr9tNJG3FBXuIZlaDC82XPJGpKQ11E_RWMvYw
Title: Re: Rumint about taking Putin down
Post by: G M on March 21, 2022, 08:41:58 AM
https://nypost.com/2022/03/20/russian-elites-planning-to-overthrow-putin/?fbclid=IwAR2m1YybffqEzVV6bNJkI6Hr9tNJG3FBXuIZlaDC82XPJGpKQ11E_RWMvYw

Always possible, but most likely wish casting from UkrIntel.
Title: NY Post: Don't bet on the end of Putin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 31, 2022, 08:33:06 AM
https://nypost.com/2022/03/30/dont-bet-on-the-end-of-vladimir-putin/?fbclid=IwAR0jUrDWbptr_lTA3mHiZkUzL7uR9MhJXg7ZBeqaLdkHfkekpUGwkpcBBds
Title: Re: Rumint about taking Putin down
Post by: G M on April 02, 2022, 07:28:34 AM
https://faridaily.substack.com/p/now-were-going-to-fck-them-all-whats?s=r

https://nypost.com/2022/03/20/russian-elites-planning-to-overthrow-putin/?fbclid=IwAR2m1YybffqEzVV6bNJkI6Hr9tNJG3FBXuIZlaDC82XPJGpKQ11E_RWMvYw

Always possible, but most likely wish casting from UkrIntel.
Title: Re: Russian Leaders (Putin, Medvedev, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: ya on April 02, 2022, 09:34:38 AM
History never repeats...but rhymes. Might explain a few things.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPWckgBUcAYSmeW?format=jpg&name=large)
Title: Re: Russian Leaders (Putin, Medvedev, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: G M on April 02, 2022, 09:52:17 AM
History never repeats...but rhymes. Might explain a few things.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FPWckgBUcAYSmeW?format=jpg&name=large)

Chinless still runs Syria.

Vladi has the world’s biggest nuclear Arsenal.

Title: Putin's health
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 07, 2022, 06:33:56 PM
https://www.foxnews.com/world/different-kind-of-bloodbath?fbclid=IwAR0qg1TCgYCVKWPHrsbZ8TIOE4pkXfxzTm6LvofVzxPX4ldnZrC4ve8gVZA
Title: Could Uke War trigger revolution in Russia?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 20, 2022, 03:38:07 PM
ON GEOPOLITICS
Could the Ukraine War Trigger Another Revolution in Russia?
undefined and Stratfor Middle East and North Africa Analyst at RANE
Ryan Bohl
Stratfor Middle East and North Africa Analyst at RANE, Stratfor
9 MIN READApr 20, 2022 | 21:19 GMT

Just how popular is the Ukraine conflict in Russia?

A survey conducted by the state-run pollster VTsIOM released on March 5 said that 71% of Russians supported the war effort. And according to a more recent VTsIOM poll published on April 8, domestic support for Vladimir Putin has only grown since Russian troops began entering Ukraine, with 81.6% of Russians saying they trusted their president compared with the 67.2% who said the same prior to the Feb. 24 invasion.

But while those figures may be exaggerated (as respondents answer in the way Russian state media has told them is acceptable), it's nevertheless indicative that, barring no major anti-war movement, the Kremlin's domestic front is currently secure. How long it will stay that way is less certain, though Russian history shows it could be a while. Repression at home and foreign confrontation abroad didn't preserve the Czarist or Soviet systems in the long run. Though that formula, despite its autocratic inefficiencies and corruptions, gave Russian leaders the ability to weather multiple major setbacks before the inherent dysfunctions of their political models pulled them down.

If there is to be a crack that gives way to a larger political revolt, it will only come after a series of failures by President Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders — and possibly years of sacrifice by the Russian people, who will increasingly feel the weight of the war at home the longer it drags on, through the loss of both national blood and treasure.

The Importance of the Domestic Front

In long wars, domestic support for the conflict often emerges as a major factor in determining the victor. The United States never lost a major battle in Afghanistan or Vietnam, yet the collapse of support at home ultimately compelled the U.S. military's withdrawal and subsequent defeat in both conflicts. If a population cannot be convinced to keep up the fight, there are little even advanced militaries can do to succeed.

With the retreat from Kyiv, Russia will now clearly endure a longer military campaign than originally planned — and the bite of sanctions that come with it. Some observers have assumed this will mean the steady erosion of Putin's base of support, paving the way for his eventual overthrow. This view, however, assumes three key factors:

The Russian people will value their material welfare over the nationalist ideology Putin is now pushing.
Russians will be casualty averse (as Western countries now are), and will react badly as the body count rises.
Russians will find some way to organize a serious anti-Putin uprising, possibly in collusion with elites.
While all these assumptions are questionable under the current circumstances in Russia, they are not wholly without merit, given the country's history.

Russia's last czar, Czar Nicholas II, so disastrously managed World War I that not only did he lose to the Germans, but his own military and citizens turned on him. An improvised Soviet coup by would-be Stalinists in 1991 fell apart when soldiers refused to open fire on defiant crowds, acting as the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union. In other words, there's an established record of Russians turning on poor leadership who think too little of their blood and treasure.

Now, Ukraine's military doggedness has battered the Russian military superiority narrative; even the Kremlin now admits to ''painful'' losses. Russian families will be receiving thousands of war death notifications. And even with state media peddling firmly pro-war propaganda, these losses will be impossible to conceal the loss of Russian troops from the general public. Meanwhile, the standard of living in Russia is set to drop even further as the full weight of sanctions sinks in. The U.S. government estimates that Russia's GDP could contract anywhere from 10-20% this year. Modern goods like iPhones and computer chips, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly difficult to find in Russia as the ruble remains volatile and more countries cut their business ties with Moscow.

To make Putin the next Nicholas II, Russia's current situation will at the least have to continue for a prolonged period. However, if Europe (or at least major parts of it) decides to bite the bullet and cut some or all Russian energy exports, it could trigger a major current accounts crisis that even Russian state media could not conceal. Such a drastic and obvious deterioration of Russia's domestic stability would increase the likelihood of a combination of oligarchs, military leaders, and the general public turning on Putin — a revolution of sorts, either bloody (like in 1917) or peaceful (like in 1991).

Putting Putin's Strength in Context

But it will probably take more time, as well as more setbacks on Putin's part, for such a revolution to unfold in Russia. First, if we are to keep the comparison to Czar Nicholas II, it's important to remember that he made a series of major mistakes during his reign — from the crushing defeat in the Russo-Japanese War to the bungling of reforms after the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905. And these mistakes also followed centuries of Czarist misrule. It was thus not a single trigger that pushed Russian citizens and soldiers to revolt during World War I, but many piled on top of one another.

Putin, in comparison, does not have the same kind of record. While the outcome of the Ukraine invasion remains undetermined, each of his previous military interventions was successful: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and even the previous invasion of Ukraine in 2014 that culminated in the annexation of Crimea were all widely supported by Russians and achieved Moscow's strategic objectives. While the current war against Ukraine is proving to be a greater test than anticipated, the invasion has not yet discredited Putin's military leadership. Indeed, there's still a chance for Putin to come out relatively unscathed — especially if he can eke out a victory that looks credible in Ukraine.

Until the recent sanctions were imposed, Putin also oversaw an economic record that was much stronger compared with the volatility of the 1990s; at least Putin's economic strategies provided for a gradually growing standard of living and overcame the chaotic ''shock treatment'' that followed the fall of the Soviet Union.

Once more, it will take time for the full weight of sanctions to hit the Russian public, and for the Russian public to then decide that such material sacrifice is Putin's fault. Given Putin's current strength as a leader, the dreams of a generals' coup, or at the very least of an army that might let anti-Putin protestors crawl on their tanks (like the anti-Soviet protestors did in Red Square in 1991), are currently unlikely to manifest.

Systematic Barriers to Change

But even if the military or public were to grow disgruntled with Putin, they currently have no credible political options for change. Russians, of course, have no free elections in which they can democratically choose a new government. But the Kremlin's sweeping crackdown on dissent over the past two years has also left Russians with no organized opposition to join, or even an underground movement to lead. Hundreds of thousands of potential Russian dissidents have already fled the country, and more may well flee as the situation at home becomes even more unsustainable. Many of the dissidents who remain in Russia, meanwhile, are now behind bars — including imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who survived a suspected assassination attempt by Russian security services in August 2020 only to be arrested several months later in Moscow. This, combined with the thousands of arrests in the initial days following the recent Ukraine invasion, suggest that the boldest elements of the Russian opposition have already been defanged.

Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact that the members of Russia's internal elite are currently wedded to the system. For a revolution to work, elites must either be divided or in disarray. The generals who would be counted on for a military coup know they could be held responsible for the reported war crimes in Ukraine and elsewhere; overthrowing the system exposes them to accountability and, as they know from Russian history, the potential of another break-up of the Russian Federation and perhaps civil war. The oligarchs, meanwhile, have grown rich off state patronage and corruption. And going against the Kremlin would put that wealth at risk, especially if the final result is a more accountable, democratic government or a civil war. Both sets of elites will also know that now is a time where loyalty is the ultimate prize. In their own internal rivalries, they will hope to portray their rivals as disloyal, seeking to oust them from power and seize their positions and riches. Behind closed doors, turning in rich ''traitors'' could well be lucrative. To get elites to a point of revolt, economic and military conditions would have to deteriorate much more than they already have, to the point of threatening their own lives.

Standing the Test of Time

For now, the Russian system is well-positioned to keep the domestic front in check. But how much longer it will stay that way is less certain. For one, it's not clear whether Russians are prepared to fight another drawn-out Cold War with the West (especially knowing that they lost the first one), or how they would react to a potentially humiliating withdrawal from Ukraine (the battle for the eastern Donbas region looms, but after Russia's failed drive for Kyiv, no longer does the world assume Ukraine's army is outmatched). It's also uncertain how well Russia can keep its war narrative alive at home.

Russians can and already are using things like virtual private networks to break through the Kremlin's information barrier. And finally, there is the looming question surrounding the long-term sustainability of Russia's current governance style, anchored as it is on the personality and politics of Vladimir Putin himself. Putin may be able to arrange a succession, possibly as soon as two years from now when his current term ends in 2024, that can manage the domestic front as well as he has. But if he can't, the vast power vacuum may leave Russia ripe for yet another revolution.

Title: Re: Could Uke War trigger revolution in Russia?
Post by: G M on April 20, 2022, 03:41:07 PM
The US is closer to collapse than Russia is.


ON GEOPOLITICS
Could the Ukraine War Trigger Another Revolution in Russia?
undefined and Stratfor Middle East and North Africa Analyst at RANE
Ryan Bohl
Stratfor Middle East and North Africa Analyst at RANE, Stratfor
9 MIN READApr 20, 2022 | 21:19 GMT

Just how popular is the Ukraine conflict in Russia?

A survey conducted by the state-run pollster VTsIOM released on March 5 said that 71% of Russians supported the war effort. And according to a more recent VTsIOM poll published on April 8, domestic support for Vladimir Putin has only grown since Russian troops began entering Ukraine, with 81.6% of Russians saying they trusted their president compared with the 67.2% who said the same prior to the Feb. 24 invasion.

But while those figures may be exaggerated (as respondents answer in the way Russian state media has told them is acceptable), it's nevertheless indicative that, barring no major anti-war movement, the Kremlin's domestic front is currently secure. How long it will stay that way is less certain, though Russian history shows it could be a while. Repression at home and foreign confrontation abroad didn't preserve the Czarist or Soviet systems in the long run. Though that formula, despite its autocratic inefficiencies and corruptions, gave Russian leaders the ability to weather multiple major setbacks before the inherent dysfunctions of their political models pulled them down.

If there is to be a crack that gives way to a larger political revolt, it will only come after a series of failures by President Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders — and possibly years of sacrifice by the Russian people, who will increasingly feel the weight of the war at home the longer it drags on, through the loss of both national blood and treasure.

The Importance of the Domestic Front

In long wars, domestic support for the conflict often emerges as a major factor in determining the victor. The United States never lost a major battle in Afghanistan or Vietnam, yet the collapse of support at home ultimately compelled the U.S. military's withdrawal and subsequent defeat in both conflicts. If a population cannot be convinced to keep up the fight, there are little even advanced militaries can do to succeed.

With the retreat from Kyiv, Russia will now clearly endure a longer military campaign than originally planned — and the bite of sanctions that come with it. Some observers have assumed this will mean the steady erosion of Putin's base of support, paving the way for his eventual overthrow. This view, however, assumes three key factors:

The Russian people will value their material welfare over the nationalist ideology Putin is now pushing.
Russians will be casualty averse (as Western countries now are), and will react badly as the body count rises.
Russians will find some way to organize a serious anti-Putin uprising, possibly in collusion with elites.
While all these assumptions are questionable under the current circumstances in Russia, they are not wholly without merit, given the country's history.

Russia's last czar, Czar Nicholas II, so disastrously managed World War I that not only did he lose to the Germans, but his own military and citizens turned on him. An improvised Soviet coup by would-be Stalinists in 1991 fell apart when soldiers refused to open fire on defiant crowds, acting as the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union. In other words, there's an established record of Russians turning on poor leadership who think too little of their blood and treasure.

Now, Ukraine's military doggedness has battered the Russian military superiority narrative; even the Kremlin now admits to ''painful'' losses. Russian families will be receiving thousands of war death notifications. And even with state media peddling firmly pro-war propaganda, these losses will be impossible to conceal the loss of Russian troops from the general public. Meanwhile, the standard of living in Russia is set to drop even further as the full weight of sanctions sinks in. The U.S. government estimates that Russia's GDP could contract anywhere from 10-20% this year. Modern goods like iPhones and computer chips, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly difficult to find in Russia as the ruble remains volatile and more countries cut their business ties with Moscow.

To make Putin the next Nicholas II, Russia's current situation will at the least have to continue for a prolonged period. However, if Europe (or at least major parts of it) decides to bite the bullet and cut some or all Russian energy exports, it could trigger a major current accounts crisis that even Russian state media could not conceal. Such a drastic and obvious deterioration of Russia's domestic stability would increase the likelihood of a combination of oligarchs, military leaders, and the general public turning on Putin — a revolution of sorts, either bloody (like in 1917) or peaceful (like in 1991).

Putting Putin's Strength in Context

But it will probably take more time, as well as more setbacks on Putin's part, for such a revolution to unfold in Russia. First, if we are to keep the comparison to Czar Nicholas II, it's important to remember that he made a series of major mistakes during his reign — from the crushing defeat in the Russo-Japanese War to the bungling of reforms after the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905. And these mistakes also followed centuries of Czarist misrule. It was thus not a single trigger that pushed Russian citizens and soldiers to revolt during World War I, but many piled on top of one another.

Putin, in comparison, does not have the same kind of record. While the outcome of the Ukraine invasion remains undetermined, each of his previous military interventions was successful: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and even the previous invasion of Ukraine in 2014 that culminated in the annexation of Crimea were all widely supported by Russians and achieved Moscow's strategic objectives. While the current war against Ukraine is proving to be a greater test than anticipated, the invasion has not yet discredited Putin's military leadership. Indeed, there's still a chance for Putin to come out relatively unscathed — especially if he can eke out a victory that looks credible in Ukraine.

Until the recent sanctions were imposed, Putin also oversaw an economic record that was much stronger compared with the volatility of the 1990s; at least Putin's economic strategies provided for a gradually growing standard of living and overcame the chaotic ''shock treatment'' that followed the fall of the Soviet Union.

Once more, it will take time for the full weight of sanctions to hit the Russian public, and for the Russian public to then decide that such material sacrifice is Putin's fault. Given Putin's current strength as a leader, the dreams of a generals' coup, or at the very least of an army that might let anti-Putin protestors crawl on their tanks (like the anti-Soviet protestors did in Red Square in 1991), are currently unlikely to manifest.

Systematic Barriers to Change

But even if the military or public were to grow disgruntled with Putin, they currently have no credible political options for change. Russians, of course, have no free elections in which they can democratically choose a new government. But the Kremlin's sweeping crackdown on dissent over the past two years has also left Russians with no organized opposition to join, or even an underground movement to lead. Hundreds of thousands of potential Russian dissidents have already fled the country, and more may well flee as the situation at home becomes even more unsustainable. Many of the dissidents who remain in Russia, meanwhile, are now behind bars — including imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who survived a suspected assassination attempt by Russian security services in August 2020 only to be arrested several months later in Moscow. This, combined with the thousands of arrests in the initial days following the recent Ukraine invasion, suggest that the boldest elements of the Russian opposition have already been defanged.

Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact that the members of Russia's internal elite are currently wedded to the system. For a revolution to work, elites must either be divided or in disarray. The generals who would be counted on for a military coup know they could be held responsible for the reported war crimes in Ukraine and elsewhere; overthrowing the system exposes them to accountability and, as they know from Russian history, the potential of another break-up of the Russian Federation and perhaps civil war. The oligarchs, meanwhile, have grown rich off state patronage and corruption. And going against the Kremlin would put that wealth at risk, especially if the final result is a more accountable, democratic government or a civil war. Both sets of elites will also know that now is a time where loyalty is the ultimate prize. In their own internal rivalries, they will hope to portray their rivals as disloyal, seeking to oust them from power and seize their positions and riches. Behind closed doors, turning in rich ''traitors'' could well be lucrative. To get elites to a point of revolt, economic and military conditions would have to deteriorate much more than they already have, to the point of threatening their own lives.

Standing the Test of Time

For now, the Russian system is well-positioned to keep the domestic front in check. But how much longer it will stay that way is less certain. For one, it's not clear whether Russians are prepared to fight another drawn-out Cold War with the West (especially knowing that they lost the first one), or how they would react to a potentially humiliating withdrawal from Ukraine (the battle for the eastern Donbas region looms, but after Russia's failed drive for Kyiv, no longer does the world assume Ukraine's army is outmatched). It's also uncertain how well Russia can keep its war narrative alive at home.

Russians can and already are using things like virtual private networks to break through the Kremlin's information barrier. And finally, there is the looming question surrounding the long-term sustainability of Russia's current governance style, anchored as it is on the personality and politics of Vladimir Putin himself. Putin may be able to arrange a succession, possibly as soon as two years from now when his current term ends in 2024, that can manage the domestic front as well as he has. But if he can't, the vast power vacuum may leave Russia ripe for yet another revolution.
Title: Putin looks unsteady at Easter service
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 24, 2022, 06:39:10 PM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10748825/Putin-looks-unsteady-Easter-church-service-footage-showing-biting-lip-fidgeting.html
Title: Re: Putin looks unsteady at Easter service
Post by: DougMacG on April 25, 2022, 07:54:58 AM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10748825/Putin-looks-unsteady-Easter-church-service-footage-showing-biting-lip-fidgeting.html

"as he stood in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral"

What's wrong with this picture?  If Putin is a believer and starting to feel his age, it might be the first time he has contemplated rotting in hell for eternity.  If he is a non believer, his remains or ashes will rot in the ground.  Either way, at death he loses all his power over others, and Easter is about death and what happens next. There is not enough time left to repent all his sins and it's clear that's not his intent.

Rather than the beautiful organ, choir and orchestra Hymns he was hearing at Easter service, at his demise the people will prefer to sing and dance to some Russian version of "the wicked witch is dead".
Title: Re: Putin looks unsteady at Easter service
Post by: G M on April 25, 2022, 08:17:57 AM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10748825/Putin-looks-unsteady-Easter-church-service-footage-showing-biting-lip-fidgeting.html

"as he stood in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral"

What's wrong with this picture?  If Putin is a believer and starting to feel his age, it might be the first time he has contemplated rotting in hell for eternity.  If he is a non believer, his remains or ashes will rot in the ground.  Either way, at death he loses all his power over others, and Easter is about death and what happens next. There is not enough time left to repent all his sins and it's clear that's not his intent.

Rather than the beautiful organ, choir and orchestra Hymns he was hearing at Easter service, at his demise the people will prefer to sing and dance to some Russian version of "the wicked witch is dead".

Much like China, the Russians in general prefer a strongman leader to chaos.

Title: Re: Putin looks unsteady at Easter service
Post by: G M on April 25, 2022, 10:46:40 AM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10748825/Putin-looks-unsteady-Easter-church-service-footage-showing-biting-lip-fidgeting.html

"as he stood in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral"

What's wrong with this picture?  If Putin is a believer and starting to feel his age, it might be the first time he has contemplated rotting in hell for eternity.  If he is a non believer, his remains or ashes will rot in the ground.  Either way, at death he loses all his power over others, and Easter is about death and what happens next. There is not enough time left to repent all his sins and it's clear that's not his intent.

Rather than the beautiful organ, choir and orchestra Hymns he was hearing at Easter service, at his demise the people will prefer to sing and dance to some Russian version of "the wicked witch is dead".

Much like China, the Russians in general prefer a strongman leader to chaos.

Iranian press says Putin is trusted.

https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2022/04/23/2699880/poll-shows-over-80-of-russians-trust-putin

3 percent of those that didn’t trust Putin have died of various causes since the poll was taken…
Title: Putin cancer operation?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 30, 2022, 04:36:36 PM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10770541/Putin-cancer-operation-near-future-hand-power-hardline-ex-KGB-chief.html
Title: Putin to undergo surgery w attendant transfer of power
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 02, 2022, 09:27:58 AM
https://nypost.com/2022/05/02/vladimir-putin-to-undergo-cancer-surgery-transfer-power/?fbclid=IwAR0pT46dlNmFPgAgEYhSktoK0zefkS8yNu7S3kKGPWoITDHO4jY1DSwiIIY
Title: Some Russian Oligarchs are more equal than others
Post by: G M on May 02, 2022, 04:38:46 PM
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/398905.php

I wonder why...
Title: Re: Russian Leaders (Putin, Medvedev, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 02, 2022, 05:41:14 PM
Please post in the Hunter thread as well.
Title: Nina Khrushcheva: How Putin Captured the Russian State
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2022, 04:14:56 AM
The Coup in the Kremlin
How Putin and the Security Services Captured the Russian State
By Nina Khrushcheva
May 10, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin at a military parade in Moscow, May 2021
Russian President Vladimir Putin at a military parade in Moscow, May 2021
Mikhail Metzel / Sputnik Photo Agency


https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2022-05-10/coup-kremlin

On December 20, 1999, Vladimir Putin addressed senior officials of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) at its Lubyanka headquarters near Moscow’s Red Square. The recently appointed 47-year-old prime minister, who had held the rank of lieutenant colonel in the FSB, was visiting to mark the holiday honoring the Russian security services. “The task of infiltrating the highest level of government is accomplished,” Putin quipped.

His former colleagues chuckled. But the joke was on Russia.

Putin became interim president less than two weeks later. From the start of his rule, he has worked to strengthen the state to counteract the chaos of post-Soviet capitalism and unsteady democratization. To achieve that end, he saw it necessary to elevate the country’s security services and put former security officials in charge of critical government organs.


In recent years, however, Putin’s approach has changed. More and more, bureaucracy has displaced the high-profile personalities that previously dominated. And as the Russian president has come to rely on these bureaucratic institutions to further his consolidation of control, their power has grown relative to other organs of the state. But it was not until February, when Putin gave the orders first to recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and then, a few days later, to send Russian troops into Ukraine, that the complete takeover by the new security apparatus became apparent.

In the early days of the war, most branches of the Russian state seemed blindsided by Putin’s determination to invade, and some prominent officials even seemed to question the wisdom of the decision, however timidly. But in the weeks since, government and society alike have lined up behind the Kremlin. Dissent is now a crime, and individuals who once held decision-making power—even if circumscribed—have found themselves hostages of institutions whose single-minded purpose is security and control. What has happened is, in effect, an FSB-on-FSB coup: Russia used to be a state dominated by security forces, but now a faceless security bureaucracy has become the state, with Putin sitting on top.

THE SURVIVAL OF THE CHEKISTS

The modern FSB traces its beginnings to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, also known as the Cheka, hunted down enemies of the new Soviet state under the fierce leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky. Its subsequent iterations, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and the Ministry of State Security (MGB), evolved under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s rule and were led most notoriously by Genrikh Yagoda in the 1930s and Lavrenty Beria in the 1940s and 1950s. The KGB became the Soviet Union’s primary security agency in 1954 under Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor. Over the following decade, Khrushchev expanded the Communist Party’s oversight of the Soviet state’s institutions of control, limiting their influence. But after Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964, Yuri Andropov, the longtime head of the KGB, reclaimed the organization’s lost authority, bringing the security service to the height of its power in the 1970s.

Andropov went on to lead the Soviet Union as general secretary of the Communist Party from 1982 to 1984. He was merciless in imposing ideological control. Any “diversion”—such as covert disagreement with Soviet politics—was grounds for prosecution. Some dissenters were imprisoned or placed in psychiatric wards for “retraining,” while others were forced to emigrate. Living in Moscow at the time, I remember police raids to catch indolent citizens and plain-clothes KGB officers—operating like Orwellian “thought police”—surreptitiously roaming city streets, detaining people suspected of skipping work or having too much leisure time. It was an atmosphere of total control, with Andropov’s KGB fully in charge.

By the late 1980s, reforms introduced by Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev loosened the grip of the security forces. Perestroika was supposed to renew the Soviet Union—some scholars even allege Andropov had a hand in the program—but it ended up threatening the survival of the regime. The last Soviet leader turned against his KGB masters, exposing the crimes of Stalinism and proceeding with an opening to the West. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 and Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe left Moscow’s sphere of influence, the KGB turned on Gorbachev, two years later launching a failed coup that hastened the Soviet collapse.

The security apparatus was humiliated—but it was not disbanded. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of post-Soviet Russia, considered communism, not the KGB, to be the greater evil. He thought that simply changing the name of the KGB to the FSB would change the organization, too, allowing it to become more benevolent and less controlling. This was wishful thinking. Russia’s security services trace their origins all the way back to Ivan the Terrible’s brutal bodyguard corps, the oprichniki, in the sixteenth century and Peter the Great’s Secret Chancellery in the eighteenth century. Yeltsin’s attempt at reform could not permanently suppress a system with such deep historical roots any more than Khrushchev’s could four decades earlier.

Russia used to be a state dominated by security forces, but now the security bureaucracy has become the state.

In fact, KGB officers were relatively well equipped to endure the collapse of communism and the transition to capitalism. To the security services, the Soviet-era call for a classless society of proletarians had always been merely a slogan; ideology was a tool for controlling the public and strengthening the hand of the state. Former members applied that pragmatic approach as they rose to elite positions in post-Soviet Russia. As Leonid Shebarshin, a former high-level KGB operative, has explained, it was only natural that those who trained under Andropov for a secret war against external and internal enemies—NATO, the CIA, dissidents, and political opposition—should become the new Russian bourgeoisie. They could handle irregular working hours, succeed in hostile environments, and use interrogation and manipulation tactics when called for. They squeezed every last drop of labor out of their employees and subordinates.

One of their number, Putin, was himself lauded as a pragmatist by Western diplomats after he rose from obscurity to become president of Russia in 2000. Even then, he made no secret of his intention to establish Andropov-style absolute authority, quickly moving to limit the power of the capitalist barons who had flourished in the 1990s under Yeltsin’s frenzied presidency. In Putin’s mind, an independent oligarchy in control of strategic industries, such as oil and gas, threatened the stability of the state. He ensured that business decisions relevant to the national interest were made instead by a handful of trusted people—the so-called siloviki, or affiliates of the state’s military and security agencies. These individuals effectively became managers or guardians of state-controlled assets. Many were from Putin’s native Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg) and most had served alongside him in the KGB. On the corporate side, their ranks include Igor Sechin (Rosneft), Sergey Chemezov (Rostec), and Alexey Miller (Gazprom), while matters of state protection are handled by Nikolai Patrushev (secretary of the Security Council), Alexander Bortnikov (director of the FSB), Sergei Naryshkin (director of the Foreign Intelligence Service), and Alexander Bastrykin (head of the Investigative Committee), among others.

Putin has been convinced that strengthening the state’s “extraordinary organs” would prevent upheaval of the kind that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putting former KGB operatives in charge seemed to offer some economic and political stability. In an effort to maintain that stability, Putin acted in 2020 to extend his presidency, proposing constitutional amendments to circumvent the term limits that would remove him from office in 2024.

Since their ratification, the constitutional changes have given the state broad latitude to address problems ranging from COVID-19 to mass protests in Belarus to Russian opposition lawyer Alexei Navalny’s return to Moscow. As was the case in the Andropov era, all matters are now run through central regulatory bodies—federal organizations that oversee everything from taxation to science (the word nadzor, meaning “supervision,” in many of their Russian names makes them easy to recognize). Criminal prosecutions are an increasingly common tactic used against Russian citizens who complain about abuses of power, request better services, or express support for Navalny, who himself was convicted based on false accusations of fraud and other supposed crimes. A punitive apparatus of control has tightened its grip, led by the technocratic Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, a former tax official, and an assortment of midlevel managers inside the regime bureaucracy.

THE FSB COUP
Putin’s decision to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, and subsequently to launch a “special military operation” to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, followed a similar pattern of punishment for political deviation: he sought to penalize an entire country for what he deemed its “anti-Russian” choice to align with the West. But within Russia, the events leading up to and following the invasion also marked the completion of a political shift that has been years in the making. They exposed the waning power of the siloviki who dominated the early Putin era—and their replacement by a faceless security-and-control bureaucracy.

On February 21, during a nationally broadcast Security Council session, the president’s closest confidants seemed completely in the dark as to what the Donetsk and Luhansk recognition would entail. Naryshkin, of the Foreign Intelligence Service, stumbled over his words as Putin demanded an affirmation of support for the decision. By the end of this exchange, Naryshkin appeared to be trembling with fear. Even Patrushev, a hardcore conservative Chekist, wanted to inform the United States of Russia’s plans to send troops to Ukraine—a suggestion that went unanswered.

For a decision as consequential as the invasion of a neighboring country, it is remarkable how many organs of the state were out of the loop. Economic institutions were caught by surprise—when Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Russian central bank, tried to resign in early March, she was told to just buckle up and deal with the economic fallout. The military didn’t seem to be aware of the entire plan either, and spent months moving tens of thousands of troops around the border without knowing whether they would be asked to attack.


Putin’s clandestine operation was even hidden from other clandestine operatives. Leaders of the FSB department responsible for providing the Kremlin with intelligence about Ukraine’s political situation, for instance, didn’t fully believe that an invasion would happen. Many analysts had confidently argued it would be against Russia’s national interests. Comfortable in the assumption that a large-scale attack was off the table, officials kept feeding Putin the story he wanted to hear: Ukrainians were Slavic brothers ready to be liberated from Nazi-collaborating, Western-controlled stooges in Kyiv. A source in the Kremlin told me that many officials now envision a disaster akin to the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which ended in a disgraceful withdrawal and helped precipitate the dissolution of the Soviet empire. But in a government that has become increasingly technocratic, institutionalized, and impersonal, such opinions are no longer permissible.

As the conflict continues into its third month and evidence of war crimes mounts, most officials and politicians continue to back Putin. Big business is largely silent. Economic elites, cut off from the West, have rallied around the flag. Even though some may be grumbling in private, very few are vocal in public. Rare exceptions include the billionaire industrialist Oleg Deripaska, who has repeatedly called for peace; the former Putin associate Anatoly Chubais, known for leading Russia’s privatization under Yeltsin, who has fled to Turkey; the oligarch and former Chelsea soccer club owner, Roman Abramovich, who has tried to facilitate a negotiated settlement; and the entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov, who was forced to sell his shares in his hugely successful online bank, Tinkoff, for kopeks after speaking out against the “operation.”

Putin has never made a secret of his intention to establish absolute authority.

The rest of Russia’s 145 million citizens—except for those tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands who have fled abroad—are similarly falling in line. Having lost access to foreign flights, brands, and payment systems, most are forced to accept that their lives are tethered to the Kremlin. In a sharp departure from the early days of the Ukrainian operation, when public shock was palpable and people took to the streets expressing antiwar sentiment, polling shows that around 80 percent now support the war. The actual number is likely lower—when the state exercises total control, people give the answers that the regime wants. Still, my own conversations with relatives and friends across Russia confirm that speaking against the war is increasingly unpopular. An acquaintance in the resort town of Kislovodsk in the Northern Caucasus, for instance, insisted that Putin needs to complete “the mission of ‘de-Nazification,’ take care of the Donbas, and show Americans not to mess with Russia.”

As the shock wears off, fear has taken its place. In a televised address in mid-March, Putin insisted that Western countries “will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on national traitors,” implying that all opponents of his “operation” are the unpatriotic enemies. The government’s security branches had previously announced a new law: spreading “fake information,” or any narrative that contradicts the Ministry of Defense’s official story, is a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Independent media outlets were blocked or disbanded, including the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, liberal radio Ekho Moskvy, and Dozhd TV, all of which regularly criticized the government until two months ago. The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, and other foreign media packed up and left the country. Since the end of February, more than 16,000 people have been detained, including 400 teenagers. People have been arrested for just being near a protest. For one Muscovite, merely showing up at Red Square holding a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace was enough to warrant detention.

In this atmosphere of complete repression, political figures who once seemed to offer alternative ideas now echo Putin’s uncompromising words. Former President Dmitry Medvedev has insisted that criticism of the operation amounts to treason. Even Naryshkin, a skeptic in February, has found his war footing and now faithfully parrots the government line. People no longer speak with their own voices; the shadow of Putinist Chekism now covers the entire country.

THE NEW SECURITY STATE

The journalist and writer Masha Gessen once dubbed Putin “the man without a face.” Today, however, his is the only face, sitting atop an anonymous security bureaucracy that does his bidding. Another coup, either in the Kremlin corridors or on the streets of Moscow, is not likely. The only group that could conceivably unseat the president is the FSB, which is still technically run by nationalist siloviki who understand that some foreign policy flexibility is necessary for internal development. But such officials are no longer the FSB’s future. The indistinct body of security technocrats now in charge is obsessed with total control, no matter the national or international consequences.

The last time the Kremlin built such an all-controlling state, under Andropov’s leadership in the early 1980s, it unraveled when the security forces relaxed their grip and allowed reform. Putin knows that story well and is unlikely to risk the same outcome. And even without him, the system he built would remain in place, sustained by the new security cohort—unless a 1980s Afghanistan-style debacle in Ukraine destroys it all. With this bureaucracy holding tight to power, Moscow’s foreign adventurism might abate. But as long as the structure holds steady, Russia will remain oppressed, isolated, and unfree.
Title: was Putin poisoned with polonium ?
Post by: ccp on May 14, 2022, 01:15:01 PM
https://nypost.com/2022/05/14/russias-vladimir-putin-ill-with-blood-cancer-secret-recording/

if true this would be poetic justice

Title: Xi- aneurism?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 14, 2022, 01:50:11 PM
I've modified the title of this thread:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10816327/Chinas-leader-Xi-Jinping-suffering-brain-aneurysm-snub-new-medicine-reports-claim.html
Title: General Gerasimov
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 14, 2022, 04:06:24 PM
https://nypost.com/2022/05/13/putin-rumored-to-have-fired-russian-general-valery-gerasimov/?fbclid=IwAR2RKoXYQMrTrt1AcWZxU19VSrl0PiGZa_9sffJTfdvCWq6C4FExapRt9do
Title: NY Post: Putin has blood cancer
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 15, 2022, 07:27:34 AM
https://nypost.com/2022/05/14/russias-vladimir-putin-ill-with-blood-cancer-secret-recording/?fbclid=IwAR0cXqx9wcjkTDOGBWjAXOUX3ix3f7B-Or56o9eB6L69Bwqp9u0s77_Py_M
Title: vlad assassinatioin?
Post by: ccp on May 15, 2022, 07:54:02 AM
vlad with blood cancer

perhaps a polonium hit

karma as they say
Title: Spin-of-the-day Award to Fiona Hill
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 19, 2022, 11:38:39 AM
https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-frustrated-constantly-explaining-things-to-trump-fiona-hill-2022-5?fbclid=IwAR1CoHyk0JES3k8_VXvfVIUXESCpdlcft1Jyslwj0GAIl_sWLpqjnLK8eKc
Title: Re: Spin-of-the-day Award to Fiona Hill
Post by: G M on May 19, 2022, 08:37:30 PM
https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-frustrated-constantly-explaining-things-to-trump-fiona-hill-2022-5?fbclid=IwAR1CoHyk0JES3k8_VXvfVIUXESCpdlcft1Jyslwj0GAIl_sWLpqjnLK8eKc

Wow! Talk about pissing on your leg and telling you it's raining...
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2022, 04:51:53 AM
https://nypost.com/2022/05/22/putin-will-be-sent-to-sanatorium-by-2023-ex-mi6-chief/?fbclid=IwAR0Xe1VfQaGtILk3jUGV2uoe9BRj8wXzdlU75PKTQFMy-M4U-biJRtC0-sw
Title: Assassination attempts on Putin thwarted
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2022, 08:54:50 AM
second

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-survived-assassination-attempt-two-months-ago-ukraine-official-says-1709096
Title: Fiona Hill: How did Putin get it so wrong?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 27, 2022, 04:24:08 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9skW4Wvtxo

IIRC Fiona Hill was part of the Deep State cabal sabotaging President Trump's Ukraine policy.
Title: Putin has three years to live?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2022, 09:02:49 AM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10864599/Vladimir-Putin-three-years-live-rapidly-progressing-severe-cancer-FSB-claims.html
Title: Assassination attempt on Putin advisor?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 20, 2022, 05:41:57 PM
https://twitter.com/Conflicts/status/1561113628962705413
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 21, 2022, 08:52:45 AM
Pasting CCP's post here:

https://nypost.com/2022/08/20/daughter-of-staunch-putin-ally-alexander-dugin-killed-in-car-bombing/
f
I am thinking Rasputin.
Title: The Assassination of Daria Dugina
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2022, 12:03:46 PM
Bringing this over from the DBMA Assn forum:

============================
Might be too political for the general forum, but the situation has interested me because it's possibly the first time we've seen the daughter of an E-Celebrity/Political speaker killed. By a female assassin at that, coming through a war zone, being accepted in very close.

Information known so far:
>Natalya Vovk, a Ukrainian national / Member of AZOV Batallion (not sure on this one)
>Got Novorussian license plates and drove into Moscow out of Ukraine. In Moscow she used tags from Kazakstan. While leaving the city she used Ukranian tags and left into Estonia.
>She lived in the condominium that Daria lived in and brought her own daughter with her.
>She apparently lived there for some time
>Planted the bomb in Daria's car, NOT Dugins (which was assumed)
>This was an assassination aimed directly at his daughter
>Assassin tried to sell the car when in Ukraine under her daughters name
>Security camera in area had been disabled for 2 weeks
Title: Re: The Assassination of Daria Dugina
Post by: G M on August 23, 2022, 12:07:15 PM
This suggests someone with formal training.


Bringing this over from the DBMA Assn forum:

============================
Might be too political for the general forum, but the situation has interested me because it's possibly the first time we've seen the daughter of an E-Celebrity/Political speaker killed. By a female assassin at that, coming through a war zone, being accepted in very close.

Information known so far:
>Natalya Vovk, a Ukrainian national / Member of AZOV Batallion (not sure on this one)
>Got Novorussian license plates and drove into Moscow out of Ukraine. In Moscow she used tags from Kazakstan. While leaving the city she used Ukranian tags and left into Estonia.
>She lived in the condominium that Daria lived in and brought her own daughter with her.
>She apparently lived there for some time
>Planted the bomb in Daria's car, NOT Dugins (which was assumed)
>This was an assassination aimed directly at his daughter
>Assassin tried to sell the car when in Ukraine under her daughters name
>Security camera in area had been disabled for 2 weeks
Title: WT: More on the Dugina hit
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2022, 12:12:35 PM
Killing of Putin supporter fuels fury; Ukraine salutes almost 9,000 ‘heroes’

BY MIKE GLENN THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded one of Russia’s highest decorations to a woman who was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow late Saturday that may have been intended for her father, an ultranationalist who has sometimes been called “Putin’s brain.”

On Monday, Mr. Putin harshly condemned the attack that killed 29-yearold Daria Dugina, a journalist and political scientist who was known as a strong backer of the Kremlin in her own right. In a statement published on the Kremlin’s website, Mr. Putin called the car bombing “a despicable, cruel crime” that ended the life of a “bright, talented person with a real Russian heart.”

“She honestly served the people [and] the Fatherland,” Mr. Putin said. “She proved by deed what it means to be a patriot of Russia.”

The gesture did nothing to quell questions in Moscow and Kyiv over who masterminded the attack, who was the target and how it will affect a war that will mark its grim six-month anniversary on Wednesday.

Like her father, hard-line ideologue Alexander Dugin, Ms. Dugina was an outspoken defender of Russian culture and power and supported Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in late February.

Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Kyiv’s top Army general, disclosed Monday during a forum with military veterans that almost 9,000 “Ukrainian heroes” have been killed so far, according to Ukraine’s Interfax news agency.

Russian losses are estimated to be far higher, but it was the first update

on the cost of the war for Ukraine in months for the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Russian investigators said Ms. Dugina died when a bomb hidden in her Toyota Land Cruiser detonated on a highway outside Moscow. The explosive device was planted under the vehicle’s floorboard on the driver’s side, according to the state-owned Tass news agency.

Less than a full day after the bombing attack, Russian intelligence officials pointed the finger of responsibility at Ukraine. They said the culprit was a Ukrainian woman named Natalya Vovk who fled to Estonia after the assassination.

“One theory is that she could have planted an explosive device in Dugina’s car with the help of [her] child,” a Russian law enforcement source told Tass.

The Russian security service, the FSB, said in a statement that Ms. Vovk and her 12-year-old daughter were attending the “Tradition” literary and musical festival, where Ms. Dugina was an “honored guest.” Reports say her father, Mr. Dugin, was supposed to have been driving the Toyota that night but changed his mind at the last minute.

The FSB, the successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB, said Ms. Vovk, 43, and her daughter fled to Estonia shortly after the car bombing. Russian officials said Ms. Vovk was working for the Ukrainian “special services” and entered Russia in a car with license plates issued by the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic, set up by the Kremlin in far eastern Ukraine.

Mr. Dugin also blamed Kyiv for his daughter’s death and used the moment to encourage Russian soldiers to continue their fight in Ukraine. “Our hearts yearn for more than just revenge or retribution. It’s too small — not in Russian,” he said in a statement published on the pro-Kremlin network Tsargrad TV. “My daughter laid her maiden life on her altar, so win, please! Let it inspire the sons of our Fatherland to the feat even now.”

Ukrainian officials denied any role in the car bombing and were quick to ridicule Moscow’s theory.

“I understand that hallucinogens of various genesis lead to a loss of connection with reality, but the representatives of Russia should understand: the world sees the war live and with it, your crimes,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelenskyy, said in a Twitter post. “Attempts to blame Ukraine for the terrorist attacks … or the car explosion in the Moscow suburbs have no chance.”

Daria Dugina and her father were leading figures within Russia’s ultranationalist community, promoting the concept of “Novorossiya” or “New Russia.” It sought to position Russia as a defender of traditional values and the natural sovereign over any Russian-speaking country or population. Each had been targeted for economic sanctions by the U.S. and British governments for their roles in promoting their hard-line views and attacking the West.

There are several possible explanations for the fatal car bombing. It could have been the result of an internal power struggle within the Kremlin or a strike from an unknown terrorist group.

Matthew Schmidt, a foreign affairs analyst and Russia expert at the University of New Haven, said Ukraine is the least likely culprit because Mr. Dugin and his daughter were merely propagandists.

“The problem with the Ukraine thesis is that they risk far more than they gain. They risk Western support,” he said in an interview with The Washington Times. “Neither of the Dugins have ever killed anybody or ordered anybody to be killed.”

Alexander Dugin may not have been a front-line soldier in the invasion of Ukraine, but he has pushed for Russia’s annexation of its smaller neighbor for decades. His book “The Foundations for Geopolitics” is required reading at Russian military academies and argues that “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning,” according to the Financial Times newspaper.

Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of Russia’s parliament called the State Duma who lives in Kyiv and is bitterly critical of Mr. Putin, said the National Republican Army — a mix of Russian activists, military personnel and politicians — claimed responsibility for the car bombing.

The group called Mr. Putin a “usurper of power and a war criminal” who has violated the Russian Constitution, unleashed a war among Slavic peoples and sent Russian soldiers to a “certain and senseless death.”

“We will overcome and destroy Putin,” the group said in a manifesto published by Ukraine’s Interfax news agency. “We declare all Russian government officials and regional administration officials to be accomplices to the usurper. We will kill every one of them who fails to resign.”

At this point, it’s impossible to know definitively who killed Ms. Dugina, Mr. Schmidt said. In addition to discounting Ukraine as the perpetrator, he doubts Moscow’s powerful oligarchs had a role to play in her death because they share Mr. Putin’s vision of a “Greater Russia.”

“And as long as Putin controls the security services, everybody knows that he’s capable of killing people and he’s done it,” the professor said.
Title: Stratfor: More on Dugina
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2022, 01:14:43 PM
second post

Russia, Ukraine: Daughter of Ultranationalist Killed in Car Bombing
3 MIN READAug 22, 2022 | 20:28 GMT





What Happened: Daria Dugina, the daughter of one of Russia's most prominent ultranationalist ideologues, Alexander Dugin, was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow, The Moscow Times reported Aug. 22. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) accused "Ukrainian special services" of the attack, which Ukrainian authorities dismissed, and a former Russian parliamentarian said an underground partisan group opposed to Putin's regime called the National Republican Army had claimed responsibility for the attack.

Why It Matters: Ukraine derives little evident benefit from the killing of Dugina or her father, who are relatively obscure in Ukraine, so it is doubtful that Kyiv targeted them. But the killing, no matter who is really responsible, reflects poorly on Russian security services, who either failed to stop both the killing and the alleged perpetrator's escape to Estonia, or, alternatively, deliberately allowed both in order to induce a certain political effect. Either way, the killing has emboldened Russian nationalists calling for an escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war, and several notable Russian propagandists have called for mass strikes on Kyiv. These demands will challenge the Kremlin to live up to its rhetoric regarding the accomplishment of its ambitious war goals of regime change and the "demilitarization" of Ukraine. Despite being used to whip up patriotic fervor in Russia, the attack is unlikely to push a significant number of Russians to volunteer to fight.

Background: Ukrainian authorities said the killing is indicative of infighting between influence groups in Russia and is likely a false flag conducted by Russia's own security services intended to increase anti-Ukrainian sentiment ahead of the show trials of Ukrainian soldiers. Dugina was a far-right Russian journalist and political activist whose views were in line with her father's. In a statement expressing his condolences, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Dugina "proved by deed what it means to be a patriot of Russia" and posthumously awarded her the "Order of Courage." In a statement, Dugin said Russians "yearn for more than just revenge or retribution" and that they wanted only "victory," which, based on his previous statements, would likely involve the capture of Kyiv and most of Ukraine.

================================


https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russian-fsb-identifies-alleged-dugina-assassin?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=870


================================



Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 27, 2022, 03:32:17 PM
https://nypost.com/2022/08/27/two-shocking-deaths-are-right-out-of-putins-assassination-playbook/?fbclid=IwAR1zcUm3f9vqGTUe0-qa97ROM2nR0s4Jt_7vYGEA5rwpI6QtuN72OUWrSXw
Title: Dugin's daughter
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 30, 2022, 12:52:03 AM
Haven't watched this, but here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Zk7K9Un2U
Title: Whoops!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2022, 11:42:24 AM
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62750584?fbclid=IwAR14nqgsL_q2ba6h_szpIKV7_uQrO1xPczG7wfHA3L6SwgtlKdmXWS4KcWU
Title: Case Study: The Assassination of Daria Dugina
Post by: Valerick on September 01, 2022, 12:19:13 PM
Woof! Good to go at last.

Posting this here for the interested. A breakdown of how the daughter of a very popular philosopher/e-celebrity in Russia was assassinated by a female w/ her child.:

>A suspected female agent, Natalia Vovk, a supposed member of Azov (a volunteer militia that has been fighting in Donbass for the last 8 or so years), entered Russia via multiple side roads using multiple plates from different nations.
>Once inside, she secured lodging in the condominium that Daria lived in
>She lived there for some time with her daughter
>The security cameras were disabled for over a week (I assume to test if they would have a rapid response).
>During this time an unknown part planted a bomb into Daria's vehicle.
>During a visit with her father, the bomb was detonated and Daria was killed with her Father driving behind her, he forced to see the entire scene
>The supposed assassin fled with Ukrainian plates into Estonia with her daughter.
>She afterwords attempted to sell her car prior to being found/leaked
>Current whereabouts unknown.

Just an idea, if a security camera breaks around a high value person that seems to be a VERY BIG CLUE that in a week or so, someone's coming to kill them. Epstein/Daria and many others I suspect. Gut feeling: Just the spotter/PI. Someone else disconnected the cameras and planted the bomb. She was the surveillance.
Title: FA on Xi:
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 09, 2022, 02:22:40 AM
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-jinping-china-weakness-hubris-paranoia-threaten-future?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_campaign=The%20Weakness%20of%20Xi%20Jinping&utm_content=20220909&utm_term=FA%20This%20Week%20-%20112017

The Weakness of Xi Jinping
How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future
By Cai Xia
September/October 2022

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-jinping-china-weakness-hubris-paranoia-threaten-future
Request Reprint Permissions

Not long ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping was riding high. He had consolidated power within the Chinese Communist Party. He had elevated himself to the same official status as the CCP’s iconic leader, Mao Zedong, and done away with presidential term limits, freeing him to lead China for the rest of his life. At home, he boasted of having made huge strides in reducing poverty; abroad, he claimed to be raising his country’s international prestige to new heights. For many Chinese, Xi’s strongman tactics were the acceptable price of national revival.


Outwardly, Xi still projects confidence. In a speech in January 2021, he declared China “invincible.” But behind the scenes, his power is being questioned as never before. By discarding China’s long tradition of collective rule and creating a cult of personality reminiscent of the one that surrounded Mao, Xi has rankled party insiders. A series of policy missteps, meanwhile, have disappointed even supporters. Xi’s reversal of economic reforms and his inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic have shattered his image as a hero of everyday people. In the shadows, resentment among CCP elites is rising.

I have long had a front-row seat to the CCP’s court intrigue. For 15 years, I was a professor in the Central Party School, where I helped train thousands of high-ranking CCP cadres who staff China’s bureaucracy. During my tenure at the school, I advised the CCP’s top leadership on building the party, and I continued to do so after retiring in 2012. In 2020, after I criticized Xi, I was expelled from the party, stripped of my retirement benefits, and warned that my safety was in danger. I now live in exile in the United States, but I stay in touch with many of my contacts in China.

At the CCP’s 20th National Party Congress this fall, Xi expects that he will be given a third five-year term. And even if the growing irritation among some party elites means that his bid will not go entirely uncontested, he will probably succeed. But that success will bring more turbulence down the road. Emboldened by the unprecedented additional term, Xi will likely tighten his grip even further domestically and raise his ambitions internationally. As Xi’s rule becomes more extreme, the infighting and resentment he has already triggered will only grow stronger. The competition between various factions within the party will get more intense, complicated, and brutal than ever before.

At that point, China may experience a vicious cycle in which Xi reacts to the perceived sense of threat by taking ever bolder actions that generate even more pushback. Trapped in an echo chamber and desperately seeking redemption, he may even do something catastrophically ill advised, such as attack Taiwan. Xi may well ruin something China has earned over the course of four decades: a reputation for steady, competent leadership. In fact, he already has.

THE CHINESE MAFIA

In many respects, the CCP has changed little since the party took power in 1949. Now, as then, the party exercises absolute control over China, ruling over its military, its administration, and its rubber-stamp legislature. The party hierarchy, in turn, answers to the Politburo Standing Committee, the top decision-making body in China. Composed of anywhere from five to nine members of the broader Politburo, the Standing Committee is headed by the party’s general secretary, China’s paramount leader. Since 2012, that has been Xi.

The details of how the Standing Committee operates are a closely guarded secret, but it is widely known that many decisions are made through the circulation of documents dealing with major policy questions, in the margins of which the committee’s members add comments. The papers are written by top leaders in ministries and other party organs, as well as experts from the best universities and think tanks, and to have one’s memo circulated among the Standing Committee members is considered a credit to the writer’s home institution. When I was a professor, the Central Party School set a quota for the production of such memos of about one a month. Authors whose memos were read by the Standing Committee were rewarded with the equivalent of roughly $1,500—more than a professor’s monthly salary.

Another feature of the party system has remained constant: the importance of personal connections. When it comes to one’s rise within the party hierarchy, individual relationships, including one’s family reputation and Communist pedigree, matter as much as competence and ideology.

The CCP is more of a mafia organization than a political party.
That was certainly the case with Xi’s career. Contrary to Chinese propaganda and the assessment of many Western analysts that he rose through his talent, the opposite is true. Xi benefited immensely from the connections of his father, Xi Zhongxun, a CCP leader with impeccable revolutionary credentials who served briefly as propaganda minister under Mao. When Xi Jinping was a county party chief in the northern province of Hebei in the early 1980s, his mother wrote a note to the province’s party chief asking him to take an interest in Xi’s advancement. But that official, Gao Yang, ended up disclosing the note’s content at a meeting of the province’s Politburo Standing Committee. The revelation was a great embarrassment to the family since it violated the CCP’s new campaign against seeking favors. (Xi would never forget the incident: in 2009, when Gao died, he pointedly declined to attend his funeral, a breach of custom given that both had served as president of the Central Party School.) Such a scandal would have ruined the average rising cadre’s career, but Xi’s connections came to the rescue: the father of Fujian’s party chief had been a close confidant of Xi’s father, and the families arranged a rare reassignment to that province.

Xi would continue to fail upward. In 1988, after losing his bid for deputy mayor in a local election, he was promoted to district party chief. Once there, however, Xi languished on account of his middling performance. In the CCP, moving from the district level to the provincial level is a major hurdle, and for years, he could not overcome it. But once again, family connections intervened. In 1992, after Xi’s mother wrote a plea to the new party leader in Fujian, Jia Qinglin, Xi was transferred to the provincial capital. At that point, his career took off.

As all lower-level cadres know, to climb the CCP ladder, one must find a higher-level boss. In Xi’s case, this proved easy enough, since many party leaders held his father in high esteem. His first and most important mentor was Geng Biao, a top diplomatic and military official who had once worked for Xi’s father. In 1979, he took on the younger Xi as a secretary. The need for such patrons early on has knock-on effects decades down the line. High-level officials each have their own “lineages,” as insiders call these groups of protégés, which amount to de facto factions within the CCP. Indeed, disputes that are framed as ideological and policy debates within the CCP are often something much less sophisticated: power struggles among various lineages. Such a system can also lead to tangled webs of personal loyalty. If one’s mentor falls out of favor, the effect is the professional equivalent of being orphaned.

Outsiders may find it helpful to think of the CCP as more of a mafia organization than a political party. The head of the party is the don, and below him sit the underbosses, or the Standing Committee. These men traditionally parcel out power, with each responsible for certain areas—foreign policy, the economy, personnel, anticorruption, and so on. They are also supposed to serve as the big boss’s consiglieres, advising him on their areas of responsibility. Outside the Standing Committee are the other 18 members of the Politburo, who are next in the line of succession for the Standing Committee. They can be thought of as the mafia’s capos, carrying out Xi’s orders to eliminate perceived threats in the hope of staying in the good graces of the don. As a perk of their position, they are allowed to enrich themselves as they see fit, seizing property and businesses without penalty. And like the mafia, the party uses blunt tools to get what it wants: bribery, extortion, even violence.

Although the power of personal connections and the flexibility of formal rules have remained constant since Communist China’s founding, one thing has shifted over time: the degree to which power is concentrated in a single man. From the mid-1960s onward, Mao had absolute control and the final say on all matters, even if he exercised his power episodically and was officially merely first among equals. But when Deng Xiaoping became China’s de facto leader in 1978, he chipped away at Mao’s one-man, lifelong dictatorship.

Deng restricted China’s presidency to two five-year terms and established a form of collective leadership, allowing other officials—first Hu Yaobang and then Zhao Ziyang—to serve as head of the party, even if he remained the power behind the throne. In 1987, the CCP decided to reform the process for selecting members of the Central Committee, the party’s nominal overseer and the body from which Politburo members are chosen. For the first time, the party proposed more candidates than there were seats—hardly a democratic election, but a step in the right direction. Even the endorsement of Deng could not guarantee success: for example, Deng Liqun, a Maoist ideologue whom Deng Xiaoping had promised to promote to the Politburo, failed to earn enough votes and was forced to retire from political life. (It is worth noting that when the Central Committee held an election in 1997, Xi barely squeaked by. He had the fewest votes of all those selected to join, reflecting a general distaste within the party for “princelings,” descendants of top CCP leaders who rose thanks to nepotism rather than merit.)

Seeking to avoid a repeat of the disastrous Cultural Revolution, when Maoist propaganda reached its apogee, Deng also sought to prevent any leader from forming a cult of personality. As early as 1978, a student from the Central Party School who was a close family friend noticed on a school trip to a pig farm in the Beijing suburbs that items that Hua Guofeng had used on an inspection visit—a hot water bottle, a teacup—were displayed in a glass cabinet, as if it were a religious shrine. My friend wrote to Hua criticizing the personal worship, and Hua had the display removed. In 1982, China’s leaders went so far as to write into the party constitution a ban on cults of personality, which they viewed as uniquely dangerous.

Family reputation and pedigree matter as much as competence and ideology to the Communist Party.
Deng was willing to go only so far in sharing power, and he forced out Hu and Zhao successively when each proved too politically liberal. But Deng’s successor, Jiang Zemin, deepened the political reforms. Jiang institutionalized his group of advisers to operate more as an executive office. He sought advice from all members of the Standing Committee, which now made decisions by majority vote, and he circulated draft speeches widely. Jiang also made the elections to the Central Committee slightly more competitive by increasing the ratio of candidates to seats. Even princelings, including one of Deng’s sons, lost their elections.

When Hu Jintao took over from Jiang in 2002, China moved even further toward collective leadership. Hu ruled with the consent of the nine members of the Standing Committee, a clique known as the “nine dragons controlling the water.” There were downsides to this egalitarian approach. A single member of the Standing Committee could veto any decision, driving the perception of Hu as a weak leader unable to overcome gridlock. For nearly a decade, the economic reforms that began under Deng stalled. But there were upsides, too, since the need for consensus prevented careless decisions. When SARS broke out in China during his first year in office, for instance, Hu acted prudently, firing China’s health minister for covering up the extent of the outbreak, and encouraging cadres to report infections truthfully.

Hu also sought to expand the use of term limits. Although he ran into resistance when he tried to institute term limits for members of the Politburo and its Standing Committee, he did manage to introduce them at the level of provincial ministers and below. More successfully, Hu established an unprecedented process by which the composition of the Politburo was first selected by a vote of senior party members.

Ironically, it was through this quasi-democratic system that Xi rose to the heights of power. In 2007, at an expanded meeting of the Central Committee, the CCP’s top 400 or so leaders gathered in Beijing to cast votes recommending which ministerial-level officials from a list of 200 should join the 25-member Politburo. Xi received the most. The deciding factor, I suspect, was not his record as party chief of Zhejiang or Shanghai but the respect voters held for his father, along with the endorsement of (and pressure from) some key party elders. In a similar advisory election five years later, Xi got the most votes and, by the consensus of the outgoing leaders, ascended to the top of the pyramid. He swiftly got to work undoing decades of progress on collective leadership.

PARTY OF ONE?

When Xi took the reins, many in the West hailed him as a Chinese Mikhail Gorbachev. Some imagined that, like the Soviet Union’s final leader, Xi would embrace radical reforms, releasing the state’s grip on the economy and democratizing the political system. That, of course, turned out to be a fantasy. Instead, Xi, a devoted student of Mao and just as eager to leave his mark on history, has worked to establish his absolute power. And because previous reforms failed to place real checks and balances on the party leader, he has succeeded. Now, as under Mao, China is a one-man show.

One part of Xi’s plot to consolidate power was to solve what he characterized as an ideological crisis. The Internet, he said, was an existential threat to the CCP, having caused the party to lose control of people’s minds. So Xi cracked down on bloggers and online activists, censored dissent, and strengthened China’s “great firewall” to restrict access to foreign websites. The effect was to strangle a nascent civil society and eliminate public opinion as a check on Xi.

Another step he took was to launch an anti­corruption campaign, framing it as a mission to save the party from self-destruction. Since corruption was endemic in China, with nearly every official a potential target, Xi was able to use the campaign as a political purge. Official data show that from December 2012 to June 2021, the CCP investigated 393 leading cadres above the provincial ministerial level, officials who are often being groomed for top positions, as well as 631,000 section-level cadres, foot soldiers who implement the CCP’s policies at the grassroots level. The purge has ensnared some of the most powerful officials whom Xi deemed threatening, including Zhou Yongkang, a former Standing Committee member and the head of China’s security apparatus, and Sun Zhengcai, a Politburo member whom many saw as a rival and potential successor to Xi.

Tellingly, those who helped Xi rise have been left untouched. Jia Qinglin, Fujian’s party chief in the 1990s and eventually a member of the Standing Committee, was instrumental in helping Xi climb the ranks of power. Although there is reason to believe that he and his family are exceedingly corrupt—the Panama Papers, the trove of leaked documents from a law firm, revealed that his granddaughter and son-in-law own several secret offshore companies—they have not been caught up in Xi’s anticorruption campaign.

Xi’s tactics are not subtle. As I learned from one party insider whom I cannot name for fear of getting him in trouble, around 2014, Xi’s men went to a high-ranking official who had openly criticized Xi and threatened him with a corruption investigation if he didn’t stop. (He shut up.) In pursuing their targets, Xi’s subordinates often pressure officials’ family members and assistants. Wang Min, the party chief of Liaoning Province, whom I knew well from our days as students at the Central Party School, was arrested in 2016 on the basis of statements from his chauffeur, who said that while in the car, Wang had complained to a fellow passenger about being passed over for promotion. Wang was sentenced to life in prison, with one of the charges being resistance to Xi’s leadership.

After ejecting his rivals from key positions, Xi installed his own people. Xi’s lineage within the party is known as the “New Zhijiang Army.” The group consists of his former subordinates during his time as governor of Fujian and Zhejiang Provinces and even university classmates and old friends going back to middle school. Since assuming power, Xi has quickly promoted his acolytes, often beyond their level of competence. His roommate from his days at Tsinghua University, Chen Xi, was named head of the CCP’s Organization Department, a position that comes with a seat on the Politburo and the power to decide who can move up the hierarchy. Yet Chen has no relevant qualifications: his five immediate predecessors had experience with local party affairs, whereas he spent nearly all his career at Tsinghua University.

Xi and his deputies have demanded a degree of loyalty not seen since Mao.

Xi undid another major reform: “the separation of party and state,” an effort to reduce the degree to which ideologically driven party cadres interfered with technical and managerial decisions in government agencies. In an attempt to professionalize the bureaucracy, Deng and his successors tried, with varying degrees of success, to insulate the administration from CCP interference. Xi has backtracked, introducing some 40 ad hoc party commissions that end up directing governmental agencies. Unlike his predecessors, for example, he has his own team to handle issues regarding the South China Sea, bypassing the Foreign Ministry and the State Oceanic Administration.

The effect of these commissions has been to take significant power away from the head of China’s government, Premier Li Keqiang, and turn what was once a position of co-captain into a sidekick. The change can be seen in the way Li comports himself in public appearances. Whereas Li’s two immediate predecessors, Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao, stood side by side with Jiang and Hu, respectively, Li knows to keep his distance from Xi, as if to emphasize the power differential. Moreover, in the past, official communications and state media referred to the “Jiang-Zhu system” and the “Hu-Wen system,” but almost no one today speaks of a “Xi-Li system.” There has long been a push and pull between the party and the government in China—what insiders call the struggle between the “South Courtyard” and the “North Courtyard” of Zhongnanhai, the imperial compound that hosts the headquarters of both institutions. But by insisting that everyone look up to him as the highest authority, Xi has exacerbated tensions.

Xi has also changed the dynamic within the Standing Committee. For the first time in CCP history, all Politburo members, even those on the Standing Committee, must report directly to the head of the party by submitting periodic reports to Xi, who personally reviews their performance. Gone is the camaraderie and near equality among Standing Committee members that once prevailed. As one former official in Beijing told me, one of the committee’s seven members—Wang Qi­shan, China’s vice president and a longtime ally of Xi—has grumbled to friends that the dynamic between Xi and the lesser members is that of an emperor and his ministers.

Xi is positioning himself not as merely a great party leader but as a modern-day emperor.
The most brazen change Xi has ushered in is to remove China’s presidential term limit. Like every paramount leader from Jiang onward, Xi holds three positions concurrently: president of China, leader of the party, and head of the military. Although the limit of two five-year terms applied only to the first of those three positions, beginning with Hu, there was an understanding that it must also apply to the other two to make it possible for the same person to hold all three posts.

But in 2018, at Xi’s behest, China’s legislature amended the constitution to do away with the presidential term limit. The justification was laughable. The professed goal was to make the presidency consistent with the party and military positions, even though the obvious reform would have been the reverse: to add term limits to those positions.

Then there is the cult of personality. Even though the ban on such cults remains in the party constitution, Xi and his deputies have demanded a degree of loyalty and admiration for the leader not seen since Mao. Ever since 2016, when Xi was declared the party’s “core leader” (a term never given to his predecessor, Hu), Xi has positioned himself in front of members of the Standing Committee in official portraits. His own portraits are hung everywhere, Mao style, in government offices, schools, religious sites, and homes. According to Radio France Internationale, Xi’s subordinates have proposed renaming Tsinghua University, his alma mater and China’s top school, Xi Jinping University. They have even argued for hanging his picture alongside Mao’s in Tiananmen Square. Although neither idea went anywhere, Xi did manage to get Xi Jinping Thought enshrined in the party’s constitution in 2017—joining Mao as the only other leader whose own ideology was added to the document while in office—and in the state constitution the next year. In one lengthy article published in Xinhua, the state media organ, in 2017, a propagandist crowned Xi with seven new North Korean–style titles that would have made his post-Mao predecessors blush: “groundbreaking leader,” “diligent worker for the people’s happiness,” “chief architect of modernization in the new era,” and so on.

Within the party, Xi’s lineage is carrying out a fierce campaign insisting that he be allowed to stay in power to finish what he started: namely, “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” As their efforts intensify, their message is being simplified. In April, party officials in Guangxi proposed a new slogan: “Always support the leader, defend the leader, and follow the leader.” In an echo of Mao’s “little red book,” they also issued a pocket-size collection of Xi quotations and invited citizens to memorize its contents. Xi seems to be positioning himself not as merely a great party leader but as a modern-day emperor.

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

The more a political system centers on a single leader, the more the flaws and peculiarities of that leader matter. And in the case of Xi, the leader is thin-skinned, stubborn, and dictatorial.

These qualities were in evidence even before he took office. In 2008, Xi became president of the Central Party School, where I taught. At a faculty meeting the next year, the number two official at the school conveyed Xi’s threat to teachers that he would “never allow them to eat from the party’s rice bowl while attempting to smash the party’s cooking pot”—meaning taking government pay while discreetly criticizing the system. Angry about Xi’s absurd notion that it was the party, not Chinese taxpayers, that bankrolled the state, I talked back from my seat. “Whose rice bowl does the Communist Party eat from?” I asked out loud. “The Communist Party eats from the people’s rice bowl but smashes their cooking pot every day.” No one reported me; my fellow professors agreed with me.

Xi acts as “chairman of everything.”

Once in office, Xi proved unwilling to brook criticism. Xi uses Standing Committee and Politburo meetings not as an opportunity to hash out policies but as a chance to deliver hours-long monologues. According to official data, between November 2012 and February 2022, he called for 80 “collective study sessions,” in which he spoke at length on a given topic before the Politburo. He rejects any suggestions from subordinates that he thinks will make him look bad. According to an old friend of Wang Qishan, who as a Standing Committee member during Xi’s first term was part of the inner circle, Wang once proposed that Xi’s “eight-point regulation,” a list of requirements for party members, be made an official party rule. But even this rather sycophantic suggestion was considered an affront by Xi because he had not come up with it himself, and he rebuked Wang on the spot.

Xi is also a micromanager. He acts as “chairman of everything,” as many analysts have noted. In 2014, for example, he issued instructions on environmental protection 17 times—a remarkable degree of meddling, given all that is on his plate. Deng, Jiang, and Hu recognized that administering a country as vast as China requires taking local complexities into account. They emphasized that cadres at all levels should take instructions from the CCP’s Central Committee but adapt them to specific situations as needed. Such flexibility was crucial for economic development, since it gave local officials room to innovate. But Xi insists that his instructions be obeyed to the letter. I know of a county party chief who in 2014 tried to create an exception to the central government’s new rules on banquets because his county needed to host delegations of foreign investors. When Xi learned of the attempted innovation, he grew furious, accusing the official of “speaking ill of the CCP Central Committee’s policy”—a serious charge that, as a result of this incident, was subsequently codified in the party’s disciplinary regulations and is punishable by expulsion.

The CCP used to have a long tradition, dating back to Mao, in which cadres could write to the top leader with suggestions and even criticisms, but those who dared try this with Xi early in his tenure learned their lesson. Around 2017, Liu Yazhou, a general in the People’s Liberation Army and a son-in-law of a former president, wrote to Xi recommending that China reverse its policy in Xinjiang and cease rounding up members of the Uyghur minority. He was warned not to speak ill of Xi’s policies. Xi’s refusal to accept such counsel removes an important method of self-correction.

Why, unlike his predecessors, is Xi so resistant to others’ advice? Part of the reason, I suspect, is that he suffers from an inferiority complex, knowing that he is poorly educated in comparison with other top CCP leaders. Even though he studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua University, Xi attended as a “worker-peasant-soldier,” a category of students admitted in the 1970s on the basis of political reliability and class background, not their academic merits. Jiang and Hu, by contrast, earned their spots in university through highly competitive exams. In 2002, when Xi was a provincial cadre, he received a doctoral degree in Marxist theory, also at Tsinghua, but as the British journalist Michael Sheridan has documented, Xi’s dissertation was riddled with instances of suspected plagiarism. As I know from my time at the Central Party School, high-ranking officials routinely farm out their schoolwork to assistants while their professors turn a blind eye. Indeed, at the time he supposedly completed his dissertation, Xi held the busy job of governor of Fujian.

MR. WRONG

In any political system, unchecked power is dangerous. Detached from reality and freed from the constraint of consensus, a leader can act rashly, implementing policies that are unwise, unpopular, or both. Not surprisingly, then, Xi’s know-it-all style of rule has led to a number of disastrous decisions. The common theme is an inability to grasp the practical effect of his directives.

Consider foreign policy. Breaking with Deng’s dictum that China “hide its strength and bide its time,” Xi has decided to directly challenge the United States and pursue a China-centric world order. That is why he has engaged in risky and aggressive behavior abroad, militarizing the South China Sea, threatening Taiwan, and encouraging his diplomats to engage in an abrasive style of foreign policy known as “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy. Xi has formed a de facto alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, further alienating China from the international community. His Belt and Road Initiative has generated growing resistance as countries tire of the associated debt and corruption.

Xi’s economic policies are similarly counterproductive. The introduction of market reforms was one of the CCP’s signature achievements, allowing hundreds of millions of Chinese to escape poverty. But when Xi came to power, he came to see the private sector as a threat to his rule and revived the planned economy of the Maoist era. He strengthened state-owned enterprises and established party organizations in the private sector that direct the way businesses are run. Under the guise of fighting corruption and enforcing antitrust law, he has plundered assets from private companies and entrepreneurs. Over the past few years, some of China’s most dynamic companies, including the Anbang Insurance Group and the conglomerate HNA Group, have effectively been forced to hand over control of their businesses to the state. Others, such as the conglomerate Tencent and the e-commerce giant Alibaba, have been brought to heel through a combination of new regulations, investigations, and fines. In 2020, Sun Dawu, the billionaire owner of an agricultural conglomerate who had publicly criticized Xi for his crackdown on human rights lawyers, was arrested on false charges and soon sentenced to 18 years in prison. His business was sold to a hastily formed state company in a sham auction for a fraction of its true value.

Nowhere has Xi’s desire for control been more disastrous than in his reaction to COVID-19.

Predictably, China has seen its economic growth slow, and most analysts believe it will slow even more in the coming years. Although several factors are at play—including U.S. sanctions against Chinese tech companies, the war in Ukraine, and the COVID-19 pandemic—the fundamental problem is the CCP’s interference in the economy. The government constantly meddles in the private sector to achieve political goals, a proven poison for productivity. Many Chinese entrepreneurs live in fear that their businesses will be seized or that they themselves will be detained, hardly the kind of mindset inclined to innovation. In April, as China’s growth prospects worsened, Xi hosted a meeting of the Politburo to unveil his remedy for the country’s economic woes: a combination of tax rebates, fee reductions, infrastructure investment, and monetary easing. But since none of these proposals solve the underlying problem of excessive state intervention in the economy, they are doomed to fail.

Nowhere has Xi’s desire for control been more disastrous than in his reaction to COVID-19. When the disease first spread in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, Xi withheld information about it from the public in an attempt to preserve the image of a flourishing China. Local officials, meanwhile, were paralyzed. As Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, admitted the next month on state television, without approval from above, he had been unable to publicly disclose the outbreak. When eight brave health professionals blew the whistle about it, the government detained and silenced them. One of the eight later revealed that he had been forced to sign a false confession.


Xi’s tendency to micromanage also inhibited his response to the pandemic. Instead of leaving the details of policy to the government’s health team, Xi insisted that he himself coordinate China’s efforts. Later, Xi would boast that he “personally commanded, planned the response, oversaw the general situation, acted decisively, and pointed the way forward.” To the extent that this was true, it was not for the better. In fact, his interference led to confusion and inaction, with local health officials receiving mixed messages from Beijing and refusing to act. As I learned from a source on the State Council (China’s chief administrative authority), Premier Li Keqiang proposed activating an emergency-response protocol in early January 2020, but Xi refused to approve it for fear of spoiling the ongoing Chinese New Year celebrations.

When the Omicron variant of the virus surged in Shanghai in February 2022, Xi yet again chose a baffling way to respond. The details of the decision-making process were relayed to me by a contact who works at the State Council. In an online gathering of about 60 pandemic experts held shortly after the outbreak began, everyone agreed that if Shanghai simply followed the latest official guidelines, which relaxed the quarantine requirements, then life in the city could go on more or less as usual. Many of the city’s party and health officials were on board with this approach. But when Xi heard about it, he became furious. Refusing to listen to the experts, he insisted on enforcing his “zero COVID” policy. Shanghai’s tens of millions of residents were forbidden from going outside, even to get groceries or receive life-saving health care. Some died at the gates of hospitals; others leaped to their deaths from their apartment buildings.

Just like that, a modern, prosperous city was turned into the site of a humanitarian disaster, with people starving and babies separated from their parents. A leader more open to influence or subject to greater checks would not likely have implemented such a draconian policy, or at least would have corrected course once its costs and unpopularity became evident. But for Xi, backtracking would have been an unthinkable admission of error.

ACTION, REACTION

The CCP’s leadership has never been a monolith. As Mao once said, “There are parties outside our party, and there are factions within our party, and this has always been the case.” The main organizing principle of these factions is personal ties, but these groups tend to array themselves on a left-to-right continuum. Put differently, although Chinese politics are largely personalistic, there are real differences over the direction of national policy, and each lineage tends to associate itself with the ideas of its progenitor.

On the left are those who remain committed to orthodox Marxism. This faction dominated the party before the Deng era, and it advocates the continuation of class struggle and violent revolution. It includes subfactions named for Mao, Chen Yun (who was the second most powerful official under Deng), Bo Xilai (a former Politburo member who was sidelined and imprisoned before Xi took power), and Xi himself. At the grassroots level, the left also includes a small, politically powerless contingent of Marxist university students, as well as workers who were laid off as a result of Deng’s reforms.

The center consists mainly of Deng’s political descendants. Because most of today’s cadres were trained under him, this is the faction that dominates the CCP bureaucracy. Centrists support full-throated economic reforms and limited political reforms, all with the goal of ensuring the party’s permanent rule. Also in the center is a group descended from two retired top officials, Jiang and Zeng Qinghong (a former vice president), as well as a group called the Youth League Faction, consisting of supporters of former party leader Hu Jintao and the current premier Li.

Last are the subfactions on the right, which in the Chinese context means liberals who advocate a market economy and a softer form of authoritarianism (or even, in some cases, constitutional democracy). This camp, which I belong to, is the least powerful of the three. It includes followers of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, party leaders under Deng. It also arguably includes Wen Jiabao, who was China’s premier from 2003 to 2013 and still wields influence. When asked about his push for political reform in a 2010 interview, Wen responded, “I will not yield until the last day of my life.”

Within the CCP elite, many resent Xi’s disruption of the traditional power distribution.
Xi faces growing opposition from all three factions. The left, while initially supportive of his policies, now thinks he has not gone far enough in reviving Mao’s policies, with some having become disenchanted after he cracked down on the labor movement. The center resents Xi’s undoing of economic reforms. And the right has been completely silenced by Xi’s elimination of even the slightest political debate.

Glimpses of these divides can be seen in the Standing Committee. One member, Han Zheng, is widely perceived as a member of Jiang’s faction. Li in particular seems to diverge from Xi, and a row between the officials is breaking out into public view. Li has long quietly opposed Xi’s zero-COVID policy, stressing the need to reopen businesses and protect the economy. In May, after Li told 100,000 party cadres at an online conference that the economy was in worse shape than expected, Xi’s allies launched a counterattack. In Xinhua, they defended him by arguing, “China’s economic development prospects will definitely be brighter.” As a symbol of their resistance to Xi’s COVID policy, Li and his entourage refuse to wear masks. In April, during a speech in the city of Nanchang, Li’s aides could be seen asking attendees to remove their masks. So far, Li has taken Xi’s imperiousness sitting down, always acquiescing out of necessity. But he may soon reach a breaking point.

Indignation at the elite level is replicating itself further down the bureaucracy. Early in Xi’s tenure, as he began to shuffle power, many in the bureaucracy grew disgruntled and disillusioned. But their resistance was passive, expressed through inaction. Local cadres took sick leave en masse or came up with excuses to stall Xi’s anticorruption initiatives. At the end of 2021, the CCP’s disciplinary commission announced that in the first ten months of that year, it had found 247,000 cases of “ineffective implementation of Xi Jinping’s and the Central Committee’s important instructions.” During the Shanghai lockdown, however, resistance became more overt. On social media, local officials openly criticized the zero-COVID policy. In April, members of the residents’ committee of Sanlin Town, a neighborhood in Shanghai, collectively resigned, complaining in an open letter that they had been sealed in their offices for 24 days with no access to their families.

China’s leader is facing not only internal dissent but also an intense popular backlash.
Even more troubling for Xi, elite dissatisfaction is now spreading to the general public. In an authoritarian state, it is impossible to accurately measure public opinion, but Xi’s harsh COVID measures may well have lost him the affection of most Chinese. An early note of dissent came in February 2020, when the real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang called him a “clown” for bungling the response to the pandemic. (After a one-day trial, Ren was sentenced to 18 years in prison.) Chinese social media platforms are awash in videos in which ordinary people beg Xi to end his zero-COVID policy. In May, a group calling itself the “Shanghai Self-Saving Autonomous Committee” released a manifesto online titled, “Don’t be a slave—save yourself.” The document called on the city’s residents to fight the lockdown and form self-governing bodies to help one another. On social media, some Chinese have sarcastically proposed that the most effective plan for fighting the pandemic would be to convene the 20th National Congress as soon as possible to prevent Xi from staying in power.

Meanwhile, despite Xi’s claims of having vanquished poverty, most Chinese continue to struggle to make ends meet. As Li revealed in 2020, 600 million people in China—some 40 percent of its population—barely earned $140 a month. According to data obtained by the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, some 4.4 million small businesses closed between January and November 2021, more than three times the number of newly registered companies in the same period. Facing a financial crisis, local governments have been forced to slash government salaries—sometimes by as much as 50 percent, including pay for teachers. They will likely resort to finding new ways of plundering wealth from the private sector and ordinary citizens, in turn generating even more economic misery. After four decades of opening up, most Chinese don’t want to go back to the days of Mao. Within the CCP elite, many resent Xi’s disruption of the traditional power distribution and think his reckless policies are jeopardizing the future of the party. The result is that for the first time since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, China’s leader is facing not only internal dissent but also an intense popular backlash and a real risk of social unrest.

FIVE MORE YEARS?

Harboring resentment is one thing, but acting on it is another. Members of the party’s upper echelons know that they can always be charged with corruption, so they have little incentive to maneuver against Xi. High-tech surveillance is presumed to be so pervasive that party elites, including retired national leaders, do not dare communicate with one another outside official events, even about mundane matters. The public, for its part, stays silent, held back by censorship, surveillance, and the fear of arrest. That is why opponents of Xi are focused on the one legal avenue for removing him: denying him a third presidential term at the upcoming National Congress.

Perhaps sensing the growing disappointment, Xi has done everything he can to tilt the playing field in his favor. The most important constituency, of course, is his fellow Standing Committee members, who ultimately have the greatest say over whether he stays in office, in part because of their control over members of China’s legislature. Xi has likely done what he can to ensure the support of Standing Committee members, from promising that they will stay in power to pledging not to investigate their families.

Nearly as important is the military, since denying Xi a third term would likely require the support of the generals. Propagandists routinely remind Chinese that “the party commands the gun,” but China’s leaders realize that in truth the gun is always pointed at the party’s head. Although Xi has steadily replaced China’s generals with his own men over the years, military officials’ rhetoric still wavers between emphasizing personal loyalty to Xi and institutional loyalty to the Central Military Commission, the body, headed by Xi, that oversees them.

In one potential sign of lingering opposition within the ranks, I learned last December from several of my contacts in China that Liu, the military official whom Xi had rebuked for criticizing policy on the Uyghurs—had disappeared along with his younger brother, also a general. Both brothers’ houses were raided. The news sent shock waves through the military, since as the son-in-law of a former president, Liu would normally have been considered untouchable. But by detaining him and his brother, Xi had issued his strongest warning yet to princelings and the top brass of the People’s Liberation Army that they should get in line.


Xi has also ramped up his ostensible anticorruption drive. In the first half of 2022, the government has punished 21 cadres at or above the provincial ministerial level and 1,237 cadres at the district and departmental level. There has been a distinct focus on the security and intelligence agencies. In January, Chinese state television aired a confession by Sun Lijun, once a high-ranking security official, who had been charged with corruption and now faces the prospect of execution. His sin, according to the party’s top disciplinary body, was that he had “formed a cabal to take control over several key departments,” “harbored hugely inflated political ambitions,” and had “evil political qualities.” In March, Fu Zhenghua, who as deputy minister of public security had been Sun’s boss, was also charged with corruption, removed from office, and expelled from the CCP. The message was clear: obey or risk downfall.

Adding extra layers of insurance to his quest for a third term, Xi has issued a veiled threat to retired party cadres. Party elders have long wielded enormous clout in Chinese politics; it was retired elites who forced out Zhao in 1989, for example. In January, Xi took direct aim at this group, announcing that the government would “clean up systemic corruption and eliminate hidden risks” by retroactively investigating the past 20 years of cadres’ lives. And in May, the party tightened the guidelines for retired cadres, warning them “not to discuss the general policies of the party Central Committee in an open manner, not to spread politically negative remarks, not to participate in the activities of illegal social organizations, and not to use their former authority or position influence to seek benefits for themselves and others, and to resolutely oppose and resist all kinds of wrong thinking.”

Xi has also sought to guarantee the backing of the 2,300 CCP delegates invited to attend the National Congress, two-thirds of whom are high-level officials from across the country and one-third of whom are ordinary members who work at the grassroots level. The delegates have been carefully screened for their loyalty to Xi. And to prevent any surprises at the congress, a ban on “nonorganizational activities” forbids them from mingling outside of formal small-group meetings of their provincial delegations, limiting their ability to or­­ganize against a particular policy or leader.

In the months leading up to the congress, the CCP’s stealth infighting will probably intensify. Xi could order more arrests and more trials of high-ranking officials, and his critics could leak more information and spread more rumors. Contrary to the conventional wisdom among Western analysts, he may not have locked up a third term. Xi’s proliferating opponents could succeed in ushering him out of office, provided they either convince enough Standing Committee members that he has lost the support of the CCP’s rank and file or persuade party elders to intervene. And there is always a chance that an economic crisis or widespread social unrest could turn even stalwart allies against him. Despite all this, the most likely outcome this fall is that Xi, having so rigged the process and intimidated his rivals, will get his third presidential term and, with it, the right to continue as head of the party and the military for another term. And just like that, the only meaningful political reform made since Deng’s rule will go up in smoke.

XI UNBOUND

What then? Xi will no doubt see his victory as a mandate to do whatever he wants to achieve the party’s stated goal of rejuvenating China. His ambitions will rise to new heights. In a futile attempt to invigorate the economy without empowering the private sector, Xi will double down on his statist economic policies. To maintain his grip on power, he will continue to preemptively eliminate any potential rivals and tighten social control, making China look increasingly like North Korea. Xi might even try to stay in power well beyond a third term. An emboldened Xi may well accelerate his militarization of disputed areas of the South China Sea and try to forcibly take over Taiwan. As he continues China’s quest for dominance, he will further its isolation from the rest of the world.

But none of these moves would make discontent within the party magically disappear. The feat of gaining a third term would not mollify those within the CCP who resent his accumulation of power and reject his cult of personality, nor would it solve his growing legitimacy problem among the people. In fact, the moves he would likely make in a third term would raise the odds of war, social unrest, and economic crisis, exacerbating existing grievances. Even in China, it takes more than sheer force and intimidation to stay in power; performance still matters. Mao and Deng earned their authority through accomplishments—Mao by liberating China from the Nationalists, and Deng by opening it up and unleashing an economic boom. But Xi can point to no such concrete triumphs. He has less margin for error.

The only viable way of changing course, so far as I can see, is also the scariest and deadliest: a humiliating defeat in a war. If Xi were to attack Taiwan, his likeliest target, there is a good chance that the war would not go as planned, and Taiwan, with American help, would be able to resist invasion and inflict grave damage on mainland China. In that event, the elites and the masses would abandon Xi, paving the way for not only his personal downfall but perhaps even the collapse of the CCP as we know it. For precedent, one would have to go back to the nineteenth century, when Emperor Qianlong failed in his quest to expand China’s realm to Central Asia, Burma, and Vietnam. Predictably, China suffered a mortifying loss in the First Sino-Japanese War, setting the stage for the downfall of the Qing dynasty and kicking off a long period of political upheaval. Emperors are not always forever
Title: 5 Russian officials arrested for proposing charging Putin with Treason
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 10, 2022, 07:47:43 AM
https://www.foxnews.com/world/five-russian-officials-arrested-proposing-remove-putin-power-charge-him-treason?fbclid=IwAR2ymYRCjGqmV8BxxM31p1WIWPHxsdT12kGl1CFOdITBO2HeWgafa6wWtEk
Title: Re: 5 Russian officials arrested for proposing charging Putin with Treason
Post by: G M on September 10, 2022, 07:53:28 AM
Imagine living in a country where you could be arrested for your political beliefs!


https://www.foxnews.com/world/five-russian-officials-arrested-proposing-remove-putin-power-charge-him-treason?fbclid=IwAR2ymYRCjGqmV8BxxM31p1WIWPHxsdT12kGl1CFOdITBO2HeWgafa6wWtEk
Title: Putin's "long game" may be getting a lot shorter , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2022, 01:53:12 PM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11212515/Putins-limousine-hit-loud-bang-possible-attack.html
Title: It would appear that the long knives are out
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2022, 06:11:20 PM
second

and, if true, this takes away Putin's justification for invading , , ,

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-began-putin-rejected-ukraine-peace-deal-recommended-by-his-aide-2022-09-14/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-briefing&utm_term=09-14-2022
Title: Re: It would appear that the long knives are out
Post by: G M on September 14, 2022, 06:21:38 PM
 :roll:

second

and, if true, this takes away Putin's justification for invading , , ,

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-began-putin-rejected-ukraine-peace-deal-recommended-by-his-aide-2022-09-14/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-briefing&utm_term=09-14-2022
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 15, 2022, 06:26:59 AM
Why the eye roll?
Title: Re: It would appear that the long knives are out
Post by: DougMacG on September 15, 2022, 08:22:22 AM
quote author=Crafty_Dog
"if true, this takes away Putin's justification for invading , , ,"

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/exclusive-war-began-putin-rejected-ukraine-peace-deal-recommended-by-his-aide-2022-09-14/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily-briefing&utm_term=09-14-2022
---------------------------------

Interesting post. [If true] it takes away his justification but not his reason for invading which I assume was to take territory, infrastructure, resources and ports from his weaker neighbor by force.  Also to send a message of compliance and surrender to his other 'backyard' neighbors.
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 15, 2022, 08:27:44 AM
Exactly.
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: G M on September 15, 2022, 10:05:16 AM
Why the eye roll?

Obvious Operation Mockingbird propaganda.

Title: Gorbachev, the KGB, and Putin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 15, 2022, 07:36:56 PM
https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/in-protecting-the-kgb-gorbachev-laid-the-foundation-for-putins-gangster-state/?fbclid=IwAR3OIPs9TCk2501OMq9dLyvpxaWVmqZHRT0oeiLrE1aT8ZUrfRbYePMuS_s
Title: Re: Gorbachev, the KGB, and Putin
Post by: G M on September 15, 2022, 08:52:54 PM
https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/in-protecting-the-kgb-gorbachev-laid-the-foundation-for-putins-gangster-state/?fbclid=IwAR3OIPs9TCk2501OMq9dLyvpxaWVmqZHRT0oeiLrE1aT8ZUrfRbYePMuS_s

There might be a lesson here about tearing a secret police agency out by the roots.
Title: Another Russian businessman dies under mysterious circs
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2022, 04:46:19 PM
https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-businessmen-keep-dying-mysterious-circumstances-putin-invaded-ukraine-report?fbclid=IwAR2Samzu0camYELvY1GWLwv8LR0amfVbaQPkXMu--ajKAveNo_w3ba2CJl8
Title: Be aware of what happened at the SCO
Post by: G M on September 19, 2022, 08:49:03 AM
https://sonar21.com/will-the-united-states-and-nato-wake-up-to-what-happened-at-the-meeting-of-the-shanghai-cooperation-organization/

Title: Is Putin's leadership in play?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 21, 2022, 04:56:58 PM
https://nypost.com/2022/09/21/protests-rock-russia-amid-nuclear-threats-mobilization-order/?fbclid=IwAR18Q1B6QTk6cRCbPB4FXOGcZ0CY5skNiN1-lpfyNLoUloPQxlzz9Lk93To
Title: ET: Rumors around Xi's absence
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2022, 11:56:53 AM
Xi’s Absence From Public Eye Ahead of Third Term Bid Sets Rumors Flying
By Eva Fu September 24, 2022 Updated: September 25, 2022biggersmaller Print
Just over a week ago, Chinese leader Xi Jinping embarked on a three-day trip to Central Asia to mark his sphere of influence. He has since been out of the public eye, skipping a high-level military meeting and the annual United Nations assembly.

With China only weeks away from the 20th National Congress, where Xi is set to pursue an unprecedented third term, his absence has been long enough to attract attention from keen political watchers, with some even speculating that he has been placed under house arrest.

By Sept. 24, Xi Jinping had become one of the top trending topics on Twitter. His name appeared on hashtags more than 42,000 times and the term “China coup” circulated 9,300 rounds on the platform.

“New rumour to be checked out: Is Xi jingping [sic] under house arrest in Beijing?” wrote Subramanian Swamy, a former Indian cabinet minister and parliamentary member until April.

Such speculation also came as Chinese nationals noted mass flight cancellations across the country. Nearly 10,000 flights—almost two-thirds of those scheduled for the day—were called off on Saturday, the same day a key conference on national defense and military reform was convened in Beijing. Weibo, China’s top social media platform, swiftly censored discussions around the flight cancellations, declaring them to be “rumors.”

Xi, who arrived back in China’s capital on Sept. 16 after meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at a regional summit in Central Asia, didn’t appear at the Beijing meeting but relayed instructions that the armed forces should focus on preparing for war. Similarly missing was Wei Fenghe, his handpicked Chinese military general currently serving as the country’s national defense minister.

Epoch Times Photo
China’s Defence Minister Wei Fenghe (front L) attends the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 12, 2022. (Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images)
His public activities since then have chiefly consisted of a greeting letter to mark the Chinese Farmers’ Harvest Festival on Sept. 22 and another on the following day to the Chinese state media China News Service, congratulating the outlet on its 70th year anniversary.

No major Chinese outlets nor officials have come out to refute the rumors floating around, but the reach of the theory, however unsubstantiated, reflects a certain degree of anger inside the country, some analysts said.

“It’s a show of discontent,” Wang He, a U.S.-based commentator on China’s current affairs, told The Epoch Times. “It seems that people are counting to the day for him to fall from power.”

Although Xi has all but secured his third term, many people have not reconciled with his continued stay in power, he added.

China analyst Gordon Chang deemed a coup unlikely, pointing to the lack of supporting evidence on the ground.

“I don’t think there was a coup,” he told The Epoch Times. “Because if there were a coup, we would see, for instance, a lot of military vehicles in the center of Beijing. There have been no reports of that. Also, there probably would be a declaration of martial law that has not occurred.”

“So it seems that something is happening, but we don’t know exactly what,” he said, adding that the only thing that can dispel some of the speculations is if Xi comes out to speak in public.

Zhang Tianliang, a writer and author of the Chinese language book “China’s Path to Peaceful Transition,” similarly dismissed the house arrest theory as not conforming to common sense.

During the past week, six senior Chinese officials, including two former cabinet-level officials, were handed heavy sentences for corruption-related offenses, adding to a string of officials purged in Xi’s anti-graft campaign he launched after taking office in late 2012.

How would Xi have the capacity to punish them if he has lost his grip on power, Zhang argued in his show on Sept. 22.

Whether or not Xi makes a public appearance, though, holds little significance, Wang said, noting that such an extended absence from public attention hasn’t been unique for Xi.

To Wang, Xi’s overseas trip ahead of the Party congress was a projection of confidence.

“Without absolute assurance, this man will not take risks easily,” he said of Xi.
Title: The corrupt Uke Oligarch we are told to love
Post by: G M on September 26, 2022, 07:58:16 AM
https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/116/446/289/original/4ba410defd5d220e.png

(https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/116/446/289/original/4ba410defd5d220e.png)

https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-ukrainian-president-and-his-inner-circle
Title: Re: The corrupt Uke Oligarch we are told to love
Post by: G M on September 27, 2022, 10:43:40 AM
https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/116/446/289/original/4ba410defd5d220e.png

(https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/116/446/289/original/4ba410defd5d220e.png)

https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-ukrainian-president-and-his-inner-circle

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/15/zelensky-bodyguards-hitler-patch/
Title: Putin,Oligarchs, Freezing Order, Bill Browder book
Post by: DougMacG on September 27, 2022, 11:18:01 AM
Just read this book.  Detailed account that goes from investigating fraud in Russia, to murders, to passing the Magnitski Act to freeze international assets of these thugs, to freezing 20 million here and there, to discovering a perhaps a trillion Putin stole from the Russian people held in the names of others such as the world's richest cello player, no not Yo yo ma, Putin's best childhood friend, to all the arrests and murders needed to cover it all up.  True story and it's not over.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Freezing-Order/Bill-Browder/9781982153281
Title: Russian insider on Putin's prospects
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 07, 2022, 12:37:51 PM
https://www.foxnews.com/world/putin-turns-70-former-insider-hitler-didnt-use-chemical-weapons-because-he-ran-time?fbclid=IwAR1sQzB-hto2BJ_ZOvqHmiNg-l66-oyowewDvr7Ahs9ryZJzj3HLZ0-GJr0
Title: FA: The Sources of Russian Misconduct
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2022, 03:47:44 PM
The Sources of Russian Misconduct
A Diplomat Defects From the Kremlin
By Boris Bondarev
November/December 2022
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/sources-russia-misconduct-boris-bondarev

For three years, my workdays began the same way. At 7:30 a.m., I woke up, checked the news, and drove to work at the Russian mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva. The routine was easy and predictable, two of the hallmarks of life as a Russian diplomat.


February 24 was different. When I checked my phone, I saw startling and mortifying news: the Russian air force was bombing Ukraine. Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Odessa were under attack. Russian troops were surging out of Crimea and toward the southern city of Kherson. Russian missiles had reduced buildings to rubble and sent residents fleeing. I watched videos of the blasts, complete with air-raid sirens, and saw people run around in panic.


As someone born in the Soviet Union, I found the attack almost unimaginable, even though I had heard Western news reports that an invasion might be imminent. Ukrainians were supposed to be our close friends, and we had much in common, including a history of fighting Germany as part of the same country. I thought about the lyrics of a famous patriotic song from World War II, one that many residents of the former Soviet Union know well: “On June 22, exactly at 4:00 a.m., Kyiv was bombed, and we were told that the war had started.” Russian President Vladimir Putin described the invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation” intended to “de-Nazify” Russia’s neighbor. But in Ukraine, it was Russia that had taken the Nazis’ place.

“That is the beginning of the end,” I told my wife. We decided I had to quit.

Resigning meant throwing away a twenty-year career as a Russian diplomat and, with it, many of my friendships. But the decision was a long time coming. When I joined the ministry in 2002, it was during a period of relative openness, when we diplomats could work cordially with our counterparts from other countries. Still, it was apparent from my earliest days that Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was deeply flawed. Even then, it discouraged critical thinking, and over the course of my tenure, it became increasingly belligerent. I stayed on anyway, managing the cognitive dissonance by hoping that I could use whatever power I had to moderate my country’s international behavior. But certain events can make a person accept things they didn’t dare to before.

The invasion of Ukraine made it impossible to deny just how brutal and repressive Russia had become. It was an unspeakable act of cruelty, designed to subjugate a neighbor and erase its ethnic identity. It gave Moscow an excuse to crush any domestic opposition. Now, the government is sending thousands upon thousands of drafted men to go kill Ukrainians. The war shows that Russia is no longer just dictatorial and aggressive; it has become a fascist state.

But for me, one of the invasion’s central lessons had to do with something I had witnessed over the preceding two decades: what happens when a government is slowly warped by its own propaganda. For years, Russian diplomats were made to confront Washington and defend the country’s meddling abroad with lies and non sequiturs. We were taught to embrace bombastic rhetoric and to uncritically parrot to other states what the Kremlin said to us. But eventually, the target audience for this propaganda was not just foreign countries; it was our own leadership. In cables and statements, we were made to tell the Kremlin that we had sold the world on Russian greatness and demolished the West’s arguments. We had to withhold any criticism about the president’s dangerous plans. This performance took place even at the ministry’s highest levels. My colleagues in the Kremlin repeatedly told me that Putin likes his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, because he is “comfortable” to work with, always saying yes to the president and telling him what he wants to hear. Small wonder, then, that Putin thought he would have no trouble defeating Kyiv.


The war shows that decisions made in echo chambers can backfire.

The war is a stark demonstration of how decisions made in echo chambers can backfire. Putin has failed in his bid to conquer Ukraine, an initiative that he might have understood would be impossible if his government had been designed to give honest assessments. For those of us who worked on military issues, it was plain that the Russian armed forces were not as mighty as the West feared—in part thanks to economic restrictions the West implemented after Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea that were more effective than policymakers seemed to realize.

The Kremlin’s invasion has strengthened NATO, an entity it was designed to humiliate, and resulted in sanctions strong enough to make Russia’s economy contract. But fascist regimes legitimize themselves more by exercising power than by delivering economic gains, and Putin is so aggressive and detached from reality that a recession is unlikely to stop him. To justify his rule, Putin wants the great victory he promised and believes he can obtain. If he agrees to a cease-fire, it will only be to give Russian troops a rest before continuing to fight. And if he wins in Ukraine, Putin will likely move to attack another post-Soviet state, such as Moldova, where Moscow already props up a breakaway region.

There is, then, only one way to stop Russia’s dictator, and that is to do what U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin suggested in April: weaken the country “to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” This may seem like a tall order. But Russia’s military has been substantially weakened, and the country has lost many of its best soldiers. With broad support from NATO, Ukraine is capable of eventually beating Russia in the east and south, just as it has done in the north.

If defeated, Putin will face a perilous situation at home. He will have to explain to the elite and the masses why he betrayed their expectations. He will have to tell the families of dead soldiers why they perished for nothing. And thanks to the mounting pressure from sanctions, he will have to do all of this at a time when Russians are even worse off than they are today. He could fail at this task, face widespread backlash, and be shunted aside. He could look for scapegoats and be overthrown by the advisers and deputies he threatens to purge. Either way, should Putin go, Russia will have a chance to truly rebuild—and finally abandon its delusions of grandeur.

PIPE DREAMS
I was born in 1980 to parents in the middle strata of the Soviet intelligentsia. My father was an economist at the foreign trade ministry, and my mother taught English at the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations. She was the daughter of a general who commanded a rifle division during World War II and was recognized as a “Hero of the Soviet Union.”

We lived in a large Moscow apartment assigned by the state to my grandfather after the war, and we had opportunities that most Soviet residents did not. My father was appointed to a position at a joint Soviet-Swiss venture, which allowed us to live in Switzerland in 1984 and 1985. For my parents, this time was transformative. They experienced what it was like to reside in a wealthy country, with amenities—grocery carts, quality dental care—that the Soviet Union lacked.

As an economist, my father was already aware of the Soviet Union’s structural problems. But living in western Europe led him and my mother to question the system more deeply, and they were excited when Mikhail Gorbachev launched perestroika in 1985. So, it seemed, were most Soviet residents. One didn’t have to live in western Europe to realize that the Soviet Union’s shops offered a narrow range of low-quality products, such as shoes that were painful to wear. Soviet residents knew the government was lying when it claimed to be leading “progressive mankind.”


Russia’s bureaucracy discourages independent thought.

Many Soviet citizens believed that the West would help their country as it transitioned to a market economy. But such hopes proved naive. The West did not provide Russia with the amount of aid that many of its residents—and some prominent U.S. economists—thought necessary to address the country’s tremendous economic challenges. Instead, the West encouraged the Kremlin as it quickly lifted price controls and rapidly privatized state resources. A small group of people grew extremely rich from this process by snapping up public assets. But for most Russians, the so-called shock therapy led to impoverishment. Hyperinflation hit, and average life expectancy went down. The country did experience a period of democratization, but much of the public equated the new freedoms with destitution. As a result, the West’s status in Russia seriously suffered.

It took another major hit after NATO’s 1999 campaign against Serbia. To Russia, the bombings looked less like an operation to protect the country’s Albanian minority than like aggression by a large power against a tiny victim. I vividly remember walking by the U.S. embassy in Moscow the day after a mob attacked it and noticing marks left by paint that had been splattered against its walls.

As the child of middle-class parents—my father left the civil service in 1991 and started a successful small business—I experienced this decade of turbulence mostly secondhand. My teenage years were stable, and my future seemed fairly predictable. I became a student at the same university where my mother taught and set my sights on working in international affairs as my father had. I benefited from studying at a time when Russian discourse was open. Our professors encouraged us to read a variety of sources, including some that were previously banned. We held debates in class. In the summer of 2000, I excitedly walked into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an internship, ready to embark on a career I hoped would teach me about the world.


My experience proved disheartening. Rather than working with skilled elites in stylish suits—the stereotype of diplomats in Soviet films—I was led by a collection of tired, middle-aged bosses who idly performed unglamorous tasks, such as drafting talking points for higher-level officials. Most of the time, they didn’t appear to be working at all. They sat around smoking, reading newspapers, and talking about their weekend plans. My internship mostly consisted of getting their newspapers and buying them snacks.

I decided to join the ministry anyway. I was eager to earn my own money, and I still hoped to learn more about other places by traveling far from Moscow. When I was hired in 2002 to be an assistant attaché at the Russian embassy in Cambodia, I was happy. I would have a chance to use my Khmer language skills and studies of Southeast Asia.

Since Cambodia is on the periphery of Russia’s interests, I had little work to do. But living abroad was an upgrade over living in Moscow. Diplomats stationed outside Russia made much more money than those placed domestically. The embassy’s second-in-command, Viacheslav Loukianov, appreciated open discussion and encouraged me to defend my opinions. And our attitude to the West was fairly congenial. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs always had an anti-American bent—one inherited from its Soviet predecessor—but the bias was not overpowering. My colleagues and I did not think much about NATO, and when we did, we usually viewed the organization as a partner. One evening, I went out for beers with a fellow embassy employee at an underground bar. There, we ran into an American official who invited us to drink with him. Today, such an encounter would be fraught with tension, but at the time, it was an opportunity for friendship.

Yet even then, it was clear that the Russian government had a culture that discouraged independent thought—despite Loukianov’s impulses to the contrary. One day, I was called to meet with the embassy’s number three official, a quiet, middle-aged diplomat who had joined the foreign ministry during the Soviet era. He handed me text from a cable from Moscow, which I was told to incorporate into a document we would deliver to Cambodian authorities. Noticing several typos, I told him that I would correct them. “Don’t do that!” he shot back. “We got the text straight from Moscow. They know better. Even if there are errors, it’s not up to us to correct the center.” It was emblematic of what would become a growing trend in the ministry: unquestioned deference to leaders.

YES MEN

In Russia, the first decade of the twenty-first century was initially hopeful. The country’s average income level was increasing, as were its living standards. Putin, who assumed the presidency at the start of the millennium, promised an end to the chaos of the 1990s.

And yet plenty of Russians grew tired of Putin during the aughts. Most intellectuals regarded his strongman image as an unwelcome artifact of the past, and there were many cases of corruption among senior government officials. Putin responded to investigations into his administration by cracking down on free speech. By the end of his first term in office, he had effectively taken control of all three of Russia’s main television networks.

Within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, Putin’s early moves raised few alarms. He appointed Lavrov to be foreign minister in 2004, a decision that we applauded. Lavrov was known to be highly intelligent and have deep diplomatic experience, with a track record of forging lasting relationships with foreign officials. Both Putin and Lavrov were becoming increasingly confrontational toward NATO, but the behavioral changes were subtle. Many diplomats didn’t notice, including me.


Even limited displays of opposition make Moscow nervous.

In retrospect, however, it’s clear that Moscow was laying the groundwork for Putin’s imperial project—especially in Ukraine. The Kremlin developed an obsession with the country after its Orange Revolution of 2004–5, when hundreds of thousands of protesters prevented Russia’s preferred candidate from becoming president after what was widely considered to be a rigged election. This obsession was reflected in the major Russian political shows, which started dedicating their primetime coverage to Ukraine, droning on about the country’s supposedly Russophobic authorities. For the next 16 years, right up to the invasion, Russians heard newscasters describe Ukraine as an evil country, controlled by the United States, that oppressed its Russian-speaking population. (Putin is seemingly incapable of believing that countries can genuinely cooperate, and he believes that most of Washington’s closest partners are really just its puppets—including other members of NATO.)

Putin, meanwhile, continued working to consolidate power at home. The country’s constitution limited presidents to two consecutive terms, but in 2008, Putin crafted a scheme to preserve his control: he would support his ally Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential candidacy if Medvedev promised to make Putin prime minister. Both men followed through, and for the first few weeks of Medvedev’s presidency, those of us at the foreign ministry were uncertain which of the two men we should address our reports to. As president, Medvedev was constitutionally charged with directing foreign policy, but everybody understood that Putin was the power behind the throne.

We eventually reported to Medvedev. The decision was one of several developments that made me think that Russia’s new president might be more than a mere caretaker. Medvedev established warm ties with U.S. President Barack Obama, met with American business leaders, and cooperated with the West even when it seemed to contradict Russian interests. When rebels tried to topple the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, for example, the Russian military and foreign ministry opposed NATO efforts to establish a no-fly zone over the country. Qaddafi historically had good relations with Moscow, and our country had investments in Libya’s oil sector, so our ministry didn’t want to help the rebels win. Yet when France, Lebanon, and the United Kingdom—backed by the United States—brought a motion before the UN Security Council that would have authorized a no-fly zone, Medvedev had us abstain rather than veto it. (There is evidence that Putin may have disagreed with this decision.)



But in 2011, Putin announced plans to run for president again. Medvedev—reluctantly, it appeared—stepped aside and accepted the position of prime minister. Liberals were outraged, and many called for boycotts or argued that Russians should deliberately spoil their ballots. These protesters made up only a small part of Russia’s population, so their dissent didn’t seriously threaten Putin’s plans. But even the limited display of opposition seemed to make Moscow nervous. Putin thus worked to bolster turnout in the 2011 parliamentary elections to make the results of the contest seem legitimate—one of his earlier efforts to narrow the political space separating the people from his rule. This effort extended to the foreign ministry. The Kremlin gave my embassy, and all the others, the task of getting overseas Russians to vote.

I worked at the time in Mongolia. When the election came, I voted for a non-Putin party, worrying that if I didn’t vote at all, my ballot would be cast on my behalf for Putin’s United Russia. But my wife, who worked at the embassy as chief office manager, boycotted. She was one of just three embassy employees who did not participate.

A few days later, embassy leaders looked through the list of staff who cast ballots in the elections. On being named, the other two nonvoters said they were not aware that they needed to participate and promised to do so in the upcoming presidential elections. My wife, however, said that she did not want to vote, noting that it was her constitutional right not to participate. In response, the embassy’s second-in-command organized a campaign against her. He shouted at her, accused her of breaking discipline, and said that she would be labeled “politically unreliable.” He described her as an “accomplice” of Alexei Navalny, a prominent opposition leader. After my wife didn’t vote in the presidential contest either, the ambassador didn’t talk to her for a week. His deputy didn’t speak to her for over a month.

BREAKING BAD

My next position was in the ministry’s Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control. In addition to issues related to weapons of mass destruction, I was assigned to focus on export controls—regulations governing the international transfer of goods and technology that can be used for defense and civilian purposes. It was a job that would give me a clear view of Russia’s military, just as it became newly relevant.

In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and began fueling an insurgency in the Donbas. When news of the annexation was announced, I was at the International Export Control Conference in Dubai. During a lunch break, I was approached by colleagues from post-Soviet republics, all of whom wanted to know what was happening. I told them the truth: “Guys, I know as much as you do.” It was not the last time that Moscow made major foreign policy decisions while leaving its diplomats in the dark.

Among my colleagues, reactions to the annexation of Crimea ranged from mixed to positive. Ukraine was drifting Westward, but the province was one of the few places where Putin’s mangled view of history had some basis: the Crimean Peninsula, transferred within the Soviet Union from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, was culturally closer to Moscow than to Kyiv. (Over 75 percent of its population speaks Russian as their first language.) The swift and bloodless takeover elicited little protest among us and was extremely popular at home. Lavrov used it as an opportunity to grandstand, giving a speech blaming “radical nationalists” in Ukraine for Russia’s behavior. I and many colleagues thought that it would have been more strategic for Putin to turn Crimea into an independent state, an action we could have tried to sell as less aggressive. Subtlety, however, is not in Putin’s toolbox. An independent Crimea would not have given him the glory of gathering “traditional” Russian lands.

Creating a separatist movement in and occupying the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, was more of a head-scratcher. The moves, which largely took place in the first third of 2014, didn’t generate the same outpouring of support in Russia as did annexing Crimea, and they invited another wave of international opprobrium. Many ministry employees were uneasy about Russia’s operation, but no one dared convey this discomfort to the Kremlin. My colleagues and I decided that Putin had seized the Donbas to keep Ukraine distracted, to prevent the country from creating a serious military threat to Russia, and to stop it from cooperating with NATO. Yet few diplomats, if any, told Putin that by fueling the separatists, he had in fact pushed Kyiv closer to his nemesis.


The West’s 2014 sanctions substantially weakened the Russian military.

My diplomatic work with Western delegations continued after the Crimean annexation and the Donbas operation. At times, it felt unchanged. I still had positive relations with my colleagues from the United States and Europe as we worked productively on arms control issues. Russia was hit with sanctions, but they had a limited impact on Russia’s economy. “Sanctions are a sign of irritation,” Lavrov said in a 2014 interview. “They are not the instrument of serious policies.”

But as an export official, I could see that the West’s economic restrictions had serious repercussions for the country. The Russian military industry was heavily dependent on Western-made components and products. It used U.S. and European tools to service drone engines and motors. It relied on Western producers to build gear for radiation-proof electronics, which are critical for the satellites Russian officials use to gather intelligence, communicate, and carry out precision strikes. Russian manufacturers worked with French companies to get the sensors needed for our airplanes. Even some of the cloth used in light aircraft, such as weather balloons, was made by Western businesses. The sanctions suddenly cut off our access to these products and left our military weaker than the West understood. But although it was clear to my team how these losses undermined Russia’s strength, the foreign ministry’s propaganda helped keep the Kremlin from finding out. The consequences of this ignorance are now on full display in Ukraine: the sanctions are one reason Russia has had so much trouble with its invasion.

The diminishing military capacity did not prevent the foreign ministry from becoming increasingly belligerent. At summits or in meetings with other states, Russian diplomats spent more and more time attacking the United States and its allies. My export team held many bilateral meetings with, for instance, Japan, focused on how our countries could cooperate, and almost every one of them served as an opportunity to say to Japan, “Don’t forget who nuked you.”

I attempted some damage control. When my bosses drafted belligerent remarks or reports, I tried persuading them to soften the tone, and I warned against warlike language and constantly appealing to our victory over the Nazis. But the tenor of our statements—internal and external—grew more antagonistic as our bosses edited in aggression. Soviet-style propaganda had fully returned to Russian diplomacy.

HIGH ON ITS OWN SUPPLY

On March 4, 2018, former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned, almost fatally, at their home in the United Kingdom. It took just ten days for British investigators to identify Russia as the culprit. Initially, I didn’t believe the finding. Skripal, a former Russian spy, had been convicted for divulging state secrets to the British government and sent to prison for several years before being freed in a spy swap. It was difficult for me to understand why he could still be of interest to us. If Moscow had wanted him dead, it could have had him killed while he was still in Russia.

My disbelief came in handy. My department was responsible for issues related to chemical weapons, so we spent a good deal of time arguing that Russia was not responsible for the poisoning—something I could do with conviction. Yet the more the foreign ministry denied responsibility, the less convinced I became. The poisoning, we claimed, was carried out not by Russia but by supposedly Russophobic British authorities bent on spoiling our sterling international reputation. The United Kingdom, of course, had absolutely no reason to want Skripal dead, so Moscow’s claims seemed less like real arguments than a shoddy attempt to divert attention away from Russia and onto the West—a common aim of Kremlin propaganda. Eventually, I had to accept the truth: the poisonings were a crime perpetrated by Russian authorities.

Many Russians still deny that Moscow was responsible. I know it can be hard to process that your country is run by criminals who will kill for revenge. But Russia’s lies were not persuasive to other countries, which decisively voted down a Russian resolution before the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons meant to derail the prominent intergovernmental organization’s investigation into the attack. Only Algeria, Azerbaijan, China, Iran, and Sudan took Moscow’s side. Sure enough, the investigation concluded that the Skripals had been poisoned by Novichok: a Russian-made nerve agent.


Moscow wanted to be told what it hoped to be true—not what was actually happening.

Russia’s delegates could have honestly conveyed this loss to their superiors. Instead, they effectively did the opposite. Back in Moscow, I read long cables from Russia’s OPCW delegation about how they had defeated the numerous “anti-Russian,” “nonsensical,” and “groundless” moves made by Western states. The fact that Russia’s resolution had been defeated was often reduced to a sentence.

At first, I simply rolled my eyes at these reports. But soon, I noticed that they were taken seriously at the ministry’s highest levels. Diplomats who wrote such fiction received applause from their bosses and saw their career fortunes rise. Moscow wanted to be told what it hoped to be true—not what was actually happening. Ambassadors everywhere got the message, and they competed to send the most over-the-top cables.

The propaganda grew even more outlandish after Navalny was poisoned with Novichok in August 2020. The cables left me astonished. One referred to Western diplomats as “hunted beasts of prey.” Another waxed on about “the gravity and incontestability of our arguments.” A third spoke about how Russian diplomats had “easily nipped in the bud” Westerners’ “pitiful attempts to raise their voices.”



Such behavior was both unprofessional and dangerous. A healthy foreign ministry is designed to provide leaders with an unvarnished view of the world so they can make informed decisions. Yet although Russian diplomats would include inconvenient facts in their reports, lest their supervisors discover an omission, they would bury these nuggets of truth in mountains of propaganda. A 2021 cable might have had a line explaining, for instance, that the Ukrainian military was stronger than it was in 2014. But that admission would have come only after a lengthy paean to the mighty Russian armed forces.

The disconnect from reality became even more extreme in January 2022, when U.S. and Russian diplomats met at the U.S. mission in Geneva to discuss a Moscow-proposed treaty to rework NATO. The foreign ministry was increasingly focused on the supposed dangers of the Western security bloc, and Russian troops were massing on the Ukrainian border. I served as a liaison officer for the meeting—on call to provide assistance if our delegation needed anything from Russia’s local mission—and received a copy of our proposal. It was bewildering, filled with provisions that would clearly be unacceptable to the West, such as a demand that NATO withdraw all troops and weapons from states that joined after 1997, which would include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Baltic states. I assumed its author was either laying the groundwork for war or had no idea how the United States or Europe worked—or both. I chatted with our delegates during coffee breaks, and they seemed perplexed as well. I asked my supervisor about it, and he, too, was bewildered. No one could understand how we would go to the United States with a document that demanded, among other things, that NATO permanently close its door to new members. Eventually, we learned the document’s origin: it came straight from the Kremlin. It was therefore not to be questioned.

I kept hoping that my colleagues would privately express concern, rather than just confusion, about what we were doing. But many told me that they were perfectly content to embrace the Kremlin’s lies. For some, this was a way to evade responsibility for Russia’s actions; they could explain their behavior by telling themselves and others that they were merely following orders. That I understood. What was more troubling was that many took pride in our increasingly bellicose behavior. Several times, when I cautioned colleagues that their actions were too abrasive to help Russia, they gestured at our nuclear force. “We are a great power,” one person said to me. Other countries, he continued, “must do what we say.”

CRAZY TRAIN

Even after the January summit, I didn’t believe that Putin would launch a full-fledged war. Ukraine in 2022 was plainly more united and pro-Western than it had been in 2014. Nobody would greet Russians with flowers. The West’s highly combative statements about a potential Russian invasion made clear that the United States and Europe would react strongly. My time working in arms and exports had taught me that the Russian military did not have the capability to overrun its biggest European neighbor and that, aside from Belarus, no outside state would offer us meaningful support. Putin, I figured, must have known this, too—despite all the yes men who shielded him from the truth.

The invasion made my decision to leave ethically straightforward. But the logistics were still hard. My wife was visiting me in Geneva when the war broke out—she had recently quit her job at a Moscow-based industrial association—but resigning publicly meant that neither she nor I would be safe in Russia. We therefore agreed that she would travel back to Moscow to get our kitten before I handed in my papers. It proved to be a complex, three-month process. The cat, a young stray, needed to be neutered and vaccinated before we could take him to Switzerland, and the European Union quickly banned Russian planes. To get from Moscow back to Geneva, my wife had to take three flights, two cab rides, and cross the Lithuanian border twice—both times on foot.

In the meantime, I watched as my colleagues surrendered to Putin’s aims. In the early days of the war, most were beaming with pride. “At last!” one exclaimed. “Now we will show the Americans! Now they know who the boss is.” In a few weeks, when it became clear that the blitzkrieg against Kyiv had failed, the rhetoric grew gloomier but no less belligerent. One official, a respected expert on ballistic missiles, told me that Russia needed to “send a nuclear warhead to a suburb of Washington.” He added, “Americans will shit their pants and rush to beg us for peace.” He appeared to be partially joking. But Russians tend to think that Americans are too pampered to risk their lives for anything, so when I pointed out that a nuclear attack would invite catastrophic retaliation, he scoffed: “No it wouldn’t.”


The only thing that can stop Putin is a comprehensive rout.

Perhaps a few dozen diplomats quietly left the ministry. (So far, I am the only one who has publicly broken with Moscow.) But most of the colleagues whom I regarded as sensible and smart stuck around. “What can we do?” one asked. “We are small people.” He gave up on reasoning for himself. “Those in Moscow know better,” he said. Others acknowledged the insanity of the situation in private conversations. But it wasn’t reflected in their work. They continued to spew lies about Ukrainian aggression. I saw daily reports that mentioned Ukraine’s nonexistent biological weapons. I walked around our building—effectively a long corridor with private offices for each diplomat—and noticed that even some of my smart colleagues had Russian propaganda playing on their televisions all day. It was as if they were trying to indoctrinate themselves.

The nature of all our jobs inevitably changed. For one thing, relations with Western diplomats collapsed. We stopped discussing almost everything with them; some of my colleagues from Europe even stopped saying hello when we crossed paths at the United Nations’ Geneva campus. Instead, we focused on our contacts with China, who expressed their “understanding” about Russia’s security concerns but were careful not to comment on the war. We also spent more time working with the other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization—Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—a fractured bloc of states that my bosses loved to trot out as Russia’s own NATO. After the invasion, my team held rounds and rounds of consultations with these countries that were focused on biological and nuclear weapons, but we didn’t speak about the war. When I talked with a Central Asian diplomat about supposed biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine, he dismissed the notion as ridiculous. I agreed.

A few weeks later, I handed in my resignation. At last, I was no longer complicit in a system that believed it had a divine right to subjugate its neighbor.

SHOCK AND AWE

Over the course of the war, Western leaders have become acutely aware of Russia’s military’s failings. But they do not seem to grasp that Russian foreign policy is equally broken. Multiple European officials have spoken about the need for a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine, and if their countries grow tired of bearing the energy and economic costs associated with supporting Kyiv, they could press Ukraine to make a deal. The West may be especially tempted to push Kyiv to sue for peace if Putin aggressively threatens to use nuclear weapons.

But as long as Putin is in power, Ukraine will have no one in Moscow with whom to genuinely negotiate. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will not be a reliable interlocutor, nor will any other Russian government apparatus. They are all extensions of Putin and his imperial agenda. Any cease-fire will just give Russia a chance to rearm before attacking again.

There’s only one thing that can really stop Putin, and that is a comprehensive rout. The Kremlin can lie to Russians all it wants, and it can order its diplomats to lie to everyone else. But Ukrainian soldiers pay no attention to Russian state television. And it became apparent that Russia’s defeats cannot always be shielded from the Russian public when, in the course of a few days in September, Ukrainians managed to retake almost all of Kharkiv Province. In response, Russian TV panelists bemoaned the losses. Online, hawkish Russian commentators directly criticized the president. “You’re throwing a billion-ruble party,” one wrote in a widely circulated online post, mocking Putin for presiding over the opening of a Ferris wheel as Russian forces retreated. “What is wrong with you?”

Putin responded to the loss—and to his critics—by drafting enormous numbers of people into the military. (Moscow says it is conscripting 300,000 men, yet the actual figure may be higher.) But in the long run, conscription won’t solve his problems. The Russian armed forces suffer from low morale and shoddy equipment, problems that mobilization cannot fix. With large-scale Western support, the Ukrainian military can inflict more serious defeats on Russian troops, forcing them to retreat from other territories. It’s possible that Ukraine could eventually best Russia’s soldiers in the parts of the Donbas where both sides have been fighting since 2014.




Should that happen, Putin would find himself in a corner. He could respond to defeat with a nuclear attack. But Russia’s president likes his luxurious life and should recognize that using nuclear weapons could start a war that would kill even him. (If he doesn’t know this, his subordinates would, one hopes, avoid following such a suicidal command.) Putin could order a full-on general mobilization—conscripting almost all of Russia’s young men—but that is unlikely to offer more than a temporary respite, and the more Russian deaths from the fighting, the more domestic discontent he will face. Putin may eventually withdraw and have Russian propagandists fault those around him for the embarrassing defeat, as some did after the losses in Kharkiv. But that could push Putin to purge his associates, making it dangerous for his closest allies to keep supporting him. The result might be Moscow’s first palace coup since Nikita Khrushchev was toppled in 1964.

If Putin is kicked out office, Russia’s future will be deeply uncertain. It’s entirely possible that his successor will try to carry on the war, especially given that Putin’s main advisers hail from the security services. But no one in Russia commands his stature, so the country would likely enter a period of political turbulence. It could even descend into chaos.

Outside analysts might enjoy watching Russia undergo a major domestic crisis. But they should think twice about rooting for the country’s implosion—and not only because it would leave Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal in uncertain hands. Most Russians are in a tricky mental space, brought about by poverty and huge doses of propaganda that sow hatred, fear, and a simultaneous sense of superiority and helplessness. If the country breaks apart or experiences an economic and political cataclysm, it would push them over the edge. Russians might unify behind an even more belligerent leader than Putin, provoking a civil war, more outside aggression, or both.

If Ukraine wins and Putin falls, the best thing the West can do isn’t to inflict humiliation. Instead, it’s the opposite: provide support. This might seem counterintuitive or distasteful, and any aid would have to be heavily conditioned on political reform. But Russia will need financial help after losing, and by offering substantial funding, the United States and Europe could gain leverage in a post-Putin power struggle. They could, for example, help one of Russia’s respected economic technocrats become the interim leader, and they could help the country’s democratic forces build power. Providing aid would also allow the West to avoid repeating its behavior from the 1990s, when Russians felt scammed by the United States, and would make it easier for the population to finally accept the loss of their empire. Russia could then create a new foreign policy, carried out by a class of truly professional diplomats. They could finally do what the current generation of diplomats has been unable to—make Russia a responsible and honest global partner.
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: ya on October 22, 2022, 08:26:39 AM
Chinese politics
https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/decoding-chinas-20th-party-congress (https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/decoding-chinas-20th-party-congress)
Title: Will he ever be seen again?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2022, 10:07:04 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/former-chinese-president-escorted-out-of-communist-party-congress/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=29461793
Title: Re: Will he ever be seen again?
Post by: G M on October 23, 2022, 04:25:15 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/former-chinese-president-escorted-out-of-communist-party-congress/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=29461793

https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/118/619/089/original/8cedabd647e2f311.png

(https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1050,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/118/619/089/original/8cedabd647e2f311.png)
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: ccp on October 24, 2022, 04:59:08 AM
"will he ever be seen again ?"

If so,
only AFTER his lobotomy and brain washing

Title: Hu Jintao
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 24, 2022, 12:01:21 PM
October 24, 2022
View On Website
Open as PDF

    
Hu Jintao
By: George Friedman
An extraordinary thing happened in China at the final meeting of the party congress over the weekend. Hu Jintao, the previous president of China, was sitting next to President Xi Jinping when two men approached from the rear. Hu rose and appeared increasingly surprised and then alarmed. A few others sitting at the lead table also appeared openly surprised, while most seemed unconcerned or were blank-faced out of discipline. Hu was escorted behind Xi, who appeared as if nothing significant was happening. It seemed to me that Xi did finally glance at him, I think with a look of contempt, but that is likely not the case, as the point of this drama seemed to be that dismissing Hu was routine. Although videos of Hu’s departure could be viewed around the world, they did not appear in China. The Chinese now have said, however, that Hu was not feeling well.

This is not the way party congresses have typically been covered in China. In the past, they were a carefully framed portrayal of the absolute unity of the Chinese Communist Party. Every public element was controlled, with no spontaneity permitted, let alone drama of this sort.

Hu may have had to go to the bathroom and needed help, or it may have been some other prosaic event. But I doubt that would require a national blackout. It is always difficult to interpret actions involving individuals. My view of the world is that individuals are defined by the world, not the other way around. So let me take a shot at seeing how China created the television drama we all saw.

The economic crisis of the past two years had to have created political divisions. After Mao, China was defined by consistent and massive growth. There was an expectation in China, shared by much of the world, that the Chinese economic miracle would continue for a long time, making China a great power.

A second problem was the South China Sea and the inability of the Chinese military to break out of America’s effective blockade. There was much talk in China and elsewhere about the surging power of China’s military and particularly its navy, but there were no actions taken that demonstrated that power. The alliance with Russia proved another serious misjudgment.

Xi came to power at the height of the Chinese growth surge. He also came to power on what appeared to be the dawning of Chinese military power. In all of this, he was attempting to surpass his predecessor, Hu Jintao. Hu had built the economy and the military and had made China into an economic presence. Xi was going to make China an economic, military and global force. It didn’t happen. During Xi’s most recent term, all of these hopes seemed to shatter.

Hu was a symbol of what China was going to become. Xi is the symbol of what China did not become. Hu, as a former successful leader of China, hovered over him, and every time Hu spoke, Xi felt the tremors. I don’t know what went on in the Chinese Politburo. Hu may have criticized Xi, as a president who succeeded when success was easy. Xi may have rejected what was said, claiming that success had become more difficult to achieve and that Hu, in his place, would do very poorly indeed. Or perhaps no words had to be exchanged, because Xi understood that he was being measured against Hu. Perhaps Hu was organizing a coup or allowing himself to become the coup’s symbol, and Xi felt he had to contain him with a very public act so that the country knew where power lay. And more important, maybe Xi wanted to frighten any enemies from acting, by showing them what could happen.

It’s hard to understand precisely what happened, but it’s easy to understand what brought us to this place. This is politics, and failure, no matter how good the excuse, is unforgiving. Xi chose to act where success would redeem him. Of course, it is possible that a battle is now raging in secret over Xi’s action. He acted, it seems, without the senior staff being told. If so, they may fear for themselves next and move on Xi. But then Xi may have anticipated this. And so the murky world of Chinese politics has yielded us a coup against a retired president. It was the act of a worried man. He will be worried until the next act.
Title: Re: Hu Jintao
Post by: G M on October 24, 2022, 02:02:27 PM
October 24, 2022
View On Website
Open as PDF

    
Hu Jintao
By: George Friedman
An extraordinary thing happened in China at the final meeting of the party congress over the weekend. Hu Jintao, the previous president of China, was sitting next to President Xi Jinping when two men approached from the rear. Hu rose and appeared increasingly surprised and then alarmed. A few others sitting at the lead table also appeared openly surprised, while most seemed unconcerned or were blank-faced out of discipline. Hu was escorted behind Xi, who appeared as if nothing significant was happening. It seemed to me that Xi did finally glance at him, I think with a look of contempt, but that is likely not the case, as the point of this drama seemed to be that dismissing Hu was routine. Although videos of Hu’s departure could be viewed around the world, they did not appear in China. The Chinese now have said, however, that Hu was not feeling well.

This is not the way party congresses have typically been covered in China. In the past, they were a carefully framed portrayal of the absolute unity of the Chinese Communist Party. Every public element was controlled, with no spontaneity permitted, let alone drama of this sort.

Hu may have had to go to the bathroom and needed help, or it may have been some other prosaic event. But I doubt that would require a national blackout. It is always difficult to interpret actions involving individuals. My view of the world is that individuals are defined by the world, not the other way around. So let me take a shot at seeing how China created the television drama we all saw.

The economic crisis of the past two years had to have created political divisions. After Mao, China was defined by consistent and massive growth. There was an expectation in China, shared by much of the world, that the Chinese economic miracle would continue for a long time, making China a great power.

A second problem was the South China Sea and the inability of the Chinese military to break out of America’s effective blockade. There was much talk in China and elsewhere about the surging power of China’s military and particularly its navy, but there were no actions taken that demonstrated that power. The alliance with Russia proved another serious misjudgment.

Xi came to power at the height of the Chinese growth surge. He also came to power on what appeared to be the dawning of Chinese military power. In all of this, he was attempting to surpass his predecessor, Hu Jintao. Hu had built the economy and the military and had made China into an economic presence. Xi was going to make China an economic, military and global force. It didn’t happen. During Xi’s most recent term, all of these hopes seemed to shatter.

Hu was a symbol of what China was going to become. Xi is the symbol of what China did not become. Hu, as a former successful leader of China, hovered over him, and every time Hu spoke, Xi felt the tremors. I don’t know what went on in the Chinese Politburo. Hu may have criticized Xi, as a president who succeeded when success was easy. Xi may have rejected what was said, claiming that success had become more difficult to achieve and that Hu, in his place, would do very poorly indeed. Or perhaps no words had to be exchanged, because Xi understood that he was being measured against Hu. Perhaps Hu was organizing a coup or allowing himself to become the coup’s symbol, and Xi felt he had to contain him with a very public act so that the country knew where power lay. And more important, maybe Xi wanted to frighten any enemies from acting, by showing them what could happen.

It’s hard to understand precisely what happened, but it’s easy to understand what brought us to this place. This is politics, and failure, no matter how good the excuse, is unforgiving. Xi chose to act where success would redeem him. Of course, it is possible that a battle is now raging in secret over Xi’s action. He acted, it seems, without the senior staff being told. If so, they may fear for themselves next and move on Xi. But then Xi may have anticipated this. And so the murky world of Chinese politics has yielded us a coup against a retired president. It was the act of a worried man. He will be worried until the next act.



(https://westernrifleshooters.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/thumbnail_IMG_0508.jpg)
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: ccp on October 24, 2022, 02:11:27 PM
yup, agree 

full Mao!

Hu Jintao = Liu Shaoqi  (?)

reminds me of this man - who dared speak out agains Mao - and in public ->

remember what happened to him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi
Title: Top Russian General sacked
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 01, 2022, 07:16:14 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/vladimir-putin-s-top-general-is-sacked-and-then-goes-missing-here-s-what-we-know-the-mysterious-situation/ar-AA13AuRO?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=5ada431e2d0a46c1aaef61e862079392
Title: Putin sick?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 03, 2022, 04:22:31 PM
https://nypost.com/2022/11/03/putins-hands-look-black-in-latest-sign-of-serious-illness/?fbclid=IwAR1yL1Uj1rt7LhJAMi3GLnmoJkxkdIUhPGhy689HpO8igskrriv3x3rVn8Q
Title: Another Putin critic bites the dust
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 11, 2022, 05:39:11 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-s-mentor-turned-outspoken-public-critic-dies-from-unexplained-disease/ss-AA13ZneF?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=524335511b1f4ee58fbe31fd6c0e139d
Title: Putin close to defeat/overthrow?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2022, 04:45:19 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-s-inner-circle-revolt-as-russian-journalist-reveals-he-is-close-to-his-defeat/ar-AA14h8Ir?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=91dceffce7704b22be64b0204653633a
Title: Belarus Leader
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2022, 03:42:54 PM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/27/belarus-vladimir-makei-death/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F386dfc8%2F6383988b3564ae5f7527d409%2F61cdf026ae7e8a4ac205b2b3%2F18%2F68%2F6383988b3564ae5f7527d409&wp_cu=10fdb05edea8f32c1b02f6dfec609335%7CD462DD329F9C56B3E0530100007F597F
Title: Re: Belarus Leader
Post by: DougMacG on November 29, 2022, 08:04:46 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/27/belarus-vladimir-makei-death/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F386dfc8%2F6383988b3564ae5f7527d409%2F61cdf026ae7e8a4ac205b2b3%2F18%2F68%2F6383988b3564ae5f7527d409&wp_cu=10fdb05edea8f32c1b02f6dfec609335%7CD462DD329F9C56B3E0530100007F597F


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11480553/Sombre-looking-Belarus-dictator-Lukashenko-bids-farewell-assassinated-foreign-minister.html

A sombre Alexander Lukashenko bade farewell at the open-topped coffin of his long-serving foreign minister today as speculation continues to churn over whether the diplomat may have been assassinated. The Belarusian president has reportedly ordered toxicology tests after Vladimir Makei died suddenly at the weekend.  ...  Makei's funeral was held in Minsk this morning amid as yet unverified claims the veteran diplomat and former spy, 64, was killed in a Moscow sting operation due to his clandestine contacts with the West concerning the war in Ukraine and efforts to prevent Belarus being incorporated into Russia by Vladimir Putin
Title: Putin falls
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 02, 2022, 12:39:07 PM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/vladimir-putin-has-fallen-down-stairs-at-official-residence/ar-AA14Ozct?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=0b5f2a2fc20c452cb147f8283729a504

Soiled himself?!?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-fell-down-stairs-soiled-himself-as-speculation-over-worsening-health-grows-report/vi-AA14PwRs?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=2152a64de92f481f8b20b842ebd498c0&category=foryou
Title: More reporting on Putin' not wellbeing
Post by: DougMacG on December 03, 2022, 02:12:55 PM
https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/vladimir-putin-falls-down-stairs-and-soils-himself-claims-suggest/news-story/4da8667ecd4e6b21c871617f08f5959b

Pretty good source but no one knows the accuracy.
Title: Another kill for Putin? Or?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2022, 05:32:48 PM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/vladimir-putin-ally-mysteriously-dies-in-suspiciously-similar-circumstances-to-another/ar-AA15swg7?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=75547ef57c0f4e088a451e29bab7209d
Title: Letter to the WSJ
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 16, 2023, 07:58:27 AM
Are We Willing to See Russia as It Really Is?
The idealization of Yeltsin and then Putin did the world no good.
Jan. 16, 2023 10:17 am ET


In his letter “Russia Was Never Predestined for Putinism” (Jan. 12), responding to my op-ed “Putin Wants Ukraine Back in the U.S.S.R.” (Dec. 30), Leon Aron argues that history is filled with “zigzags and hairpin turns” and the Russian invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin represented a radical break with the policies of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. There is no sign that this is true.

Yeltsin’s corruption needed terror to protect it and all evidence shows that Yeltsin and Mr. Putin were linked by common crimes. In September 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were blown up in the middle of the night and more than 300 people were killed. The bombings were blamed on Chechens and used to justify a new invasion of Chechnya. Mr. Putin, the newly appointed prime minister, was put in charge of the war. His rating soared and he was elected president.

For 23 years, I had no doubt that the bombings were carried out by the Federal Security Service (FSB) in cooperation with members of Yeltsin’s entourage. But I was uncertain of the guilt of Yeltsin himself. Documents recently released by the Clinton Presidential Library, however, show that Yeltsin actively aided the operation to make Mr. Putin president. In a telephone call on Sept. 8, 1999, he informed President Bill Clinton that Mr. Putin would be the next president. “I am sure you will have good relations with him,” Yeltsin said. Mr. Putin’s rating at the time was 2%. On the next day, the first Moscow apartment building was blown up in the middle of the night.

The idealization of Yeltsin and Mr. Putin did the world no good. The war on Ukraine could have been prevented if the U.S. had seen Russia as it is. But Russia does not reveal her secrets willingly, and none are so blind as those who will not see.

David Satter
Title: Putin's successor
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2023, 10:10:08 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mercenary-chief-yevgeny-prigozhin-eyed-as-vladimir-putin-s-successor-as-russian-leader-s-health-continues-to-sharply-decline/ar-AA16q6p4?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=2a4e18c9989a495886e60a5d04669d56
Title: Medvedev vs. Kishida
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2023, 01:28:51 PM
Jan 14 (Reuters) - Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Saturday of shameful subservience to the United States and suggested he should ritually disembowel himself.
Title: MSN: Putin has cancer
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 17, 2023, 07:58:01 PM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/vladimir-putin-is-withdrawn-silent-deeply-preoccupied-as-sick-russian-leader-continues-suspected-cancer-treatments/ar-AA16rXKC?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=9a3eab616eb847018c33b60ca930d25d
Title: They shoot generals, don't they?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2023, 04:39:19 PM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-propagandist-shot-in-the-head-could-be-warning-to-wagner-leader/ar-AA17aNBn?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=dd2a7c8de4424bdbb1b7aa531408406c
Title: Tallying up Putin kills
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2023, 05:18:54 PM
https://www.the-sun.com/news/7603864/putin-killing-russian-elite-mob-boss/
Title: Zeihan on Putin, and the Wagner Mutiny
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 26, 2023, 01:15:58 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNYnzWPUZ04
Title: Re: Tallying up Putin kills
Post by: G M on June 26, 2023, 03:02:34 PM
https://www.the-sun.com/news/7603864/putin-killing-russian-elite-mob-boss/

https://giphy.com/gifs/super-tuesday-favorites-HPPo897APrNh6
[url][https://giphy.com/gifs/super-tuesday-favorites-HPPo897APrNh6/url]

Title: George Friedman: Where does Russia Stand Now?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 26, 2023, 04:42:00 PM
June 26, 2023
Open as PDF

    
Where Does Russia Stand Now?
By: George Friedman
There has been a great deal of talk that the Wagner Group's attempted insurrection over the weekend may have weakened Russian President Vladimir Putin. If Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is to be believed, the uprising was months in the making, a result of the conventional military deliberately withholding supplies and, more recently, of a direct Russian missile attack on his troops. This may explain why his march seemed to be directed more at the Russian General Staff than at Putin himself. Whatever the case, the affair was over in a day; either it failed or it was meant to be little more than a gesture. Knowing what happened in this incident will take a long time to sort out.

What we must think through now, though, is to what extent the Prigozhin debacle will destabilize the Russian government, weaken Putin or affect the war in Ukraine. Putin’s status is at the center of it all. If this was indeed a coup attempt, it never seriously threatened the Kremlin. Prigozhin’s issues with elements of the central government were well known. Why, then, would Putin be weakened by a putsch from a known malcontent that went nowhere? And what does being weakened even mean? Does it mean that department heads, and particularly the General Staff, would disregard his orders? Does it mean he no longer has a job?

In a political sense, weakened might mean that Putin would no longer be able to make executive decisions or eliminate bureaucrats and generals. This would be a serious development. Russia is at war, and it needs an effective command structure. If Putin were weakened, then the command structure would break down, which would also mean there would be no supreme commander. In that scenario, it is unlikely Putin would be weakened; he would be replaced. The question is who would replace him? Prigozhin might have been angling for the job, but he ultimately capitulated to a different Putin puppet, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Someone unknown to me might emerge, of course, but short of an heir apparent I don’t know what it means for Putin to be weakened. And even if I did, I don’t know why a coup attempt broken in less than a day should weaken him.

The more serious question concerns what the Wagner Group was doing on the battlefield in the first place. Private military contracting is common enough, but Wagner’s role in Russia was fairly unique in that it took on responsibilities usually reserved more for conventional forces than for paramilitary groups, charged as it was with executing some of the war’s most important battles. As its role evolved, Prigozhin began to pursue his own strategy outside the chain of command of the military, sometimes openly ridiculing his rivals, who would cut off his supplies in kind. Two armies thus tried – and have so far failed – to fight a common enemy.

Putin is responsible for the whole affair. He and his cadre thought Russia would quickly and decisively defeat Ukraine. Almost immediately, with the failure of his tank assault, the Russian attack was bogged down. Russia hadn’t lost the war, but neither had it won, so he supplemented the army with Wagner. In other words, Putin vastly misunderstood Ukraine’s army and his own, and instead of disengaging he threw Wagner into the fray. This strange solution created chaos. From the chaos came the insurrection.

In that sense, putting down a coup attempt isn’t the admission of failure that many seem to believe. The failure was creating the situation in which Wagner had to be hired in the first place. The issue now will be the degree to which Moscow is able to review its war plans and locate the massive errors. Putin has avoided having his war plans reviewed. Will a review now happen out of one of the few successes Putin has had?

Some believe the whole incident was a conspiracy. If that were the case, the planning would have to include the president of Belarus, the Russian General staff, members of Putin’s staff and so on, as well as a portion of the Wagner Group. No professional conspiracy would ever be executed with so many people aware of what was going on. I wonder how many details Lukashenko might have asked for at some point. Putin, an ex-KGB agent, would know the implausibility of the conspirator’s methods. No professional would try a conspiracy with so many people involved.
Title: Re: Tallying up Putin kills
Post by: DougMacG on June 26, 2023, 09:41:42 PM
https://www.the-sun.com/news/7603864/putin-killing-russian-elite-mob-boss/

Seriously, how do you trivialize that?

https://www.amazon.com/Freezing-Order-Laundering-Surviving-Vladimir/dp/1982153288
Title: Who is the richest cello player in the world?
Post by: DougMacG on June 26, 2023, 10:04:40 PM
Yo yo ma?

No.  Think again.  It's in the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Freezing-Order-Laundering-Surviving-Vladimir/dp/1982153288

https://mashable.com/article/putin-cellist-friend-panama-paper
Title: Putin, Walter Russell Mead, WSJ
Post by: DougMacG on June 27, 2023, 05:43:06 AM
WSJ excerpt, subscribe WSJ.com
It’s Too Early to Count Putin Out
The Wagner rebellion made him look weak, but brutal leaders have survived worse.
Walter Russell Mead
June 27, 2023

Review and Outlook: Putin survives in power, but Prigozhin’s revolt reveals the Ukraine war’s failure. Images: AFP/Getty Images/Zuma Press
Winston Churchill reportedly said that Kremlin political intrigues are like “a bulldog fight under a rug,” and that the only way outsiders know who won is when the bones of the loser fly out.

As of press time, both dogs were still growling. The Kremlin says that rebellious Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin is still under criminal investigation. Mr. Prigozhin, who by Monday afternoon hadn’t taken up the proffered sanctuary in Belarus, kept issuing statements.

At some point the situation will resolve. Mr. Prigozhin could step too close to an open window. His nemesis, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, might decide to spend more time with his family. Or Vladimir Putin might demand an end to the infighting and force a staged reconciliation between the rivals.

Meanwhile, many Western commentators are crowing over what looks like a major setback for Mr. Putin and his war in Ukraine. Certainly, the Wagner putsch was an embarrassment for his regime. It revealed much about the tensions building in the Russian elite as the war drags on. It made Mr. Putin look indecisive and weak, an impression his Monday night appearance on Russian TV did nothing to dispel. This not an image that a wartime dictator needs.

But ugly regimes don’t always melt away simply because we would like them to. Over many years Stalin’s dictatorship endured one factional fight after another, but through them all Stalin tightened his grip. Hitler consolidated his power over the Wehrmacht after the assassination attempt of July 1944 and only death broke his hold over the once-rebellious German officer class. Mao’s Great Leap Forward failed even more spectacularly than Mr. Putin’s attack on Ukraine, but years later the Great Helmsman died in bed. The Wagner mutiny may mark the beginning of the end of Mr. Putin’s power, or it may mark the start of a new and possibly even more intense phase of totalitarian rule in Moscow. It is, as Zhou Enlai would put it, too early to say.

There are three things to bear in mind as we try to make sense of the dramatic developments in Russia. The first is that politics in nondemocratic societies, especially Russia, can look very different from what we know in the West. Scheming politicians in Western societies organize parliamentary revolts or make their arguments in the press. When parliaments lack power, and the press isn’t free, political infighting moves to other venues. Usually, politics in these societies takes place behind closed doors. When the infighting bursts into the open, it can look dramatic, but drama isn’t always catastrophe.

Second, the public was, for the most part, uninvolved. There were scattered signs of public support for Wagner, but there was no surge of public unrest. No throngs of demonstrators filled the streets of Moscow; no huge crowds gathered at barricades to welcome or block Mr. Prigozhin’s advance. Even at a moment of perceived regime weakness, ordinary Russians stayed home. The Russian public may be skeptical of its leaders and unhappy with the war, but for now politics remains the preserve of the elite. All this, from Mr. Putin’s standpoint, is good news. Dictatorships rely on public acquiescence and passivity much more than on enthusiastic support, and judging from the weekend’s events, Mr. Putin’s hold on the Russian street looks reasonably secure.

READ MORE GLOBAL VIEW
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What if Putin Loses His War in Ukraine?June 5, 2023
Finally, we should remember that Messrs. Prigozhin and Shoigu both have real successes under their belts. Wagner matters to Mr. Putin. Wagner won, at great cost, the only real Russian victory in recent months when its troops forced the Ukrainians out of Bakhmut. Wagner mercenaries, taking advantage of the unaccountable strategic paralysis that seems to have gripped Washington and the West in the face of the group’s growth, have made great strides across the Middle East and Africa, bringing wealth and prestige to the Kremlin. That network is a significant asset, and unless Mr. Putin is certain that it will function as well under new leadership, Mr. Prigozhin may still be too valuable to discard.

But Mr. Shoigu is also useful. After a string of reversals, the Russian army seems to have stepped up its game. Deep minefields, well-planned trenches and fortifications, as well as Russian countermeasures against Himars and other Western weapons, have so far blunted Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Additionally, Mr. Putin believes Mr. Shoigu’s Central Asian ethnic and regional background makes him a safe choice to lead the Defense Ministry. Without the dense networks within the armed services that Russian-background generals have, Mr. Shoigu would have a hard time launching a coup.

The West very much wants Mr. Putin to fail, and if the weekend’s events signal the decline of the Putinocracy, your Global View columnist will gladly participate in the celebrations. But if Russia’s defenses hold in Ukraine, Wagner continues to prosper globally and the Russian public stays passive, Mr. Putin may be in less trouble than many of us hope.

 More at wsj.com
Title: Re: Tallying up Putin kills
Post by: G M on June 27, 2023, 07:03:46 AM
https://www.the-sun.com/news/7603864/putin-killing-russian-elite-mob-boss/

Seriously, how do you trivialize that?

https://www.amazon.com/Freezing-Order-Laundering-Surviving-Vladimir/dp/1982153288

If we ignore decades of "Arkancides" and trips to Pedo Island, how many deaths and massive human suffering can we directly link to the Clintons?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/11/27/clinton-ponders-2020-run-lets-not-forget-her-real-libya-scandal-glenn-reynolds-column/895853001/

The American Oligarchs are our responsibility. Putin and his ilk are the default setting for how the world works.

We are supposed to be different. We aren't anymore.

We were warned by the founders to avoid foreign entanglements and we ignored that and have become what we swore to fight.
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2023, 07:33:43 AM
"The American Oligarchs are our responsibility."

Yes.  The win-win/libertarian theory of international trade have something to do with their rise.  DITTO THE RISE OF CHINA.  Ross Perot was prescient.

"Putin and his ilk are the default setting for how the world works."

I don't disagree.

"We are supposed to be different. We aren't anymore."

Though there is still a residue of what we were (witness we here on this forum) I don't disagree.

"We were warned by the founders to avoid foreign entanglements and we ignored that and have become what we swore to fight."

This is quite a bit trickier.   Our containment strategy for the Cold War was correct and our victory great.  The challenge presented was "What to do with victory?" We were the uni-polar power both militarily and economically. Here the Clintons , , , came up short. 

Then came the War with Islamic Fascism?  What would have "avoiding foreign entanglements" looked like there?

Title: RANE: What to watch for after the mutiny
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2023, 03:35:09 PM


What To Watch For in Russia After Wagner's Armed Rebellion
Jun 27, 2023 | 20:48 GMT



The Russian government may not fully observe the informal deal it reached to end Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's armed uprising, raising questions about the future of President Vladimir Putin's regime and his war in Ukraine. Putin made his second public address in as many days on June 26, and his first since Wagner mercenaries ended their June 23-24 march on Moscow. Like his previous address on June 24, Putin played both sides, directly calling the organizers of the rebellion traitors for making Wagner commit ''fratricide [as] Russia's enemies wanted,'' while also claiming that ''the vast majority'' of the group's fighters and commanders were still ''Russian patriots, devoted to their people and state.'' Most importantly, Putin offered Wagner fighters the opportunity to continue serving Russia on the frontlines in Ukraine by entering into contracts with the defense ministry, thus reaffirming his support for Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu's order that Wagner and other ''volunteer detachments'' formally come under his ministry by July 1 (which Wagner leader Prigozhin claims precipitated his uprising). Notably, Putin also said he would uphold his ''promise'' of allowing Wagner troops to join Prigozhin in neighboring Belarus, but that he was sure only those who recognized their ''tragic mistake'' of participating in the mutiny would actually do so.

Against this backdrop, how the incidents of June 23-26 will impact the trajectory of Russia's political stability and invasion of Ukraine will depend on events that will become clearer in the coming days. Key questions to assess the future of Russia's domestic and foreign policies include the following:

1) What is the Wagner Group's future as a legal and organizational entity?

The future of the Wagner Group largely depends on the extent to which its associated legal entities and brand will be permitted to continue operating in Russia as authorities frame its leadership as treacherous. So far, Russian officials have not directly said Wagner will be liquidated as an organization within the country. Even as he makes clear some of its leaders are corrupt and betrayed their country, and that its soldiers must be placed under the control of the regular Russian army, Putin is also not yet referring to the organization as if it no longer exists. Reports suggest that business structures in Russia supporting Wagner, at least for now, remain in operation following the uprising. This makes sense, as the Kremlin likely wants to avoid a premature legal crackdown that could jeopardize the group's activities — particularly those in Africa, which are vital to Russia's geopolitical strategy.

However, in the long run, it appears highly unlikely that Wagner will continue to operate abroad under its current branding and organizational structure. According to Prigozhin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko offered to let him operate further within Belarus' ''legal jurisdiction,'' without providing details. The legal and public disassembling of Wagner forces would lead to the disbandment of some of Russia's more elite and experienced offensive formations, many of which will be hesitant to embed themselves into the rigid structures of the Russian Armed Forces. And while the dispersal of Wagner troops into the regular army is unlikely to result in an immediate loss of morale, further losses and a weak performance throughout Ukraine's counteroffensive could actually see more Russian soldiers eventually rally around Prigozhin and his criticisms of the Kremlin.

2) Will Putin uphold his deal with Prigozhin?

On June 24, the Kremlin announced it had reached a deal to end Wagner's insurrection, in which the Russian government agreed to drop mutiny charges against Prigozhin, who along with other Wagner personnel would also be allowed to leave Russia for Belarus if they wished to do so. In exchange, Prigozhin would end the drive on Moscow and Wagner fighters who didn't take part in the uprising would sign contracts with Russia's defense ministry. For Putin, the agreement serves to both appease the pro-Prigozhin sectors of the Russian people, elite and military, as well as increase pressure on his own inner circle to achieve better outcomes in the Ukraine war. For Prigozhin, the deal appears to maintain his influence over certain Wagner operations and the stability of its operations in the near term by allowing him and his associates nominal safety from intervention by Russian law. But while officials have commented on the broad contours of the agreement, its terms are not codified, nor are they considered binding or official — meaning Putin can easily renege on the deal should he see fit. The Russian president could, for example, break the spirit of the deal by keeping investigations directly related to the mutiny case against Prigozhin and Wagnerites closed, only to persecute them for corruption and other offenses. Putin could also eventually order to kill Prigozhin and the other Wagner fighters involved in the uprising, to more effectively intimidate any opponents and prevent dissension in the Russian government. By punishing Prigozhin and other Wagner leaders, Putin would reassert the strength of his regime and send a message to other potential conspirators as the 2024 presidential elections near. Putin will only follow the agreement to the extent to which he believes it serves his interests, and could easily bend and backtrack on the deal once Prigozhin has been sufficiently marginalized and the Russian government is ready to take over the Wagner group's activities under new leadership.

3) What is Belarus' role?

Putin thanked his Belarusian counterpart Lukashenko for helping broker the deal that ended Wagner's armed uprising — a narrative the Kremlin may believe will further tie Lukashenko's public image to Russia's war in Ukraine. It is difficult to discern what role the Belarusian president actually played in halting the rebellion, as it is very possible that Lukashenko was simply the easiest third party Putin could call on to help resolve the crisis. Prigozhin also claimed that Lukashenko approached him with a deal that would allow the Wagner Group to continue its operations in Belarus, and Lukashenko has publicly indicated that he hopes the Belarusian army can learn from Wagner's fighting experience. Given Belarus' vassal status to Russia, Prigozhin and Wagner personnel can be easily apprehended if they step out of line in Belarus. Their presence in the country may thus be intended for other purposes, like exaggerating an already implausible threat of a renewed Russian attack toward Kyiv from the north. But while it so far appears that Prigozhin and at least some of the approximately 8,000 Wagner assailants who took part in this weekend's events may relocate to Belarus, most Wagner forces will stay at their camps in Ukraine and Russia to prepare for new assignments under contracts with Russia's defense ministry, and play no part in the claimed Belarus exile. The number of Wagner forces who actually relocate to Belarus is thus unlikely to be enough to credibly threaten a new offensive from there. However, Prigozhin's influence has already cemented itself among the Russian populace, particularly the far-right and ultra-nationalist sectors. Should Prigozhin's mutiny incite further domestic unrest or challenges, it is very likely that he'd simply be targeted in Belarus or extradited to Russia.

4) Will Prigozhin remain a political actor?

Prigozhin's refusal to accept the Kremlin's spin that the war in Ukraine was going according to plan ushered his rise to political stardom in Russia, where many felt he was speaking truth to power. Even after the mutiny, Prigozhin has continued to push his narrative of events and grievances with Russia's defense ministry, and may very well keep criticizing Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov, and eventually even Putin. Unless the Kremlin more actively moves to discredit Prigozhin, there is reason to believe he may remain Russia's second most popular political actor behind Putin, even in exile in Belarus. The Kremlin is thus likely exploring ways to muzzle him if he is allowed to live. If enacted in its publicly claimed form, the deal Prigozhin reached with Moscow to halt his recent uprising may enable him to temporarily continue leading Wagner operations in Africa from Belarus. But the Kremlin appears highly unlikely to allow this in the medium-to-long term, especially if Prigozhin keeps making critical statements about Russia's leaders. That said, if Russian troops face further setbacks in Ukraine, more Russian citizens could become disgruntled with the war effort and identify with Prigozhin's critical narratives regarding their government's strategy in Ukraine — in which case, punishing Prigozhin would run the risk of only worsening such popular dissatisfaction. There are no obvious candidates who could replace Prigozhin as Wagner chief in the interim, as most high-ranking individuals in the organization backed him, though finding someone more loyal to the Kremlin would not be difficult, at least in theory.

5) Will Shoigu and Gerasimov keep their jobs?

All current evidence indicates that, for now, the two main targets of Prigozhin's grievances — Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov — remain at their posts. But the armed rebellion has provided Putin with very clear grounds to mandate their removal at any time, especially as it becomes increasingly difficult to claim that the Ukraine invasion has gone according to plan. Indeed, Prigozhin's armed revolt also showed that certain portions of the Russian public and even the military, along with influential far-right figures, support his critical views of the country's military leadership. But while ousting Shoigu and Gerasimov from office could bolster Putin's popularity among these crucial constituencies, it could also backfire on Putin by shaking the trust of loyalists in his inner circle (who, unlike Prigozhin, actually have the institutional and personal resources to secure power). For months, the Russian president has avoided calls to oust Shoigu and Gerasimov, as removing the two highest-ranking military officials in Russia (below Putin) would risk prompting other loyalists in Putin's inner circle to conspire against him by showing them he's no longer their protector. The Kremlin will thus probably continue to delay such a decision to avoid sending the message that it has capitulated to Prigozhin. But Shoigu and Gerasimov could be canned later this year if Ukraine makes more gains on the battlefield, which would enable Putin to tie the decision to the two leaders' incompetence and not Prigozhin's rebellion.

6) What can be gleaned from the international reaction to the Wagner rebellion?

For now, the overall reaction by Russia's regional partners and allies indicates that support for Putin's regime remains largely unchanged. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Recep Erdogan expressed their support for Putin and his government, and emphasized the need for domestic stability in Russia. In a June 25 statement, Chinese President Xi Jinping described the Wagner crisis as an ''internal affair,'' but also reasserted his support for Russia's sovereignty, indicating his continued support for Putin. Iran, China and other pro-Russian states will likely disseminate narratives that accentuate Putin's ability to de-escalate the situation and handle Prigozhin. However, should Putin's rule face future challenges, these countries may reassess their positions. At a regional level, Putin's mid-crisis briefings to Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Uzbekistan were met with indifference and a lack of commitment in coming to Russia's aid. And in the West, officials will likely continue observing for further signs of weakness in Putin's rule, and attempt to tie any similar events in the future with the need to capitalize on the window of opportunity they create by supporting Ukraine's counteroffensive operations.
Title: WSJ: Prig planned to capture Army leaders
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2023, 07:55:01 AM
Wagner’s Prigozhin Planned to Capture Russian Military Leaders
By Bojan PancevskiFollow
June 28, 2023 8:56 am ET

Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin planned to capture Russia’s military leadership as part of last weekend’s mutiny, Western officials said, and he accelerated his plans after the country’s domestic intelligence agency became aware of the plot.

The plot’s premature launch was among the factors that could explain its ultimate failure after 36 hours, when Prigozhin called off an armed march on Moscow that had initially faced little resistance.

Prigozhin originally intended to capture Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, during a visit to a southern region that borders Ukraine that the two were planning. But the Federal Security Service, or FSB, found out about the plan two days before it was to be executed, according to Western officials.

Gen. Viktor Zolotov, commander of the National Guard of Russia, a domestic military force that reports directly to President Vladimir Putin, also said authorities knew about Prigozhin’s intentions before he launched his attempt.

“Specific leaks about preparations for a rebellion that would begin between June 22-25 were leaked from Prigozhin’s camp,” Zolotov told state media on Tuesday.

Western intelligence agencies also found out early about the plans by Prigozhin, Putin’s former confidant, by analyzing electronic communications intercepts and satellite imagery, according to a person familiar with the findings. Western officials said they believe the original plot had a good chance of success but failed after the conspiracy was leaked, forcing Prigozhin to improvise an alternative plan.

Still, the intelligence raises questions about the extent of Putin’s authority after Moscow failed to prevent Wagner troops from marching almost all the way to Moscow despite the Kremlin’s knowledge of the conspiracy, people familiar with the matter said.



Prigozhin’s plot relied on his belief that a part of Russia’s armed forces would join the rebellion and turn against their own commanders, according to this intelligence. The preparations included amassing large amounts of ammunition, fuel and hardware including tanks, armored vehicles and sophisticated mobile air defenses days before the attack, according to Western intelligence findings.


Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has arrived in Belarus, as the paramilitary group prepares to hand over its heavy weapons following an aborted rebellion against Moscow. Photo: Belarus President Press-Service/Zuma Press
Made aware of the leak, Prigozhin was then forced to act sooner than planned on Friday and managed to capture the southern Russian city of Rostov, a key command point for the invasion of Ukraine. The ease with which Wagner’s troops took the city of one million that is home to a large military airport suggests that some regular forces commanders could have been part of the plot, according to Western intelligence.

Western officials said they believe Prigozhin had communicated his intentions to senior military officers, possibly including Gen. Sergei Surovikin, commander of the Russian aerospace force. It couldn’t be determined whether Surovikin passed this information on to the FSB, or how the agency found out about Prigozhin’s plans.

Surovikin was the first senior commander to condemn the plot on Friday and urge Prigozhin to stop his men. Forces under Surovikin’s command carried out airstrikes on the Wagner column, the only such attack by regular troops against the insurrectionists.


Gen. Sergei Surovikin was the first senior commander to condemn the plot. PHOTO: RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY/TASS/ZUMA PRESS

Gen. Viktor Zolotov said authorities knew about the Wagner leader’s intentions beforehand. PHOTO: YELENA AFONINA/TASS/ZUMA PRESS

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the reports about Surovikin, published earlier by the New York Times, as speculation and gossip in a press conference on Wednesday.

Videos posted online by local reporters and bystanders showed Wagner vehicles bypassing barricades of buses and streaming into Rostov early Saturday morning. Prigozhin appeared in footage as he entered the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District, berating Russia’s deputy minister of defense, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, and the deputy head of the Russian military intelligence, Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev.

After taking the command point without facing resistance, Prigozhin split his forces and ordered a few thousand men to head to Moscow while he commanded the rebellion from a bunker in Rostov, hoping that regular forces would join his quest to topple the military leadership.


The plot would likely have ended in an armed standoff in Moscow if Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko hadn’t offered to mediate, according to the Western intelligence analysis.


Lukashenko suggested hosting Wagner in his country, partly to bolster his own security against possible encroachment by Russia, according to Western intelligence. Putin has long sought to absorb Belarus into the Russian Federation.

The permanent stationing of Wagner troops agreed as part of the deal to defuse the crisis is meant to serve as Lukashenko’s personal security guarantee, Western intelligence said they believe.

Wagner troops faced little pushback on their way to Moscow. There is no evidence that any regular forces switched sides to join them.

The Wagner rebellion has triggered large-scale purges in the Russian armed forces, according to Mikhail Zvinchuk, a former Defense Ministry official who now runs a blog about Russia’s military and its invasion of Ukraine.

The indecisiveness in suppressing the rebellion is being cited as a reason for purging commanders and officials, Zvinchuk wrote. Surovikin hasn’t been seen since Saturday.
Title: WSJ: Putin moves to seize control of Wagner Empire
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2023, 07:58:43 AM


Putin Moves to Seize Control of Wagner’s Global Empire
The Kremlin assured nations in Africa and the Middle East that it would manage Wagner forces, which have spread Russian power at little cost to Putin
By Benoit FauconFollow
, Joe ParkinsonFollow
 and Drew HinshawFollow
June 28, 2023 9:28 am ET


In the hours after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s army of ex-convicts and mercenaries halted their advance on Moscow, the Kremlin set out to seize full control of the global empire built by the notorious military entrepreneur.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister flew to Damascus to personally deliver a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad: Wagner Group forces would no longer operate there independently. Senior Russian foreign ministry officials phoned the president of the Central African Republic, whose personal bodyguards include Wagner mercenaries, offering assurances that Saturday’s crisis wouldn’t derail Russia’s expansion into Africa. Government jets from Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations shuttled from Syria to Mali, another of Wagner’s key foreign outposts.

The rush of diplomatic activity reflected Vladimir Putin’s attempt to play down the chaos at home and to assure Russia’s partners in Africa and the Middle East that Wagner operations there would continue without interruption according to diplomats and intelligence officers, Wagner defectors, people briefed on the conversations and a review of international flight data. From now on, however, in Moscow’s preferred outcome, those operations would be under new management.

Russia, which for years denied any association with Wagner, appears to be trying to take over the far-flung mercenary network managed by Prigozhin and his lieutenants. After Saturday’s failed mutiny, it isn’t clear how much it can or how quickly.

“Wagner helped Russia build its influence, and the government is loath to give it up,” said J. Peter Pham, former special envoy for the West African Sahel region. “Wagner gave the state deniability. The question is whether they can manage its complexity and deal with additional scrutiny.”


An image released Monday by the official Syrian Arab News Agency, showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, center-right, and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin in Damascus.  PHOTO: SANA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

At minimal cost and at an arm’s length, Wagner helped the Kremlin amass international influence and collect revenues, managed by Prigozhin’s holding company Concord and a network of shell companies that helped funnel funds to the Kremlin, according to Western officials and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Wagner companies generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in Africa, a crucial source of funding to maintain both Russia’s influence on the continent and to finance operations in Ukraine, Western officials said. The group’s sources of income include exports of Sudanese gold to Russia, as well as diamonds from the Central African Republic to the United Arab Emirates and wood to Pakistan, these officials said.

For years, Wagner Group has worked as a security force for autocratic regimes across the Middle East and Africa, and, more recently, it has been tiptoeing toward Latin America and the Caribbean. Including Ukraine and Russia, Wagner employs more than 30,000 fighters.

Wagner’s mercenaries—backed by political strategists, financiers and geologists to prospect for mineral resources—have become entrenched in Mali, Syria and the Central African Republic. The group has offered help suppressing antigovernment protests in Venezuela and Sudan. Prigozhin’s associates had planned a secret trip to Haiti, as late as February, to offer their services to the government, which is struggling to keep control of Port au Prince, according to classified U.S. military documents leaked onto the videogame chat group Discord. Haiti’s foreign ministry didn’t return a request for comment.


Around 6,000 or so Wagner personnel perform varied work outside of Russia and Ukraine—from safeguarding mines and politicians in the Central African Republic, whose civil war dates back a decade—to defending oil wells and government-held territory in Syria. In Mali, Wagner fighters, backed by Russian-made jet fighters and helicopters, deploy alongside Malian soldiers to Saharan villages falling under the sway of Islamists. Militants have battled the state since 2012.

The fate of Wagner operations now hinges on whether the Kremlin can simultaneously marginalize Prigozhin and maintain the empire he built on three continents. Some national security officials, sizing up the prospects, say Washington may have an opening to regain influence on a continent where Russia and China have been digging in.

The Biden administration and European governments have been pushing leaders in Africa to stop working with Wagner and have been tightening sanctions on the group. In January, CIA director William Burns pressured a top Libyan commander to expel Wagner, amid fears the group could tap in to the country’s oil riches. The Treasury Department designated Wagner as a transnational criminal organization over its actions in the Ukraine war on behalf of Russia. 

The U.S. levied sanctions Tuesday against Africa-based gold firms allegedly used by Wagner to help fund its fighting in Ukraine. A State Department spokesman said more actions would soon be announced.


Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during his address Tuesday in Moscow. PHOTO: SERGEI GUNEYEV/TASS/ZUMA PRESS
After years denying any Kremlin connections to Wagner, Putin said on Tuesday that the group had been financed by the Russian state for the year ending in May. In the Central African Republic, the Russian defense ministry—which first sent Wagner there in 2018—is paying for 3,000 of Prigozhin’s mercenaries, said Fidèle Gouandjika, the nation’s presidential security adviser.

The governments of Mali and Sudan didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Kremlin didn’t respond to emailed questions for comment.

In Russia, Wagner’s men have until July 1 to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry. Prigozhin, whose plane landed Tuesday in Belarus, has repeatedly said his men would reject the contracts. He hasn’t said whether or not he would try to keep control of Wagner’s foreign operations while in exile.


Wagner’s Telegram and communication channels, which went dark on Saturday, are back online, said Lou Osborn, an analyst at All Eyes on Wagner, an open-source research group. They are largely all carrying the same message, Osborn said, that Prigozhin is being hailed as the man who could topple Putin.

Changing forces
To counter such an idea, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Vershinin flew to Damascus over the weekend to urge Assad to stop Wagner fighters from leaving Syria without Moscow’s oversight, people briefed on the conversation said. A statement issued by Assad’s office after the meeting said they discussed coordination, especially in “light of recent events.”


The Wagner Group began as a small clandestine force but has grown in recent years into a global war cartel run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, plundering gold and diamonds while advancing the Kremlin’s strategic interests and becoming the face of the Russian assault in Ukraine. Photo illustration: Xingpei Shen

Wagner fighters, who had largely operated independently in Syria, were ordered Tuesday to an air base run by Russia’s Defense Ministry in the Syrian port city of Latakia, and they complied, two people familiar with the matter said.

In Mali, a military junta is betting on Moscow to secure a country that has been losing ground to Islamists for years. The U.N. this week is set to vote to pull out all 13,000 United Nations peacekeepers, following demands by Mali’s coup-government to end the U.N.’s decadelong security mission.

Mali’s government, which has been paying Wagner $10 million a month, had been counting on the company’s mercenaries to fill the vacuum, according to Western security officials. The Wagner Group had been operating the helicopters Mali’s soldiers used to wage war on jihadists across a country twice the size of France, its former colonial ruler. The work has the air of a public-private venture. The Russian state provided Wagner with aircraft, heavy equipment and other supplies.


Russia has told Wagner fighters and workers to stay at their posts, according to a U.S. intelligence officer, and that refusal to carry out their duties would bring harsh reprisals.

War footing

Since Putin launched his war on Ukraine, Wagner has taken aggressive steps to expand its footprint in Africa and beyond. At the start of the year, Wagner posted new recruitment ads for experienced fighters, trumpeting its expansion on the continent.

In January, Wagner held talks about sending a military force to Burkina-Faso, a West African nation also threatened by jihadists and which had decided to expel French troops. The group’s propaganda outlets signaled it was setting its sights next on Ivory Coast, a potential foray into Africa’s Atlantic coast.

The U.S. shared intelligence in February that purported to reveal a Prigozhin plot to help rebels destabilize the Chad government and potentially kill the president, an important Western ally.

A U.N. report this year said Russian instructors were working with local soldiers in the Central African Republic to gain control over regions known for artisanal diamond mining. The goal was to form a corridor from Wagner-controlled regions through Sudan, the reports said, on to the mineral-trading hub of Dubai.


Marat Gabidullin, a former Wagner commander in Syria, isn’t sure how the organization can survive without its founder. If Wagner were to leave the Central African Republic, a civil war would break out, he said in an interview last month. For now, there is little evidence of any change in the CAR.

Gouandjika, the country’s presidential security adviser, chalked up Saturday’s armed advance on Moscow to an argument between Putin and Prigozhin—“a domestic matter,” he said, with little consequence for his nation.

To make his point, Gouandjika paused while a Russian-piloted Sukhoi aircraft took off from an airport in the capital of Bangui on a reconnaissance mission.

“It’s reassuring to see nothing’s changed,” he said.

“If Moscow decides to recall them and send us Beethovens or Mozarts,” he added, “we will have them.”

Summer Said contributed to this article.
Title: WSJ: GM is wrong about Putin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2023, 08:18:46 AM


Russia’s Godfather Is Losing It
Putin is too weak to win the war and also too weak to end it.
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
By
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Follow
June 27, 2023 6:28 pm ET


The signature of Vladimir Putin’s rule has been the export of Russia’s creative, entrepreneurial, ambitious people until there was one left, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The process culminated with the flight of Russia’s technical and business talent amid the Ukraine war. It began with Mr. Putin’s attack on the most successful and creative of the oligarchs, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in 2003. Like Mr. Prigozhin, who started as a hot-dog vendor, Mr. Khodorkovsky operated a café. He expanded into energy and his crime was seeing a political role for himself based on his oil wealth. His biggest mistake, apparently, was not having a private army.

In the subsequent legal charade, which saw Mr. Khodorkovsky jailed and his assets redistributed to regime cronies, a question was Mr. Putin’s real agency. Originally maneuvered into position by oligarchs looking to protect their Yeltsin-era wealth, Mr. Putin’s rise was cemented by terrorist bombings that killed hundreds of Russian apartment dwellers in their beds and are now believed to have been carried out by his own supporters with or without his knowledge.

Ditto murders of journalists, critics and opposition politicians, including some who insisted on investigating the bombings. Were these outrages authored by Mr. Putin or by those trying to control him?

The echo in Mr. Prigozhin’s method in the recent uprising is hard to ignore. He rose to a sudden celebrity status via his public commentary on the failings of the Ukraine war, understood over and over to be his way of communicating with and trying to manipulate Mr. Putin.

Tellingly, amid a supposedly “existential” war, behind this week’s showdown was a standard Putin-era battle over money and graft, which was also the source of the war itself, Mr. Prigozhin explained in one of his videos. He was only acting to stop rival kingpins, Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov of the Ministry of Defense, from stealing his major asset, his Wagner mercenary force, by incorporating it into the Russian military.

It has always paid to focus on the true nature of the Putin regime rather than the Russian political and geographic imperatives that realists talk about.

Mr. Putin dreams of Peter the Great, but his retinue resembles the “prat” British gangsters who populate a Guy Ritchie movie. The very nature of his regime drove his neighbors toward NATO, which might otherwise have become vestigial. Only state cronies thrive in his economy dominated by the pursuit of graft opportunities. From local entrepreneurs to BP and Ikea, investors learned that to build something in Russia was to risk having it stolen by the regime.

From early on, he lacked a retirement strategy, meaning he would have to stay around forever and grow calcified in office. When he couldn’t give his people hope of European-style prosperity and freedoms, he gave them military adventures and “national enemies.”

And now even his leverage over his sub-bosses is starting to deteriorate, because he no longer is able to solve any real problem. He only creates them, such as launching a war in Ukraine on the misinformed premise that Ukrainians would surrender.

Mr. Prigozhin is the most off-kilter of the Putin elite but the first to say the war was launched on false pretenses. Ukraine and NATO weren’t threatening Russia. There were no “Nazis.” For all his wrong-side-of-the-tracks ambience, Mr. Prigozhin channels what every respectable regime official thinks. The truth seeps even into the propagandistic coverage of Russia’s state-controlled TV. And Mr. Putin’s attempt to brace up his godfather system this week by invoking the dignity and legalism of the state hardly helped. It was better calibrated to suggest a dictator’s wishful thinking than to show he has any answers.

Mr. Prigozhin’s fate remains up in the air, but he enjoys bargaining chips Mr. Khodorkovsky lacked, as when his employees shot down several aircraft seeking to interfere with their protest “march of justice” to Moscow. Despite the apparent amnesty afforded by Mr. Putin to end the showdown, will Mr. Prigozhin now fall out of a window as other inconvenient Putin associates have? I am more skeptical than some. Would somebody be able to place hands on him? Would they dare? What’s in it for them? Mr. Putin faces risks whichever way he turns in the still-unfinished crisis; by a strange logic, Mr. Prigozhin may even have bought himself some immunity by putting elite doubts about the war officially on the record.

At the same time, a weak Putin is even less likely to make peace. He is also less likely to be able to order the apparently strengthened Messrs. Shoigu and Gerasimov to undertake any more hopeless fantasy offensives in pursuit of ultimate victory. Expect paralysis in Moscow and defensive inertia in the war. With the ending yet to be written, the final chapter is likely to exhibit the same elements of burlesque that characterized internal Russian politics this week.
Title: WSJ: Another Way GM is wrong about Putin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2023, 08:23:29 AM
second

The U.S. Should Encourage Russian Brain Drain
An immigration policy that would have both domestic and international benefits for the U.S.
By
John Fund
Follow
June 27, 2023 6:31 pm ET



Members of the Wagner Group military company in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, June 24. PHOTO: /ASSOCIATED PRESS
The weekend’s abortive Wagner Group rebellion is the most extreme threat against Vladimir Putin yet. Russia is bleeding, and its injuries penetrate deeper than the battlefield. The massive migration plaguing the country is an opportunity for the West.

Over the weekend the Journal reported that prices of flights from Moscow were surging. An aviation search engine showed airfares to Dubai had soared to $4,200, Istanbul to $850 and Yerevan, Armenia, to $1,000. Travelers to some destinations had to wait for flights on Monday or Tuesday because weekend seats sold out.

Such an exodus isn’t new. Last year’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted two other waves of emigration. While estimates vary, some 200,000 left Russia in the first two months of the war, including many journalists, artists and tech professionals. Last fall, when the government decided to enlist young men off the streets, 400,000 people left the country.

Russia is reeling from its worst labor crunch since Mr. Putin came to power in 1999. Half of all businesses face labor shortages, according to the country’s central bank. In December, Russia’s Communications Ministry disclosed that 10% of the country’s IT workers had left in 2022 with no plans to return. Shortages of engineers, welders and oil drillers further hinder Russian industries.

To buck the trend, Russia’s security services have confiscated the passports of some senior officials to prevent them from overseas travel. Some Russian nationalists have even called for an aerial “Berlin Wall” to prevent average citizens from leaving. But such a move would further alienate Mr. Putin from his people and weaken his popularity.

The U.S. and its allies stand to gain from Mr. Putin’s population drain, and we should look to immigration laws as instruments of foreign and economic policy. The U.S. accepts as many as 85,000 migrants a year through the H-1B visa program, which allows employers to hire educated foreign workers for specialty occupations. By slightly expanding those numbers and targeting Russian technical talent, we can take advantage of the Russian engineers fleeing Moscow to fill our tech labor shortage.

President Biden has taken steps in this direction. Last year he asked Congress to waive job-offer requirements temporarily for Russians with advanced degrees in a host of fields including manufacturing, technology and engineering. The proposal languished in Congress. Mr. Biden needs to revive it and make it a priority.

If Washington sets an example, U.S. allies may follow in different ways. In April 2022, European Council President Charles Michel said European countries should consider offering asylum to Russian soldiers who leave their posts in Ukraine. The month before, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala visited Kyiv and called for “a coalition of states” to “provide asylum to soldiers of the Russian Federation who decide not to fight and desert.”

Taking talent and numbers away from Mr. Putin, whether through asylum or immigration, is a strategic way to weaken Russia’s military and economy while strengthening the economies of the U.S. and its allies.

Mr. Fund is a columnist for National Review and a senior fellow at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

Title: Re: WSJ: GM is wrong about Putin
Post by: G M on June 28, 2023, 09:13:33 AM
Be careful of what you wish for. If VodkaManBad is gone, odds are we really won’t like his replacement.




Russia’s Godfather Is Losing It
Putin is too weak to win the war and also too weak to end it.
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
By
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Follow
June 27, 2023 6:28 pm ET


The signature of Vladimir Putin’s rule has been the export of Russia’s creative, entrepreneurial, ambitious people until there was one left, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The process culminated with the flight of Russia’s technical and business talent amid the Ukraine war. It began with Mr. Putin’s attack on the most successful and creative of the oligarchs, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in 2003. Like Mr. Prigozhin, who started as a hot-dog vendor, Mr. Khodorkovsky operated a café. He expanded into energy and his crime was seeing a political role for himself based on his oil wealth. His biggest mistake, apparently, was not having a private army.

In the subsequent legal charade, which saw Mr. Khodorkovsky jailed and his assets redistributed to regime cronies, a question was Mr. Putin’s real agency. Originally maneuvered into position by oligarchs looking to protect their Yeltsin-era wealth, Mr. Putin’s rise was cemented by terrorist bombings that killed hundreds of Russian apartment dwellers in their beds and are now believed to have been carried out by his own supporters with or without his knowledge.

Ditto murders of journalists, critics and opposition politicians, including some who insisted on investigating the bombings. Were these outrages authored by Mr. Putin or by those trying to control him?

The echo in Mr. Prigozhin’s method in the recent uprising is hard to ignore. He rose to a sudden celebrity status via his public commentary on the failings of the Ukraine war, understood over and over to be his way of communicating with and trying to manipulate Mr. Putin.

Tellingly, amid a supposedly “existential” war, behind this week’s showdown was a standard Putin-era battle over money and graft, which was also the source of the war itself, Mr. Prigozhin explained in one of his videos. He was only acting to stop rival kingpins, Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov of the Ministry of Defense, from stealing his major asset, his Wagner mercenary force, by incorporating it into the Russian military.

It has always paid to focus on the true nature of the Putin regime rather than the Russian political and geographic imperatives that realists talk about.

Mr. Putin dreams of Peter the Great, but his retinue resembles the “prat” British gangsters who populate a Guy Ritchie movie. The very nature of his regime drove his neighbors toward NATO, which might otherwise have become vestigial. Only state cronies thrive in his economy dominated by the pursuit of graft opportunities. From local entrepreneurs to BP and Ikea, investors learned that to build something in Russia was to risk having it stolen by the regime.

From early on, he lacked a retirement strategy, meaning he would have to stay around forever and grow calcified in office. When he couldn’t give his people hope of European-style prosperity and freedoms, he gave them military adventures and “national enemies.”

And now even his leverage over his sub-bosses is starting to deteriorate, because he no longer is able to solve any real problem. He only creates them, such as launching a war in Ukraine on the misinformed premise that Ukrainians would surrender.

Mr. Prigozhin is the most off-kilter of the Putin elite but the first to say the war was launched on false pretenses. Ukraine and NATO weren’t threatening Russia. There were no “Nazis.” For all his wrong-side-of-the-tracks ambience, Mr. Prigozhin channels what every respectable regime official thinks. The truth seeps even into the propagandistic coverage of Russia’s state-controlled TV. And Mr. Putin’s attempt to brace up his godfather system this week by invoking the dignity and legalism of the state hardly helped. It was better calibrated to suggest a dictator’s wishful thinking than to show he has any answers.

Mr. Prigozhin’s fate remains up in the air, but he enjoys bargaining chips Mr. Khodorkovsky lacked, as when his employees shot down several aircraft seeking to interfere with their protest “march of justice” to Moscow. Despite the apparent amnesty afforded by Mr. Putin to end the showdown, will Mr. Prigozhin now fall out of a window as other inconvenient Putin associates have? I am more skeptical than some. Would somebody be able to place hands on him? Would they dare? What’s in it for them? Mr. Putin faces risks whichever way he turns in the still-unfinished crisis; by a strange logic, Mr. Prigozhin may even have bought himself some immunity by putting elite doubts about the war officially on the record.

At the same time, a weak Putin is even less likely to make peace. He is also less likely to be able to order the apparently strengthened Messrs. Shoigu and Gerasimov to undertake any more hopeless fantasy offensives in pursuit of ultimate victory. Expect paralysis in Moscow and defensive inertia in the war. With the ending yet to be written, the final chapter is likely to exhibit the same elements of burlesque that characterized internal Russian politics this week.
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc)
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2023, 01:07:14 PM
On this I suspect all of us are agreed. 

Indeed it was/is a reason we think provoking this war was a bad idea.
Title: WSJ: Russian Leaders
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 30, 2023, 07:41:43 AM
The Military Leaders Who Could Swing the Balance of Power in Russia
Putin for years has played off rival commanders against each other to ensure his own power—a trick that is becoming more difficult to perform

Russian President Vladimir Putin with military leaders Sergei Shoigu, in foreground, and Valery Gerasimov last year. PHOTO: MIKHAEL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/KREML/SHUTTERSTOCK
By Yaroslav TrofimovFollow
June 30, 2023 9:53 am ET

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The Wagner revolt saw Yevgeny Prigozhin’s paramilitary group briefly seize the city of Rostov, the nerve center for the Russian war on Ukraine, on the morning of June 24, in a bid to topple Russia’s military leadership. Prigozhin’s forces got within 150 miles of Moscow before he called off the advance after a compromise was negotiated by the president of Belarus. The standoff exposed long-running tensions within Russia’s security forces and President Vladimir Putin’s tendency to pit them against each other. The mutiny’s aftermath raises questions about where the loyalties of Russia’s competing commanders might ultimately lie.

The Mutineers:
Yevgeny Prigozhin


PHOTO: PRIGOZHIN PRESS SERVICE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The owner of the Wagner paramilitary organization launched the failed putsch on June 23 after feuding for months with the military’s top commanders over tactics and resources, but has been given immunity by Putin and is relocating some of his men to Belarus. Prigozhin operated out of the Southern Military District headquarters that his men seized in Rostov during the mutiny.

Lt. Col. Dmitry Utkin

A veteran of Russia’s GRU military-intelligence special forces and the founding commander of Wagner, Utkin led the column of Wagner’s troops toward Moscow on June 24. He is covered by Putin’s amnesty and his whereabouts is unknown.

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Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev


PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The commander of Russian forces during last year’s siege of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine, Mizintsev was promoted to the post of Russia’s deputy defense minister before being abruptly fired in April. He was immediately hired by Prigozhin as deputy commander of Wagner. His exact role in the mutiny and his whereabouts is unknown.

The Loyalists:
Gen. Sergei Shoigu


PHOTO: RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PRESS S/AP
Russia’s minister of defense since 2012, Shoigu is blamed by many critics inside the Russian military for failing to prepare the Russian Armed Forces for the war in Ukraine. Shoigu, whose removal was Prigozhin’s key demand, reappeared in public after the failed putsch, attending meetings with Putin in the Kremlin. His position appears to remain secure, for now.

Gen. Valery Gerasimov


PHOTO: SERGEY FADEICHEV/SPUTNIK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The chief of Russia’s General Staff since 2012, Gerasimov assumed direct control of the war in Ukraine after sidelining Gen. Sergei Surovikin in January. Gerasimov fled Rostov as Wagner seized the city on June 24 and hasn’t yet been seen in public. Prigozhin has repeatedly blamed Gerasimov for mishandling the war, demanding his removal.

Col. Gen. Aleksandr Lapin


PHOTO: YEGOR ALEYEV/TASS/ZUMA PRESS
Blamed by Prigozhin and by Chechen militia leader Ramzan Kadyrov for Russian defeats in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Lyman last fall, Lapin was removed at the time as commander of the Central Military District. In January, he was brought back as chief of staff of the Russian Ground Forces and has since assumed the role of a deputy commander of Russian troops in Ukraine, meeting Putin on the president’s visit to Luhansk in April and leading the response to May’s cross-border incursions in Russia’s Belgorod region.

Col. Gen. Ramzan Kadyrov


PHOTO: HEAD OF CHECHEN REPUBLIC/TASS/ZUMA PRESS
The Chechen warlord, who commands a large force that ostensibly belongs to the Russian National Guard, sided with Wagner against Gerasimov last year but later entered into an open conflict with Prigozhin. Kadyrov sent his men to Rostov to confront Wagner on June 24, but the Chechen troops never entered the city.

Gen. Viktor Zolotov


PHOTO: SERGEY GUNEEV/SPUTNIK/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
The commander of the Russian National Guard participated in the celebrations of the mutiny’s defeat in the Kremlin, boasting that his forces were ready to stop the rebels outside Moscow. He announced that the National Guard, an internal-security force, will now be strengthened with tanks and long-range artillery.

Under a Cloud:
Gen. Sergei Surovikin


PHOTO: MIKHAIL METZEL/SPUTNIK/REUTERS
The chief of Russia’s Aerospace Forces was appointed as the first overall commander of the Russian military in Ukraine last October, after a series of battlefield defeats. Dubbed by the Russian media as “General Armageddon” for his campaign to destroy Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure, Surovikin was repeatedly praised by Prigozhin—and was demoted in January, as the Wagner owner’s relationship with Shoigu and Gerasimov soured. Surovikin recorded an appeal to Wagner to stop the putsch on the evening of June 23, but hasn’t been heard from since then. Some Russian news organizations report that he is under investigation for allegedly abetting the rebellion, and possibly in custody.

Col. Gen. Mikhail Teplinsky


PHOTO: RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS OFFICE/ZUMA PRESS
The commander of Russia’s VDV Airborne Forces was removed from the battlefield last fall, and recorded a video message at the time complaining that he isn’t allowed to participate in the war. A hero to many Russian hard-liners, he returned to Ukraine earlier this year and was seen meeting Putin during the president’s visit to southern Ukraine’s Kherson region in April, in his role as a deputy commander of the Russian forces group in Ukraine. Teplinsky is seen as close to Surovikin, and according to Russian military analysts repeatedly complained about Gerasimov’s orders for frontal attacks that caused huge casualties.

Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev


PHOTO: RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE
The deputy chief of Russia’s GRU military-intelligence agency, Alekseyev was responsible, among other duties, for private military companies like Wagner, helping establish the group. He was inside the Southern Military District headquarters when Prigozhin seized the building on June 24, and was filmed smiling and saying “Take them” when Wagner’s chief demanded the handover of Shoigu and Gerasimov. Alekseyev hasn’t been seen since then.

Col. Gen. Andrey Yudin


PHOTO: RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE
The deputy commander of Russia’s Aerospace Forces was reported by the Russian media to have been removed from his position after the failed mutiny. He told Russian media that he hasn’t been detained.

Col. Gen. Yunus-Bek Yevkurov


PHOTO: SERGEY FADEICHEV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A deputy defense minister, Yevkurov was inside the Southern Military District headquarters when it was seized by Wagner. According to Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Yevkurov—who passed his phone to Prigozhin—was a key facilitator of the negotiations that ended the mutiny.

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

The War in Ukraine and the Wagner Rebellion
Title: Wagner shot down elite Russian aircraft
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 03, 2023, 07:24:03 AM


https://www.foxnews.com/world/wagner-strikes-psychological-blow-russian-morale-hitting-elite-airborne-command-and-control-uk-intel?fbclid=IwAR3BZgqyeahrbwtIzTkRjOD3t3OlstskmAXgWjZGrnkjYyPhy1buy7T5sMs
Title: Nixon
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2023, 09:15:27 AM
The Ukraine War Wouldn’t Have Surprised Richard Nixon
A declassified 1994 letter to Bill Clinton shows how well the former president understood the Russians.
By Luke A. Nichter
July 21, 2023 1:54 pm ET




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Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign agreements and treaties on arms limitation and cooperation in Moscow, May 29, 1972. PHOTO: -/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
When Bill Clinton eulogized Richard Nixon on April 27, 1994, he spoke of the former president’s “wise counsel, especially with regard to Russia . . . based on our last phone conversation and the letter he wrote me just a month ago.” For nearly 30 years, the content of that letter remained a secret. Thanks to its declassification this week through Mr. Clinton’s presidential library, it is hidden no longer.

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What is most striking about the seven-page, single-spaced letter dated March 21, 1994, is that Nixon anticipated a more belligerent Russia, the rise of someone like Vladimir Putin, and worsening relations between Moscow and Kyiv. Nixon, who was 81, had just returned from a two-week trip to Russia and Ukraine. In 1972 he became the first sitting president to visit Moscow, where he signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. After leaving office he continued to have access to elites in governments and opposition leaders around the world. That Mr. Clinton was a Democrat and Nixon a Republican made no difference. The ultimate Cold Warrior was an elder statesman interested in the contours of the post-Cold War era.

Nixon warned that Boris Yeltsin’s brief experiment with democracy was already over. “As one of Yeltsin’s first supporters in this country and as one who continues to admire him for his leadership in the past, I have reluctantly concluded that his situation has rapidly deteriorated since the elections in December, and that the days of his unquestioned leadership of Russia are numbered,” Nixon wrote to Mr. Clinton. “His drinking bouts are longer and his periods of depression are more frequent. Most troublesome, he can no longer deliver on his commitments to you and other Western leaders in an increasingly anti-American environment in the Duma and in the country.”

Nixon also said that Moscow’s relationship with Kyiv would worsen. Though the dynamic had improved during Yeltsin’s tenure, the situation in Ukraine was “highly explosive.” “If it is allowed to get out of control,” Nixon warned, “it will make Bosnia look like a PTA garden party.”

The former president didn’t think American diplomats were taking the issue seriously enough. “Because of the importance of Ukraine, I reluctantly urge that you immediately strengthen our diplomatic representation in Kiev,” he wrote. It was equally important that the U.S. anticipate Yeltsin’s potential successor. “Bush made a mistake in sticking too long to Gorbachev because of his close personal relationship. You must avoid making that same mistake in your very good personal relationship with Yeltsin.”

It wasn’t clear who that successor might be. “There is still no one who is in Yeltsin’s class as a potential leader in Russia,” Nixon wrote. “The Russians are serious people. One of the reasons Khrushchev was put on the shelf back in 1964 is that the proud Russians became ashamed of his crude antics at the U.N. and in other international forums.” In other words, if the U.S. didn’t act promptly to cultivate Yeltsin’s successor, Russia could again shift to a more nationalist, hard-line leader, as when Leonid Brezhnev succeeded Khrushchev.

Nixon also warned Mr. Clinton about presidential personnel. “I learned during my years in the White House that the best decisions I made, such as the one to go to China in 1972, were made over the objections of or without the approval of most foreign service officers,” he wrote. Nixon evidently didn’t think Mr. Clinton was being served well by his own people. “Remember that foreign service officers get to the top by not getting into trouble. They are therefore more interested in covering their asses than in protecting yours.” Always inspired by the big play—the lunar landing, the unilateral ending of the gold standard, and trips to China and Russia—Nixon encouraged Mr. Clinton to do the same. That would require that the best ideas not be stifled by his administration.

Mr. Putin has sparred with five presidents to date, but it was Nixon who saw him coming. “After he died, I found myself wishing I could pick up the phone and ask President Nixon what he thought about this issue or that problem, particularly if it involved Russia,” Mr. Clinton said in 2013. Nixon didn’t live to see Mr. Putin succeed Yeltsin, but his newly declassified correspondence with Mr. Clinton shows that he wouldn’t be surprised by Russia today.

Mr. Nichter is a professor of history at Chapman University and author of “The Year That Broke Politics: Chaos and Collusion in the Presidential Election of 1968,” forthcoming in August
Title: Putin's breaking point?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 08, 2023, 02:48:30 PM
40 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YrQZbU5F94&t=6s
Title: Prigozhin defenestrated?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2023, 11:01:40 AM
Do I use the word correctly?

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/wagner-chief-yevgeny-prigozhin-dies-in-plane-crash-report/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=32488299
Title: When falling out of a window is too subtle; RANE
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 24, 2023, 06:29:27 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/when-falling-out-of-a-window-is-just-too-subtle/

==========================

The Wagner Group After the Death of Yevgeny Prigozhin
5 MIN READAug 23, 2023 | 23:17 GMT





Yevgeny Prigozhin on July 4, 2017, in Moscow.
Yevgeny Prigozhin on July 4, 2017, in Moscow.
(SERGEI ILNITSKY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia's paramilitary Wagner Group, will enable the Kremlin to consolidate political control and extend its influence over the Wagner Group, whose fighters are likely to focus on deployments in Africa and Ukraine. On Aug. 23, an Embraer ERJ-135 aircraft with tail number RA-02795 linked to Prigozhin exploded over Russia's Tver region between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Russia's aviation authority Rosaviatsiya said Prigozhin and his chief Wagner deputy Dmitry Utkin were on board. Sources linked to the Wagner Group claimed that the plane exploded after an anti-air system shot it, and a Western official told the Financial Times the plane had been brought down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile system. However, other Russian media sources claimed that the wreckage did not show signs of being struck by an anti-air system and instead suggested that a bomb may have been placed on board. Russian authorities have not definitively confirmed Prigozhin's death, but the Grey Zone Telegram channel linked to the Wagner Group claimed it had confirmed that both Prigozhin and Utkin were killed.

The explosion came almost exactly two months after the start of Prigozhin's mutiny in June, and — aside from killing Prigozhin and Utkin — left five other high-ranking Wagner associates, plus the plane's three crew members, dead.
Prigozhin's death is likely an assassination at the hands of the Kremlin in order to deter challengers and dispel notions of Russian President Vladimir Putin's weakness ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Since the Wagner Group's mutiny in late June, the Kremlin has used the uprising to reveal and neutralize military personnel, officials and public figures suspected of sympathizing with Prigozhin's criticism of the Kremlin's handling of the war in Ukraine. While the mutiny ended with a deal to send Wagner personnel to Belarus, Putin was only incentivized to abide by the agreement until it stopped serving his interests. As a result, there was always a large risk that he could backtrack on the deal once Prigozhin was sufficiently marginalized and the Russian government was ready to take over the Wagner Group's activities under new leadership. Prigozhin's death is likely intended to reduce perceptions in Russia and around the world that Putin responded to the mutiny with weakness by allowing Prigozhin to preserve his life, wealth and status despite the damage dealt to national unity by his brief revolt. Prigozhin's death will likely deter similar challenges to Putin's rule that could have made the Russian political system more volatile ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko claimed that an informal "deal" he helped broker to end the Wagner Group's mutiny included a "security guarantee" for Prigozhin. Prigozhin's death will therefore serve as the latest reminder for would-be opponents that Putin will always prioritize power preservation — a message that he and his supporters can use to curb any internal pushback ahead of next year's election.
As per Russia's usual information strategies, Russian propaganda networks will likely offer an array of explanations for the plane's explosion. But the Kremlin will likely hint that Prigozhin's death should serve as a lesson to would-be opponents.
Prigozhin's and Utkin's deaths make the Wagner Group's future uncertain, but the Russian government will likely strive to send its fighters to Africa and Ukraine. Telegram channels associated with the Wagner Group have said the organization is calling an extraordinary meeting of its commanders in the coming days. It is likely that as a result of this meeting, Russia's security services, namely the GRU and FSB, will gain more control over Wagner leaders. This greater unity of command will reduce the political liability and operational volatility associated with Prigozhin's and Utkin's leadership of the Wagner Group. The death of Utkin and the other Wagner leaders means the organization's remaining leadership will likely come under firmer Kremlin control. The organization's new leaders will likely claim to be continuing Prigozhin's recently announced renewed focus on Africa, where Wagner troops are present in the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Sudan and possibly Burkina Faso; speculation also swirls suggesting they could be sent to Niger. Furthermore, Prigozhin's death renders the role of Belarus in the group's future largely unnecessary and likely to be wound down in the near- to mid-term, as Wagner's fighters are unlikely to want to engage in major provocations against NATO from its territory. Furthermore, Belarus is unlikely to desire the group's long-term presence in the country given that Minsk would have to absorb a greater share of the costs, and more important, as Wagner forces are much more needed in Ukraine and would be of greater use for Russia in Africa than in Belarus.

At a meeting with Wagner leaders June 29, just days after the mutiny, Putin reportedly tried to reveal and expand differences between Prigozhin and Wagner's top commanders by suggesting that, unlike Prigozhin, they want to return to the war in Ukraine.
On Aug. 21, Prigozhin posted a video address on his Telegram channel, his first since the June mutiny, in which he said he would seek to expand Russian influence on all continents and make Africa "more free." While Prigozhin's location in the video was unconfirmed, some observers suggested it was filmed in Mali.
Title: Zeihan on the Prigozhin hit
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 24, 2023, 11:26:54 AM
Second

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0UeRPNzJXY
Title: George Friedman on Prigozhin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 29, 2023, 12:56:31 PM
August 29, 2023
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Prigozhin RIP, Or Do the Best You Can
By: George Friedman
Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is dead. He died of a fatal dose of self-confidence. He made three mistakes. First, he thought himself a competent commander. Second, he attempted a coup against a former KGB man who was trained in paranoia. His final mistake was to fail at all that he tried. Arguments over who killed him and how he died are inevitable. Enough time had passed since Prigozhin’s failed coup that it seemed reasonable to conclude that Russian President Vladimir Putin had decided to let him live, and strange theories emerged to support this. My favorite was that Prigozhin and Putin had collaborated in staging the coup. The theory never advanced to the point where it explained why Putin would organize a coup against himself, but the obvious answer – that the apparent coup was just a coup – was so boring.

An early theory about Prigozhin’s death was that a surface-to-air missile downed his plane. The uncertain origins of this missile could allow Putin to neutralize suspicions that he had organized the killing and, more important, signal that he was still worried about Prigozhin. It is more likely that a bomb was placed on the plane while it was on the tarmac preparing to leave Moscow.

But the missile theory opens the possibility of shifting the blame onto the Americans or Ukrainians. The problem with that theory is that Prigozhin was worth more to them alive than dead. Prigozhin frightened Putin by staging a coup that came within 120 miles (190 kilometers) of Moscow. Prigozhin was Putin’s caterer and friend. He was likely at many dinners and other social events where things took place that Putin would rather be forgotten and that Putin’s enemies would cherish. His continued existence might cause Russians and others to believe that Putin had lost his resolve at a time when the Russian president couldn’t afford to let doubts linger. A living Prigozhin was Putin’s nightmare and an American and Ukrainian dream.

There is also the question of why Putin waited so long to kill Prigozhin. I think it was because, in the wake of the coup, questions over Putin’s competence and control would have risen. Putin did not want what happened to appear to be a near success. It might have prompted thoughtful men and women to calculate their own odds. Rushing to kill Prigozhin would smell of fear. Letting him run loose (while monitoring his every breath) raised the possibility that Putin somehow authorized or at least wanted a coup, and demonstrated that Putin did not fear him. The long period of waiting minimized the Prigozhin legend and allowed Putin to carefully hold painful discussions with Prigozhin’s former staffers and other fascinating people who might leave their guard down since Prigozhin was still alive.

The final and most interesting question is how and why a former caterer to Putin became head of a paramilitary force. The United States uses private forces like Blackwater, but they are never on the level of Wagner. Nor do they operate under their own power, regardless of how it might seem. American private military companies occupy the lesser jobs. Wagner was a significant military force in its own right – which is very odd for a major power like Russia. The group was used in various lesser conflicts when Russia did not want to send its main force, but after the Ukraine war started, Putin concentrated them in Russia and then in Ukraine.

I think the reason was that Putin did not trust his own general staff. The opening of the war, with tanks massed without consideration of logistics like fuel, deepened his concern. The issue was glaring enough that even after the invasion started, it was possible for Kyiv to believe the attack from the north was merely a diversion, with the main effort coming elsewhere. But the Russian military attacked and was immediately bogged down. The Russian army constantly tried to capture cities of no military importance instead of seeking to break the enemy’s forces. The Ukrainians were left with surprising freedom of action.

This early performance forced Putin to make a decision: withdraw, continue with the general staff or bring in the Wagner Group, unconventional but ruthless and better than what he had. This is where Putin made his great mistake. He left the regular army on the battlefield while also deploying Wagner. In effect, he had two armies under different and competing commands. Wagner also went after control of cities, rather than trying to destroy the Ukrainian army as is only proper. Inevitably, the regular army and Wagner competed with one another for missions and supplies. Artillery shells were particularly fought over in increasingly ugly and public disputes, much to the delight of Russia’s enemies.

Putin did not appreciate what he had set in motion and did not decisively intervene. It was Prigozhin who went too far, criticizing the general staff and, by implication, Putin. When the Kremlin finally tried to cut him down, Prigozhin moved to eliminate the general staff and take control. The clumsiness of his coup indicates that it would not have solved any problems. The simple fact is that the war had to be fought, according to the Russians, to gain strategic depth. The problem was that the Russian high command had not prepared the army for the war because Putin, an intelligence guy, did not understand the logic of war, lacked or failed to allocate the necessary material, and lacked competent commanders. I have heard a motto: “Never let an intelligence genius run a war.” I don’t know if Putin is a genius, but he ran the war as if he believed he was. He personally has survived the chaos and killed the guy who fought in the war, albeit badly.
Title: ET: Xi
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2023, 09:12:26 AM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/ccp-leader-xis-security-obsession-unpredictable-whereabouts-attract-international-attention-5490615?utm_source=China&src_src=China&utm_campaign=uschina-2023-09-14&src_cmp=uschina-2023-09-14&utm_medium=email&cta_utm_source=China&est=emCB8%2Ba%2FyGEz3svRaI2yoBkvd21b92it6%2FpiDVwbLr0D7L1BpftMBEa38pP74CBrNR%2Bo
Title: So, that is what happened , , ,
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 06, 2023, 09:21:09 AM
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-prigozhin-death-wagner-leaders-got-drunk-high-played-grenades-aboard-plane?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1886
Title: Putin speaks
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 07, 2023, 08:09:48 PM



President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Participants in the plenary session, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

I am glad to welcome you all in Sochi at the anniversary meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club. The moderator has already mentioned that this is the 20th annual meeting.

In keeping with its traditions, our, or should I say your forum, has brought together political leaders and researchers, experts and civil society activists from many countries around the world, once again reaffirming its high status as a relevant intellectual platform. The Valdai discussions invariably reflect the most important global political processes in the 21st century in their entirety and complexity. I am certain that this will also be the case today, as it probably was in the preceding days when you debated with each other. It will also stay this way moving forward because our objective is basically to build a new world. And it is at these decisive stages that you, my colleagues, have an extremely important role to play and bear special responsibility as intellectuals.

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Over the years of the club’s work, both Russia and the world have seen drastic, and even dramatic, colossal changes. Twenty years is not a long period by historical standards, but during eras when the entire world order is crumbling, time seems to shrink.

I think you will agree that more events have taken place in the past 20 years than over decades in some historical periods before, and it was major changes that dictated the fundamental transformation of the very principles of international relations.

In the early 21st century, everybody hoped that states and peoples had learned the lessons of the expensive and destructive military and ideological confrontations of the previous century, saw their harmfulness and the fragility and interconnectedness of our planet, and understood that the global problems of humanity call for joint action and the search for collective solutions, while egotism, arrogance and disregard for real challenges would inevitably lead to a dead-end, just like the attempts by more powerful countries to force their opinions and interests onto everyone else. This should have become obvious to everyone. It should have, but it has not. It has not.

When we met for the first time at the club’s meeting nearly 20 years ago, our country was entering a new stage in its development. Russia was emerging from an extremely difficult period of convalescence after the Soviet Union’s dissolution. We launched the process of building a new and what we saw as a more just world order energetically and with good will. It is a boon that our country can make a huge contribution because we have things to offer to our friends, partners and the world as a whole.

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Regrettably, our interest in constructive interaction was misunderstood, was seen as obedience, as an agreement that the new world order would be created by those who declared themselves the winners in the Cold War. It was seen as an admission that Russia was ready to follow in others’ wake and not to be guided by our own national interests but by somebody else’s interests.

Over these years, we warned more than once that this approach would not only lead to a dead-end but that it was fraught with the increasing threat of a military conflict. But nobody listened to us or wanted to listen to us. The arrogance of our so-called partners in the West went through the roof. This is the only way I can put it.

The United States and its satellites have taken a steady course towards hegemony in military affairs, politics, the economy, culture and even morals and values. Since the very beginning, it has been clear to us that attempts to establish a monopoly were doomed to fail. The world is too complicated and diverse to be subjected to one system, even if it is backed by the enormous power of the West accumulated over centuries of its colonial policy. Your colleagues as well – many of them are absent today, but they do not deny that to a significant degree, the prosperity of the West has been achieved by robbing colonies for several centuries. This is a fact. Essentially, this level of development has been achieved by robbing the entire planet.

The history of the West is essentially the chronicle of endless expansion. Western influence in the world is an immense military and financial pyramid scheme that constantly needs more “fuel” to support itself, with natural, technological and human resources that belong to others. This is why the West simply cannot and is not going to stop. Our arguments, reasoning, calls for common sense or proposals have simply been ignored.

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I have said this publicly to both our allies and partners. There was a moment when I simply suggested: perhaps we should also join NATO? But no, NATO does not need a country like ours. No. I want to know, what else do they need? We thought we became part of the crowd, got a foot in the door. What else were we supposed to do? There was no more ideological confrontation. What was the problem? I guess the problem was their geopolitical interests and arrogance towards others. Their self-aggrandisement was and is the problem.

We are compelled to respond to ever-increasing military and political pressure. I have said many times that it was not us who started the so-called “war in Ukraine.” On the contrary, we are trying to end it. It was not us who orchestrated a coup in Kiev in 2014 – a bloody and anti-constitutional coup. When [similar events] happen in other places, we immediately hear all the international media – mainly those subordinate to the Anglo-Saxon world, of course – this is unacceptable, this is impossible, this is anti-democratic. But the coup in Kiev was acceptable. They even cited the amount of money spent on this coup. Anything was suddenly acceptable.

At that time, Russia tried its best to support the people of Crimea and Sevastopol. We did not try to overthrow the government or intimidate the people in Crimea and Sevastopol, threatening them with ethnic cleansing in the Nazi spirit. It was not us who tried to force Donbass to obey by shelling and bombing. We did not threaten to kill anyone who wanted to speak their native language. Look, everyone here is an informed and educated person. It might be possible – excuse my ‘mauvais ton’ – to brainwash millions of people who perceive reality through the media. But you must know what was really going on: they have been bombing the place for nine years, shooting and using tanks. That was a war, a real war unleashed against Donbass. And no one counted the dead children in Donbass. No one cried for the dead in other countries, especially in the West.

This war, the one that the regime sitting in Kiev started with the vigorous and direct support from the West, has been going on for more than nine years, and Russia’s special military operation is aimed at stopping it. And it reminds us that unilateral steps, no matter who takes them, will inevitably prompt retaliation. As we know, every action has an equal opposite reaction. That is what any responsible state, every sovereign, independent and self-respecting country does.

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Everyone realises that in an international system where arbitrariness reigns, where all decision-making is up to those who think they are exceptional, sinless and right, any country can be attacked simply because it is disliked by a hegemon, who has lost any sense of proportion – and I would add, any sense of reality.

Unfortunately, we have to admit that our counterparties in the West have lost their sense of reality and have crossed every line. They really should not have done this.

The Ukraine crisis is not a territorial conflict, and I want to make that clear. Russia is the world’s largest country in terms of land area, and we have no interest in conquering additional territory. We still have much to do to properly develop Siberia, Eastern Siberia, and the Russian Far East. This is not a territorial conflict and not an attempt to establish regional geopolitical balance. The issue is much broader and more fundamental and is about the principles underlying the new international order.

Lasting peace will only be possible when everyone feels safe and secure, understands that their opinions are respected, and that there is a balance in the world where no one can unilaterally force or compel others to live or behave as a hegemon pleases even when it contradicts the sovereignty, genuine interests, traditions, or customs of peoples and countries. In such an arrangement, the very concept of sovereignty is simply denied and, sorry, is thrown in the garbage.

Clearly, commitment to bloc-based approaches and the push to drive the world into a situation of ongoing “us versus them” confrontation is a bad legacy of the 20th century. It is a product of Western political culture, at least of its most aggressive manifestations. To reiterate, the West – at least a certain part of the West, the elite – always need an enemy. They need an enemy to justify the need for military action and expansion. But they also need an enemy to maintain internal control within a certain system of this very hegemon and within blocs like NATO or other military-political blocs. There must be an enemy so everyone can rally around the “leader.”

The way other states run their lives is none of our business. However, we see how the ruling elite in many of them are forcing societies to accept norms and rules that the people – or at least a significant number of people and even the majority in some countries – are unwilling to embrace. But they are still urged to do so, with the authorities continually inventing justifications for their actions, attributing growing internal problems to external causes, and fabricating or exaggerating non-existent threats.

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Russia is a favourite subject for these politickers. We have grown used to this over the course of history, of course. But they try to portray those who are not willing to blindly follow these Western elite groups as enemies. They have used this approach with various countries, including the People’s Republic of China, and they tried to do this to India in certain situations. They are flirting with it now, as we can see very clearly. We are aware of and see the scenarios they are using in Asia. I would like to say that the Indian leadership is independent and strongly nationally oriented. I think these attempts are pointless, yet they continue with them. They try to portray the Arab world as an enemy; they do it selectively and try to act accurately, but this is what it comes down to. They even try to present Muslims as a hostile environment, and so on and so forth. In fact, anyone who acts independently and in its own interests is immediately seen by the Western elite as a hindrance that must be removed.

Artificial geopolitical associations are being forced onto the world, and restricted-access blocs are being created. We see this happening in Europe, where an aggressive policy of NATO expansion has been pursued for decades, in the Asia-Pacific region and in South Asia, where they are trying to destroy an open and inclusive cooperation architecture. A bloc-based approach, if we call a spade a spade, limits individual states’ rights and restricts their freedom to develop along their own path, attempting to drive them into a “cage” of obligations. In a way, this obviously amounts to the dispossession of part of their sovereignty, often followed by the enforcement of their own solutions not only in the area of security but also in other areas, primarily the economy, which is happening now in relations between the United States and Europe. There is no need to explain this now. If necessary, we can talk about it in detail during the discussion after my opening remarks.

To attain these goals, they try to replace international law with a “rules-based order,” whatever that means. It is not clear what rules these are and who invented them. It is just rubbish, but they are trying to plant this idea in the minds of millions of people. “You must live according to the rules.” What rules?

And actually, if I may, our Western “colleagues,” especially those from the United States, don’t just arbitrarily set these rules, they teach others how to follow them, and how others should behave overall. All of this is done and expressed in a blatantly ill-mannered and pushy way. This is another manifestation of colonial mentality. All the time we hear, “you must,” “you are obligated,” “we are seriously warning you.”

Who are you to do that? What right do you have to warn others? This is just amazing. Maybe those who say all this should get rid of their arrogance and stop behaving in such a way towards the global community that perfectly knows its objectives and interests, and should drop this colonial-era thinking? I want to tell them sometimes: wake up, this era has long gone and will never return.

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I will say more: for centuries, such behavior led to the replication of one thing – big wars, with various ideological and quasi-moral justifications invented to justify these wars. Today this is especially dangerous. As you know, humankind has the means to easily destroy the whole planet, and ongoing mind manipulation, unbelievable in terms of scale, leads to losing a sense of reality. Clearly, a way out should be sought from this vicious circle. As I understand it, friends and colleagues, this is why you come here to address these vital issues at the Valdai Club venue.

In Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept, our country is characterised as an original civilisation-state. This wording clearly and concisely reflects how we understand not only our own development, but also the main principles of international order, which we hope will prevail.

From our perspective, civilisation is a multifaceted concept subject to various interpretations. There was once an outwardly colonial interpretation whereby there was a “civilised world” serving as a model for the rest, and everyone was supposed to conform to those standards. Those who disagreed were to be coerced into this “civilisation” by the truncheon of the “enlightened” master. These times, as I said, are now in the past, and our understanding of civilisation is quite different.

First, there are many civilisations, and none is superior or inferior to another. They are equal since each civilisation represents a unique expression of its own culture, traditions, and the aspirations of its people. For instance, in my case, it embodies the aspirations of my people, of which I am fortunate to be a part.

Outstanding thinkers from around the world who endorse the concept of a civilisation-based approach have engaged in profound contemplation of the meaning of “civilisation” as a concept. It is a complex phenomenon comprised of many components. Without delving too deeply into philosophy, which may not be appropriate here, let’s try to describe it pragmatically as it applies to current developments.

The essential characteristics of a civilisation-state encompass diversity and self-sufficiency, which, I believe, are two key components. Today’s world rejects uniformity, and each state and society strives to develop its own path of development which is rooted in culture and traditions, and is steeped in geography and historical experiences, both ancient and modern, as well as the values held by its people. This is an intricate synthesis that gives rise to a distinct civilisational community. Its strength and progress depend on its diversity and multifaceted nature.

Russia has been shaped over centuries as a nation of diverse cultures, religions, and ethnicities. The Russian civilisation cannot be reduced to a single common denominator, but it cannot be divided, either, because it thrives as a single spiritually and culturally rich entity. Maintaining the cohesive unity of such a nation is a formidable challenge.

We have faced severe challenges throughout the centuries; we have always pulled through, sometimes at great cost, but each time we learned our lessons for the future, strengthening our national unity and the integrity of the Russian state.

This experience we have gained is truly invaluable today. The world is becoming increasingly diverse, and its complex processes can no longer be handled with simple governance methods, painting everyone with the same brush, as we say, which is something certain states are still trying to do.

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There is something important to add to this. A truly effective and strong state system cannot be imposed from the outside. It grows naturally from the civilisational roots of countries and peoples, and in this regard, Russia is an example of how it really happens in life, in practice.

Relying on your civilisation is a necessary condition for success in the modern world, unfortunately a disorderly and dangerous world that has lost its bearings. More and more states are coming to this conclusion, becoming aware of their own interests and needs, opportunities and limitations, their own identity and degree of interconnectedness with the world around them.

I am confident that humanity is not moving towards fragmentation into rivaling segments, a new confrontation of blocs, whatever their motives, or a soulless universalism of a new globalisation. On the contrary, the world is on its way to a synergy of civilisation-states, large spaces, communities identifying as such.

At the same time, civilisation is not a universal construct, one for all – there is no such thing. Each civilisation is different, each is culturally self-sufficient, drawing on its own history and traditions for ideological principles and values. Respecting oneself naturally comes from respecting others, but it also implies respect from others. That is why a civilisation does not impose anything on anyone, but does not allow anything to be imposed on itself either. If everyone lives by this rule, we can live in harmonious coexistence and in creative interaction between everyone in international relations.

Of course, protecting your civilisational choice is a huge responsibility. It’s a response to external infringements, the development of close and constructive relationships with other civilisations and, most importantly, the maintenance of internal stability and harmony. All of us can see that today the international environment is, regrettably, unstable and quite aggressive, as I pointed out.

Here is one more essential thing: nobody should betray their civilisation. This is the path towards universal chaos; it is unnatural and, I would say, disgusting. For our part, we have always tried and continue to try to offer solutions that consider the interests of all sides. But our counterparts in the West seem to have forgotten the notions of reasonable self-restraint, compromise and a willingness to make concessions in the name of attaining a result that will suit all sides. No, they are literally fixated on only one goal: to push through their interests, here and now, and do it at any cost. If this is their choice, we will see what comes of it.

It sounds like a paradox, but the situation could change tomorrow, which is a problem. For example, regular elections can lead to changes on the domestic political stage. Today a country can insist on doing something at any cost, but its domestic political situation could change tomorrow, and they will start pushing through a different and sometimes even the opposite idea.

A standout example is Iran’s nuclear programme. A US administration pushed through a solution, but the succeeding administration turned the matter the other way around. How can one work in these conditions? What are the guidelines? What can we rely on? Where are the guarantees? Are these the “rules” they are telling us about? This is nonsense and absurd.

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Why is this happening, and why does everybody seem comfortable with it? The answer is that strategic thinking has been replaced with the short-term mercenary interests of not even countries or nations, but the succeeding groups of influence. This explains the unbelievable, if judged in Cold War terms, irresponsibility of the political elite groups, which have shed all fear and shame and think of themselves as guiltless.

The civilisational approach confronts these trends because it is based on the fundamental, long-term interests of states and peoples, interests that are dictated not by the current ideological situation, but by the entire historical experience and legacy of the past, on which the idea of a harmonious future rests.

If everyone were guided by this, there would be far fewer conflicts in the world, I believe, and the approaches to resolving them would become much more rational, because all civilisations would respect each other, as I said, and would not try to change anyone based on their own notions.

Friends, I read with interest the report prepared by the Valdai Club for today’s meeting. It says that everyone is currently striving to understand and imagine a vision of the future. This is natural and understandable, especially for intellectual circles. In an era of radical change, when the world we’re used to is crumbling, it is very important to understand where we are heading and where we want to be. And, of course, the future is being created now, not only before our eyes, but by our own hands.

Naturally, when such massive, extremely complex processes are underway, it is hard or even impossible to predict the result. Regardless of what we do, life will make adjustments. But, at any rate, we need to realise what we are striving for, what we want to achieve. In Russia, there is such an understanding.

First. We want to live in an open, interconnected world, where no one will ever try to put artificial barriers in the way of people’s communication, their creative fulfilment and prosperity. We need to strive to create an obstacle-free environment.

Second. We want the world’s diversity to be preserved and serve as the foundation for universal development. It should be prohibited to impose on any country or people how they should live and how they should feel. Only true cultural and civilisational diversity will ensure peoples’ wellbeing and a balance of interests.

Third, Russia stands for maximum representation. No one has the right or ability to rule the world for others and on behalf of others. The world of the future is a world of collective decisions made at the levels where they are most effective, and by those who are truly capable of making a significant contribution to resolving a specific problem. It is not that one person decides for everyone, and not even everyone decides everything, but those who are directly affected by this or that issue must agree on what to do and how to do it.

Fourth, Russia stands for universal security and lasting peace built on respect for the interests of everyone: from large countries to small ones. The main thing is to free international relations from the bloc approach and the legacy of the colonial era and the Cold War. We have been saying for decades that security is indivisible, and that it is impossible to ensure the security of some at the expense of the security of others. Indeed, harmony in this area can be achieved. You just need to put aside haughtiness and arrogance and stop looking at others as second-class partners or outcasts or savages.

Fifth, we stand for justice for all. The era of exploitation, as I said twice, is in the past. Countries and peoples are clearly aware of their interests and capabilities and are ready to rely on themselves; and this increases their strength. Everyone should be given access to the benefits of today’s world, and attempts to limit it for any country or people should be considered an act of aggression.

Sixth, we stand for equality, for the diverse potential of all countries. This is a completely objective factor. But no less objective is the fact that no one is ready to take orders anymore or make their interests and needs dependent on anyone, above all on the rich and more powerful.

This is not just the natural state of the international community, but the quintessence of all of humankind’s historical experience.

These are the principles that we would like to follow and that we invite all of our friends and colleagues to join.

Colleagues!

Russia was, is and will be one of the foundations of this new world system, ready for constructive interaction with everyone who strives for peace and prosperity, but ready for tough opposition against those who profess the principles of dictatorship and violence. We believe that pragmatism and common sense will prevail, and a multipolar world will be established.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the forum’s organisers for your fundamental and qualified preparations, as always, as well as thank everyone at this anniversary meeting for your attention. Thank you very much.


Sent from my iPhone
Title: Re: Putin speaks
Post by: DougMacG on October 08, 2023, 07:08:05 AM
Crafty, do you take anything new from this?

He lays out ideals that he does not live up to. He seems like a humble man but he also is a murderous psychopathic dictator.  With truths and half truths mixed in, he is one of the best propagandists in human history, in my view.
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc) other countries too
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 08, 2023, 12:39:53 PM
No time in this moment to write up a proper analysis (note the overlap with Mearsheimer though), but certainly we should expose ourselves to what he has to say and what it tells us about how Russia and he view things.

Title: Putin heart attack?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2023, 06:38:41 PM


https://resistthemainstream.com/vladimir-putin-allegedly-found-on-floor-after-suffering-cardiac-arrest/?utm_source=newsletter1
Title: Re: Putin heart attack?
Post by: DougMacG on October 23, 2023, 08:19:36 PM


https://resistthemainstream.com/vladimir-putin-allegedly-found-on-floor-after-suffering-cardiac-arrest/?utm_source=newsletter1

I saw that too.  Now I've seen it on two sources I've never heard of. 

NYT/MSM report Israel bombed a hospital based on Hamas' word but find this story unverified?
Title: Putin is evil
Post by: DougMacG on October 24, 2023, 07:38:57 PM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12666523/Third-executive-Russian-oil-giant-criticised-Putins-invasion-Ukraine-dies-suddenly.html

Every sentence and every thought about Putin or Russia under Putin should be prefaced with Putin is evil, in my humble view.
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc) other countries too
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 25, 2023, 07:35:21 AM
Works for me!
Title: Putin with Tucker
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 10, 2024, 09:15:00 AM
 An extraordinary two hours

https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson
Title: Counterpoint
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 10, 2024, 04:22:48 PM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tucker-carlson-s-putin-interview-was-even-worse-than-expected/ar-BB1i41rF?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=a9a884ba64384bea9ee84f6e285dc9ef&ei=18

Several of these points seem sound, but somehow the $1+B (number from Victoria Nuland in front of Congress btw) that America put into the Uke elections goes unmentioned.
Title: George Friedman on Tucker-Putin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2024, 07:34:16 AM


February 13, 2024
View On Website
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Putin’s Perspective on the Russia-Ukraine War
By: George Friedman

Russian President Vladimir Putin did something unprecedented last week: He held a two-hour press conference directed at the American public. It was not exactly a press conference, in the sense that Tucker Carlson, a talk show host perceived as sympathetic toward Russia, was the only reporter present. But neither was it, strictly speaking, an interview, as for most of the program, Putin held forth without the benefit of questions. In a sense, this made it more valuable because it allowed Putin to set out his views in an interesting and important way that might not have been possible had Carlson asked questions that were focused on an American perspective.

Instead, we got a genuine Russian perspective on the war in Ukraine, and Putin appeared to be a reasonable and thoughtful man. He made some very dubious claims, but every leader makes dubious claims while appearing statesmanlike, and Putin’s behavior drove home to an American audience that his position is not without some merit. He also made clear that he is a Russian patriot working for Russian interests, and it is in this spirit that we should take his claims. He did not want to appear like Stalin. He also seemed enormously knowledgeable, far beyond most politicians, though he did have the advantage of knowing what was to be said as well as a translator who always stood between him and his audience. But I believe this was Putin, helped by prepackaged questions, providing a sense of his broad knowledge. If this worked, then he showed that Russia was ruled by a sophisticated thinker. However, given the interview’s length and complexity, the American public may have given up early and not listened to the complete interview.

Still, the historical context, the targeting of an American audience, and the extraordinarily detailed description of Russia and Russian history seem to be setting the stage for negotiations. In defense of Russia’s attack, Putin charged the U.S. and NATO with dishonesty and duplicity in facing Russia, which was simply pursuing its historical imperative. This was no ordinary program, nor was it self-indulgent rambling; Putin’s emphasis on the failure of negotiations in Turkey early in the war makes this clear.

Putin’s central presentation concerned Russian history. He explained how Russia was formed many centuries ago and contrasted this with Eastern Europe’s formation. In this way he argued that Ukraine had always been part of Russia, physically and linguistically. Unstated but implicit in his argument, Ukraine is Russia, and the invasion of Ukraine simply represents the Russian world’s return to an older reality. This is why, according to Putin, Russia’s actions in Ukraine constitute a special military operation and not an act of war. He also spoke of Poland, hinting that Poland and Lithuania are renegades whose roots are inseparable from Russia. The discussion of Russian history was lengthy, but it was not merely academic. Putin’s argument was that history binds a place to its surroundings and its inhabitants and, in this case, gives Russia the right to make claims on foreign territory. I admired the way he slipped in his claims to the region in a way that might be dismissed or overlooked. He did, however, lay the foundation for Russian claims in Poland.

Some of what Putin said was confusing. For example, he asserted that the current Ukrainian government and its predecessors were Nazis and therefore were an enemy of Russia. He cited two men who had become Nazi collaborators before concluding that this made Ukraine a remnant of Nazi Germany and therefore hostile to Russia and other countries that had fought Hitler. This left me confused, as there is no country that was occupied by the Germans that didn’t have collaborators, from France to the Netherlands and so on. Some may have been ideologically Nazis, but all were seeking to survive or prosper. Putin made this argument from the beginning, but if followed logically it would compel Russia to invade most of Europe as a moral obligation. Putin showed himself to be highly sophisticated, so he must understand what he is saying and depend on the world to not understand his claims or take them seriously.

In another part, while expressing his readiness to negotiate, Putin said the United States was damaging itself by using the dollar to compel foreign powers to align with its worldview. He then claimed, in his most baffling remarks, that China’s economy dwarves America’s and that its economic future is bright. It is as if he has missed China’s reality in the two years since Ukraine was attacked. He said this in the context of claiming that a new economic order is emerging, and for that to happen, China must drive it. It is interesting that Putin’s seriously deep analysis of things, even if parts are debatable, concluded with obviously wrong assertions, but he was at it for a long time and was probably tired.

One other thing that struck me was his remarks about Russia’s intercontinental hypersonic missiles. The speed and maneuverability of hypersonics make defense against an attack – in the U.S. or elsewhere – very difficult. I advocated the development of intercontinental hypersonics in my book “The Future of War.” The U.S. has not yet fielded a hypersonic missile, nor do I have any evidence that it is developing an intercontinental version. If Russia’s intercontinental hypersonic missile is as capable as Putin suggested, then that may have been the most significant thing he said.

The rest of Putin’s remarks consisted of complaints about NATO and the United States and his insistence that the uprising in Kyiv in 2014 was the real beginning of the war. He left unexplained how Russia could have ignored such a terrible threat for so long.

Putin is the president of a modern nation-state, so he must explain his policies to his people and try to influence other governments and foreign publics. The goal is not to be truthful but persuasive in order to put other governments under carefully shaped pressure. What can be said is that Russia has stepped fully into modernity with an excellent presentation of truth and myths while allowing Carlson a few rebuttals. Putin saw him as friendly but a wild card, so few cards were dealt to him.

Title: Follow ups on the Tucker-Putin interview
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 15, 2024, 05:58:06 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzlt1VVBcg8

Of course, do note that this is RT:
https://swentr.site/russia/592452-putin-tucker-carlson-dangerous/?fbclid=IwAR1ZPKytNRMnPQpO0QPQ2ihnup07bPOykYZiedPGKgH1LArNLp2IwMT1__g

and here is MSN's take:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-humiliates-tucker-carlson-after-interview/ar-BB1ijzf9?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=8b3e4cc59b2b48e19f5cc6705ad05c7a&ei=21
Title: Trump: I threatened to bomb Putin if he invaded Ukraine; Putin prefers Biden
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 15, 2024, 09:25:22 AM
https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1757913243178394069

which might explain this:

https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/15/putin-says-he-prefers-biden-over-trump-because-hes-more-predictable/
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc) other countries too
Post by: ccp on February 15, 2024, 09:58:59 AM
"He sort of believed me, like 5%, 10%. That’s all you need. He never did it during my time. He didn’t do this during the last four years because he knew he couldn’t."

But does not this sound like he is telegraphing he was bluffing....

But for the most part I believe it.
That is why Xi probably would rather have Biden.

I was watching a C span recording from December few days ago when Ted Cruz and Mike Lee give FBI director Wray a giant grilling.
At one point earlier Richard Blumenthal said something about we know who Russia or China would rather have as President.  He did not say who but the hint I got was he meant Trump, as though this disparaged Trump.
I was thinking it is most certainly the opposite.  And not for a good reason for the US.

Title: VDH on the interview
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 15, 2024, 03:35:44 PM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXXQj8IdHVQ
Title: Friedman follow up on the interview
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 16, 2024, 07:36:30 AM
February 16, 2024
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Additional Thoughts on the Putin Interview
Thoughts in and around geopolitics.
By: George Friedman
On Tuesday, we published an article I wrote on Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I believe the interview revealed a great deal about Putin, his view of Russia’s role in European history and his justification for the invasion of Ukraine. A number of readers challenged me by saying I appeared to admire Putin or that I felt his actions were justified. The truth is that my judgment here is irrelevant; hating him or viewing him as evil would not enhance either my knowledge of him or that of the country he leads. It would be little more than self-gratification.

Even so, perhaps the occasion warrants more explanation. I normally deal only with nations, but sometimes when a powerful individual speaks – especially when that individual is hostile to my country or is someone with whom I disagree – I use a different process. The first step in defeating an enemy, whether in politics, business or any other arena, is to understand how they think. You must begin with the likely fact that they do not see themselves as evil or stupid, and no matter how you feel, you cannot allow your feelings to obscure that fact. You can use brute force to defeat an adversary, but if brute force is not a choice then subversion is possible. For that, you must understand and respect your enemy’s view of themselves. You must always place yourself in their head. Premature hatred or contempt will lead to failure.

This is true in wider conflicts too. The Vietnam War, for example, began with precious little understanding of the Viet Cong. Many in the U.S. wrote them off as evil. Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh spoke publicly about what the war would look like, but we dismissed it as a lie. Our intellectual shallowness and our inability to understand what drove them cost 50,000 U.S. lives.

Putin said that NATO started the war and forced Russia to act. In the interview, he claimed that Poland and the Baltic states are, because of their shared history, ultimately part of Russia. This is untrue, of course; Putin is a politician, and politicians lie. But lies can reveal the truth when properly analyzed. And for that reason alone there is utility in watching interviews like this.

Thanks to all who read the article and those who wrote comments.
Title: RIP Alexei Navalny (Did Putin have him killed?)
Post by: DougMacG on February 18, 2024, 07:49:56 AM
See 4 minute documentary at the link:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/16/russian-activist-and-putin-critic-alexei-navalny-dies-in-prison


[Doug] Putin wants what's best for Russia (?) and he wants to stay in power the rest of his life.  Assuming those two things don't overlap perfectly, which one does he want more?  Obviously to stay in power at all costs.

Putin is an autocrat in a system that is not supposed to be autocratic.  He holds phony elections He stepped down temporarily for term limits?  Ended term limits?  Kills his opponents.  Rigs the results.  Steal from his country.  A Madura with a larger arsenal.

Besides condemning that there, what are we going to do when that happens here?
Title: Putin, Navalny
Post by: DougMacG on February 19, 2024, 08:04:22 PM
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/killing-navalny-russia
Title: Medvedev
Post by: ccp on February 19, 2024, 08:40:54 PM
""Attempts to restore Russia's 1991 borders will lead only to one thing - a global war with Western countries with the use of our entire strategic (nuclear) arsenal against Kyiv, Berlin, London, and Washington. And against all other beautiful historic places that have long been included in the flight targets of our nuclear triad," Medvedev said"  a day ago in news reports.

Remember this :

"hot mic" moment in 2012, when Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev "after my election I have more flexibility.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/nov/14/obamas-hot-mic-moment-russian-president-2012-was-u/

Perhaps this Medvedev nuc talk is a response to recent Trump's "boast" that he could bomb Moscow......

This is reminding me of how I felt after watching The Day After movie -> pits in my stomach.  Statements like these from either side is very disconcerting.  I don't recall anyone saying this even in the earlier Cold War.  Something about Nikita Krushev telling how he would "bury us" but not mentioning using nucs.

These are not the best of times,,,,,

We need strong leaders but also cool heads.  I dunno,,,,,

Title: All Putin wants is a few oblasts in Ukraine?
Post by: DougMacG on February 23, 2024, 05:57:14 AM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13116937/Putin-brink-new-land-grab-possible-announcement-annexing-Moldova-Transnistria.html
Title: Re: Russian and Chinese Leaders (Putin, Xi, Oligarchs, etc) other countries too
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 23, 2024, 11:04:52 AM
May I ask that you post that in the Russia-Europe thread as well?

The implications of Russia taking Odessa are huge.
Title: Putin’s Behavioral Profile
Post by: Body-by-Guinness on February 28, 2024, 12:49:12 PM
I am falling down a rabbit hole with the Behavior Panel; these guys reveal A LOT, with one piece being what low regard they have for the MSM (which I haven’t heard them say, but they sure drop a ton of tips. Turns out one gent, Chase Hughes, is not only a behavior analyst for US spooks, he has also prepared a profile of Putin, available here:

https://www.chasehughes.com/_files/ugd/8e0d92_7ae47c5d6039424d90c7be36fe88bafb.pdf?index=true

It’s a one pager, but certainly contains its share of tidbits.