Posted on 03/03/2014 7:25:43 PM PST by annalex
Western leaders are stunned because they haven’t realized Russia’s owners no longer respect Europeans the way they once did after the Cold War. Russia thinks the West is no longer a crusading alliance. Russia thinks the West is now all about the money.
Putin’s henchmen know this personally. Russia’s rulers have been buying up Europe for years. They have mansions and luxury flats from London’s West End to France’s Cote d’Azure. Their children are safe at British boarding and Swiss finishing schools. And their money is squirrelled away in Austrian banks and British tax havens.
Putin’s inner circle no longer fear the European establishment. They once imagined them all in MI6. Now they know better. They have seen firsthand how obsequious Western aristocrats and corporate tycoons suddenly turn when their billions come into play. They now view them as hypocrites—the same European elites who help them hide their fortunes.
Once Russia’s powerful listened when European embassies issued statements denouncing the baroque corruption of Russian state companies. But no more. Because they know full well it is European bankers, businessmen and lawyers who do the dirty work for them placing the proceeds of corruption in hideouts from the Dutch Antilles to the British Virgin Islands.
We are not talking big money. But very big money. None other than Putin’s Central Bank has estimated that two thirds of the $56 billion exiting Russia in 2012 might be traceable to illegal activities. Crimes like kickbacks, drug money or tax fraud. This is the money that posh English bankers are rolling out the red carpet for in London.
Behind European corruption, Russia sees American weakness. The Kremlin does not believe European countries – with the exception of Germany – are truly independent of the United States. They see them as client states that Washington could force now, as it once did in the Cold War, not to do such business with the Kremlin.
When Russia sees Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal outbidding each other to be Russia’s best business partner inside the EU (in return for no mention of human rights), they see America’s control over Europe slowly dissolving.
Back in Moscow, Russia’s hears American weakness out of Embassy Moscow. Once upon a time the Kremlin feared a foreign adventure might trigger Cold War economic sanctions where it hurts: export bans on key parts for its oil industry, even being cut out of its access to the Western banking sector. No more.
Russia sees an America distracted: Putin’s Ukrainian gambit was a shock to the U.S. foreign policy establishment. They prefer talking about China, or participating in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Russia sees an America vulnerable: in Afghanistan, in Syria and on Iran—a United States that desperately needs Russian support to continue shipping its supplies, host any peace conference or enforce its sanctions.
Moscow is not nervous. Russia’s elites have exposed themselves in a gigantic manner – everything they hold dear is now locked up in European properties and bank accounts. Theoretically, this makes them vulnerable. The EU could, with a sudden rush of money-laundering investigations and visa bans, cut them off from their wealth. But, time and time again, they have watched European governments balk at passing anything remotely similar to the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which bars a handful of criminal-officials from entering the United States.
All this has made Putin confident, very confident – confident that European elites are more concerned about making money than standing up to him. The evidence is there. After Russia’s strike force reached the outskirts of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, in 2008, there were statements and bluster, but not a squeak about Russia’s billions. After Russia’s opposition were thrown into show trials, there were concerned letters from the European Union, but again silence about Russia’s billions.
The Kremlin thinks it knows Europe’s dirty secret now. The Kremlin thinks it has the European establishment down to a tee. The grim men who run Putin’s Russia see them like latter-day Soviet politicians. Back in the 1980s, the USSR talked about international Marxism but no longer believed it. Brussels today, Russia believes, talks about human rights but no longer believes in it. Europe is really run by an elite with the morality of the hedge fund: Make money at all costs and move it offshore.
The Kremlin sees its evidence in the former leaders of Britain, France and Germany. Tony Blair now advises the dictatorship in Kazakhstan on how to improve its image in the West. Nicholas Sarkozy was contemplating setting up a hedge fund with money from absolutist Qatar. And Gerhard Schroder is the chairman of the Nord Steam consortium – a majority Gazprom-owned pipeline that connects Russia directly to Germany through the Black Sea.
Russia is confident there will be no Western economic counterattack. They believe the Europeans will not sanction the Russian oligarch money. They believe Americans will not punish the Russian oligarchs by blocking their access to banks. Russia is certain a military counterattack is out of the question. They expect America to only posture. Cancel the G-8? Who cares?
Because Putin has no fear of the West, he can concentrate on what matters back in Russia: holding onto power. When Putin announced he would return to the presidency in late 2011, the main growling question was: why?
The regime had no story to sell. What did Putin want to achieve by never stepping down? Enriching himself? The puppet president he shunted aside, Dmitry Medvedev, had at least sold a story of modernization. What, other than hunger for power, had made Putin return to the presidency? The Kremlin spin-doctors had nothing to spin.
Moscow was rocked by mass protests in December 2011. More than 100,000 gathered within sight of the Kremlin demanding Russia be ruled in a different way. The protesters were scared off the streets, but the problem the regime had in justifying itself remained. Putin had sold himself to the Russian people as the man who would stabilize the state and deliver rising incomes after the chaos of the 1990s. But with Russians no longer fearing chaos, but rather stagnation as the economy slowed – it was unclear what this “stability” was for.
This is where the grand propaganda campaign called the Eurasian Union has come into its own. This is the name of the vague new entity that Putin wants to create out of former Soviet states — the first steps toward which Putin has taken by building a Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, and he had hoped with a Ukraine run by Viktor Yanuvokych. This is not just about empire; it is about using empire to cover up the grotesque scale of Russian corruption and justify the regime.
Russia would rather have swallowed Ukraine whole, but the show must go on. Russian TV needs glories for Putin every night on the evening news. Russian politics is about spin, not substance. The real substance of Russian politics is the extraction of billions of dollars from the nation and shuttling them into tropical Western tax havens, which is why Russian politics needs perpetual PR and perpetual Putinist drama to keep all this hidden from the Russian people. Outraged Putin has built up a Kremlin fleet of luxury aircraft worth $1 billion? Angry that a third of the $51 billion budget of the Sochi games vanished into kickbacks? Forget about it. Russia is on the march again.
This is why Crimea is perfect Putin. Crimea is no South Ossetia. This is not some remote, mountainous Georgian village inhabited by some dubious ethnicity that Russians have never heard of. Crimea is the heart of Russian romanticism. The peninsula is the only part of the classical world that Russia ever conquered. And this is why the Tsarist aristocracy fell in love with it. Crimea symbolized Russia’s 18th and 19th-century fantasy to conquer Constantinople and liberate Greek Orthodox Christians from Muslim rule. Crimea became the imperial playground: In poetry and palaces, it was extolled as the jewel in the Russian crown.
Crimea is the only lost land that Russians really mourn. The reason is tourism. The Soviet Union built on the Tsarist myth and turned the peninsula into a giant holiday camp full of workers sanitariums and pioneer camps. Unlike, the Russian cities of say northern Kazakhstan, Crimea is a place Russians have actually been. Even today over one million Russians holiday in Crimea every year. It is not just a peninsula; this is Russia’s Club Med and imperial romanticism rolled into one.
Vladimir Putin knows this. He knows that millions of Russians will cheer him as a hero if he returns them Crimea. He knows that European bureaucrats will issue shrill statements and then get back to business helping Russian elites buy London town houses and French chateaux. He knows full well that the United States can no longer force Europe to trade in a different way. He knows full well that the United States can do nothing beyond theatrical military maneuvers at most.
This is why Vladimir Putin just invaded Crimea.
He thinks he has nothing to lose.
No, he has been driven out.
Why you haven't seen the machine guns displayed on the steps of the parliament building? By the unidentified thugs in military gear? You don't think that is intimidation of the electorate?
Well, today something worked somewhere because Putin chickened. That is a good thing about him, he's a coward, like any Sov on a government job.
The author does not ask, he is convinced. But I am not convinced and the events today bear me out: Putin was scared and backed off.
The "moslem problem" does not seem to concern the RF government at all, and the Moscow Patriarchate supports the government in all it does. The militant Muslims are treated as a case-by-case criminal phenomenon (much like Obama); the Muslim enclaves are bought off with generous budget outlays. The endless supply of low-wage central Asian workers in the big cities makes ordinary life intolerable for the plain folks, but the government refuses to even set up a vise regime. If you think our immigration policy is nuts, wait till you study RF's.
no protestant class in Russia
That is right, they are barely noticeable.
Will the Maidan movement topple Moscow from the inside
It will happen if and when the Russian people shake down their Soviet identity en masse. So far there is no evidence of that. Case in point: all these supposedly Russian patriots in Ukrainian lands bring red flags to their rallies and gather -- where else? -- in front of still surviving Lenin statues. The "nationalistic", -- for lack of better word rhetoric in RF is neo-Stalinist: "Kill the fascists", "Death to Banderovci". So is the level of their passion, -- they are barely awake and few people come to rallies. They are apathetic Sovs that wait for someone to fix their problems.
There were ethnic Russians in the Maidan. There are people of Russian origin that cheered it and are genuinely happy that at least the Ukies broke free. Also, a case can be made that Crimea perhaps needs an honest referendum and self-determination. But the statistical Russian looks like this:
Observe: thin crowd, tired, past their prime looks. The Police Department overestimated them; a dozen cops would have been enough. One icon, one Soviet flag (inscribed: "USSR 2.0"), one Russian flag, two Ukrainian flags. A slogan: "Fascism won't pass". A photograph of the Berkut (Yanukovich's militarized police) inscribed "Berkut is the defenders of Ukraine from Fascists". Do they look like a Maidan material to you? They are still fighting WWII.
Another demonstration:
Observe the new Soviet Man on the photos in my previous post.
That, in contrast, is the flower of the new born nation. God help them.
This is indeed a faceless thug without national insignia striking a pose in front of someone clearly not needing his antics. I see the difference. Do you?
Wow, there's nine of 'em, and they forgot the hammer and sickle on the flags. Strange for dedicated lifelong commies.
Speaking of faceless thugs...reports are coming in that the Maidan snipers were actually working for Svoboda not Yanukovitch.
Ukraine's new govt is expected to fall in line with the new Euro think but the moslem problem is just going to get worse. I can't visualize Ukraine opening its arms to southern moslem types at all unless they are forced to by laws made by the new regime.
Yes. I notice plenty of variations on the Soviet theme in small party and organization flags. It also could be that the official Communist Party expropriated the old USSR flag. This shows that Soviet revanchism is broader than a single doctrinaire party; it's a mood rather than a platform. They just want to be feared again.
I am sure they are coming, from the Lubyanka Street.
Ukraine doesn’t have a “moslem problem”.
Anyone with a pair of ears can listen to it and draw their own conclusions.
...”Maidan snipers were actually working for Svoboda not Yanukovitch”...
Yes, and shooting both sides ta boot!
March 5, 2014........The snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev,Ukraine were allegedly hired by Maidan leaders, according to a leaked phone conversation between the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister...
Quote”...It was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition....they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,” .....the Estonian FM stressed......”it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened,”......
The Svoboda reminds me so much of the Islamists who infilitrated the Egyptian Protests....who hired their thugs to shoot and set fires etc.
Interesting post from a European......
.....”I’m in central Europe and I can tell you that people feel more threatened by the disorder in Kiev, the inclusion of anti-democrats in the new Ukrainian ‘government’, and by Svoboda’s commitment to a nuclear-armed Ukraine than by the return of Russian ‘single-mindedness”....
Few realize the current Ukraine Government has Nuclear ambitions big time!
I think Putin will posture about the future of Ukraine... But for now will settle for the Crimean peninsula. And he’ll get to keep it, without firing a single shot in anger.
Because that’s what he wanted.
We are being taken to school, gentlemen. Best we at least learn something.
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