Putin’s dream of isolation.

It’s March 20, 2014.  The US President has just announced the increased sanctions on the Russian politicians, oligarch, banks and other targets.  He threatened furthering these sanctions if/when Putin decides on escalation of his aggression toward the Ukraine or any other now-sovereign, former republics.
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Russia has always had an excellent (although most often ‘satanic’) policies.  They have proven over and over, that what they have ever done was very profoundly prepared, estimated, and executed.  they always challenged the West by their moves, and most often got away with it.  
Only sometimes their predictions of the Western reaction were missed, or - using our former President neologism -  they ‘miss-underestimated’ our response.  

I am not a conspiracy-theorist in general.  When Russians are involved, though, I always try to find the ‘double deck’, hidden intensions, and, sometimes the elusive, located far in the future goals.  Their politics, a bit like Chinese, may have goals 50, 100 years ahead.  It’s only possible in the ideologically driven countries - even when they finally embrace the ‘(not so)-free market’ economy.

Russian leaders live in their own reality, the ‘close-circuit’ reality.  Putin stated on numerous occasions, that the ‘glasnost’(*1) and ’perestroika’(*2), which led to the the end of the ‘cold war’, was the biggest Soviet mistake.  When Russia started acting upon the principles brought by the glasnost and perestroika, it became increasingly difficult to lead the same political path as before.  If/when the Russian Government opened itself to its nation scrutiny, nothing could be run as it was before.  Unheard before the protests to the particular political decisions, voiced by the thousands, became the burden, the new government had to deal with.  As we know it dealt wit it  in a heavy handed, but covert way - loudest opponents were simply disappearing, to be found with the bullet in the head, or 
unrecognizably mutilated.
At the same time, all movement of the country on the World platform were more visible, and needed explanation.  To explain anything to the West…?  It was taking the edge from the Russian politics.  
the KGB ‘Apparatchik’ like Putin must have really suffered.  Suddenly Russia entered the World Society, and had to behave like a member of it, answering questions and responding to accusations - when before… they could just ignore that.

Russia has always been isolated from the rest of the World.  In their, and their satellites’ reality it was an absolute ruler, and to the rest of the World it was a ’Superpower’ to be reckoned with.  It was also, so easy to explain to their own people, that all the failures are the result of the Western politics and aggression, and that all the successes are even more important and precious in the same context.  

And suddenly, after the 1991, the successes and failures became just that: successes and failures of the government and its politics.  Russia as a ’Superpower’ was gone, but it lived in the mind of nationalistic Russians, and their leader, like Putin.
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As I stated above, I am not a conspiracy-theorist in general.  But when I recall the timeline of the Syrian conflict, I can’t help but wonder…

Syria has always been in the Russian orbit.  It was a Russian ‘plug’ into the Middle East, as well the broker for the shady transactions (oil +) with the Iran, with whom the no-one could legally trade.  Suria was that convenient proxy.  Later in the Arab Spring even Syria caught on fire, and its President Assad (member of the small religious minority - Alawites (*3)) escalated the un-proportional response to the peaceful (at the beginning) protests, killing hundreds of the protesters daily.  Always justifying it as a war with the terrorists, he lived to the self-fulfilling prophecy:  ‘Al-Qaeda’ affiliate (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (*4)) became the major player in this conflict - making the Western help in arming the fighter almost impossible.
The west was watching, contemplating the intervention, trying to device the campaign which would produce somewhat stable results, not alike the post war Iraq or Afghanistan.  I am sure that a small expeditionary force who would ‘take the Assad out’ was under consideration…

And then - Bashar al-Assad, following the footsteps of his father, started exterminating the rebel supporting cities.  Not, just some active centers of the opposition, but the whole settlements.  And he did it not only using a destructive force of the conventional weapons… He used the poisonous gas, on the whole population of the attacked locations.  His stacks of the chemical weapons was huge (a Russian ‘gift’ from the sixties and seventies).  it became immediately clear, that the chemical weapons are dangerous in his hands… but in the hands of the wrong factions, after he is gone, they may become the weapons against the West in general, and Israel in particular.  

Situation grew to the level of complexity, one can only call: a GORDIAN KNOT.  The impossible task of un-tying this knot suddenly became possible when Russians offered help in convincing the Syria’s President to give up his chemical weapons to the international community.  Suddenly, from the villain, who was about to be attacked and exterminated - Bashar al-Assad rose to the level of a ‘good guy’, who wants to cooperate with the World Community and give up, illegal and condemned by the World chemical weapons.  What a sinister twist.  Now we need this villain to complete this task.  He stalls, not complying with the schedule, intensifying the extermination of the opposition by the conventional weapons, and we stand by and ‘clap our hands’ in approval of his generousness…

What I am suggesting at this time, is, that it is Russia, who is standing behind all of it.  Not from the moment of defusing the situation, when the West (and Israel) were about to attack Syria (opening another Pandora’s Box), but from the very beginning!!!
I am suspecting, that the Russians advised Assad to use his chemical weapons on the innocent population, so they would be able to do what they did and SAVE ‘HIS BEHIND’.
It is really a sinister scenario - and right on the level of Russian conniving policies.  They never considered people above the political gains.  Quite the contrary.  Under their rules, the people have always fell the victims of the policies.  The sacrifices for the greater ‘good’ (greater good - read - ‘particular interests’).
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With the thousands of soldiers and the heavy equipment on the Ukrainian border, the self proclaimed pro-Russian militia (supported by the Russian Special Forces) forced themselves into the Ukrainian Navy Headquarters and a few other military installations and ordered the Ukrainian soldiers and personal to ‘go home’ or to join the Russian Army.   And all of it was done while the hundreds of women walked in front of the invading forces - a human shield.  As fas as we all know, human shields were used by Nazi forces in many of the urban fights on the invaded territories.  This practice has been condemned internationally, and yet the Russians have no problem violating any international laws.

I am afraid that the near future might create much longer list of these violations, committed by the Russians.  Russians want the return of the ‘cold war’.  And we all are on a final stretch…




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*1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost
*2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika
*3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alawites
*4 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant

Russia is, and has always been an Evil Empire.

Russia is, and has always been an Evil Empire. 

Never a Democracy… always run by a ruthless Dictator and it’s merciless, and often covert apparatus.

Since the beginning of the civilization Russia has been constantly terrorizing it’s neighbors, never respecting any international laws, nor treaties.

It’s completely normal, that any country acts to provide the best environment for it’s security, growth and prosperity.  There are generally acceptable ways of conduct leading to that, benefitting also all the neighbors, and providing a natural and self-propelling, stable environment. 

Unfortunately many countries with the imperialistic appetites, like Russia, always preferred having an upper hand in any international relationships, providing it by the sword and fire.

After the October Revolution of 1917, when Russia got rid of the Tsar, and established the USSR (CCCP), only the political system changed, not the appetite for domination and control over the surrounding countries.  Although, coming out of the WWI, USSR gave the sovereignty to Poland (previously oppressed and divided between Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary), it’s long term plan for the hegemony and iron clad control over this part of Europe was far from over. 

When it was threatened by a possibility of the Hitler’s aggression, Russia didn’t have a moral dilemma, but initiated the conniving treaty with Ribbentrop (Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany), giving Hitler a ‘carte blanche’ for his plans to invade the rest of the Central Europe, as long as the Russia was spared.

Based on this sneaky agreement, when Hitler initiated the WWII, invading the Poland from the West, USSR invaded the Polish Eastern territories (which happen to be the Polish part of the Ukraine).  Only recently, after decades of denying the facts, Russia finally acknowledged the Katyn massacre, where several thousands of Polish Army officers were seized and killed by the Russian forces, at the beginning of the war.

USSR suffered tremendous losses during that war.  More than 20 million of its citizens lost their lives, and other millions were displaced by the war activities.  Also, helped by other countries of anti-Nazis coalition (especially American food and weapons), USSR played a major role in the defeat of the Nazi-Germany War Machine.  These are the well known facts.  No one can diminish their importance.

And yet, there is an other face of this coin, showing how the defeat of Germany by the Russian Army was achieved, and how it looked from the perspective of the countries, which laid on it’s way. 

For political reasons no one wanted to talk, nor even remember of the millions of people in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc. who suffered the impact of the Russian, behaving like ‘locust’, army.  Millions of women have been raped, and millions of properties looted by the Russian soldiers.  Everything what hadn’t been destroyed by Germans, fell victim to the ‘locust’, Russian army.

There is also a little known to the World (or little remembered) incident of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, against the occupying German forces in Warsaw.  The uprising happened when the victorious Russian Army was approaching the Polish capital.  And yet, the Russians stopped short, on the East side of the Vistula River, watching the Warsaw Uprising to bleed out and die, with a great number of it’s brave fighters exterminated by vindictive German forces.

Russians, having the clearly defined plan for the future of Poland, being it’s communist satellite, preferred to see the Polish uprising die, instead of having to deal with the strong and ‘empowered’ Polish opposition. 

And then, the history brought the creation of the New World Order, where the USSR took over the Eastern and Central Europe and enslaved hundreds of millions of people in the controlled by the local Communist governments countries of the Eastern Block.  The Russian ruthless leaders kept changing, but method of the control stayed the same.  Army and the Police in all the countries of the Eastern Block applied the disproportional force at the smallest and most innocent signals of the public distress, opposition, or descent.  People disappeared and rotted in the prison, or the labor camps all over the region, not sparing the Russian society.  Stalin himself (died finally in 1953, allowing a partial ‘thaw out' of the communist rules in Poland) was responsible for the death of more than a million of his own people, who voiced disapproval, or simple were suspected of the descent.

The external policy of Russia has always been imperialistic, executed with no scruples, under false presences, and with completely dishonest explanation. 

Russia always opposed any form of the Western intervention, or mingling with the affairs of other countries, publicly demanding that all the nations have a right to making their own political and economical decisions…  But the same principles never applied to the Russian intervention and mingling with other countries' fate.  
The Cold War was in a full swing, bringing the World very close to the Nuclear Annihilation - when Nikita Khrushchev (the Russian Leader in the Sixties) tried to install the nuclear missiles in the Communist controlled island of Cuba, a few hundred miles South from the US mainland. 

Established right after the WWII, United Nations (replacing the League of Nations) created the Security Council (in 1946) - an International body comprised of 15 members - and only 5 Permanent Members (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States), who was supposed to provide the collective security in the World... It soon became a farce - when any initiative could, and often has been brought down by the ‘veto’ of one or another Communist power (when a couple of days ago the UN Security Council tried to forge a simple statement condemning the Russian Annex of the Ukrainian Crimea - Russians exercised the right to VETO for the 100th time - what an achievement !).

Right after the WWII the West felt very uncomfortable with the growing strength and importance of the USSR, and it’s territorial and political ambitions.  There were discussions of the open war with the growing adversary…  We had ’The Bomb’.  We used it, and the World knew it’s potential.  So, we could think about the World according to our gospel…  Oh, wait… On August 29, 1949 we lost this edge.  USSR exploded it’s first atomic bomb.  It’s name - ’Tsar’ exposed the imperial tendencies of its owner.  The same year brought another event, changing the power balance in the World - The Communist Revolution in China.  It was spreading like wild fire.  The fall of Cuba to the communist forces of Castro (sponsored by Russia) didn’t help.  It was under our noses, it was on our watch!

The Cold War was expanding.  ‘One who strikes the first, dies the second’ - all strategists were unanimous.  We will be living under constant thread of nuclear annihilation, since there is no way to win the nuclear confrontation.  The feeling of helplessness and the constant threat produced the only thing it could - fear of Russia and it’s influences. Senator McCarthy’s idiotic suspicion of the Communist infiltration in the US Congress and the society at large fell on the fertile ground.  While Russia was exterminating the descendants within its society and the population of its satellites, the USA was on its own ‘witch hunt’, trying to find and get rid of the ‘communists’.  If found or suspected, they didn’t disappear and die, but they were ostracized…  We came to our senses, finally, but the fear of ‘McCarthyism’, like the Sword of Damocles has been hanging over our heads since.

The Cuban missile crisis was an expected consequence of the situation under our noses.  It’s scary even to think, what would have happened, if the Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev hadn’t blinked…

The history will tell, if the Western reaction on what Russia with its Chinese ally was imposing was right or not.  Scholars will debate forever if the Eisenhower’s ‘Domino Effect’ theory was right or not, and if our acting upon it was at all justified, or at least prudent.  We know - there was no Domino Effect - but, what if the Vietnam War prevented it?!  There is no way of proving one way or another, after the fact.

After all, the whole Vietnam War grew so unpopular in the USA, that the war weary US population started looking at the USSR and its policies with a little softer look.

But, let’s remind ourselves, what is a subject of this article…  Getting back to our thesis…

In 1954, a year after the Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev (the next ruthless dictator) gave the Crimea, ethnically Russian in more than 60%, to the Ukraine.  Ukraine population has always had the nationalistic, separatist movement, which created constant problems for the Moscow government.  Maybe the Crimea ‘gift’ was a way of appeasement…  There are many theories, but I will leave them aside.  It happened, but within the Great USSR it was a formal move, with no consequence.  At least to the Western observer.  It was creating a difference in the lives of the Ukrainians.  In the USSR, in order to travel to other districts, or Republics, one would have to obtain an official permit, claiming an important reason for the travel.  All the travels were controlled, and in many cases restricted.  Having Crimea within the Ukrainian borders gave the Ukrainians the Black See resorts.  Most of the high rank members of the Party, had their vacation residences there.  But, as stated before, it was a formal move, of little significance…

Close to another corner of the Empire, in April 1978, the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in the Saur Revolution. Within a few months the anti-communist government launched the uprising in the Eastern Afghanistan.  The full fledged civil war exploded soon after.  While Pakistan was training and supporting the mujahedeen, the Russia started sending arms, and later the army to support the communist factions. 

By mid-1979, the United States had started a covert program to assist the mujahedeen, but not until the President Reagan approved arming the fighters with the sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons, Russians were in control over Afghanistan. 

The Russian involvement in the Afghan war put tremendous strain on the resources in not very economically efficient USSR.  Un-winnable, prolonged war created also a very heavy psychological burden on the soldiers and the population.  
There were many independent factors leading to that, and finally, after loosing grip over it’s satellite countries, and losing them one by one, on December 26, 1991, the USSR formally ceased to exist.  As a result Russian Federation (the former USSR) lost several of it’s former Republics, who got their sovereignty, and established more or less hostile (very rarely friendly) to the Russia governments.

The World was celebrating, but in the intelligence community no one discarded the threat of the Russia’s drive to rebuilt it’s power and domination.  The beast was wounded, but as dangerous as ever.

Years passed, and Russia had a few leaders, who no one will probably remember.  But on the last day of 1999,  after Yeltsin resignation the Acting President position was filled by the former KGB ‘apparatchik’ (high ranked member of the KGB - USSR Internal Security Agency) - Vladimir Putin.  Being a ‘shorty’ - 5’5”, in a short time he demonstrated to the World the “napoleon complex”, showing off his masculinity, and flexing his own, and his country, military ‘muscles’. 

Like in the old days, he tried to crush the separatist movement in Chechnya.  Like in the old days, in 2008, Russian forces crushed the opposition in Georgia and annexed the free and independent country, without much of the Western opposition.

In the new formed country, as far from the Democracy as the former USSR, Putin has been playing politics with his ‘patsy’ Dmitry Medvedev, switching places with him - always with the 100% support of the Russian population.  We all know how truthful were any elections in the USSR, North Korea, China… Always overwhelming support, always almost 100% attendance and almost 100% vote YES.

Putin didn’t even try hiding, or covering this farce.  He has been playing this game with the West in the open.  He has been playing this game to the tune of the millions of Russians who still haven’t given up the dream of the New-Old Empire - Great and Powerful RUSSIA.  Millions support Putin, and those who do not, are intimidated and often killed.  It happened to many journalists who naively believed that something had changed in their country, and tried to address the ‘shady business’ of the Government.  The list is really long, but let’s remember here at least a few: Nina Yefimova, Natalia Estemirova, Nadezhda Chaikova and others (please review the whole list -*1).

Yeah, you can take a boy out of the KGB, but you can’t take the KGB out of a boy.

Putin dreams of the revival of the Russia as a Superpower.  He also dreams of restoring the glory and owe, brought by the Russian drive to be or have the biggest, the most expensive, the richest and often most tasteless… After the fiasco of 1980 Moscow Olympics, when the West in general boycotted the event, Putin dreamt about the Winter 2014 Olympics to be granted to Sochi - the ’summer’, Russian resort.  And it happened.  The most expensive Olympics ever - with over $90 Billions price tag.

Yes, he did it.  It was his Olympics, his triumph - although shaded by lack of snow and his anti-gay laws.  He has proven once again, that for the Russian leader - his image, and his place in the history is the most important thing, in his and his country reality. 

During the Sochi Olympics, the pro Russian government of Ukraine, who had just rejected the trade agreement with the UE, and accepted the extensive trade agreement with Russia instead - hed to deal with the strong, populous, and very decisive protests over the Central, and West part of the Ukraine.  In the Ukraine Capital - Kiev the clashes with the security forces, and the Police led to hundreds of people to be killed by life ammunition used by the apparatus.  As a result, the President of Ukraine - considered by the West as a Russian puppet - Viktor Yushchenko was ousted, and escaped to Russia.  The formerly imprisoned on manufactured charges Julia Timoshenko (former Ukrainian PM) was released from the prison.  Thanks to the on going Olympics Putin had to seat on his hands in the decisive period of the conflict.  After the Olympics ended, when the International support for the new Interim Government of Ukraine led by the Arseniy Yatsenyuk grew strong, Putin couldn’t make an open move, like in Georgia years before.  So, he did what he could - claiming the discrimination of the Russian ethnics in Crimea by the ‘Nazi’ elements in the Ukraine, he threw a several thousands of ‘unmarked’, but clearly Russian special forces into Crimea to ‘protect’ Russian population (we all remember the Annexation of Austria or Annexation of Sudetenland by Hitler in the 1938 - done under the same ‘ethnic protection’ pretext). 

Free and independent from the USSR/Russia since August 1991, the Ukraine is one of the most important countries who spanned from the USSR.  It had to be a grain of sand in the Russian eye from the very moment of independence, since by default it possessed tremendous arsenal of the nuclear weapons - Russian weapons.  It acted swiftly and in 1994 it gave up the whole arsenal, and according to the Budapest accord received assurances - not to suffer the use of force or be threatened by any military action against the newly independent nation.  The Accord was signed by USA, Russia, the UK, and Ukraine.

And yet, Russia thrusted the thousands of its soldiers to the territory of the independent country, forced the ad-hoc referendum where both questions were pro Russian:  either to succeed form Ukraine and join Russia or accept a status quo (already created independent Crimea).  In both cases the Crimea wouldn’t be Ukrainian any more.  As expected, with the majority of the Russians, the boycott of the referendum by Crimean Tatars, and the Russian Army supervising the execution of the referendum, there was no ‘risk’ of failing.  the vote was YES. 

Two days later the Russian DUMA (Russian Parliament) approved the Annexation of the Crimea.

The World promised repercussions.  Some, insignificant restriction of travel for Russian and Crimean officials have been imposed.  But the Europe is totally dependent on the Russian gas.  Without it the winters in the whole Europe will be very long and very cold.  Although the USA has a trade balance with the Russia on the level of $70 Billion, UE’s trade balance is more than twice this amount. 

All the Russian actions so far have been politically motivated.  Putin in fact wants to put his country in the fiscal turmoil, knowing that the Russian population will soon forget about the reasons for the sanctions and just turn against the West in the unified and overwhelming anger.  It’s easily predictable.  

So far Putin promised not having any plans, nor appetite for annexing any other part of the Ukraine.  No one believes in that.  He already mustered about 80 thousand of troops on the Ukrainian border.  Just to have the military exercises.  We heard the same assurances from Hitler in 1938. 

The Crimea is not physically connected to Russia at this point.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin asked for the land ‘corridor’ leading from Russia to Crimea.  This is what Hitler did in Poland, imposing the corridor through the Polish territory, connecting the Reich with a Free City of Gdansk.  And then… we all know what happened.

 

At this point Putin has all the chips.  The World knows about the history of the Crimea (it always was Russian, until the whim of the former Russian leader in 1954).  Although the UN mandate states that no country can redraw the borders by force, the Crimean case is (if it stays confined, as it is now) inconvenient, ideologically wrong... but too small to act upon, jeopardizing the prosperity of the countries involved in assuring the Budapest Accord. 

So, Putin will enjoy playing a flute on the nose of the West for the foreseeable future…  
Like Hitler did before the WWII.

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*1:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia