Putin does not naturally give birth to a gangster state, Invasion of Ukrainestir the planet in chaos and order his goblins on Russian television to relentlessly threaten the world with mushroom clouds.
“Russian conquests and violence are the most natural and legal thing ever done in history,” was one of the recent statements of the former Russian president. Dmitry Medvedev.
The heartbreaking question is whether there is any truth in Putin’s rhetoric that the United States blames Russia’s global aggression. Three decades of post-Cold War twists and turns between Russia and the US provide compelling evidence that Putin is right – but clearly not for the reasons that he and his propagandists claim.
Nine years of news reports from Putinthe war in Ukraine—which exploded into a full-fledged land invasion nearly 12 months ago—kinds of armed mischief in Africa and assassinations of political opponents at home and abroad only continues to overshadow this larger and more dangerous picture of history. It is a portrait illustrating three decades of Western cooperation to enrich Russia’s leaders, support and abet their oligarchs, and use diplomatic hoaxes like “balance of power” to empower Putin.
Even before Putin stepped into the Kremlin’s throne room in 2000, the former KGB agent who served as an assistant to the Mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak, has instigated a new financial dance with the West that will revolutionize Russian finance.
Putin’s cash machine
It was a modern twist to the Bolshevik system of “noble chiefs,” which he perfected while in the presidential suite. The procedure involves a Russian business entering into lucrative and shady joint ventures with Western energy, production, distribution or trading companies. The split has always been 51/49, with the jurisdictional Russian entity holding the majority and always through one of Putin’s hundreds of kneeling oligarchs, all of which conceal transaction details beneath the layers of secrecy of completely legal offshore companies.
Investment bankers – who during the gratuitous 1998 ruble economic crisis said they’d rather eat cabbage from Chernobyl than lend it to Russia – love the new tunes that come out of Putin’s mouth and take advantage of the sound. his music bar to sell more Russian stocks and bonds.
John-Paul Smith, Morgan Stanley’s emerging markets expert Dean Witter, warned at the dawn of the Putin era: “The macro picture looks great, but you have a problem with almost every stock. votes you consider”. “Everything is tainted on an individual basis.”
Putin’s military chiefs are also aware of the insidious consequences of these deals as they are the shared profits that enrich them and create a global oligarchy. Yet somehow lost or overlooked in the pile of cash, is how Putin is spending the Russian cut: Militarization.
“Very few people understand the reality of what Putin is doing,” said a former General Electric executive who had direct experience with the overall management system. “It was one of those things that I couldn’t even say, let alone explain, to anyone who wasn’t there. There is so much innocence, more than it should have.”
Russia is not a country. It’s a global fascist enterprise. As a business this is something to behold, and those tasked with continuously helping the country shed its brutal past and embrace the 21st century finance the process with their eyes closed. squish.
In 1991, for example, US Ambassador to Moscow Robert Strauss rationalized the wisdom of cornering post-Soviet Russia into billions of dollars in foreign aid and private sector investments. without the need for detailed appraisal. “I would rather risk a few billion dollars here for our country than not risk a few billion dollars and end up looking at a real fascist type situation,” the former FBI agent from Texas explained in lunch at the restaurant. the ambassador’s accommodation at Spaso House.
The first law of forensic science is Locard’s Principle of Exchange: “Every contact between a perpetrator and a crime scene leaves a trace,” and there probably aren’t enough bags of FBI evidence available to contain it. proof about the West’s enthusiasm for funding Putin’s criminal assault and its meager buzz.
To be sure, five consecutive US presidential administrations, the leaders of America’s NATO allies, the Davos Men at the World Economic Forum, and the Wall Street oligarchs have been many times. passionately exploiting Russia’s natural resources. warning Strauss’ “fascist situation” was included in every deal with the post-Soviet Kremlin.
Of course, the reason is money. In 1989, Leonid Evenko, an aging senior apparatus at the American and Canadian Institutes, explained how Russia operated its nascent hustle.
“The best part is living here on the dollars we make from our joint ventures with the US,” Evenko said, looking at expensive whiskeys and crunchy cucumber sandwiches at the checkout. hard currency of the Savoy hotel in Moscow. “This is life. Take a break from Russia for a steak and shrimp cocktail in New York City once in a while. Americans will never understand this fact because you don’t really know or care what’s going on in the world. This is the big difference between us.”
Robert Trent Jones Jr. remember Russia well before and after the West delivered shrimp and T-bones to Savoy. “I first came here as a Yale student in 1961,” said the famous architect who built the first golf course in Russia, a negotiation that began in 1974 with the Prime Minister. Soviet general Leonid Brezhnev and many members of the Politburo of the Cold War. “I want to see my enemies up close.”
Instead, Jones continued to seek out Russian friends, all of whom, he said, “share my existential ambitions and fears.” Jones recalls, their discussions “focused on how to make money peacefully with the threat of the fusion cloud in the background.”
US money blows back
More than 50 years later, Russia and Wall Street abound with cash, but only Putin continues to terrify the world with full-blown nuclear weapons. misbehavior. “Everything will end with a nuclear attack,” Putin’s television propagandist Vladimir Solovyov recently warned. “But we will go to heaven, while they simply creak.”
Or maybe die of indifference, according to a January 2023 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, found that the percentage of American adults who think the United States is giving too much aid to Ukraine has increased 6 percentage points since last September and 19 percentage points since. when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country in February 2021.
During one of his famous poker games at Spaso House sometime between 1953 and 1957, the US Ambassador to Moscow Charles Bohlen poured another round of wine and extended the axiom that those who do not study too much The past will repeat its mistakes, and those who do study it will find other ways to go wrong.
Bohlen, who helped author the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II and played a key role in formulating American Cold War policy based on the Kremlin’s absolute obsession with re-establishing the empire. Russian regime to ensure the external security of their weak internal regime.
“Two lies told me never to trust anyone who told them,” continued Bohlen, according to family members accustomed to his intelligence and wit. “The first was, ‘I’m never drunk with Champagne.’ The second is, ‘I know how to get along with the Russians.’”. , but you don’t know who gets hit and who doesn’t.
As Putin’s war in Ukraine drags into its second bloodiest year, Bohlen’s 60-year-old assessment of Russia is the only sure signal of what happens next in Moscow, Kyiv and beyond.
Undoubtedly, Western money and ignorance, coupled with no small amount of indulgence, have empowered and continue to facilitate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s a bloody crime scene and Putin isn’t the only one concerned.
