RussiaGate #Digest

2021-06-15 16:18:50 Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russia Today and notorious propaganda manager, called Keir Simmons of NBC News “an idiot” for the question he asked Vladimir Putin about the killings of Boris Nemtsov, Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Magnitskiy, Alexander Litvinenko and Mikhail Lesin.

Simonyan and other state-sponsored journalists are not used anymore to direct questions to the President whom she calls Nachalnik, or The Boss. Simmons did the unthinkable in Simonyan’s world, for all she is used to is servile subordination and high incomes at the expense of Russian taxpayers.

Simonyan started her illustrious career in state media with lying about the real number of hostages during the Beslan school siege.

Insulting opponents, colleagues and even unknown people is common in decadent Russian political culture. Simonyan is one of the best and, perhaps, disgusting examples of this process. Open / Comment

2021-06-15 13:43:26 22% of Russians want to leave the country, according to the Levada poll. The rate of potential emigration among the 18-24 years old youth is a stunning 48%. Half of Russian youngsters have no faith in the future of the country.

This speaks volumes about the actual results of Putin’s long rule. Of course, people are mostly eyeing the US and Europe as potential places to live in. Kremlin propaganda’s “American failures” do not convince Russian youth.

People just want an overall healthier environment which is non-existent in Russia. The emigration along with demography makes the replacement of Russian ethnic population with immigrants from growing Uzbekistan and Tajikistan inevitable. Open / Comment

2021-06-14 18:26:05 Groundhog Day

President Putin’s NBC interview brought back memories of the great American fantasy comedy. Perhaps, the American audience could find something interesting in Putin’s arguments, but Russia has been hearing them for a while.

Putin deflected all the criticism on the abuse of human rights in Russia, crackdown on the opposition and other issues with pointing out America’s failures.

That’s what Putin and his elites has been doing for years. The whole nation is trapped in this time loop. The West is living rent-free in Putin’s head. Western failures and inescapable downfall are the cornerstones of Kremlin’s everyday propaganda.

What do American failures have to do with Russian total corruption, horrendous poverty, systemic abuse of law by the state? How do they make it easier for Russians?

Putin’s ressentiment is bothering and funny at the same time. Open / Comment

2021-06-11 20:04:02 Russia’s central bank raised its key interest rate to 5.5% today, increasing the cost of lending for the third time this year due to rising inflation.

Annual consumer inflation in Russia overshot expectations and reached 6% in May, its highest level since October 2016 when the key rate was at 10%.

Russia struggles to control inflation, so more hikes would be needed. Open / Comment

2021-06-11 11:26:46 Russia's prison service (FSIN) confirmed yesterday that convicts would be sent to construct a new section of the Baikal-Amur Mainline track (BAM) in Siberia, which was partially built by Gulag prisoners.

The BAM track was conceived in the 1930s, it was one of the largest and most costly projects of the Soviet Union that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Gulag prisoners sent to the labour camps under Joseph Stalin.

Gulag is officially back under Vladimir Putin. With Russia’s immense poverty it was no problem whatsoever for the state-owned Russian Railroads to find voluntary workers for BAM and create new jobs, but why pay them? Open / Comment

2021-06-10 19:28:07 Cornerstones of Putinism

According to the latest report of The Boston Consulting Group Russia’s 500 richest individuals, or less than 0.0001% of adult population, control 40% of the country’s entire household wealth.

It is three times the global average. In the last twenty years the share of wealth in the hands of 90% of world population increased from 11% to 18%, but Russia under Putin is moving in the opposite direction.

It is one of the reasons why the West is depicted by Kremlin as an archenemy and the land which is doomed. Russian elites simply do not want to follow current Western trends of raising taxes on the rich.

One of Kremlin’s domestic goals is the complete destruction of the middle class, which is almost non-existent in Russia. Middle class always demands political representation, but Russia’s owners do not want to spend their time on dealing with democracy.

The cornerstone of putinism is to keep Russian people poor while the rich are getting richer. Putinism is impossible without poverty.

Russia is not a state, it is a private corporation. Or a joint-stock company with about 500-1000 owners and Putin as the number one oligarch. Open / Comment

2021-06-10 11:19:56 Stupid and Funny

President Putin elaborated yesterday on the Ukranian bill on indigenous peoples which was submitted by Ukranian President last month. According to the bill, Russians are not recognized among indigenous peoples in Ukraine.

Putin said that Ukranian initiative doesn’t correspond to history, at all so calling Russians non-indigenous in Ukraine is not only false, but also funny and stupid.

Cannot argue with that, it is obviously stupid and provocative. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish Russians and Ukranians from one another. The bill is driving wedge between Moscow and Kyiv, but it makes sense if one considers that Ukraine has no more political identity and follows American and British patterns.

Second, Ukrainian nationalism is ethnic, not civil, in its core. As well as Russian.

Among the scandalous 2020 Constitution amendments allowing Putin to rule indefinitely was one enshrining Russian as the language of “state-forming people”. There are two sorts of people under Russian law. The first one has formed the state, the second one hasn’t, the criteria of inequality is language (actually ethnicity).

Russia and Ukraine are similar even in their discriminative policies towards minorities. Open / Comment

2021-06-09 18:54:00 True Patriot

It’s worthy to note that Vladislav Klyushin had been arrested in Switzerland not only because the meeting between Biden and his junior counterpart Putin will also be held in Switzerland.

One of the most important media-contractors of Kremlin and Defense Ministry has been spending his time not in Fortress Russia with the best president in the world, but in a Swiss canton right in the middle of doomed and ignorant Europe.

The hypocrisy of these people and their bosses in Kremlin has went through the roof a long time ago.

Russian state propaganda is keeping silence over his arrest so far which means that Klyushin's boss Alexei Gromov hasn't given any instructions yet. Open / Comment

2021-06-09 10:51:26 Position of Strength

Switzerland is considering a US extradition request for a Russian businessman Vladislav Klyushin. He had been arrested in the canton of Wallis in March. A court in Massachusets issued a warrant of arrest on March 19, two days later Klyushin was arrested in Switzerland.

On April 19, the US embassy in Bern requested his extradition, accusing him of running insider trading in the tens of millions of dollars with several accomplices. According to the spokesperson of the Swiss justice ministry, Klyushin opposed the extradition.

Who is Mr.Klyushin?

According to the Russian investigative Proekt media, he is a close associate of Alexei Gromov, Kremlin’s long-time propaganda chief. Klyusin is the owner of M-13 media company which has been getting lucrative deals from Kremlin since 2016 for monitoring social networks, media and messengers through through “Katyusha” media-monitoring system, also used by the Defense Ministry.

Klyushin is the man behind Nezygar channel which is the center of Kremlin’s network in Telegram. The US wants him tried for running insider trading, but Klyushin’s ties with Kremlin’s senior official Gromov and Defense Minister Shoigu make him a much more interesting prize for Americans.

Moscow surely does its best to pull Klyushin from the clutches of American justice but will likely fail. The meeting between Biden and Putin will take place in Geneva on June 16, and that’s what Jake Sullivan meant by “going on a trip from a position of strength” Open / Comment

2021-06-08 18:00:52 Kremlin Feudal Lords

Kremlin’s telegram major Nezygar reveals the logic behind the crackdown on opposition and the colonial mindset of Kremlin overall:

’’Various groups of Russian elite want the situation to be stable and the level of public competition to be low. Nobody is interested in political circus, everyone understands the negative consequences of turbulence. The System doesn’t want the replay of the 1999 scenario (when Yeltsin left his office after making a deal with Putin and elites supporting him).

The elites are focused on solving their internal problems. To waste resources on the non-system actors and to deal with the consequences of their political show is considered to be ineffective”.

So, there cannot be any political competition, democracy and freedom in Russia only because “The System” wants to solve its own problems and considers public politics “an ineffective waste of resources”. People are just bothering these “elites” and make them waste their time on some minor issues like poverty and social well-being of population.

The only thing Kremlin feudal lords want is to pass their power and illegitimate capitals to their children. They need a new deal with the West which could guarantee their personal and financial security. They need American and European guarantees for their personal corporation which is known as Russia.

Their info-servants from Nezygar have put everything very straight. Open / Comment