Category Archives: Russia

Crimea’s Off-Kilter Presentation

25 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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The dueling narratives in Crimea appear to pit ethnic security against western freedom, i.e., Crimea’s Russians belong with Russia and Ukraine, so far, can go to hell.

— Russia for Russians and Russian Security in Crimea —

However, the apparent basis for Ukraine’s recent revolution appears to have been resistance to Russian domination associated with Putin’s kleptocracy, which was then signaled in the person of Viktor Yanukovych by way of his excessively self-aggrandizing spending — or, alternatively, by his setting the example of the “new nobility” assembled by “men of respect”, but, perhaps, for himself either rejecting what he might have had to do to hold his position or simply not having the power to hold it.

— Russia for Russians and Russian Security in Crimea —

vs

— Putin’s Russia and Piratical Government in Ukraine —

Discussion of the recent Russian annexing of Crimea often seem to revolve around the legality and propriety of Putin’s initiative and not around Putin’s character. However, the imbroglio, from the intimations of revolution forward, has been about the character projected by Russia’s president’s leadership.  From the new Russian Security State, one that features FSB staffing at a higher level per capita than ever achieved by the KGB to state-controlled media, from cooperation and support of the Assad-Khamenei axis, which support appears to have transformed legitimate “Arab Spring” challenge into a blood bath, to the $52 billion development effort to produce the Olympic Games at Sochi, the tone set has been that of piratical control.

If one has wished for Russia to attend to Syria as within its sphere of influence and to do so in the most aboveboard and humanitarian way, that wish may be dismissed with the chain of dictatorship having by now been made appallingly clear (and so I have made “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” a BackChannels trope).

In the Russian projection, Crimea has been made to look like its about simmering ethnic animus and divided loyalties across a large constituency.

Look again.

Look again at the mansions and hunting lands acquired by Viktor Yanukovych: Crimea, by extension, turns out an argument about the validity of dictatorship, and not necessarily Putin’s dictatorship alone.

Yesterday, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen noted of President Putin the following:

Russian nationalism is an indigenous force, and Russian grievance is somewhat the same. But another leader may not have fanned either one. A non-Putin, in fact, may not have felt either emotion so intensely. Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and now the prime minister, probably would not have seized Crimea. Nothing about him suggests otherwise. He is no Putin.

But Putin is. The tautology has become plain. The reformer has become the uber nationalist and expansionist.

Cohen, Richard.  “Why the Study of Vladimir Putin is so Important.”  The Washington Post, March 24, 2014.

If there’s a basis for arguing the assertion untrue, one wonders what it might me.  In fact, I’d go further and suggest that Cohen’s “uber nationalist and expansionist” is more than that: Putin would seem to be the dictators’ dictator, the standard bearer of a class.

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Conflict, Integrity, and Putin

25 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

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With the annexing of Crimea, Great-Leader-for-Long-Time Putin has driven himself closer to the wall that stands beneath the banner, “No Farther.”  From Syria to Ukraine, the Statesman of Respect, the same that continued arms deliveries to the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, thereby sustaining also the projection of influence paid for by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, has enjoyed and employed power at egregious cost to the humanity of the states concerned.

What have Russians gotten out of Syria other than the identification of their state with a monster?

While Crimea’s Russian contingent has obtained some measure of Slavic assurance and validation, one might ask whether as much was at all needed, and then, given former President Yanukovych’s kleptocratic display, whether ethnic vanity has not been served much at the expense of an improved economic future and peninsula-wide political stability.

______

The peninsula’s native population, the minority Crimean Tatars, boycotted the vote wholesale, as did many ethnic Ukrainians. Authorities have already begun asking Crimean Tatars to vacate their property; one Tatar man, who opposed the Russian takeover, has turned up dead, his body bearing marks of torture.

Sindelar, Daisy.  “Putin’s Crimea Address Rewrites History.”  Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, March 19, 2014.

* * *

. . . the main thrust will be to attack Russia’s ambitions to be increasingly influential and respected in the world by freezing it out of bodies such as the G8, and projecting it as a gangster state. Russia longs for respectability and to become a super-power once more, but the Crimean adventure has scuppered that.

Mitchenson, Robin.  “Putin’s failed, criminal state won’t be a hyperpower.”  The Commentator, March 25, 2014

* * *

This bland description of what happened to the Tatars is appalling. In May 1944 the whole Tatar population of Crimea was rounded up in days and transported to gulag-style slave labour in the eastern USSR: ethnic cleansing and genocide perpetrated by Stalin against fellow Soviet citizens.

Crawford, Charles.  “Vladimir Putin, Crimea and ‘Double Standards’.”  The Commentator, March 21, 2014.

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The conflicts I’ve looked over, so far, are loaded with disingenuous speech, for there is no other way to sustain a dictatorship that barrel bombs children except by lying about every facet of it, nor for that matter, is there any good way of maintaining one’s warm water naval station and kleptocracy with absolute certainty and control except by promoting and establishing the pretext for stealing it.

This blog has now a small assembly of nifty concept widgets addressing the mentality that abets and drives dictatorships.

Start with “malignant narcissism“.

It does not yet have an off button for them.

However, there is an “off button” in global political reality, and it is simply insistence on integrity in governance and related speech.

As much may be enforced by a free press, presuming the mass of it has some integrity itself, the many peccadillos of scribblers notwithstanding.

For various internal reasons — reasons known only to themselves — dictators fear honesty, starting with themselves.  In their own heads, they must be great beyond imagining, and then in their social surrounds, that greatness wants its equal in validation.

Remember: the (malignant) narcissist is never wrong.

While one may wonder what enables a man to deploy — or maintain the deployment of — snipers intent on crippling children, one may go on to question the ethics and humanity of any anomic enough to keep the same interminably propped.

Comrades in crime?

Yes.

But oh what crimes!

A little bribery, corruption, graft?

Piffle.

Those things: apologize to the public, perhaps; do some time, maybe; retire to the marina; hang out at the mansion; mix with the beautiful people until the sun sets.

To do what the Great Bad Boys do — start by making an unmistakable statement!

Arrest children at the local people’s protest; move on to murder and torture (see, for example, “Children of the Syrian Revolution” [2012]).

Initiate an indiscriminate bombing campaign against communities primarily up in arms about jobs and local services.

Set loose one’s hired thugs and laconic snipers, the kind who shoot to kill their “enemies” while still in the womb.

Take it up a notch: while claiming to be fighting “the terrorists”, drag in the real McCoy — and work with them!

Get to a place from which one cannot retreat or recover, the scope and viciousness of the criminal misjudgment — or criminal assertion of a sadistic bent — being too great.

And bond with like-minded others, the kind that like Yanukovych my write their reflections — also their blackmails, bribes, loans at high interest, perhaps — in diaries and memos.

The enormity of the crimes political and the blood spilled with them may be what bonds Putin-Assad-Khamenei and Putin-Yanukovych and Chinese political elites with Nicolas Maduro and his new hires who seem to know how to shoot while rolling on two wheels.

Thugocrats love Vesparados.

Once firmly on that track, the only “off switch” is what others may do to derail that black locomotive of a personality in its every facet.

And afterward, should the good prevail, God willing, the good may demand integrity from the next empowered politician arriving at “reset”.

Death on Wheels — Two Links

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2557696/3-killed-Venezuelan-protests-turn-violent.html; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2587944/French-official-shot-dead-car-motorbike-riding-assassins-shortly-backing-daughter-local-politician.html; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/25/venezuela-motorcycle-gangs-vidoes-colectivos_n_4855640.html.

Back to the Beginning with Putin – Still Recent Related Background

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/24/how-boris-berezovsky-made-vladimir-putin-and-putin-unmade-berezovsky.html

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FTAC – Guest Note – Elena Elena – On Crimean Identity and Self-Determination

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Politics, Regions, Russia, Ukraine

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I’ve been trying to locate a really good article I read about the subject without much luck… Putin is done with the Ukraine. I do not think Russia is going to do anything beyond annexation of the Crimea. The reason: Because the Crimea is a special case legally. (1) The Crimea was given illegally by Nakita Khruschev to the Ukraine in 1954, without any authorization by the Russians in Crimea or from the Duma. It’s worth noting that only 13 members of the Secretariat voted to this, the other 14 were simply absent. (2) As a compromise, the Crimea became an autonomous Russian Region within Ukraine and its constitution stated as such. The means the Crimea could, at any time, vote and rejoin Russia, which is what happened. (3) The propaganda from the EU and the USA and NATO trying to characterize Russian behavior as illegal is a lie. There are treaties between Russia and Ukraine in 1991, 1994, 2004, and 2007 which make everything that has happened perfectly legal within the law – and in 1999 the World Court in the Hague, responding to a question, stated that any people, exercizing self-determination, can quit one state and join another legally.

“FTAC” — “From the Awesome Conversation” (on Facebook).

“Elena Elena” — A Facebook friend and writer of the above quoted passage.

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With the arrival of common broadband, access to the English-language editions for foreign newspapers, blogging software, and social networks — basic ingredients — any English reading and writing Everyman lucky enough to have the lifestyle, technology, and time could travel by armchair around the world and through its war zones with unprecedented freedom.

So I, you, and we have done as much.

We have seen it all!

But, perhaps, we haven’t seen it at all at all.

As elsewhere, the devils in history are in the details of events, and while hopscotching from revolution to terror, from the diplomacy of the hour to the heart wrenching atrocity of the day, one may discover missing the clear, accurate, and complete intimacy with story that comes with specialization.

How difficult might such specialization be here in mid-flight?

Here’s the step-off for recent events by way of the Modern Broadbanded Everyman’s Wikipedia entry:

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Crimea became part of the newly independent Ukraine. Independence was supported by a referendum in all regions of Ukrainian SSR, including Crimea.[17] 54% of the Crimean voters supported independence with a 60% turnout (in Sevastopol 57% supported independence).[18] The percentage of the total Crimean electorate that had voted for Ukrainian independence in the referendum was 37%.[19] In 1994, the legal status of Crimea as part of Ukraine was backed up by Russia, who pledged to uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine in a memorandum signed in 1994, also signed by the US and UK.[20][21]

This new situation led to tensions between Russia and Ukraine. With the Black Sea Fleet based on the peninsula, worries of armed skirmishes were occasionally raised. In August 1991, Yuriy Meshkov established the Republican Movement of Crimea which was registered on 19 November.[20]

On 2 September 1991, the National Movement of Crimean Tatars appealed to the V Extraordinary Congress of People’s Deputies in Russia demanding the program how to return the deported Tatar population back to Crimea. Based on the resolution of the Verkhovna Rada (the Crimean parliament) on 26 February 1992, the Crimean ASSR was renamed the Republic of Crimea.[22] The Crimean parliament proclaimed self-government on 5 May 1992.[23][22] (which was yet to be approved by a referendum to be held 2 August 1992[clarification needed Did the referendum happen, or was it cancelled?][24]) and passed the first Crimean constitution the same day.[24] On 6 May 1992 the same parliament inserted a new sentence into this constitution that declared that Crimea was part of Ukraine.[24]

Huh?

As a Wikipedia section note tells, the above passage might be too detailed.

Be that as it may, what it also tells is how time may be needed to read, sift, and reflect on descriptions of events, of the evidence of events, until they make sense, the rhetoric and actions of so many conflicted parties tumbling finally into place in an historian’s mind in a way less ambiguous than may be perceived in a hurry.

Add this commonplace too: nothing beats being there.

The armchair bobbing on the foam of the information deluge and short form Wikitype “learnin'” might not suffice for accurate and reliable comprehension.

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Revived Arcs of Dictatorship – Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Asia, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Politics, Regions, Russia, South America, Ukraine, Venezuela

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To Russian and Syrian officials and their supporters, the Syrian war and the standoff over the Crimean Peninsula are essentially part of a single, larger battle, against post-Cold War American unilateralism.

Unity Coalition for Israel.  “Russian Defiance Is Seen as a Confidence Builder for Syria’s Government.”  March 24, 2014.

When Putin’s Russia pledged $10 million to Syrian relief while spending $52 billion to host the winter games in Sochi, it told the world unmistakably what it was going to be about: the greatness of the Great Leader.

Why shouldn’t Bashar al-Assad continue what he’s doing while “encouraging” votes to reelect him as their Great Leader?

Why should Vladimir Putin halt the expansion of either mafia enterprise or Russian hegemony in Crimea?

* * *

Six documents stamped with the seal of the Venezuelan army show that as far back as December 2001, agents of then president Hugo Chavez — Maduro’s mentor — sought to build a paramilitary. What is more, the recruitment efforts targeted military bases in order to incorporate army personnel into this non-uniformed militia. In other words, the Chavez government was looking for trained professionals who could handle weapons.

O’Grady, Mary Anastasia.  “Sanctioned killers make a mockery of ‘democracy’ claims.”  The Wall Street Journal, March 24/25, 2014.

I read the above in hard copy at the coffee shop an hour ago, so it has been out today, Monday, March 24.

Venezuela’s axis may be counterpoised to Russia, as I recall the note of a South American friend: “You can see the oil rigs of the Chinese from Miami.” [1]

The business would seem to come along with the way of doing business – or perhaps dictatorships simply understand one another in the way of crooked and sociopath elites:

The challenges facing most of the Caribbean nations are neither unique nor entirely isolated. They include high unemployment and migration levels, unsustainable levels of government debt and increasingly high costs of energy. In fact, the high costs of energy have led some small Caribbean island nations to join Hugo Chavez’s radical ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas) in exchange for cheap Venezuelan petroleum. When a powerful nation such as China comes on the scene and offers loans, credits and investment, local actors take substantial notice, especially when the traditional hegemon, the United States, seems preoccupied elsewhere.

Menéndez, Fernando.  “China Comes to the Caribbean.”  China – U.S. Focus, January 25, 2014.

To spell in schematic, “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” and “Putin-Yanukovych” (so sorry it didn’t last) seems to me perfectly sensible, and then to suggest a similar but Chinese-oriented path for Chavez seems not unreasonable.

The line may be missing a dot or two, but the dots are there and whether intentionally among the Bond-villain set — in the post-00s of the 21st Century, these already have their nukes — or unconsciously by way of the anomic lust for money that produces the policy that pipes out Sudanese oil while ignoring the Darfur Genocide, for example — hardly matters: free Europeans say “hello” to the new old bosses, the old familiars, the kind that talk kindly while select suspect associates are thrown off the roofs above their heads and the children of their constituents are barrel bombed into dead certain compliance with their will.

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Related on BackChannels: “Draw Near, the Next World Order — China and Russia Hang Together.”  March 3, 2014.

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Russia Today – Russia, Yesterday – RT, Please!

23 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

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The officially controlled phase of glasnost began the examination of “blank pages” in Soviet history. Literary journals filled up with long-suppressed works by writers such as Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky, Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, and Andrey Platonov. Newspapers and magazines carried stories of Stalin-era acts of repression, concentration camps, and mass graves. The works of Marxist theoretician Nikolay Bukharin, shot in 1938 for alleged rightist deviation, appeared. By revealing communist party crimes against the Soviet peoples, and the peasants in particular, glasnost further undermined Soviet federalism and contributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Data as of July 1996

Russia-Glasnost – Mongabay.com.

* * *

RIA Novosti is part of a massive effort by Russia to build and project to the world an image of a country where the economy is booming and democracy is developing. The campaign is designed to counter what the government and many people here see as unrelenting and unfair Western criticism of declining political freedoms under President Vladimir Putin, who is preparing to hand over his post, but perhaps little of his power, after the election last Sunday of his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev.

Russia Pumps Tens of Millions Into Burnishing Image Abroad – 3/6/2008.

* * *

Anyone who has watched Russia’s English-language propaganda channel RT over the past 10 months would have learned that in Syria, foreign-funded terrorists, Israeli operatives, and American intelligence agents are attempting to destabilize a benevolent, popular autocrat.

Russia’s International News Channel RT Warps the Truth About the Syrian Uprising – Tablet Magazine – 2/13/2012.

* * *

1. So on Saturday, RT used all kinds of chyrons to explain the situation in Crimea. For example: The Russian military is a “stabilizing force for Ukraine.”

14 Insane Moments From RT’s Coverage Of The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine – 3/3/2014.

* * *

The job quickly began to seem strange. The editing process was multilayered: “First you have somebody who’s a native English speaker, usually British,” Bivens said. This person edits the script for clarity and tightness. “Then you have a Russian and they make sure that it fits whatever narrative they want it to fit.”

How The Truth Is Made At Russia Today – 3/13/2014.

* * *

It’s been a busy few weeks for Vladimir Putin. In the last month, the Russian president has hosted the Olympic Games, invaded a neighboring country and massed troops along its border. Back in Moscow, the Kremlin has cranked up the volume of hysterical anti-Western propaganda to a roar while cracking down on the last vestiges of the free media.

* * *

While filming in Ukraine over the past several weeks, I was struck by how the revolution that began in February has become a full-scale propaganda war, a surreal throwback to Soviet times, with both sides digging in and stoking old, bitter biases and grievances.

In the battle for the future of Ukraine, control of the media could be just as important as the military bases and government buildings.

Inside Ukraine’s Propaganda War | Foreign Affairs / Defense | FRONTLINE | PBS – 3/14/2014.

* * *

Vladimir Putin and the Lessons of 1938 – Garry Kasparov – POLITICO Magazine – Gary Kasparov – 3/16/2014.

* * *

The news director, who was Russian, pitched the network as an alternative news source that dared to challenge conventions. “Question More” was the network’s slogan.

I Was Putin’s Pawn – Elizabeth Wahl – POLITICO Magazine – 3/21/2014.

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Language as a culturally-invented survival technology would seem to separate cultures into one of two channels: Channel One: Lies, Loyalty, Power, Subjugation; Channel Two: Truth Telling, Uncertainty, Independence, Dignity.

Which have you chosen?

The language behavior of Putin-Assad-Khamenei would seem to be that of the autocrat / malignant narcissist whose every effort seeks the manipulation of his targets, and what works, works: the censoring and intimating of other and critical and inquiring voices; the dissemination of lies, patronage, and propaganda. Masked by passionate nationalism, these have embarked on criminal adventures from their first words.

What it means to be Crimean Russian in Russia (Today) is to be subjugated to the story whipped up by Colonel President Emperor Putin because in the colonel president emperor’s world, that is the only story that matters.

What it would mean to be Crimean Russian in Crimea would be to live in the other world, distinctly Russian, independent of mind, and free of dictatorship.

Other Ukrainians, some with Ukrainian nationalism in mind, know that Ukraine is not Russia and they are not Russian, and they will not stand the impositions of Russian state-sponsored mafia (how else to describe the deposed president Viktor Yanukovych?) on their newly liberated and western-aligning state, but Ukrainian Russians may feel the tug of divided loyalties, and at that fork might ask a question:

Is Putin Russia?

Is Russia Putin?

Are autocracy and subjugation inherently Russian?

In particular, in Crimea, for the Russians of the peninsula, are autocracy and subjugation (their own to Putin’s manner of doing business as illustrated by what has happened to RT since Glasnost) inherently irresistible?

If Crimea’s Russians have been thinking about their wallets more than their freedoms, including the freedom to discern from an open and free media a true state of affairs in foreign policy an trade, they may be surprised to find themselves Ukrainian after all.

If not, they will live in the bubble atop the vertical of power, i.e., the world according to Russia Today – RT, Kremlin invented: Kremlin approved.

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Eastern Ukrainian city divided over Russia ties – YouTube – AFP – 3/19/2014.

Additional Reference

McFaul to quit as U.S. Russia ambassador after conclusion of Sochi Olympic Games – The Washington Post – 2/4/2014.

Putin on the Couch – Susan B. Glasser – POLITICO Magazine – 3/13/2014.

Crimean War redux, with Putin as czar – The Globe and Mail – 3/18/2014.

Who Is Putin? | Return Of The Czar | FRONTLINE | PBS

Yanukovich’s Assets

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FTAC – On Global Conflict’s Edge

19 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Journal, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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https://www.facebook.com/pages/Yuri-Bezmenov/46501554141 Sign on. 🙂 Not quite everyone’s on Facebook, especially if they’re wanted (by INTERPOL) or popular in some heavy (as in the 1960’s “heavy, dude”) way, in which case they may be found at their university or think-tank address.

What’s interesting here, perhaps, is watching this edge in conflict surface, a conflict between the criminally deluded and utterly dishonest and the victims and targets of that form in political delusion and dishonesty.

Related: Yuri Bezmenov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; (1) Yuri Bezmenov (Facebook).

Video one-of-nine about control of political language:

Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press 1/9 – YouTube – 1/5/2009.

From the above-cited personality page for Yuri Bezmenov:

Yuri Alexandrovitch Bezmenov (1939 – 1993) is a former KGB propagandist who was assigned to New Dehli, India, defected to the West in 1970, and was interviewed by Edward Griffin in 1985. Bezmenov explains his background, some of his training, and exactly how Soviet propaganda is spread in other countries in order to subvert their teachers, politicians, and other policy makers to a mindset receptive to the Soviet ideology.

* * *

Not so oddly, I spent the morning watching Gene Hackman and Will Smith in Enemy of the State. Then after brunch this cold rainy day turned to Facebook where I had a message waiting from a correspondent in South America noting the Far Out Left’s desire to destroy Israel. My response to that:

Far Left: thieves.

I’m a liberal socialist.  Correa and I would probably understand one another.

These guys of the Far Out Left seem descended from the 1970s. Time Warped. Everyone’s a Carlos wannabee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_the_Jackal

If he / they didn’t have a convenient political lingo, he / they would be — and have proven so — dumb criminals.

The world faces stark choices as regards the political kleptocrats (sometimes, when I’m feeling jazzy, I call them “kleptocats!”) we have come to know and sometimes love — for being too easily charmed — as dictators, but when you watch what they do to constitutions, courts, and laws, then to men — old ones too, and women and children — in their unbridled ambition for absolute control over others, you know that the war “over there”, or perhaps the one you’re in, is no longer a lonely war but rather a war — sub-state, transnational, global — neither contained nor isolated.

* * *

Often for revolutionaries there are two wars: one rages outside of the person, the other rages within.

* * *

My South American correspondent acknowledged (and here I quote with light editing for style), “many studied in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with scholarships.”

Such would be at least in their 40s — it has been more than 22 years — and in the prime of their programming.

Others, say the first to rifle through abandoned STASI offices in defunct East Germany, may be in the prime of their counter-programming program, and I should think them today an unknown quantity in the former Soviet empire.  Perhaps they too will surface in the coming days, weeks, and months.

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Ukraine and the Shrewd Kleptocrat

13 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Political Psychology, Politics, Regions, Russia, Ukraine

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She warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that his actions would lead to “catastrophe” for Ukraine.

“It would also change Russia economically and politically,” she said.

But Putin has reiterated his previous stance: Ukraine’s crisis was caused by internal factors, not by Russia.

Change course in Crimea or face costs, West warns Russia – CNN.com

* * *

President Obama has one crucial lever he can activate immediately, as was done in the case of deposed Ukrainian Viktor Yanukovich: identify, freeze, and disclose stolen assets hidden in the West.

Want Putin’s Attention On Ukraine? Follow His Money – 3/3/2014.

Related: Putin’s Watch Collection Dwarfs His Declared Income | The Moscow Times – 6/6/2012; Helping Russia avoid Putin kleptocracy – CSMonitor.com – 9/27/2011; WikiLeaks cables condemn Russia as ‘mafia state’ | World news | The Guardian – 12/1/2010.

* * *

Britain has been handing visas to hundreds of Russian oligarchs in return for them paying at least £1million towards our £1.2trillion national debt.

Russian and Chinese businessmen have been allowed to jump to the front of the immigration queue by ‘investing’ a seven-figure sum in Government gilts.

Russian oligarchs buy UK visas for £1million | Mail Online – 2/25/2014.

* * *

MOSCOW — When Vladimir V. Putin returned to the Russian presidency in 2012, one of the first messages he sent to his political elite, many of them heads of banks and large corporations, was that the times had changed: Owning assets outside Russia makes you too vulnerable to moves by foreign governments, he told them. It is time to bring your wealth home.

Titans in Russia Fear New Front in Ukraine Crisis – NYTimes.com – 3/10/2014.

* * *

One notable statistic about Russia is that the mean wealth of its 110m adults last year was $10,980 while the median was $870. In other words, if the country’s assets were equally divided, the man in the middle would possess more than $10,000 but, in practice, his net worth is less than a 10th of that sum. This is the result of 110 billionaires controlling 35 per cent of the wealth.

Punishing a few oligarchs in London is not enough – FT.com – 3/5/2014.

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The pundits fret over what to do with the Russia-Crimea-Ukraine debacle not in relation to mere Slavic expansionism — start, oh Russians, with investments in the east for that — but rather the expansion of Putin’s “mafia state“.

______ For readers who have a couple of hours to spare (right now) ______

Putinism and Russian Protest – YouTube – 2:02:48 – posted 10/29/2012.

That I find this kind of thing exciting scares me!

Panels about Putin may be inseparable from concerns associated with political psychology.

* * *

Garry Kasparov’s Advice to Obama: ‘Forget About Diplomatic Solution’ with Putin – YouTube 3/6/2014.

* * *

On Viktor Yanukovych:

Revelations In The Yanukovych Papers – YouTube – 3/12/2014.

Primary Source: What the Ousted Ukrainian President Tried to Hide Before He Fled | New Republic – 3/12/2014.

Related Reference

Garry Kasparov on Putin | Fox Business Video (today).

Russia’s Putin Cracks Down on Media When We Need Journalism the Most | New Republic (today): Most of Lenta’s reporters have resigned in protest, writing in a farewell letter, “The trouble is not that we’ve lost our jobs. The trouble is that you’ve got nothing to read.”

Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina on Putin’s War in Crimea | New Republic – 3/2/2014.

Is Vladimir Putin insane? Hardly – latimes.com – 3/11/2014.

Russia – A mafia state? – YouTube – 1:43:47 – roundtable with Luke Harding – posted 7/27/2012.

Can Putin Contain Post-Putinism? – YouTube – 1:24:23 – – 11/28/2012.  AKA “Can Putinism Be Reformed?”

Putinism and Russian Protest – YouTube – 2:02:48 – 10/29/2012: “Dictators will always steal as much as they can.”

Yanukovych Leaks

Reference – Media and Propaganda

Stephen Colbert Tackles Vladimir Putin’s TV Propaganda – 🙂

Crimea: Putin vs. Reality by Timothy Snyder | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books – 3/7/2014.

Russia blocks internet sites of Putin critics – Courant.com (today).

Russian Aggression

Russian troops gather at Ukraine border – World – The Boston Globe (today); Russian troops gathering at Ukraine border for exercises as standoff continues – The Washington Post; Russia might halt nuclear inspections | Concord Monitor; Ukraine: Russia Fired On Plane Over Crimea.

Source: Ukraine: Russia Fired On Plane Over Crimea (today): “Kyiv Post’s Christopher Miller tweeted this video that allegedly shows a pro-Russian group attacking pro-Ukrainian groups in Donetsk today”.

Related: Ukraine: deadly clashes in Donetsk | euronews, world news; Violent clashes in Donetsk between Ukrainians and pro-Russian groups as Moscow moves thousands of troops to border | Mail Online.

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President Obama’s Bilateral Meeting with Prime Minister Yatsenyuk of Ukraine – YouTube – 3/12/2014.

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