Russia Today

What is Russia’s end game?

…look at the reports Russian TV was showing from the Donetsk region. He had never seen anything like the piles of corpses and the humiliation of captives before. Far from playing its old games with conspiracy theorists, it looked as if the new and decidedly unpost-modern line from the Kremlin was ‘prepare the viewers for war’. If he’s right, then a divided Europe, which spends as little as it can on its armed forces, will have to face the fact that Putin will try to humiliate it by sending undercover troops into the Nato countries on the Baltic. You might say he would be mad to do so. Russia has little to gain from provoking further sanctions, and risks uniting Nato around its core principle that an attack on one is an attack on all. But reason and Russia don’t go together. While Pomerantsev was talking, a passage from Bill Browder’s autobiography came back to me. Russia was like a prison yard, Browder wrote:

‘When someone is crossing the year coming for you, you have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, if you manage to survive, you will have to become someone’s bitch. That’s the calculus that every oligarch and every Russian politician goes through every day.’

Putin has to come keep coming at the West to show he is not a weakling and a coward, who could be taken out by a rival. And if he gets away with it, Europe will be his bitch.

I have looked into Putin’s eyes presents another view.

Putin is centrally driven by his determination to restore Russia as a power to be taken seriously. He deeply mistrusts the West. But he is not a risk taker. His pride in Russia was apparent every time I saw him, from lavish Kremlin receptions to celebrate Russia’s artistic elite to his cold response at a Downing Street meeting to hearing that a gas project was going to cost Russia billions more than anticipated – eventually followed by Russian expropriation of the company concerned. His caution has been much questioned since the annexation of Crimea last year – which took virtually all observers (including me) by surprise. But the Putin I knew was a man who judged situations very carefully, was very conscious of Russia’s relative weakness vis-à-vis the West, and only took action if he was confident he had a decisive advantage, or felt himself unbearably provoked – as in Georgia in 2008. There is simply no evidence for the Western hysteria about a revanchist Russia. The Putin I know is not going to take on Nato.

None the less, getting out of the mess in Ukraine is not going to be easy. Putin has nailed his flag to the mast of protecting the East Ukrainian dissidents. Nor will he let Ukraine abandon its neutral status and join Nato. He is not going to let economic pressures, or even the supply of arms, force him to accept a deal which damages what he views as vital Russian interests. He knows the Russian elite, and people, are firmly behind him on all this.

Which reminds me of this:

”Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war. Winston Churchill

I think we are in for it again. And only 70 years later.

It all works for Russia because Europe depends on Russia for its energy supplies. Anti-fracking is not working well in America. But Europe is Putin’s bitch because of their anti-fracking stance. They can hardly resist Russia when their energy (natural gas especially) depends on Russia.

And guess who is working to make Europe dependent on Russia?

A shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president of a London-based investment firm whose president until recently chaired the board of the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.

In addition to those roles, Hoskins is a director at a company called Klein Ltd. No one knows where that firm’s money comes from. Its only publicly documented activities have been transfers of $23 million to U.S. environmentalist groups that push policies that would hamstring surging American oil and gas production, which has hurt Russia’s energy-reliant economy.

With oil prices plunging as a result of a fracking-induced oil glut in the United States, experts say the links between Russian oil interests, secretive foreign political donors, and high-profile American environmentalists suggest Russia may be backing anti-fracking efforts in the United States.

The interest of Russian oil companies and American environmentalist financiers intersect at a Bermuda-based law firm called Wakefield Quin.

All warfare is based on deception.