Russia today

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 06, 2022 3:01 pm

The U.S. Directed Rebellion in Kazakhstan May Well Strengthen Russia

In early 2019 the Pentagon financed think tank RAND published an extensive plan for soft attacks on Russia.

Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground.

The 200 pages long report recommended certain steps to be taken by the U.S. to contain Russia. As its summary says:

Recognizing that some level of competition with Russia is inevitable, this report seeks to define areas where the United States can do so to its advantage. We examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia’s actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia’s military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad. The steps we examine would not have either defense or deterrence as their prime purpose, although they might contribute to both. Rather, these steps are conceived of as elements in a campaign designed to unbalance the adversary, leading Russia to compete in domains or regions where the United States has a competitive advantage, and causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.
RAND lists economical, geopolitical, ideological and informational as well as military measures the U.S. should take to weaken Russia.


Since the report came out the first four of the six 'geopolitical measures' listed in chapter 4 of the report have been implemented.

Image

The U.S. delivered lethal weapons to Ukraine, it increased its support for 'rebels' in Syria. It attempted a regime change in Belarus and instigated a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The U.S. is now implementing measure 5 which aims to 'reduce Russia's influence in Central Asia'.

Kazakhstan, Russia's southern neighbor, was part of the Soviet Union. It is a mineral rich, landlocked country three times the size of Texas but with less than 20 million inhabitants. A significant part of its people are Russians and the Russian language is in common use. The country is an important link in the strategic Belt and Road Initiative between China and Europe.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union the country has been ruled by oligarchic family clans - foremost the Nazarbayevs. As the CIA Worldfactbook notes:

Executive branch
chief of state: President Kasym-Zhomart TOKAYEV (since 20 March 2019); note - Nursultan NAZARBAYEV, who was president since 24 April 1990 (and in power since 22 June 1989 under the Soviet period), resigned on 20 March 2019; NAZARBAYEV retained the title and powers of "First President"; TOKAYEV completed NAZARBAYEV's term, which was shortened due to the early election of 9 June 2019, and then continued as president following his election victory


Over the last decade there have been several uprisings (2011, 2016 and 2019) in Kazakhstan. These were mostly caused by uneven distribution of income from its minerals including oil and gas. The oligarchs in the capital of Astana / Nur-Sultan live well while the provinces which produce the minerals, like Mangistauskaya in the south-west, have seen few developments.

Recently the price for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), used by many cars in Kazakhstan, went up after the government had liberalized the market. This caused another round of country wide protests:

The string of rallies that has torn through Kazakhstan since January 2 began in the western oil town of Zhanaozen, ostensibly triggered by anger over a sudden spike in the price of car fuel. Similar impromptu gatherings then quickly spread to nearby villages in the Mangystau region and then in multiple other locations in the west, in cities like Aktau, Atyrau and Aktobe. By January 4, people had come out onto the streets in numbers in locations many hundreds of kilometers away, in the southern towns of Taraz, Shymkent and Kyzyl-Orda, in the north, in the cities of Uralsk and Kostanai, as well as in Almaty and Nur-Sultan, the capital, among other places.
Few saw scenes as fiery as those in Almaty, though.

Clashes in Almaty continued throughout the night into January 5. After being dispersed by police from Republic Square, part of the crowd headed around two kilometers downhill, to another historic location in the city, Astana Square, where the seat of government used to be located in Soviet times.

While there is little reliable way to gauge the scale of the demonstrations, a combination of on-the-ground reporting and video footage appears to indicate that these protests may be even larger than those that brought the country to a near-standstill in 2016.

While the grievances that sparked the first rallies in Zhanaozen were to do with fuel prices, the sometimes rowdy demonstrations that have followed appear to be of a more general nature. Chants of “shal ket!” (“old man go!”), usually understood as a reference to former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who continues to wield significant sway from behind the scenes, have been heard at many of the demos.


The protests escalated soon with gangs of armed protesters taking control of government buildings and setting them on fire. There were also attempts to take control of radio and TV stations as well as airports. Police, which generally did little to intervene, were gunned down.

The actions in Almaty, the country's largest city and former capital, are certainly not spontaneous reactions by a crowd of poor laborers but controlled actions by well trained groups of armed 'rebels'.

Peter Leonard @Peter__Leonard - 9:18 UTC · 6 Jan 2022
Kazakhstan: Very important and intriguing detail with strong shades of Kyrgyzstan 2020. Peaceful people initiate rallies, but shady and violent individuals turn up to sow trouble, and it is never remotely clear who they are or where they came from /1 https://t.co/qYSlUUrMVx
From one account I heard, a similar dynamic played out in Almaty on Wednesday morning. A relatively small and mild gathering formed on Republic Square, opposite city hall. All of a sudden hundreds of extremely aggressive men turned up, threatening all and sundry #Kazakhstan /2

They threatened and attacked journalists standing nearby, ordering anybody who took photographs to delete the images. It was clearly this cohort that was responsible for much of the destruction. And it is a mystery (to me) who they were /3


We have seen similar formations during the U.S. instigated uprisings in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Belarus.

NEXTA, the U.S. financed regime change media network in Poland which last year directed the failed color revolution attempt in Belarus, announced the U.S. demands:

NEXTA @nexta_tv - 13:52 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
Demands of the Protesters in #Kazakhstan
1. Immediate release of all political prisoners
2. Full resignation of president and government
3. Political reforms:
Creation of a Provisional Government of reputable and public citizens. Withdrawal from all alliances with #Russia


A more reliable source confirms these:

Maxim A. Suchkov @m_suchkov - 14:43 UST · Jan 5, 2022
The list of demands of protestors in #Kazakhstan that's been circulating is interesting, to put it mildly.
While most demands focus on bolstering social & economic support & countering corruption points #1, 7, 10, 13, 16 expose the roots of protest & who's driving them
#1 demands that #Kazakhstan should leave Eurasian Economic union.
#7 demands legalization of polygamy "for certain groups of the population" & prohibition on marriage with foreigners
#10 demands independence for Mangystau region &^that revenues of oil companies remain in Mangystau

Caveat: this list been circulating a lot on telegram - could be fake or not representative of what protestors want, thou it appears protestors are a diverse group that includes genuinely disgruntled people, political manipulators, "prof revolutionaries" (that were in UKR & BEL), etc


The government of Kazakhstan has since lowered the LPG prices. On January 5 president Tokayev relived the 'First President' Nazarbayev of his position as chairman of the Security Council and promised to act tough on armed protesters.

Kazakhstan is part of the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) as well as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). On the morning of January 5 Tokayev had a phone call with the presidents of Russia and Belarus. He has mobilized airborne units of the armed forces of Kazakhstan. On the evening of January 5 he requested support from the CSTO against the 'foreign directed terrorists' which are fighting the security forces.

Russia, Belarus and other CSTO members have dedicated quick reaction forces reserved for such interventions. These will now be mobilized to regain government control in Kazakhstan. Russian CSTO forces are currently on their way to Kazakhstan. Belorussian and Armenian troops will follow soon.

They are in for some tough time:

Cᴀʟɪʙʀᴇ Oʙsᴄᴜʀᴀ ❄ @CalibreObscura - 19:50 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
#Kazakhstan: Captured arms from the National Security Committee (equivalent to Russian FSB) building by protestors in #Almaty: At least 2 PG-7V projectiles, possible boxed Glock pistol & (possibly) more in numerous scattered crates, various kit.
Anti-Armour capability in 48hrs...
Image


During the last decades the U.S. and its allies had been relatively quiet about the dictatorial leadership in Kazakhstan.

Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled - 14:18 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
NATO's cheerleading corner of FSU "experts" already working hard to spin Kazakhstan uprisings as somehow Putin's fault or indictment of Putin—but note how quiet our media-NGO complex has been the past 20 years re: the regime's human rights abuses, corruption & "authoritarianism"


Chevron is the largest oil producer in Kazakhstan and the former British prime minister Tony Blair has previously been giving advice to then president Nursultan Nazarbayev on how to avoid an uproar over dead protesters:

In a letter to Nursultan Nazarbayev, obtained by The Telegraph, Mr Blair told the Kazakh president that the deaths of 14 protesters “tragic though they were, should not obscure the enormous progress” his country had made.
Mr Blair, who is paid millions of pounds a year to give advice to Mr Nazarbayev, goes on to suggest key passages to insert into a speech the president was giving at the University of Cambridge, to defend the action.


Times however are different now as Kazakhstan has continued to strengthen its relations with Russia and China.

The CIA offshoot National Endowment for Democracy has financed some 20 'civil society' regime change programs in Kazakhstan with about $50,000 per annum each. The involved organizations currently seem to be mostly quiet but are a sure sign that the U.S. plays a role behind the scenes. On December 16 details of upcoming demonstrations were already announced by the U.S. embassy in Kazakhstan.

Image

It is likely that this pre-planned Central Asia part of the 'Extending Russia' program has been implemented prematurely as a response to Russia's recent ultimatum with regards to Ukraine and NATO. Its sole purpose is to unbalance the Russian leadership in Moscow by diverting its attention towards the south.

I however believe that Russia has prepared for such eventualities. They will not affect its plans and demands.

What is difficult to discern though is what is really happening behind the scenes in Astana/Nur-Sultan. Has Tokayev, who was previously seen as a mere puppet of Nazarbayev, really replaced him? His control of the security forces is somewhat in doubt:

Liveuamap @Liveuamap - 19:18 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
Tokayev dismissed the head of his security guard Saken Isabekov. Also, the President dismissed the Deputy Head of the State Security Service of the Republic of Kazakhstan from his post


But the outcome of the whole game is quite predictable:

Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled - 14:31 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
The grim likelihood, given all the various "revolutions" in the FSU the past 20 years, is that Kazakhstan's street protests [will be] instrumentalized by a powerful clan to replace the ruling oligarchy with a new oligarchy.


The CSTO troops which are now landing in Almaty will take a few days to end the rebellion. The outcome is not in doubt.

Moscow, not Washington DC, will have a big say in who will come out at the top.

It is quite possible that the results of the whole affair will, like the failed U.S. regime change attempts in Belarus, not weaken but strengthen Russia:

Dmitri Trenin @DmitriTrenin - 7:57 UTC · 6 Jan 2022
#Kazakhstan is another test, after #Belarus, of RUS ability to help stabilize its formal allies w/o alienating their populations. As 1st action by CSTO since founding in 1999, it is major test for bloc. Lots of potential pitfalls around, but can be big boon if Moscow succeeds.


Posted by b on January 6, 2022 at 9:19 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/01/t ... .html#more
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 07, 2022 3:17 pm

CSTO peacekeeping units were brought into Kazakhstan to suppress protests
01/06/2022

Briefly about recent events
The indignation of the population of the Republic of Kazakhstan with high prices for liquefied gas led to the resignation of the government. Earlier we have already talked about the reasons for the flared up conflict. Despite the fact that the president of the state, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, instructed to carry out the reform and postpone the transition to electronic gas trading on exchanges for a year, the riots on the streets of Kazakhstan continue. In view of the current situation, the president of the republic appealed to the allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and called for heads of state to assist in overcoming the "terrorist threat". Russia, Armenia and Belarus have already senttroops to Kazakhstan. ROT FRONT briefly talks about the prerequisites, causes and consequences. We have released a material in which we analyze the events taking place in Kazakhstan.
The strikes, which began at the end of 2021, are real workers' protests. Initially, they arose in Zhanaozen, then in the Mangistau region, and rather quickly spread to the Karaganda region, Atyrau region and to some large regional centers.

If initially the protests were spontaneous, now the protests are partly controlled by big capital - this became noticeable after the appearance of armed nationalist formations in the ranks of the protesters. Armed people robbed shops and beat shop windows in Alma-Ata, and the instigators of the riots at each stage were organized in an organized way to the central square.

Image
Mass protests in Kazakhstan - Almaty, 2022
The coordination demonstrated by the protesters in large cities shows very clearly that these events were prepared in advance; probably even before the workers' strikes began. According to available information, in many cities, the security forces did not receive an order to act harshly, for example, the leadership limited the use of special equipment with stun grenades and rubber bullets. It is possible that this is precisely why the security forces in a number of cities retreated under the onslaught of protesters.
At the same time, we know that Kazakhstani big capital usually does not hesitate to drown the people's protest in blood. This is evidenced by the events of a decade ago in Zhanaozen, when the Kazakh authorities took up arms on striking workers and carried out a punitive operation, killing and maiming protesting oil workers. And in 2016, employees of the private security company Mys-Orda , serving MMC Kazakhaltyn , opened fire with shotguns at the miners of the Novaya gold mine .

Image
Mass protests in Kazakhstan - 2022
So, today the siloviki act rather softly - in relation to the usual patterns of behavior in Kazakhstan. One of the versions of the reasons for the current events is that the clan around the current president of Kazakhstan, with the help of protesters, is getting rid of the influence of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev . A monument to Nazarbayev in the city of Taldykorgan has already been tumbled down by protesters. At the same time, Tokayev declared himself the head of the Kazakhstan Security Council instead of Nazarbayev, while protesters in Alma-Ata ransacked the city administration buildings, police stations and the local airport.
The job is done - order can be established. To do this, Tokayev turned to his CSTO partners and obtained the necessary political and military support.

Image
Mass protests in Kazakhstan - 2022
Of course, this time the protests will not lead to the desired result, to the reconstruction of the clan state, to the improvement of living conditions. However, the alternative is to be silent and afraid. Kazakhstan does not yet have a strong organization capable of defending the interests of workers in practice. There was no such thing in Ukraine, and there is no such thing in Russia. The labor movement must learn to defend itself against both direct enemies and onion friends. This requires a high level of organization and understanding of their direct class interests: the very subjective factor is needed - organization. If you do not prepare it for a long time and painstakingly, then in the future all protests will be used by various groups of big business in their own interests, and any popular demonstrations will only lead to a change from one clan to another.
https://www.rotfront.su/dlya-podavleniy ... kazahstan/.

********************************************

Russian communist workers' party expresses class solidarity with striking workers in Kazakhstan
01/06/2022
Statement of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the RKWP-CPSU

The beginning of 2022 in Kazakhstan was marked by a workers' strike in the Mangistau region. The reason for the speech was a shock jump in gas prices - two times. And the real reasons are that the 30-year domination of capitalism in Kazakhstan has led to an enormous growth of social contradictions.


The luxury of the elite is side by side with the poverty of the working masses. People are especially hated by the prosperity and reign of the Nazarbayev clan, the former secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, who has turned from a comrade into a master and guarantor of the exploiting class.

The strikers' first demands were purely economic - lower gas prices for consumers, higher wages and better working conditions. A strike began in the workers' town of Zhanaozen, well-known to us and to the whole world, where in 2011 a many-month strike of oil workers took place, brutally suppressed by the authorities. The protesters were shot at. Dozens of workers were killed, hundreds were arrested and imprisoned. The RCWP, ROT FRONT and many communist and workers' parties of the world then expressed fraternal solidarity with the strikers, an angry protest against the inhuman reprisals, and carried out numerous support actions. Representatives of our party, with a real risk to their lives, went to the scene of the events, where they met with workers' leaders, handed over material support, and expressed a strong protest to the regional authorities.

Events unfolded rapidly. Since the authorities as usual did not react in any way to the protests of workers, in just a few days the strike covered the entire region, and then escalated into mass unrest. The workers were supported by city dwellers, then workers in many regions of Kazakhstan went on strike in solidarity with their class brothers. The authorities indicated their readiness to make partial concessions. But the workers and the rising people were no longer satisfied with pitiful handouts from the master's shoulder. The authorities began to pull troops to large cities. And then the protesting masses of Kazakhstan literally revolted, already putting forward political demands for the resignation of the country's government and the departure from power of the hateful Nazarbayev clan.

The authorities were really afraid of the strength of the united people, the president satisfied all the economic demands and sent the Government into resignation.

However, one cannot calm down and celebrate victory. Power in the country remains in the hands of big business. The troops have not been returned to their places of permanent deployment. The enterprises are in the hands of the former owners. The authorities have already turned to their CSTO partners for help, who understand the danger of an example of a popular uprising for other republics. It should be understood that the bourgeoisie of Kazakhstan crossed the line already in 2011 by shooting the workers of Zhanaozen. Today they will probably stop at nothing. At the slightest opportunity, all the concessions snatched from the gentlemen will be taken back, repression will return with the same fury. Capital cannot exist without exploitation. Therefore, the workers need to organize themselves into class organizations and fight not for a change from one clan to another, but for their workers' power. The communists understand that these protests cannot do without the participation of other capitalist clans opposing the Nazarbayev family - the synchronization of the protests and the one-sided orientation of slogans was too obvious. It is no secret that for many years in the territory of the former Soviet republics various NGOs, funded by capital, have been working on training universal activists, incl. large foreign states. Activists have their own headquarters, finances, connections and at a certain moment they try to ride the protests and take them in the direction their owners need, reducing everything to replacing one ruling clique with another, but leaving inviolable the relations of private property. Any mass action of the people awakens various social strata to political life. Our party expresses unconditional support to those working people who is fighting against the abominations of capitalism and the ruling elite who have lost all shame. We see in their struggle the growth of the self-awareness of the working class, the acquisition of invaluable experience of successful struggle and the awareness of the need to organize the class. Of particular importance is the awareness of the need for class solidarity, the transition from demands for one master to demands for the entire ruling class, and from purely economic demands to political ones. We strongly condemn the actions of the declassed elements, provocateurs and marauders who joined the popular protest, discrediting the actions of the multinational proletariat of Kazakhstan and making it easier for the authorities to forcefully suppress strikes, rallies and demonstrations under the guise of "protecting the population from terrorists." We see in their struggle the growth of the self-awareness of the working class, the acquisition of invaluable experience of successful struggle and the awareness of the need to organize the class. Of particular importance is the awareness of the need for class solidarity, the transition from demands for one master to demands for the entire ruling class, and from purely economic demands to political ones. We strongly condemn the actions of the declassed elements, provocateurs and marauders who joined the popular protest, discrediting the actions of the multinational proletariat of Kazakhstan and making it easier for the authorities to forcefully suppress strikes, rallies and demonstrations under the guise of "protecting the population from terrorists."

We see that it is still far from the revolutionary situation. So far, the workers of Kazakhstan have neither an organization, nor, moreover, a communist consciousness. But they took a step forward in their struggle, and this step must find our support.

The authorities of Kazakhstan and the bourgeoisie of the Russian Federation with one voice are diligently bypassing the class essence of events and are trying to reduce their assessments to intimidation by the "Maidan". In the ranks of the protesters, pogromists and nationalists are already playing a provocative role. This is a well-known tactic of the bourgeoisie - to distort the essence of events, to reduce them from the class struggle to conspiracies and coups. The communists have already learned lessons from the events in Ukraine and have long warned that even if there was no Maidan, it would be profitable for the bourgeoisie to invent it as a scarecrow.

We know that every step in the class struggle is a step forward. Today they will learn to make limited demands, they will feel their strength, having achieved a reduction in prices and the resignation of the government, tomorrow, you see, and a party with knowledge of the way will be found, - they will figure it out and go further - to socialism.

We protest against the use of CSTO forces as gendarmes!

We protest against the interference of the Russian Federation in the affairs of Kazakhstan and the possible use by the Russian authorities of the experience of the bloody suppression of the indignation of the people in October 1993.

We demand from the authorities of Kazakhstan not to allow repressions against the people, we demand the release of all political prisoners, incl. convicted of participating in the Zhanaozen protests in 2011

We demand freedom of action for trade unions, the abolition of bans on the activities of the Communist Party of the Republic, legalization of the actions of the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan;

There is no fascization of the CSTO regimes and authorities!

Long live class solidarity!

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Workers of Russia! Rise to the fight against the power of capital together with Kazakhstani class brothers!


Image

https://www.rotfront.su/rossijskaya-kom ... rabochaya/

****************************

Statement of the Eurasian Bureau of the World Federation of Trade Unions in support of the working class of Kazakhstan
01/07/2022

The free trade unions of Russia and Central Asian states that are members of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) , independent of employers and the authorities , express their categorical protest against the violent reprisals against the workers of Kazakhstan and attempts to represent the outraged people as hooligan and extremist forces.

Image

The reason for the indignation of the people is the long, hateful rule of the Nazarbayev clan and his henchmen, which led to a gigantic social stratification and the disastrous situation of the working masses. At the same time, the authorities brutally suppressed any protests, it is enough to recall the shooting of Zhanaozen workers in 2011. At the same time, any possibilities of expressing protest and points of view different from those of the regime were clamped down within the framework of legitimate possibilities. The majority of independent trade unions have been liquidated, membership in unregistered trade unions, contrary to ILO Convention No. 87, is equivalent to an administrative offense! The court closed the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, refuses to register the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan. The number of political prisoners, primarily trade union activists, is growing.

So the reason for the indignation is clear, it is not some external terrorist forces, but its own anti-people policy. And the shock increase in gas prices (suddenly, twice) only served as a detonator for an explosion of popular anger. This was indirectly acknowledged by the current President of Kazakhstan Tokayev, who poisoned the government, promised to return prices and assumed the functions of chairman of the Security Council from Nazarbayev.

We express solidarity with the just protest of the workers of Kazakhstan, and we consider it inadmissible to mix their struggle with the unbridled actions of various provocative, Islamist and nationalist forces.

This method of organizing pogroms and outrages is used by the bourgeoisie to discredit the movement of workers in many countries of the world. Russian security officials, will only lead to an increase in anti-Russian sentiments in the republic, which will certainly be used by nationalist forces.

The WFTU trade unions demand the prevention of reprisals in relation to the just actions of the working class of Kazakhstan.

We demand the restoration of freedom of trade union activity in the republic.

We oppose the use of the CSTO forces in fact in the role of gendarmes.

We express our solidarity with the struggle of the workers of Kazakhstan!

Director of the Eurasian Bureau of the
World Federation of Trade Unions
E.A. Kulikov

https://www.rotfront.su/zayavlenie-evra ... o-vsemirn/

All above Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 10, 2022 2:45 pm

Coal or Life: The Story of One Confrontation
10.01.2022

... Or where are the partisans in Kuzbass
From the Editor: Today we are publishing an interview-story, for the writing of which the author - a Kemerovo resident and a member of the ROT FRONT party - had to go on a journey, albeit not very distant, but difficult for winter times - to the "A-triangle". Although this triangle is not Bermuda, things are going on wonderful in it too: kilometers on the map turn into hundreds of meters on the ground, a “communist” (from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation) and an uncompromising fighter against coal mines suddenly turns into a deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and a compromiser with coal miners ... , about everything in order. A word to the author.
Image

What prompted me to go to Alekseevka was the fact that I somehow received a message via whatsapp with an audio story about the confrontation between the inhabitants of the villages of Apanas, Alekseevka and Ananyino and the owners of coal mines, who put the profit from coal mining above the ability to live in these villages, above existence nature, fertile soil layers, taiga, rivers, air. Mentioned in the story and about the " Kuznetsk partisans”, Which are rumored in these places. Leaflets are distributed on their behalf, equipment burns at the open-pit mines, accidents occur. Some believe that the "partisans" really exist and are fighting on the side of the protesters, while others believe that these are provocations of the coal miners themselves, and it is not clear which of this is true. The above-mentioned audio story does not answer this question either. However, I did not come in search of this answer. And in order to meet with the authors, activists of the fight against open-pit mines, Vladimir Gorenkov and Sergei Sheremetyev... I hoped to record their story in a better quality than what was dictated to the phone by Vladimir, and I also prepared some questions. Whether this interview can be considered, I do not know - I am not a journalist. I myself am interested in the history of the struggle, and I consider it my duty to share it with as many readers as possible.

The old ROT FRONT activist San Sanych accompanied me on my trip and showed me the way... He advised us to take shovels with us - suddenly we get stuck and have to dig out. “Last time, - says San Sanych, - we went to the guys, we went down normally, but we didn't manage to get back up right away. There was a thaw, rain, then frost and ice. Snow fell, and the ice was slightly dusted. But when we returned, the grader was working, he removed the snow, left an ice crust. We were skidded into a snowdrift along it, we had to dig, and only on the second attempt we somehow managed to overcome the ice, even though the wheels were studded. The question is - what did he clean there? ”. “Probably, the cut creates the appearance of caring for people: they say, we clean your dear ones.” - I answered. He himself counted on spikes, four-wheel drive and blocking. In our area you will see many different cars, but outside the city, where the highways end, “Niva” is the queen. But he obeyed and took the shovels.

After the Listvyagov, the route ended, technological roads began, a “washing board” with fine coal crumbs and dust rising despite the snow. I had to turn off the external air supply. After chatting with San Sanych, we missed one turn and ran into the barrier and the mine guard booth. We immediately got our bearings and turned around. San Sanych drew attention:

“Look how the guards are alarmed, how they are seeing them off with their eyes,” he pointed to three people in black uniforms at the security gate at the gate.

- Apparently, they are afraid that we are the intelligence of the "partisans", - I replied.

- They are all afraid of the partisans here ...

Image
Leaflet "Kuznetsk partisans"

We arrived without incident, the shovels were not useful. Here is Alekseevka: several narrow streets, ordinary village houses, built in different ways, but not destroyed huts, as it seemed.

- There are 146 houses here. Of these, 17 are non-residential, of which two or three are abandoned, the rest are for sale. They live in some houses all the time, and in some only in the summer, in the winter - in the city, - San Sanych explained.

But in the city there is an opinion that there are already dead villages in several yards, the rest is all abandoned and destroyed.

Image
Sergey Sheremetyev

Here is the house of Sergei Sheremetyev. Near the fence there is a “Niva” pretty eaten by rust. When the owner and hostess met us, I saw that the house was simple, rustic, with a through veranda, one door opened to the gate, the other to the garden. Inside the house there is a cramped kitchenette with buckets, flasks and other household utensils; at the exit from it, in the living room, there is a stove, which the owners were just about to light up. Modest decoration, a table, chairs, a small sofa, a bookcase, a shrine with icons. Cats and a small dog walk around the house like a boss. This is how the “paid” man lives - if not by the Jews from the planet Nibiru, then by Navalny's headquarters, no more, no less - the “protestor” and troublemaker Sergei Sheremetyev. I learned about Navalny's headquarters later, when his wife Oksana showed me the SMS that came to her phone from unknown numbers,

I settled down on the sofa in the living room, that is, I laid out and tuned the equipment there, checked the microphone. We decided to wait for Vladimir Gorenkov, who was to dictate the story. I immediately realized that the conditions were a little unsuitable. Household noise (I can’t ask the owners to leave business and remain quiet if work is always needed in my house), cats, a dog, a dog barking from the street - all this does not correspond to the “studio conditions” of work. Moreover, Vladimir said that he might not come for a long time. I decided to ask Sergei some questions, but it wasn’t necessary. He began the story himself - it is clear that he has nothing to hide and is himself interested so that as many people as possible know about what is happening in these places. And I turned on the recording.

Sergey Sheremetyev:

- Active actions began in 2017. Before that, in 2010-2013 there were local conflicts, without unification. In 2010, the Bungurskiy-Severny open-pit mine began to be dug for us. We demanded from them documents regulating the boundaries of the work, which, as it turned out, took place under the village itself. That is, then for the first time we went against the plans of the coal miners. Prior to that, the same fate befell Tilep (a village in the Novokuznetsk district of the Kemerovo region - editor's note) , but people there were simply naughty. Later, in 2017, people from Tilep joined us, but only one family.

In general, they demanded documents. At first, of course, we wrote letters: to the environmental protection, to the prosecutor's office, we hoped for the big bosses - that they would come and how they would all be screwed up! But they only warmed up on this. Any complaint to the control authorities is considered by the latter as a source of enrichment. That is, you can get a lot of money from an enterprise, and “for excuse” you can write them a fine of ten thousand. And as they dug, they continue to dig.

When we demanded documents from Bungursky-Severny, they foolishly gave us both license agreements and projects. They also promised us everything: to bring water, fountains, holidays ... And in the documents we saw falsification of distances. In fact, the distance to the border of the section is 300 meters, and according to documents - 1700 to Alekseevka. They say: "The law allows us to work close to the settlement, the sanitary zone can be from 100 m to 1 km." Whereas the law clearly states that at least a kilometer from the quarry where mining is taking place, 500 m from the dump, 300 m from the loading, and at least 100 m from the sewage treatment plant. 300 meters from the village. Henceforth, the management of the sections did not make such mistakes - that is, they did not show the documentation. The authorities said: "The FSB does not allow us to provide documents." It was the same with the village of Rassvet: it was not indicated in the documents at all. That is, the section is right on the territory of the village.

This is how, together with the Dawnovites, they began to protest. They had such an activist, Sokolova. The woman is already in years, so the workers of the mine attacked her - they pounded her right to the ground. She tried to fight through Moscow, went. Then the courts began.

We went to the open-pit mines: we tried to stop work, enter the explosion zone, and the like. And in four years they managed to stop work: the site was mothballed. Of course, later they said, they say, this is not because of people, not because of protests ... they never admit that this is the reason. As always, "their grenades are of the wrong system."


Then the site was put up for sale, and two very greedy people, Gagik Sukiasyan and Andrei Khalezin, one businessman in construction, another prosecutor's son, bought it. They were also told that the layer was uncovered, just flooded with water. You pump out the water, and here is coal for you. And what kind of fool will leave the exposed layer? They dumped everything that could be there. The conservation was in effect until 2020, that is, from January 1, 2020, they were supposed to start working. In 2019, they already drove an excavator (which was allegedly then set on fire by the "partisans" ). And they don't have much money. Nobody leases them equipment, and buying them themselves is a big risk, suddenly they won't be able to work. Moreover, Tsivilev outlined his position on the cuts in his speech.(After numerous protests and recording a video message to the head of the region at the press conference of Governor S. Tsivilev, a promise was made not to allow coal mining at Apanasovsky - author's link) "

Then Sergei showed satellite maps, on which you can see everything exhaustively. On a planetary scale, there are few such dark green spots, on all continents. And the taiga of Kuzbass is one of such places.

Image

But if you zoom in on the map to the scale of the region, when the names of the “A-triangle” are read: Ananyino, Alekseevka, Apanas, a gray spot appears clearly. The entire Kuzbass is covered with such spots. These are cuts.

- Kiselevsk, Belovo - there are layers everywhere, everything is dug up, - Sergey comments on the map. - The most extreme is just the Apanasovsky site. But the strata go further. If they are not stopped here, they will tear everything apart. From the Altai side, cuts were also dug. Next is the Salair Park. Maybe it will be possible to create a buffer zone here, then it will be possible to stop them. In no case should they be allowed to continue to develop, otherwise the question will already arise in order to clean up the villages, Alekseevka, Apanas and Ananyino. On half of Ananyino's territory, plots have been cut, but not yet sold. A piece of Apanas also falls under development, but so far we are holding them back.
They promise a lot, they say, you have no road, we will build it. And they began to build - without a project, without transferring lands. Here through Listvyagi (existing), but through Mikhailovka, it turns out twice as far. "

I AM:

- That is, the question is in the survival of the villages themselves?

S.Sh .:

- Not only, but also the possibilities here of any life in general. Nothing will grow or live here. For this we stand here ...

I AM:

- Gagik Sukiasyan argues that if you do not start mining, coal can ignite spontaneously. Is it true or not?


"A-triangle"
S.Sh .:

- Yes, all this is a lie. In 2013, the cut stopped work - they chose everything they could. There is no exposed coal. Well, how can two empty pits ignite, from which everything has already been selected? If you mine coal, then you need to expand the quarry.

If you expand the quarry, you will have to dig up everything, and the location of the villages is clear from the map.

Question from San Sanych:

Image

- What is smoking here, near Alekseevka? Is this not an Apanasov cut?

S.Sh .:

- No, this is exactly the Tuleyevsky dump. Dumping began in Soviet times; when stripping is in progress, the first coal is thrown out with the rock. And then, when the mining had already started, the peasants were reluctant to carry coal for loading, immediately unloaded the coal on the dump, poured the diesel fuel, and changed. It turns out that no one did the last trips, and there is a mixture of coal and diesel fuel. When this very "privatization" was underway, everyone began to go bankrupt. “Black diggers” appeared, but we scared them away. And then, under Tuleyev, when he allowed to dig everything and everywhere, a maximum of waste was brought here. From now on, a gray smoke is visible there. At a depth of less than a meter, the temperature there is over 700 degrees. We live next to an artificial volcano. As part of the reclamation of this dump, the new owners offered to extinguish it with clay dug out in the cuts. They just don't know anymore how else to get here. When there was privatization,“Tuleyev's dump” was moved beyond the boundaries of the site, it turned out to be nobody's. They want more money to reclaim this dump. Here, they drew up a project that supposedly it can be closed with clay. And where to get the clay? - At the Apanasovsky site. They even came up with a formulation: “there is a warehouse of clay in the pillar”. Gagik fussed about with this project on administrations, but we also came out with the fact that we would not give clay here. Under the guise of reclamation of the dump, they want to start stripping work. They laughed: "There is no coal!" And why does Gagik need this site then? There are strata under the villages ”.

Image
Dump "Tuleyevsky" . Photo

Sergei recalled the struggle with the Bungurskiy-Severny open-pit mine: “They did not allow them to move on, they set up duty in the villages. As soon as the equipment came in, they immediately gathered there and drove out. Miroshnik, at that time the head of the Novokuznetsk district, to which it was possible to enter without a pass - easily communicated with the citizens - said directly: "These protests are beneficial to me, I will get more money from them."

I AM:

- That is, protest activity is used to warm up on it?

S.Sh .:

- Well, if Miroshnik used it to somehow help the region, the owners of the open-pit mines knocked out money under the pretext that “these troglodytes need one thing or the other ...”, and they themselves stuffed their pockets with the same money. For example, they made a fence in our cemetery - the picket fence and the rotten pillars, and according to the estimate - 600 thousand rubles. It was 2011, that is, 600 thousand - it was money, not what it is now.

And so in everything. For example, I personally don't need anything from them, just leave here, and that's it, let us live. And some people thought: "Well, they will do something for us." An agreement was concluded for two years. And during these two years it became clear who would have to deal with. For example, they undertook to repair a transformer - are they really electricians? And to repair the road - are they road builders? How they repaired the transformer for us - half of the village sat without light until real electricians arrived and fixed it. At the meeting, Miroshnik said: "How to deal with you if you haven't done half of what you undertook to do, and if you did, then it would be better not to do it?"

San Sanych:

- Here, for the overall picture ... About the collection of signatures, how many signatures have you collected?

S.Sh .:

- 300 signatures for the petition.

San Sanych:

- Who organized the collection of signatures? Nobody organized. Take, for example, one organization, the Education Defense Committee. They organized a protest against distance education, previously opposed gadgets. They collected signatures on all these actions. And then the courts began against them. In a word, there are people who collect signatures. But there is no center - such as to deal with the problem of the barbarity of coal mines - there is no one.

S.Sh .:

- It's not too late to create all this. It turns out that here, Kemerovo, south-western direction, just a wind rose - not a single cut, although there is coal. Novokuznetsk, south-western direction - 7 sections, from Stepanovskiy to Berezovskiy. Now the sections that you have seen are the Bungurskiy-Yuzhny 2 section, the last patch that separates a series of sections from the city. So the city is no less interested in fighting the cuts than we are.

Image
Coal mine. Photo

I AM:

- There is an opinion among many people, since the 90s, that big business should come, create jobs, build infrastructure, roads, schools, hospitals, etc. How about this? Not everyone agrees with the protests, are there compromisers too?

S.Sh .:

- And what about without it? There is, for example, the group of Yuri Bondar, who previously supported the protests ( deputy of the council of the Zagorsk rural settlement, ran for the Liberal Democratic Party, previously from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation; was elected as an opponent of coal mines - ed.) . But he never hid that he supported these protests in order to squeeze more from the cuts. Now he speaks about it directly, for example, in an interview.“Taige-info” that, they say, well done, they raised the problem to the whole world, but now we need to use it, negotiate, they will make good concessions. And he is not lying, he speaks the truth. At first, when they started to dig in Bungurskiy-Severny, the owners said so: they say, we have all the documents, but these natives - go nafig. And when we started performing - that's it, let's try to conclude different agreements with us. Well, Bondar also suggested last year: "Let's put forward conditions that are obviously impossible for them." And he began to fight directly, actively, as an example to us, they put him, they say, we must fight like Cooper. He, indeed, burned with words: he mentioned things that would come to bloodshed directly to the camera. But he didn’t agree to a real exit, he was afraid that they would “close”. Gorenkov then told him: they say, okay, you need to stay free, us, if anything,

And the referendum was held, and gathered, and the police dispersed. As a result, the referendum was not registered. And how can he not be registered? Only if the organizers themselves do not want to register it. In general, Bondar leaked the referendum, like the LDPR members, who realized that protests were a profitable business. At first, they came to us from the Communist Party, but said: "Guys, we can film all these cases, but there is no participation." The Liberal Democratic Party also organized the rally. We, of course, immediately set a condition - no flags, only the Kuzbass flag. Otherwise, everyone would have come with their own flags - it is possible that the "rainbow" would have appeared (laughed). Rallywas on September 24, 2017, 500 people. Its peculiarity was that there were representatives of the entire south of Kuzbass, from Belovo to Kiselevsk, as well as Prokopyevsk, Myski, Mezhdurechensk. Took place at the Public Events Square in Novokuznetsk. The only time a meeting of this magnitude was held was in the center of the city. I remember that the stage was not given to us, like it was being renovated. But we had a rostrum with the coat of arms of the Soviet Union, so they spoke from it.

Image
Rally on September 24, 2017 in Novokuznetsk. Photo

Also, about August 26, 2017. We stopped the incision, mothballed it, it seems we are living normally. But here comes the technique. Trailers, excavators ... What's the matter? We are told: "There will be a cut here." How? What? I look on the Internet - it turns out, Ananyevsky-Vostochny. It captures our road, the substation, and almost Tuleevsky dump. We ask - yes, there will be a cut! You have, they say, “… there are problems with the road and the substation. We will move the substation and build a new road. " Yes, we do not have to do anything, we are satisfied with the road and the substation. They answered: “We have a license, the state has given us.” We are to the authorities! They say something like "well, yes, everything is fine with them according to the documents." How normal is it? There was also a rally recently organized by the Liberal Democratic Party in Ordzhonikidze district on Flag Day, August 19. And what after the rally? Direct action only. And on August 26, we organize the blockage of the incision. 400 people left 6 villages. The police arrived, the Department of Economic Crimes. We demand documents from them, and they only take out a copy of the license. And where are everyone else, where is the project, expertise, conclusions? .. But no! Do you understand? They just fired them like a torpedo - "will it work - will it not work?" Their main goal is Ananyevsky-Vostochny 2. Behind the substation, the taiga, up to Targay, has already been cut, there are almost 70 million tons of layers.

- Then the journalists suggested to us a form of protest - to be, so to speak, "in trend", and not just go out and demand something there. And we started to come up with promotions. For example, we plant trees. The police are coming - what is it? And we plant trees. Or we launch colored fish into the quarry. So they drew attention to themselves. After all, this is a common misfortune in the south of Kuzbass. Contacts began to be established: with Gavrilovka (Stepanovsky open pit), with Mencherep, in the Belovsky district. They just had it like this: "There will be a cut! Give back your shares, we are buying them back! " Residents: "How is the cut?" They: "And that's it! We will lower the Belovskoye reservoir and dig it. " People: “We don’t want to!” And went to court. Then, in court, everything was decided, even in the bud, at the stage of redemption of shares. Although they found there a collaborationist one who sold shares and extolled that, they say, there will be a cut, good ... But we defended it through the courts. Lawyers from"Teams 29" , which are now announced as foreign agents.

In protest actions, in their success, everything depends 90% on the position of the locals. And not just sympathy, although it is also necessary - as Lenin said, "without attracting the masses to your side, there is nothing to talk about success." Actions are important. For example, in Gavrilovka, the dump was piled directly onto agricultural land. The director of the open pit said: "This is a temporary dump." Ha! A temporary dump is when the snow is removed and dumped somewhere until it melts. How can the dump be temporary? Then activists appeared at their place, contacted us, and together we decided that we were acting: we were stopping the construction of the dump, demanding that it be dismantled, taken away. 300 people quickly gathered and held a rally in Gavrilovka. But the locals said: “Everything suits us! The dump does not interfere with us. Moreover, they clean our roads, and that, and they do it ... Why did you decide to quarrel with us here? ”. A group of their activists also split: some decided to go to the end, seeking to eliminate the construction of the dump, which the cut did not tilt to their side. Others began to say: "... so and so, but let them do everything for us here, and then we will drive them away."

Image
People's gathering in Gavrilovka, 2017. Photo

The same was on the Berezovskaya road - everything depended on the locals. We already looked ridiculous there: the same faces come out with posters and demand something there. So you need to look at the situation and apply the appropriate method. It was a good action then, they came out with a poster “Signal if against moving the road!”. I myself stood a couple of times, people drove by, honked. I gave a poster to the locals - they never even came out with it. And if I marry them all the time - the same person - people will think that either they are crazy, or they pay money for it.

I AM:

- That is, everyone seems to be against it, but let someone else protest and fight, he is a fine fellow, he will achieve everything, but they themselves are on the sidelines ... I also meet this in production.

S.Sh .:

- Yes exactly. And especially in a work environment.

Then they shared their experience of fighting in their workplaces. That is, on my part - what kind of struggle is this? So, I bark at the factory from time to time with the bosses and with colleagues I have conversations about unification, organization, collective struggle. Nobody listens to me. To which Sergey again noticed that it depends on the situation and its significance for the team: they can put up or that's all, it is impossible to tolerate further. And he gave an example from his work, when he worked as a driver of route number 58. When they overestimated the plan, setting an obviously impossible task and the dependence of wages on the plan, then they organized a trade union, and a route council, and even a leaflet was issued, “Route Bulletin”. The crooks of the Ministry of Justice never registered the trade union. The fact that there is only one route with its own drivers and management, and there are many bus owners working on it, also played against it.

Returning to the "coal business"

I AM:

- Do you feel support from other regions of Russia? Tell us about the tent for Shies.

S.Sh.

- It was like this: in the Far East, the group “Protect the Forests of Russia” was created. We reached them through whatsapp. Their coverage went great, not only eastern Siberia, but also the south of Kuzbass. Shies also entered this group. Even the actions were organized practically on the same day, which were organized through this group. We had an army tent for the occasion. In terms of mutual assistance, we sent it to the guys. But they ingloriously "profiled" her. Nevertheless, then they sent us an equivalent in exchange. As far as it became known, then 8 people were on duty at the site, in the camp. The police come and announce: “Come to the place, we will now describe your property, no one is going to do anything to anyone!”. But no, these 8 people were pulled into the forest. Well, it would be a partisan camp and doing something illegal. But then the police. I wouldn’t pay attention to all the violations, let them draw up a protocol. But they chose to just run away. And the police, without hesitation, demolished the camp: they buried it all and poured water over it. Valuable property, like chainsaws and the like, was described, the rest - into the pit.

I believe that it is unacceptable to act like this during a protest. Ever since the French Revolution, the slogan is the same: “Courage, courage and again courage” (Danton). It was about the same on Cheremza. Tent camp, performances ... And also: “The police will come now! What to do?" So what to do? Here are the police, and here are the violations. On the contrary, not to scatter, but to point out to the police the violations against which we stand here. There was one provocateur, she said: "Do you want the police to come and tie everyone up?" Yes, we do! So that the police see all the violations and fix them. And there is nothing to be afraid of. They even told people themselves: "That's it, this is your boundary, stay here."

They spoke, listened to speeches, and then the people began to disperse. "Where are you going?" - "Well, we are - home." That is, as? You have taken your foothold, and now you are leaving? That's all, these are your boundaries, come on, pitch tents, organize posts! You can't leave here now. And so, we started with one tent, then we set up a few more. And we achieved that there would be no loading here. But it was necessary to put pressure on, to fight against the cut. If they don’t do the loading here, they will do it elsewhere. And so it happened - the cut began its work. We began to grease ourselves, organize volleyball tournaments, organize children's parties.

Image
Siberian Kandyk

Then Shorets Aleksey Chispiyakov and Vyacheslav Krechetov, a professional operator, were driving UAZ vehicles and filmed how an excavator was digging up kandyks (plants listed in the Red Book). They just filmed, commented, like you can't do that, kandyks are digging up, ruining nature. And it was necessary to immediately stop and call the same police. Let the matter not progress further, but the excavator will already be idle for some time without work, which means it will bring losses. What is the most painful place for a bourgeois? This is his pocket. And they filmed, grieved over these kandyks, came to the cars - and their wheels were also lowered. And the guard of the cut stands and laughs. Next time your boots will be taken away - will you go barefoot? So you need - if you are fighting - to go to the end, and use any little thing in the fight.

San Sanych:

- Tell us about the role of the parties that helped you. LDPR, KPRF, maybe Yabloko ...

S.Sh .:

- Real help, effective, was only from the RCWP. In terms of quantity, of course, it is small, but high quality (members of the ROT FRONT and RKWP participated in protest actions from start to finish, were always aware of the events, how they could support the protesters and continue to support - the author's note) .

The Liberal Democratic Party, represented by Tipitin and Birlyukov, directly said that politics is a business, you need to have some benefit from this (typical LDPR policy, and not only one of it - author's note) . Yes, at some stage - before the elections - there was help from them, in organizing rallies, for example. At that time, Birlyukov and Tipitin were deputies of the City Council, so they were solving the issue of the venue, equipment, etc.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation too - there are normal guys, they provided help, the same field round tables. For example, such a round table was organized directly on the hot site, on the road to Kostenkovo, right in the field. We see that one BelAZ got up, the second turned around and left. To have a round table - and deploy BelAZs - you have to try!

"Yabloko" too - its representatives, 5 people, took part in the action to defend the Kostenkovo ​​road. And their lawyer was very helpful in the courts.

I AM.:

- And the last question. How do you see the future after defeating all these “cutters”? And is it possible without changing the social system?

S.Sh .:

- Of course, it is impossible without self-organization. We started - there was already some kind of self-organization. We started with the cemetery: why is it not put in order. This is how the village council was organized. Further, more, and now we have pulled ourselves together with the fight against the arbitrariness of the "cutters". The main thing is the self-organization of the population!

Image
Vladimir Gorenkov

Then we got up and went to the hallway to meet: the second important participant in the events arrived - Vladimir Gorenkov . I turned off the recording. And for the better. It was about many things that I would not like to publish so far, so that the reader does not make hasty, and most importantly, wrong conclusions. First, of course, we talked about the "Kuznetsk partisans." As it turned out, a publishing house from Yekaterinburg became interested in the story; agreed to publish the book on paper. The guys have completed some chapters, worked on the bugs and are now waiting for the editorial answer. The output should be a work of fiction, but using documentary, with dates, names and events. The working title is "Kuznetsk Story".

It was decided to arrange the story in the form of an audiobook after the paper came out. If, of course, everything is in order, and the main protesters, Sergei and Vladimir, are alive and free. Such fears are not unfounded. The scenario of their "landing" in front of them has been revealed more than once. Sergei was attacked . Sergei's wife showed SMS messages that come from unknown numbers. They contain swearing, insults, threats, accusations of “payment”. But, like the heroes of their story, they are already accustomed to the conditions of the struggle, it has become their way of life.

“Someone is giving up,” says Sergei, “they are offering many to buy out plots for both 5 million and 10 million. Someone was simply given 400 thousand for non-participation, he bought a car, and now he is keeping quiet. People are sold for different things. We, since we decided to go to the end, so we will go. Moreover, the majority still support us. And since they are threatening us, beating us, it means that they are really afraid of us.

I don’t think I can reduce interest in the future book if I say that there will be neither a happy ending, nor a sad end. Events continue. What will be the result? Here, as in life, everyone has the opportunity to become the author and hero of a book called Struggle.

https://www.rotfront.su/ugol-ili-zhizn- ... go-protiv/

Sounds like struggles here, Canada, throughout the world. The commonality is capitalism.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 13, 2022 2:15 pm

The withdrawal of the CSTO peace mission from Kazakhstan begins

Image
The OSTC peacekeeping mission arrived in Kazakhstan on January 6 at the request of the Kazakh president. | Photo: @LeoLorder
Published 13 January 2022

The president said that the presence of the CSTO peace contingent played a great role in stabilizing the situation in the country.

The president of Kazakhstan, Kasim-Yomart Tokáyev announced that starting this Thursday the withdrawal of the peace contingent from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will begin after controlling the situation after the anti-democratic protests in early January.

The contingent of at least 2,000 troops led by Russia and also made up of Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, in addition to Kazakhstan, arrived in the country on January 6 at the request of the Kazakh leader.

According to the president, the presence of the CSTO peace contingent played a great role in stabilizing the situation in our country.


Tokáyev said that the arrival of the CSTO forces in Kazakhstan had "great psychological importance to repel the aggression of terrorists and criminals."

The National Security Committee (CSN) of Kazakhstan announced the termination in 14 of the 17 regions of the country of the CSTO operation launched after protests that broke out at the beginning of the year and degenerated into violent riots.


"The situation has stabilized in 14 regions of Kazakhstan. For this reason, the operational center for the fight against terrorism reports the end of the antiterrorist operation and raises the 'red' level of terrorist threat," the CSN said in a statement.

The agency warned that operations continue in the city of Almaty, one of the epicenters of violent demonstrations in the Central Asian country.

The protests have left a balance so far of at least 164 dead, a thousand injured and more than 10,000 detainees.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/inicia-r ... -0005.html

Google Translator

************************************

Image

Putin draws the line for colour revolutions
Posted Jan 13, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

Originally published: Indian Punchline (January 12, 2022 ) |

This must be a rare page in American diplomatic history that a U.S. Secretary of State has been literally off his rocker. Antony Blinken’s outbursts on the events in Kazakhstan were not only boorish but also illogical.

Blinken questioned the decision by the president of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich Tokayev to request help from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to deploy forces to help stabilise the grave situation in his country. He said it was unclear why the deployment was happening!

Moscow had emphasised right at the outset that the CSTO deployment would be temporary. Nonetheless, Blinken sniped that “one lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave”.

The Russian Foreign Ministry furiously denounced Blinken’s insulting remarks. It said Blinken spoke “in his typical boorish manner.” The statement went on to say,
When Americans are in your house, it can be difficult to stay alive, and not to be robbed or raped. Indians of the North American continent, Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Panamanians, Yugoslavs, Libyans, Syrians and many other unfortunate people who are unlucky enough to see these uninvited guests in their ‘home’ will have much to say about this.
On Tuesday, Tokayev announced that the CSTO contingent of troops would begin leaving the troubled Central Asian country in two days, with the pullout to be completed in 10 days’ time! Kremlin responded that it is entirely the prerogative of the Kazakh government to decide on such matters concerning national security!

Blinken would know that following the murder of the Iranian general Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad two years ago, Iraqi parliament had demanded the forthwith departure of all American troops. But the Americans are yet to pay heed to it!

Yet, Blinken is an intelligent man. All things taken into account, he deliberately indulged in an act of dissimulation by uttering some nonsensical things: Blinken was actually scrambling to cover up the tracks of the attempt at regime change in Kazakhstan masterminded by the CIA with the approval of President Biden.

Isn’t that a familiar ploy for crafty minds—distract attention from the core issue by raising dust in the air? In this miserable case, the failed attempt by the Biden administration at regime change in a strategically located remote country sandwiched between Russia and China (which is manifold more strategic than Ukraine ever can be) exposes American diplomacy to ridicule in a vast region of Inner Asia. And it forecloses any best-laid plans by NATO to cross the Caspian ever.

Worst of all, the U.S.’ Indo-Pacific strategy will now have a huge arc of geography to the west of China, which is impossible to barricade following such a massive depletion of American influence. Russia achieved all this at minimal cost—a five-day military mission to Kazakhstan.

The Kremlin is reticent about disclosing everything it knows, but from available details, what took place was a failed attempt at colour revolution while “destructive internal and external forces took advantage of the situation,” as President Vladimir Putin put it.

The Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov has written more explicitly on the Russian embassy’s webpage that thousands of jihadists were involved in efforts to wreak havoc in Kazakhstan.

As he put it,

Kazakhstan came under attack by radicals who preached misanthropic ideology. Thousands of jihadists and looters made an attempt to shatter the constitutional order… This is a new attempt at a colour revolution with the help of gunmen and looters.

In another interview to Newsweek, Antonov added,

There is serious concern over further spread of radical religious ideology in Central Asia. It comes from the destabilisation in the Middle East and Afghanistan caused, in turn, by the Western military interferences under the pretext of defending human rights and democracy.

The Kremlin’s close allies, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko openly alleged that “foreign intelligence agencies of various major forces have interfered” in Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday that the country “has been subjected to armed aggression by well-coordinated terrorist groups trained abroad. According to preliminary data, the attackers include individuals who have military combat zone experience in the ranks of radical Islamist groups.”

Tokayev himself spoke about a “well-organised and well-prepared act of aggression against Kazakhstan with the participation of foreign fighters mainly from Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan. There were also fighters from the Middle East. The idea was to form a zone of controlled chaos on our territory with the subsequent seizure of power.”

Putin has drawn a parallel with the regime change in Ukraine in 2014, sponsored by the U.S. where agents provocateurs demoralised the security forces forcing President Vikor Yanukovich to flee and into the resultant vacuum, U.S. diplomats promptly inserted a puppet regime unfriendly toward Moscow.

Foreign militants participated in the riots in Kazakhstan, Tokayev said in a talk with European Council President Charles Michel held via a video conference on Monday. “I have no doubts that this was a terror attack,” Tokayev was quoted as saying.

“This was a well-organized and prepared act of aggression against Kazakhstan with the participation of foreign gunmen mostly from Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan. There were also militants from the Middle East,” Tokayev said. “Their intent was to create a zone of controlled chaos on our territory with the subsequent seizure of power,” he added.

Indeed, sixteen security personnel were killed, over 1,300 suffered injuries and about 500 police cars were burned. There were targeted attacks simultaneously on government buildings in many cities.

Conspiracy theories are galore. The involvement of Turkey and Israel has figured. Kazakhstan has closed 5 out of its seven border crossings with Kyrgyzstan. The talk of the town is that western intelligence transferred battle-hardened Islamist fighters from Syria to Kyrgyzstan to infiltrate the porous border into Kazakh territory.

Bishkek feels so ashamed and guilty that President Sadyr Japarov didn’t show his face at the CSTO leaders’ videoconference two days ago and instead deputed his prime minister!

More details will surely emerge. It’s known that the few thousands detainees held by Kazakh authorities include foreign nationals. An estimated 16000 NGOs are operating in Kazakhstan and many are known to be funded by U.S. organisations such as Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, which funds regime change projects in ex-Soviet republics.

The U.S. has networked extensively with ethnic Kazakh nationalists, pro-Western groups and youth. The “New Kazakh”, educated in America, is a different breed altogether from the “Russified” generation of the Soviet era.

Kazakhstan is a coveted trophy for Cold Warriors. It borders Xinjiang and is the transportation hub for Beijing’s west-bound BRI projects. China has huge stakes in trade, investment, energy cooperation with Kazakhstan.

For Moscow too, the stability of Kazakhstan is of vital concern as 3.5 million ethnic Russians live there. Besides, Russia also has strategic assets there such as the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the Sary Shagan testing range for ICBMs. The sparsely populated landmass is a potential infiltration route for terrorist groups.

Blinken’s provocative remarks about the CSTO and Russia shifted the searchlight moved away from the attempted colour revolution. Nonetheless, the Russophobes in the Biden administration are ending up as losers.

They fancied that while Moscow’s eyes remained trained on Russia’s western border, they could create a fait accompli for Russia along its 7600-km long open southern border. They were clueless that Putin would react decisively.

By deputing a hotshot general with previous record in Chechnya, Crimea and Donbass to command the CSTO troops for the five-day period in Kazakhstan, the Kremlin made its point—‘No more colour revolutions.’

https://mronline.org/2022/01/13/putin-d ... volutions/

Confused and confusing situation. Like other uprisings of recent years this one certainly started out as a worker's protest over prices, specifically gas but grievances over the price of other necessities has been festering. However, it seems these protests were hijacked, just as the Egyptian revolt was hijacked by liberals and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Maidan revolt in Ukraine, initially that of mostly 'clerks', was hijacked by local Nazis with US connivance. In this case the hijackers appear to be one or more of the not in power oligarchic clans. That the government is being reshuffled and treason charges are out there makes me believe this to be the case. That Rotfront, good communists, has had little to say about this after initially supporting the protests and certainly no friends of the capitalist regime supports this supposition by negation. The possibility of Islamic radicalism being involved is certainly possible, they have been US proxy footsoldiers for decades, but I'm not seeing evidence of that.

But I'm here and they're there...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:27 pm

Image

After Kazakhstan, the Color Revolution Era is Over
January 16, 2022
By Pepe Escobar – Jan 12, 2022

What happened in Kazakhstan increasingly looks like a US-Turkish-British-Israeli-led coup d’etat attempt foiled dramatically by their Eurasian adversaries.

The year 2022 started with Kazakhstan on fire, a serious attack against one of the key hubs of Eurasian integration. We are only beginning to understand what and how it happened.

On Monday morning, leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) held an extraordinary session to discuss Kazakhstan.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev framed it succinctly. Riots were “hidden behind unplanned protests.” The goal was “to seize power”—a coup attempt. Actions were “coordinated from a single center.” And “foreign militants were involved in the riots.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin went further: during the riots, “Maidan technologies were used,” a reference to the Ukrainian square where 2013 protests unseated a NATO-unfriendly government.

Defending the prompt intervention of CSTO peacekeeping forces in Kazakhstan, Putin said, “it was necessary to react without delay.” The CSTO will be on the ground “as long as necessary,” but after the mission is accomplished, “of course, the entire contingent will be withdrawn from the country.” Forces are expected to exit later this week.

But here’s the clincher: “CSTO countries have shown that they will not allow chaos and ‘color revolutions’ to be implemented inside their borders.”

Putin was in synch with Kazakh State Secretary Erlan Karin, who was the first, on the record, to apply the correct terminology to events in his country: What happened was a “hybrid terrorist attack,” by both internal and external forces, aimed at overthrowing the government.

The tangled hybrid web
Virtually no one knows about it. But last December, another coup was discreetly thwarted in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Kyrgyz intel sources attribute the engineering to a rash of NGOs linked with Britain and Turkey.

That introduces an absolutely key facet of The Big Picture: NATO-linked intel and their assets may have been preparing a simultaneous color revolution offensive across Central Asia.

On my Central Asia travels in late 2019, pre-COVID, it was plain to see how western NGOs—Hybrid War fronts—remained extremely powerful in both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Yet, they are just one nexus in a western nebulae of Hybrid War fog deployed across Central Asia, and West Asia for that matter. Here we see the CIA and the US Deep State crisscrossing MI6 and different strands of Turkish intel.

When President Tokayev was referring in code to a “single center,” he meant a so far “secret” US-Turk-Israeli military-intel operations room based in the southern business hub of Almaty, according to a highly placed Central Asia intel source.

In this “center,” there were 22 Americans, 16 Turks and 6 Israelis coordinating sabotage gangs—trained in West Asia by the Turks—and then rat-lined to Almaty.

The op started to unravel for good when Kazakh forces—with the help of Russian/CSTO intel—retook control of the vandalized Almaty airport, which was supposed to be turned into a hub for receiving foreign military supplies.

The Hybrid War west had to be stunned and livid at how the CSTO intercepted the Kazakh operation at such lightning speed. The key element is that the secretary of Russian National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, saw the Big Picture eons ago.

So, it’s no mystery why Russia’s aerospace and aero-transported forces, plus the massive necessary support infrastructure, were virtually ready to go.

Back in November, Patrushev’s laser was already focused on the degrading security situation in Afghanistan. Tajik political scientist Parviz Mullojanov was among the very few who were stressing that there were as many as 8,000 imperial machine Salafi-jihadi assets, shipped by a rat line from Syria and Iraq, loitering in the wilds of northern Afghanistan.

That’s the bulk of ISIS-Khorasan—or ISIS reconstituted near the borders of Turkmenistan. Some of them were duly transported to Kyrgyzstan. From there, it was very easy to cross the border from Bishek and show up in Almaty.

It took no time for Patrushev and his team to figure out, after the imperial retreat from Kabul, how this jihadi reserve army would be used: along the 7,500 km-long border between Russia and the Central Asian “stans.”

That explains, among other things, a record number of preparation drills conducted in late 2021 at the 210th Russian military base in Tajikistan.

James Bond speaks Turkish
The breakdown of the messy Kazakh op necessarily starts with the usual suspects: the US Deep State, which all but “sang” its strategy in a 2019 RAND corporation report, Extending Russia. Chapter 4, on “geopolitical measures”, details everything from “providing lethal aid to Ukraine,” “promoting regime change in Belarus,” and “increasing support for Syrian rebels”—all major fails—to “reducing Russian influence in Central Asia.”

That was the master concept. Implementation fell to the MI6-Turk connection.

The CIA and MI6 had been investing in dodgy outfits in Central Asia since at least 2005, when they encouraged the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), then close to the Taliban, to wreak havoc in southern Kyrgyzstan. Nothing happened.

It was a completely different story by May 2021, when the MI6’s Jonathan Powell met the leadership of Jabhat al-Nusra—which harbors a lot of Central Asian jihadis—somewhere in the Turkish-Syrian border near Idlib.

The deal was that these “moderate rebels”—in US terminology—would cease to be branded “terrorists” as long as they followed the anti-Russia NATO agenda.

That was one of the key prep moves ahead of the jihadist ratline to Afghanistan—complete with Central Asia branching out.

The genesis of the offensive should be found in June 2020, when former ambassador to Turkey from 2014 to 2018, Richard Moore, was appointed head of MI6.

Moore may not have an inch of Kim Philby’s competence, but he does fit the profile: rabid Russophobe, and a cheerleader of the Great Turania fantasy, which promotes a pan-Turk confederation of Turkic-speaking peoples from West Asia and the Caucasus to Central Asia and even Russian republics in the Volga.

MI6 is deeply entrenched in all the “stans” except autarchic Turkmenistan—cleverly riding the pan-Turkist offensive as the ideal vehicle to counter Russia and China.

Erdogan himself has been invested on a hardcore Great Turania offensive, especially after the creation of the Turkic Council in 2009.

Crucially, next March, the summit of the Confederation Council of Turkic-speaking States—the new Turkic Council denomination—will take place in Kazakhstan. The city of Turkestan, in southern Kazakhstan, is expected to be named as the spiritual capital of the Turkic world.

And here, the “Turkic world” enters into a frontal clash with the integrating Russian concept of Greater Eurasia Partnership, and even with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that, crucially, does not count Turkey as a member.

Erdogan’s short term ambition seems at first to be only commercial: after Azerbaijan won the Karabakh war, he expects to use Baku to get access to Central Asia via the Caspian Sea, complete with Turkey’s industrial-military complex sales of military technology to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Turkish companies are already investing heavily in real estate and infrastructure. And in parallel, Ankara’s soft power is on overdrive, finally collecting the fruits of exercising a lot of pressure, for instance, to speed up the transition in Kazakhstan from Cyrillic script to the Latin alphabet, starting in 2023.

Yet both Russia and China are very much aware that Turkey essentially represents NATO entering Central Asia. The organization of Turkic states are cryptically called the Kazakh operation ‘fuel protests’.

It’s all very murky. Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanism—which comes with massive cheerleading by his Muslim Brotherhood base—essentially has nothing to do with the pan-Turanic drive, which is a racialist movement predicating domination by relatively “pure” Turks.

The problem is that they are converging while becoming more extreme, with Turkey’s right-wing Grey Wolves deeply implicated. That explains why Ankara intel is a sponsor and, in many cases, a weaponizer of both the ISIS-Khorasan franchise and those Turan racists, from Bosnia to Xinjiang via Central Asia.

The Empire handsomely profits from this toxic association, in Armenia, for instance. And the same would happen in Kazakhstan if the operation is successful.

Bring on the Trojan Horses

Every color revolution needs a “Maximum” Trojan Horse. In our case, that seems to be the role of former head of KNB (National Security Committee) Karim Massimov, now held in prison and charged with treason.

Hugely ambitious, Massimov is half-Uyghur, and that, in theory, obstructed what he saw as his pre-ordained rise to power. His connections with Turkish intel are not yet fully detailed, unlike his cozy relationship with Joe Biden and son.

A former Minister of Internal Affairs and State Security, Lt Gen Felix Kulov, has weaved a fascinating tangled web explaining the possible internal dynamics of the ‘coup’ built into the color revolution.

According to Kulov, Massimov and Samir Abish, the nephew of recently ousted Kazakh Security Council Chairman Nursultan Nazarbayev, were up to their necks in supervising ‘secret’ units of ‘bearded men’ during the riots. The KNB was directly subordinated to Nazarbayev, who until last week was the chairman of the Security Council.

When Tokayev understood the mechanics of the coup, he demoted both Massimov and Samat Abish. Then Nazarbayev “voluntarily” resigned from his life-long chairmanship of the Security Council. Abish then got this post, promising to stop the “bearded men,” and then to resign.

So that would point directly to a Nazarbayev-Tokayev clash. It makes sense as, during his 29-year rule, Nazarbayev played a multi-vector game that was too westernized and which did not necessarily benefit Kazakhstan. He adopted British laws, played the pan-Turkic card with Erdogan, and allowed a tsunami of NGOs to promote an Atlanticist agenda.

Tokayev is a very smart operator. Trained by the foreign service of the former USSR, fluent in Russian and Chinese, he is totally aligned with Russia-China—which means fully in sync with the masterplan of the BRI, the Eurasia Economic Union, and the SCO.

Tokayev, much like Putin and Xi, understands how this BRI/EAEU/SCO triad represents the ultimate imperial nightmare, and how destabilizing Kazakhstan—a key actor in the triad—would be a mortal coup against Eurasian integration.

Kazakhstan, after all, represents 60% of Central Asia’s GDP, massive oil/gas and mineral resources, cutting-edge high tech industries: a secular, unitary, constitutional republic bearing a rich cultural heritage.

It didn’t take long for Tokayev to understand the merits of immediately calling the CSTO to the rescue: Kazakhstan signed the treaty way back in 1994. After all, Tokayev was fighting a foreign-led coup against his government.

Putin, among others, has stressed how an official Kazakh investigation is the only one entitled to get to the heart of the matter.

It’s still unclear exactly who—and to what extent—sponsored the rioting mobs. Motives abound: to sabotage a pro-Russia/China government, to provoke Russia, to sabotage BRI, to plunder mineral resources, to turbo-charge a House of Saud-style “Islamization.”

Rushed to only a few days before the start of the Russia-US ‘security guarantees’ in Geneva, this color revolution represented a sort of counter-ultimatum—in desperation—by the NATO establishment.

Central Asia, West Asia, and the overwhelming majority of the Global South have witnessed the lightning fast Eurasian response by the CSTO troops—who, having now done their job, are set to leave Kazakhstan in a couple of days—and how this color revolution has failed, miserably.

It might as well be the last. Beware the rage of a humiliated Empire.


Featured image: The recent events in Kazakhstan have foreign fingerprints all over them, and represent a developing Central Asian fight between two distinct opposing poles. Photo: The Cradle

(The Cradle)

https://orinocotribune.com/after-kazakh ... a-is-over/

As a dissection of an imperialist project this piece is good. However, it does lack some class perspective. Because many of these 'color revolutions' start out with legitimate worker's grievances, as apparently did this one. Egypt is another such case, and even Maidan started out with a bunch of clerks unhappy they didn't get their silk panties and I phones upon socialism's demise, before the Nazis with US connivance took over. It is a testimony to the power and agility of the imperialists that they are able to intercept and redirect legitimate protest to their liking. This they could do in a void, but the void is being filled.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:58 pm

Image

National Endowment for Democracy Provided $1.2 Million to Kazakhstan to Help Spark Color Revolution Against Pro-Russian and Pro-China Regime
January 16, 2022
By Jeremy Kuzmarov – Jan 12, 2022

Media Has Covered Crisis in Kazakhstan in Biased Way
On January 2nd, protests erupted in the city of Zhanaozen in western Kazakhstan that have since spread across the country. Over 160 people have been killed, including at least 18 police officers, with hundreds more wounded.

The New York Times and other mainstream media outlets depicted the violence as a result of the doubling of fuel prices and unhappiness with political authoritarianism and corruption.

Image
PHOTO: Protesters take part in a rally over a hike in energy prices in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 5, 2022.

Protesters take part in a rally over a hike in energy prices in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on January 5, 2022. [Source: abcnews.go.com]
Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has been widely condemned for carrying out large-scale human rights abuses, with Russian backing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to Russia as an occupying power.

Russia has indeed sent troops into Kazakhstan in support of Tokayev. On January 5th, Tokayev invoked article four of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led alliance of former Soviet states that includes Belarus, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan, which agreed to provide Kazakhstan with military assistance and defense.

Image
[Source: silkroadbriefing.com]

In most media coverage, including even in alternative media, Tokyaev is depicted as the bad guy, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, Tokayev’s statement about criminals and murderers leading the protests is actually true.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported that two police officers in Almaty were found beheaded and that government buildings were stormed and set ablaze.

RT News reported that protesters were driving away military vehicles, disarming soldiers, burning cars and had set on fire the mayor’s office in Almaty, the country’s largest city.

Lest one think RT News is biased since it is pro-Russian, The New York Timesalso featured a photograph of a burning police car on January 7.[1]

Pepe Escobar wrote in Strategic Culture about the protesters provoking “total anarchy, robbery, looting, hundreds of vehicles destroyed, attacks with assault rifles, ATMs and even the Duty Free at Almaty airport [being] completely plundered.” This assessment dovetailed with that of Galym Ageleulov, a human rights activist in Almaty who participated in the protests. He described the crowd as “an unruly mob of…thugs…clearly organized by crime group marauders.”

Image
Photo of burning police car in Almaty published by The New York Times. [Source: nytimes.com]

Regime Change

The media almost universally failed to report that political organizations in Kazakhstan in 2020 received $3.8 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which promotes regime change against pro-Russian leaders in Eastern Europe and Central Asia under the guise of advancing democracy and human rights, and more than $1.2 million from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). (data for 2021 is not yet publicly available)

Image
[Source: ned.org]

The NED was founded in the 1980s by the Reagan administration to carry out functions previously adopted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).[2] It has been involved in supporting “color revolutions,” or regime-change operations, throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia directed against pro-Russian leaders like Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia in the 2003 “Rose Revolution” and Viktor Yanukovych who was ousted in Ukraine in Februar

Image
[Source: wikipedia.org]

Image
Color Revolution in Ukraine. [Source: atlanticcouncil.org]

In 2018-2019, the NED spent almost three million dollars in Belarus, which was targeted in a color revolution directed against Socialist Alexander Lukashenko, a close Russian ally who sustained considerable popular support because of the strength of his country’s social programs.

Image
Protests in Minsk in August 2020 with the aim of bringing down Alexander Lukashenko’s socialist government. The protesters fly Belarus’s pre-revolutionary flag. [Source: covertactionmagazine.com]

Much of the NED funding was directed toward training youth activists in political organizing, strengthening NGOs and financing independent anti-Lukashenko media, which played a pivotal role in trying to stir up opposition and protests against him. The NED has also set out to publicize human rights abuses as a means of undermining Lukashenko’s legitimacy.

The same approach has been deployed in Kazakhstan. In 2020, the NED budgeted $61,450 for defending human rights, $69,920 for what it calls promoting and defending civil society, and $300,550 for independent news and commentary.

All of these initiatives sound positive, but their primary intention is to stir anti-regime opposition and propaganda.

When violent protests begin to escalate, the opposition media kick into high gear, depicting the president as a tyrant committing human rights crimes, and international media—including the alternative media—follow suit.

Regime change usually follows, though in the case of Kazakhstan, Russian and CSTO support, combined with the lack of organization and vision of the protest movement, makes those prospects here unlikely.[3]

Corrupt Foreign-Backed Leader

The leader of the Kazakh protest movement, Mukhtar Ablyazov, is a former energy minister and wealthy banker, who fled from Kazakhstan to Britain in 2009 after being charged with corruption and embezzling as much as $6 billion when he was head of Kazakhstan’s largest bank.

DCK leader Mukhtar Ablyazov receives political asylum in France - Open Dialogue Foundation

Image
A Great Freedom Fighter! Mukhtar Ablyazov raising fist in France, having received asylum there in 2020 after being forced to leave Britain under the threat of imprisonment for tax evasion. [Source: en.odfoundation.eu]

Owning a network of over 800 fake companies, many of them off-shore[4], Ablyazov was accused of murdering his business rival, Yerzhan Tatishev, on a hunting trip. A colleague told a court in Almaty that Ablyazov, who heads the right-wing Democratic Choice party of Kazakhstan, “proposed…the physical elimination of Yerzhan. This would happen during a hunting trip and look like an accidental death. And so it happened.”[5]

Image
Tarzan Tatishev [Source: asiantimes.com]

Dubbed by the British press as the “world’s richest fraudster,” Ablyazov lived sumptuously in a nine-bedroom mansion in London’s “Billionaire’s Row” and a 100-acre estate in Windsor Great Park, while renting a 15,000 square foot mansion on Bishop’s Avenue in London. He owned three private planes and more than one thousand apartments, and 106 cars.

Image
Ablyazov’s mansion on London’s billionaire’s row. [Source: independent.co.uk]

In 2012, a British judge ordered him imprisoned for lying in court about his financial assets, which prompted him to seek asylum in France.[6] Lord Justice Maurice Kay observed that: “It is difficult to imagine a party to commercial litigation who has acted with more cynicism, opportunism and deviousness towards court orders than Mr Ablyazov.”

Image
Ablyazov arrives at court hearing in France in 2014. [Source: occrp.org]

Ablyazov has set up headquarters for the new color revolution in Kyiv, home of a U.S.-backed government infiltrated by neo-fascists that is priming for war with Russia, and has called for Western military intervention.

His lawyer, Stephan Roh, was the attorney for Joseph Mifsud, the notorious Maltese-British agent who tried to entrap Trump campaign worker George Papadopoulos in 2016, with help from Italian Democratic Party networks and the Italian government under Matteo Renzi.

Image
Stephen Roh [Source: buzzfeednews.com]

Geopolitical Stakes

Besides failing to discuss Ablyazov’s background, almost all media coverage of Kazakhstan has failed to probe the important geopolitical stakes underlying the protests.

Russia is depicted as the bad guy because it is supposedly helping a ghastly regime. But as bad as Tokayev may be, the alternative appears to be worse.

The media further ignores the fact that Putin and Russia are obligated to act under the CSTO to defend Kazakhstan and that the U.S. has been supporting the “color revolution in Kazakhstan as part of a renewed Cold War offensive. Its goal is to pry a key Russian strategic ally into the U.S. and Western political orbit, where it could be admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Russia has strong interest in Kazakhstan, including a launch site for space missions that it rents, a major missile testing site where a next generation missile defense system is being developed, and a reliance on Kazakh gas as a backstop for insufficient Russian production.

Image
A Russian Soyuz-FG rocket with five satellites launches from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan on July 22, 2012. [Space.com]

Kazakhstan is also one of the world’s leading uranium producers and an important oil supplier to China, which has emerged as a key strategic ally of Moscow.

The color revolution as of this writing appears to have failed. The reason is because Kazakhstan has benefited greatly from the Eurasian Economic Union which has integrated its economy with Russia and Belarus.[7]

As a huge potential hub for accessing Central Asia, Kazakhstan under Tokayev’s leadership is also poised to receive considerable support under China’s One Belt-One Road initiative, which will likely result in a huge buildup of Kazakhstan’s railway and infrastructure, and tremendous economic benefit.[8]

Image
[Source: carnegieendowment.org]

The U.S., it appears, would prefer to go back to the days of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled Kazakhstan from 1990 until 2019. His mafia-style tactics were apparent when the decapitated carcass of a dog was left outside the office of a newspaper that reported he had stashed more than a billion dollars in state oil money in Swiss bank accounts, with a warning that “there won’t be a next time.”[9]

Image
Nursultan Nazarbayev [Source: nbcnews.com]

The money had come from the sale of a 20% stake in the Tengiz oil fields to Chevron, and from $78 million in bribes given by an American oil industry consultant, James H. Giffen, the de facto U.S. ambassador who also worked for Nazarbayev and helped secure Chevron’s concession.[10]

Image
[Source: upstreamonline.com]
Image
James H. Giffen [Source: nytimes.com]

In 2005, former U.S. President Bill Clinton famously enjoyed a decadent midnight feast with Nazarbayev while helping to secure a uranium mining concession in Kazakhstan for Clinton Foundation donor James Giustra.

Image
Bill Clinton, center, with Frank Giustra on his left and Sir Tom Hunter on his right. [Source: nytimes.com]

Today, the Great Game continues, but the world is changing, and China and Russia are becoming more powerful.



Notes:
1. Newsweek reported that the protesters had broken into the presidential residence, while the World Socialist Web Site reported that they were smashing bank windows.

2. Former Archivist of the United States and NED founder Allen Weinstein stated openly: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” ↑

3. Though the initial protests were led by workers, the left wing parties have been decimated by years of repression. The country’s main political opposition party, the right-wing “Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan,” as such has begun to play a role in the demonstrations. A high level intelligence source told journalist Pepe Escobar that the protests were being “sponsored by MI6 to create a new Maidan right before the Russia/U.S.-NATO talks in Geneva and Brussels…to prevent any kind of agreement.” Another intelligence source told him that it was a diversionary tactic to bog Russia down while war is triggered in Ukraine. ↑

4. Some of these companies were listed as being owned by dead alcoholics as part of a pattern of tax evasion and financial fraud. Ablyazov is reputed to have ties to organized crime. See Charles van der Leeuw, Fugitive Long-fingered Gentry from the Plains (Capisan, 2009).↑

5. The consequence of Tatishev’s death was that Mukhtar Ablyazov forced Tatishev’s widow to transfer him the shares that Tatishev held in BTA Bank. The transfer made Ablyazov the owner of BTA and one of the most powerful men in Kazakhstan. The man convicted of accidentally killing him, Muratkhan Tokhmadiyev, said he had in fact been hired to do so by Mukhtar Ablyazov. ↑

6. Ablyazov was facing three concurrent twenty-two month sentences for judgments against him that totaled $4.9 billion. Within a year of his tenure as head of the state-owned Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company (KEGOC), revenues were down by 12 percent and expenditure up by 53 percent, a pattern repeated in 1999 when he was named CEO of Air Kazakhstan, swiftly asset-stripping the company into bankruptcy. The Royal Bank of Scotland was among numerous British institutions to suffer at the hands of Ablyazov—it had to be bailed out by British taxpayers after suffering losses of more than $1.8 billion. ↑

7. President Tokayev also has made major concession to the protesters that will help to dissipate them. He has promised state regulation of gas, gasoline, and socially important goods; a moratorium on raising utility bills; subsidized rents for housing for the poor; and the creation of a public fund to support health care and children. ↑Tokyaev also satisfied protesters by removing ex-President Nursultan Nazarbayev, whom he served as a foreign minister under, from a key security post.

8. The One-Belt-One Road was initially launched in Kazakhstan by Xi Jinping at Nazarbayev University in September 2013. ↑

9. Peter Baker, “As Kazakh scandal unfolds, Soviet-style reprisals begin,” Chicago Tribune, June 11, 2002, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct- ... story.html. The dog’s severed head was later put on the editor’s doorstep. Nazarbayev still wields influence in Kazakhstan, though has just been removed from a key security post. Some of the protesters had demanded his return, while others chanted that “the old man should go away.”↑

10. Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism (New York: Penguin, 2002), 496, 497; Michael Dobbs, David Ottaway and Sharon LaFraniere, “American at Center of Kazakh Oil Probe,” The Washington Post, September 25, 2000; Ken Silverstein, The Secret World of Oil (London: Verso, 2014), 21, 22. Giffen also gave Nazarbayev and his wife gifts, including his-her snowmobiles, and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry. Giffen never denied paying the bribes but said his actions were fully known by the U.S. government. He had made millions in concessions on Kazakhstan oil deals, enabling him to buy an 11-acre estate adjacent to the celebrated Winged Foot Golf Course in New York’s Westchester County. In late 2010, the Justice Department dropped bribery charges in exchange for a misdemeanor tax plea, and the Judge, William Pauley, imposed no jail time, saying Giffen was a Cold War hero and “one of the only Americans with sustained access to high levels of government in the region. These relationships built up over a lifetime were lost the day of his arrest.” Oil fixer Friedhelm Eronat stated that “oil fields are a battleground. If Jim (Giffen] had not been involved, other [non-American] firms would have gotten the contracts, and the loser would have been the U.S. government.” ↑

11. Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr., “After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton,” The New York Times, January 31, 2008. ↑





Featured image: Protesters climb on top of a van in Almaty on January 6. [Source: nbcnews.com; collage by staff]

(CovertAction Magazine)

https://orinocotribune.com/national-end ... na-regime/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 22, 2022 3:18 pm

The head of the "Fair Russia" invited the oligarchs to share their income
01/21/2022

Asking for mercy from the oligarchs

Sergei Mironov , head of the Just Russia - For Truth faction, said that Russian oligarchs and businessmen need to share their income with the poorer sections of society, including pensioners, which will bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. According to the deputy, the rich and politicians should take care of the low-income segments of the population, including from a sense of self-preservation: accumulated poverty is a powder magazine. The MP also called for indexing pensions for working pensioners and returning the retirement age to previous values ​​in order to improve the standard of living.

Image

It is known from historical experience that the rich are not particularly willing to share their income with the working people. A solid theoretical base has been created to justify this state of affairs. True, all its provisions can be stated in several paragraphs. Firstly, huge incomes are a payment for the risk and responsibility that businessmen take on. Secondly, they earned all these huge capitals with their labor and intelligence. All of these arguments are false. Any worker risks much stronger and more seriously - if an entrepreneur almost always risks only money, then workers risk their health and life itself, which is confirmed by everyday practice. Labor and intelligence also do not bring a lot of money in the market system - otherwise the richest scientists and hard workers would be the richest. However, both of them often live in poverty. The real source of huge incomes is unpaid labor - the surplus value seized from the workers by businessmen. This is precisely the injustice of the structure of society.

Part of the working people believes in justifying the wealth of the largest entrepreneurs and either resigns themselves to living in poverty, or strives to achieve a better life through hard work. To protect against those who do not agree with such a fate, a state apparatus has been created and laws have been established that protect the "legitimate" interests of entrepreneurs from any encroachment.

That is why workers should, on the one hand, study and improve their political education, which will enable them to get rid of harmful illusions and delusions, and on the other hand, work to create their own organization that will help workers fight against organized business. We cannot ask for favors from entrepreneurs, take them - that's our task.

https://www.rotfront.su/rukovoditel-spr ... oj-rossii/

*********************************

Desperate farm workers go on hunger strike

01/22/2022

In the war of owners they ruin their health

Employees of LLC "LOTAS" , who have not received wages for almost a year, declared an indefinite hunger strike. Residents of the villages of Sarsy-First and Sarsy-Second of the Krasnoufimsky district of the Sverdlovsk region recorded a video message to the President of the Russian Federation V. Putin , the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation I. Krasnov and the head of the Investigative Committee A. Bastrykin with a request to pay attention to the raider seizure of the enterprise. The head of the Investigative Committee complied with their demand - he instructed the head of the Investigative Committee for the Sverdlovsk Region to personally delve into the problem of citizens and submit to him a report on the ongoing activities and investigative actions.


Image
Residents of Sarsa-First and Sarsa-Second declare a hunger strike © Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation

Now Mikhail Egorov is listed as the general director of the agricultural enterprise , who replaced Vladimir Aimetov in this position . In relation to the latter, a criminal case was initiated under Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (misappropriation or embezzlement), Article 170.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (falsification of the unified state register of legal entities, the register of holders of securities). You can learn more about the conflict in this material .

Local residents claim that until recently LOTAS LLC was a prosperous enterprise, but with the change of management everything has changed for the worse: for a year now people have been without work and without wages, there is nothing to support their families. They repeatedly wrote letters to various supervisory authorities, including the prosecutor's office, the investigative committee, and appealed to the governor. The problem is known to everyone, but nothing changes. Tired of the inaction of the authorities and lack of money, people took a desperate step - declared an indefinite hunger strike.

The workers of the agricultural enterprise consider the removal of Vladimir Aimetov from the leadership as the main reason for their troubles. But, oddly enough, in 2021, Tavra LLC, which he manages, had almost similar problems with the payment of wages: last year, instead of money, workers were given “harvest” cards there.
Sarsy-First : eight streets; population in 2002 - 522 people, in 2010 - 483 people.
Sarsy-Second : eight streets; population in 2002 - 673 people, in 2010 - 649 people.
It is unlikely that the population has increased in recent years.
Of course, the despair of people is understandable. In such settlements, you can’t really run away with a choice of a field of activity. LLC "LOTAS" is practically a "city-forming" enterprise. One can only sympathize with people. The market and the widespread degradation of production have made them hostages in the hands of cunning entrepreneurs. The fate of 85 employees of some rural enterprise does not worry those in power much. And not such enterprises have become victims of "free competition". Such cases are not uncommon even in the same Sverdlovsk region.

But the hunger strike is not our method. By declaring it, the working people are simply ruining their health in the war of proprietors. Yes, and their demand to “ pay attention to the situation ” has already been fulfilled: Bastrykin has already sent the task to the regional department of the Sledkom. It may turn out that, having won the property for the “right” owner, the workers will have to spend the rest of their lives on treating the consequences of a hunger strike. Will this "correct" owner pay these costs? We highly doubt it. And "harvest" cards are not yet a means of payment in the Russian Federation.

Unfortunately, many working people have the determination to go on a hunger strike, but there is no time for self-organization, theoretical preparation and finding out the true causes of their plight. If the comrades had moved in this direction, perhaps they would have found other, more effective and correct decisions on how to act in the current situation. Don't repeat their mistakes. Work on yourself, get organized today.

https://www.rotfront.su/otchayavshiesya ... hozpredpr/

All above Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 04, 2022 4:01 pm

Anatoly Chubais announced the high price for Yeltsin's reforms
02.02.2022

crocodile tears

Well-known politician Anatoly Chubais said that it was thanks to Yeltsin's actions that it was possible to preserve the integrity of Russia and restore statehood. It was Yeltsin, according to the businessman, who built a market economy in the country, created a system of separation of powers and ensured freedom of speech and the press, but a very high price was paid for this. Chubais added that the scale of this price turned out to be larger than they expected.

Image

Mr. Chubais is being disingenuous when he talks about the reforms of the 1990s. Russia did not lose statehood, and it was not necessary to restore it. By the beginning of the 90s, the Soviet economy occupied a leading position in the world, second only to the United States, and Soviet industry could produce any kind of industrial product. The standard of living of people was high as never before in the history of the peoples of the Soviet Union, the level of social protection was the highest in the world. However, all this was destroyed in order to satisfy the greed of a handful of individuals. The USSR was liquidated, the industry was largely destroyed, and the people plunged into poverty, which resulted in a large-scale increase in mortality in the country, a decrease in the birth rate and population decline.

Chubais cannot say that they allegedly did not expect such consequences. The effects of market reforms were predicted by simulations using the OGAS system, and the simulation result was consistent with what happened afterwards. Further, Chubais himself declared : “Well, thirty million will die out. They didn't fit into the market. Don't think about it - new ones will grow . " So the consequences of the criminal reforms were well known to this group of people who seized the state and made it an instrument of their affairs.

The workers of Russia and the whole world must learn a lesson from the tragedy of the collapse of the USSR. We cannot prosper in market conditions. Any market will bring poverty and robbery to the working people. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a conscious enemy of the working people or a fool. The working people can improve their lives only by eliminating the market system and replacing it with a more progressive one, by seizing political power.

https://www.rotfront.su/anatolij-chubaj ... okoj-tsen/

Google Translator

These people are really little different from our capitalist ruling class, the differences largely being their developmental state of 'primitive accumulation'. If you don't think so look how our bosses have prioritized their response to Covid-19 to keeping their money train rolling.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 25, 2022 2:11 pm

Russia's de-dollarization drive more than symbolic
By Xu Wenhong | China Daily | Updated: 2022-02-24 07:07

Image
[Photo/IC]

The Ukraine crisis is showing little sign of being resolved. The United States and the European Union have imposed a new tranche of sanctions on Russia, especially in financial field, aimed at increasing Russia's financing costs and weakening its economy.

Russia started "de-dollarizing" its economy years ago, to minimize the impact of the financial sanctions the United States and the European Union had been threatening to impose on the country. Unhappy with the US dollar's domination of the global economy despite the declining US economy, Russia has implemented de-dollarization policies to safeguard its monetary sovereignty, offset the impact of the financial sanctions by the US and the EU, and make the international financial order more dynamic.

Global debates on the possible collapse of the US dollar have been going on for nearly 50 years. In recent years, the debates have become increasingly fierce. Yet the dollar's hegemony continues, to a large extent.

How de-dollarization policies will play out

According to International Monetary Fund data, the share of the US dollar in global foreign exchange reserves was 59 percent in 1995, increasing to 59.02 percent in 2020. So it will be very difficult for Russia to end the dollar's domination of the global financial order. Besides, there is a huge gap in the economic strengths of Russia and the US, with the former's GDP being $1.71 trillion and the latter's nearly $23 trillion in 2021.

Given these facts, what are the prospects and significance of Russia's de-dollarization policy?

Russia and some other countries have introduced de-dollarization policies because the US uses the dollar as a weapon to impose sanctions on the countries, and the foremost anti-sanction measure is de-dollarization.

With the US imposing sanctions on other countries at the drop of a hat, in order to demand its pound of flesh, more and more countries are coming together to issue joint de-dollarization policies. Since about 10 percent of the countries and one quarter of the global population are suffering because of US sanctions, the de-dollarization trend is intensifying across the world.

After the 2008 global financial crisis, the US economy continued to hollow out, although the Federal Reserve kept resorting to quantitative easing. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the over-issuing of US dollars greatly increased in scale, leading to the dollar bond losing credit. This has resulted in the decline in the status and influence of the dollar in the global economic system, prompting Russia and some other countries to gradually clear the dollar bonds by increasing the share of the euro or other currencies in their foreign exchange reserves.

In the global currency competition, the dollar and the euro are generally balanced. The countermeasures against the "dollar trap" may lead to a multi-polar currency pattern. Just as the British pound gradually declined along with the British Empire, the dominant role of the dollar as the global currency too can be undermined sooner or later.

However, it is difficult for countries to take concerted de-dollarization measures since their interests differ. And the US uses the differences in interests to take them on one by one.

As such, the rivalry between the US, which is taking measures to maintain the dollar's hegemony, and countries such as Russia, which have launched de-dollarization policies, will create profound political and economic uncertainties. Also, Russia-US relations will become even more confrontational, especially in the fields of economy and finance, leading to more uncertainties in the international economic and financial order.

Yet the international payment system could undergo many changes. In the future, the international payment structure could be a combination of many options, including SWIFT(Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) and the payment systems followed by the EU, China, Russia and other economies.

In fact, the interconnection between the payment systems of the EU, China and Russia could be the focus of economic and financial work of all countries to avoid the dollar hegemony in the future.

Dollar's hegemony lasts, but perhaps not forever

But Russia's ruble cannot replace the US dollar as an international currency in the near future. It is realistic to believe that Russia would take the lead in the construction of a new global financial order. Russia still lags behind the US and developed European countries when it comes to efficient allocation of market resources, which is a reflection of their financial strength, capital market perception, size of economy, infrastructure and the abundance of financial products. So Russia still has a long way to go to catch up with the advanced Western economies.

The wide gap between Russia and those economies in these areas will be an important factor affecting Russia's de-dollarization policy.

However, gold and digital currency will be important tools in Russia's de-dollarization drive. Many countries regard gold as an important tool for "de-dollarization", and Russia and some other countries have hoarded huge amounts of gold to secure their economies.

Also, digital currency, as a product of blockchain and digital technology, is a distinct virtual product of the digital age and sets the direction for future development. And the digital currencies issued by central banks will contribute to the de-dollarization drive.

Russia has made some key achievements in the field of digital currency, with the Russian digital financial assets law coming into effect in 2021 and Moscow carrying out the legislative work on the "digital ruble" in the second half of 2021. These developments will help Russia gain some advantages in digital currency and further promote its de-dollarization drive.

The significance of Russia's de-dollarization drive is that it is the most radical of de-dollarization measures taken by countries using other currencies. Russia has not only implemented de-dollarization measures domestically, but is also taking some tough measures in financial information exchange and international energy settlement currency. Because of Russia's resolute de-dollarizing measures and its vigorous efforts to deepen international cooperation, more and more countries are following in its footsteps to de-dollarize their economies or assisting it in its de-dollarization drive.

Therefore, we can say Russia's de-dollarization drive has had a global impact.

That some countries want to de-dollarize their economies shows the dissatisfaction with the US dollar's hegemony in the global financial and payment systems, concerns over the over-issuance of the dollar, the call for changing the dollar-based Bretton Woods system, and the need to change the current international economic and financial orders, so as to make them fairer and more balanced.

Although the de-dollarization drive cannot end the dollar's influence on the Russian economy in a short time, Russia has shown the world that the dollar's hegemony can be challenged and perhaps weakened in the long run.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202202/ ... 88834.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

User avatar
blindpig
Posts: 10592
Joined: Fri Jul 14, 2017 5:44 pm
Location: Turtle Island
Contact:

Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Feb 28, 2022 5:08 pm

BLACK BOX DEFENCE FOR THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY – DOLLAR DEBT REPAYMENTS BLOCKED; GAS AND OIL DELIVERIES TO GERMANY STOPPED; OLIGARCH ASSETS NATIONALIZED

Image

By Sergei Glazyev, translated and introduced by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

On Friday morning, February 25, Sergei Glazyev published the following analysis of US sanctions against the Russian economy and of the Russian options for defence and counter-attack.

Glazyev is a Russian state official with ministerial rank. He has served for many years as an economic policy adviser to President Vladimir Putin; since 2019 he is the minister for integration and macroeconomics of the Eurasian Economic Commission, the bloc of former Soviet states coordinating customs, central banking, trade and fiscal management policies together.

Glazyev, now 61, has also been the longest surviving force on the left of Russian policymaking since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and of Boris Yeltsin’s destruction of the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1993. He has been a consistent critic of the monetary policies of the Russian Central Bank; and of the oligarch system promoted by Anatoly Chubais, Alexei Kudrin, German Gref and their business allies in Moscow, and by the financial centres of New York and London. For 25 years they have proved stronger inside the president’s circle than Glazyev; they have persuaded Putin to overrule him publicly, then ignore and sideline him. Until now.

Commencing with Putin’s February 21 speech, the recognition of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the commencement of the military campaign in the Ukraine, the management of the Russian economy has moved on to a war footing. In the interpretation of a leading European banker, the escalation of US and European Union (EU) sanctions intends to confiscate Central Bank assets and destroy all financial links between Russia and the west. He comments that nothing on this scale against a major world power has been attempted since President Franklin Roosevelt froze the foreign assets of Japan on July 26, 1941, and imposed an embargo on Japanese oil and gasoline imports six days later.

The new sanctions commenced on February 22 in response to Russian recognition of Donbass independence, and the signing of a treaty of military and economic cooperation. The first sanctions strike targeted two state banks; three sons of Russian state officials; and state bonds to be issued from Wednesday of this week.

The second-strike sanctions escalated on February 24 to “target the core infrastructure of the Russian financial system — including all of Russia’s largest financial institutions and the ability of state-owned and private entities to raise capital — and further bars Russia from the global financial system. The actions also target nearly 80 percent of all banking assets in Russia and will have a deep and long-lasting effect on the Russian economy and financial system.”

In addition, the targets were expanded to include for the first time state-owned Alrosa, the diamond producer and international diamond market maker; and Sovcomflot, the world’s largest energy tanker fleet operator. At the same time, the US Treasury said it would not block Russian payments for “agricultural and medical commodities and the COVID-19 pandemic; overflight and emergency landings; energy.”

The third strike began overnight between February 26 and 27. The White House announced the disconnection from the SWIFT interbank payments system for “selected Russian banks” . Russian press reporting has speculated that Sberbank and VTB will be disconnected, along with the other banks targeted on February 24. It is not clear whether Alfa Bank, the leading commercial bank owned by Mikhail Fridman, will appear on the SWIFT disconnection list.

The White House also announced the launch of “a multilateral Transatlantic task force to identify, hunt down, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs – their yachts, their mansions, and any other ill-gotten gains that we can find and freeze under the law.”

US and European Union officials are claiming that “restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank (CBR) from deploying its international reserves” amount to a freeze on the Central Bank’s US dollar and Euro denominated holdings. As of January 31, the CBR reported holding $469 billion in foreign exchange. Of that aggregate, year-old CBR data suggest that 22% is in US dollars; 29% in Euros, and 6% in British pounds.

London banking sources and a leading oil trade figure believe that if the third-strike sanctions halt US dollar and Euro payments for Russian oil, gas, coal, titanium, palladium, diamonds, and other commodity exports, along with servicing of interest and principal loans, then the Russian side will stop all debt payments. They will also stop all deliveries to the US and Europe.

The domestic Russian political implications are not less dramatic; they are potentially revolutionary, though not in the direction US figures like Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and William Burns have been calculating in public. Glazyev is one of the Russian revolutionaries they least want to see take power over the oligarchs now.

For reporting on Glazyev’s responses to the first round of US sanctions in March 2014, read this, For a longer archive on Glazyev back to 1993, click to open. http://johnhelmer.net/page/2/?s=glazyev

“Sanctions and sovereignty

By Sergey Glazyev

In Russian.

Image
Source: https://expert.ru/

It would be childish to assume that ‘when we are beaten, we get stronger.’ Although we have indeed strengthened our national sovereignty in the economic sphere under the influence of American sanctions, but not to such an extent that we do not pay attention to them at all. The damage from sanctions, of course, is there and it is significantly enhanced by the passive policy of the monetary authorities.

Permanent intimidation of Russia with new ‘sanctions from hell’ has long ceased to excite Russian public opinion. I remember how in 2014, like others in the first list subjected to US sanctions, I was interviewed and we all assured journalists that we were proud of such recognition of our services to Russia. Since then, the number of individuals and legal entities sanctioned by the United States and its satellites has increased many times and has not had any noticeable impact on our country. On the contrary, the retaliatory measures introduced by our Government in terms of restricting food imports from these countries significantly contributed to the growth of domestic agricultural production, which has almost completely replaced the import of poultry and meat.

Defense and energy industry enterprises have learned to circumvent these sanctions by refusing to use the dollar, and at the same time American banks, in favour of national currencies and banks of partner countries. The next step is the development of digital currency instruments that can be used without resorting to the services of banks which are afraid of falling under sanctions. The Russian people are following with interest the return to the country of the capital exported by the oligarchs and themselves, who are afraid of confiscation and arrest in NATO countries.

American sanctions have affected not so much Russia as third countries which have been subjected to pressure from Washington. First of all, our European neighbours, who have curtailed most of the cooperation projects in the scientific, technical and energy spheres. They also affected Chinese commercial banks operating in the dollar zone, which preferred to stop servicing Russian customers. Russia’s trade turnover with the EU and the United States has naturally decreased, while with China it has grown. In the period 2014-2020, in monetary terms, Russia’s trade turnover with China increased by 17.8% from $88.4 billion to $104.1 billion. The share of APEC [Asia Pacific Economic Conference] and SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organisation] countries in the external trade turnover of the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union] increased during this period from 29.6% to 36.4% and from 16.3% to 24.1%, respectively. The share of the EU in the external trade turnover of the EAEU, on the contrary, decreased from 46.2% in 2015 to 36.7% in 2020. Trade turnover with the United States during the period under review decreased by 18.1% from $29.1 billion to $23.9 billion.

In fact, with the help of sanctions, the United States is trying to oust Russian goods from the markets of its satellites, replacing its own. This was most clearly manifested in the European natural gas market, where the US share has increased sharply, although it has not yet been possible to displace Russia in the European natural gas market.

The main result of the US-European sanctions was a change in the geographical structure of Russian foreign economic relations in favor of China, the expansion of cooperation with which fully compensates for the curtailment of trade and economic relations with the EU. European consumers have to switch to more expensive American energy carriers, and their producers simply lose the Russian market. The total losses of the EU from anti-Russian sanctions are estimated at $ 250 billion.

Another important result of the US sanctions was the fall in the share of the dollar in international settlements. For Russia, as for other countries which have been subjected to US sanctions, the dollar has become a toxic currency. By tracing all dollar transactions, the US punitive authorities can block payments, freeze, or even confiscate assets at any time. For 8 years after the sanctions were imposed, the dollar’s share in international settlements decreased by 13.5 percentage points (from 60.2% in 2014 to 46.7% in 2020).

Sanctions have become a powerful incentive for the transition to settlements in national currencies and the development of national payment systems. Thus, in the mutual trade of the EAEU states, the share of the dollar decreased by more than 6 percentage points (from 26.3% in 2014 to 20.0% at the end of 2020).

I remember how ten years ago, when considering the risks to the Russian banking system at the National Banking Council, I asked the then head of the Central Bank: ‘Is the risk of disconnecting Russian banks from the international SWIFT banking transmission system being considered, as Western partners did in relation to Iran?’ To which I received the answer: ‘We cannot consider the risk of an atomic bomb hitting the Bank of Russia.’ However, the management of the Central Bank has taken measures — today Russia has its own system for transmitting electronic messages between banks — the Bank of Russia’s Financial Message Transmission System (SPFS), as well as its own payment system for Mir bank cards, which is interfaced with the Chinese Union Pay system and can be used for cross-border payments and transfers. Both of them are open to foreign partners and are already widely used not only in domestic, but also in international settlements. Disabling SWIFT is no longer seen as a large-scale threat — it will benefit the development of our payment and financial information systems.

Image

However, it would be childish to assume that ‘when we are beaten, we get stronger.’ Although we have indeed strengthened our national sovereignty in the economic sphere under the influence of American sanctions, but not to such an extent that we do not pay attention to them at all. The damage from sanctions, of course, is there and it is significantly enhanced by the passive policy of the monetary authorities.

Since 2014, when, with the connivance of the regulator, currency speculators brought down the ruble exchange rate by manipulating the market, the latter has been used by sanctions as a fail-safe fuse of macroeconomic stability. At the same time, it was in 2014, on the eve of the already announced US sanctions, that the Bank of Russia switched to a free-floating exchange rate regime. And only after that, the United States introduced their sanctions, being sure that speculators would multiply their negative effect. When the ruble fell by almost half, Obama was pleased to say that ‘the Russian economy is torn to shreds.’ As a result of this manipulation of the Russian currency market, ruble incomes and savings depreciated, and speculators received over 35 billion rubles.in profit. But this happened not because of sanctions, but rather because of the complicity of the Bank of Russia, which left the exchange rate formation at the mercy of international speculators on the recommendation of Washington financial organizations.

Only very naive people can believe in the formation of an equilibrium ruble exchange rate in the free-float mode. The Bank of Russia’s exclusion of itself from ruble exchange rate regulation means that international currency speculators are engaged in this. On the rocking of the ruble exchange rate, which has become one of the most unstable currencies in the world with a threefold provision of foreign exchange reserves, international speculators receive multibillion dollar profits, and Russians, the depreciation of their ruble savings and income together with bursts of inflation. At the same time, the investment climate is hopelessly deteriorating — the instability of the ruble exchange rate creates uncertainty about the main parameters of investment projects using imported equipment and export-oriented products.

Thus, the damage caused by US financial sanctions is inextricably linked to the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia which is the ideal one for them. Its essence boils down to a tight binding of the ruble issue to export earnings, and the ruble exchange rate to the dollar. In fact, an artificial shortage of money is being created in the economy, and the strict policy of the Central Bank leads to an increase in the cost of lending, which kills business activity and hinders the development of infrastructure in the country.

Sanctions restrictions have caused an extremely high demand for corporate financing in the domestic market. Against the background of a relatively low key rate and access to cheaper funding, large banks consistently keep a net interest margin above the average market level, 5.4% to 6%; whereas for the largest banks in China, the USA, Germany, France, Great Britain and Japan, the net interest margin ranges from 0.8% to 2.3%.

However, these windfalls are not directed to financing infrastructure projects, but to the acquisition of disparate non-core businesses that are combined into ecosystems. Most of these businesses remain unprofitable even at the EBITDA [earnings] level. Despite this, billions of rubles are still spent on their development. These figures are quite comparable to the volume of investments in a major infrastructure project in the real sector of the economy, which can bring both job growth and contribution to the development of the economy. But such projects (as well as filling the budget) are still left to the raw materials companies, while the largest financial corporations prefer to direct their income to the creation of chimeras.

In fact, it was the connivance of the Central Bank which led to the fact that Russia and its industry were drained of blood and unable to develop.

If the Central Bank fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure the stability of the ruble — and it has all the possibilities for this due to the threefold surplus of the currency reserves of the monetary base — then financial sanctions would be nothing to us. They could even be turned, as in other sectors of the economy, to the benefit of the banking sector, if the Central Bank replaced the loans withdrawn by Western partners with its own special refinancing instruments. This would increase the capacity of the Russian credit and banking system by more than 10 trillion rubles. Also, it would fully compensate for the outflow of foreign financing of investments, preventing a decline in investment and economic activity without any inflationary consequences. Thus, it would be possible to avoid a long period of decline in real incomes of the population caused solely by the peculiarities of the monetary policy pursued in Russia, which ensured the effectiveness of sanctions in the monetary and financial sphere.

Assessing the consequences of anti-Russian sanctions, it is impossible to ignore the consequences of severing economic ties with Ukraine. The mutual abolition of the free trade regime and the imposition of an embargo on a wide range of goods led to the rupture of cooperative ties that ensured the reproduction of many types of high-tech products. Blocking the work of Russian banks led to the depreciation of multibillion-dollar Russian investments. The refusal of the Ukrainian authorities to service the debt to Russia caused several billion dollars’ more losses. In total, their volume is estimated at about $100 billion for each of the parties. This is really significant and in many ways irreparable real damage, which we ourselves have aggravated with retaliatory sanctions.

To date, the outcome of the economic consequences of anti-Russian sanctions is as follows. Ukraine suffered the biggest losses relative to GDP, in absolute terms — the European Union. Russian losses of potential GDP, since 2014, amount to about 50 trillion rubles. But only 10% of them can be explained by sanctions, while 80% of them were the result of monetary policy. The United States benefits from anti-Russian sanctions, replacing the export of Russian hydrocarbons to the EU, as well as China; replacing the import of European goods by Russia. We could completely offset the negative consequences of financial sanctions if the Bank of Russia fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure a stable ruble exchange rate, and not the recommendations of Washington financial organizations.

Consider the threats of American and European Russophobes against the new ‘sanctions from hell’. It has already been mentioned above that the threat of disconnecting Russian banks from the SWIFT system, widely discussed in the media today, although it will interfere with international settlements at first, will benefit the Russian banking and payment system in the medium term.

The threat to ban transactions with Russian bonds will also benefit us, since their issue in a budget surplus is nothing more than a source of profit for foreign speculators. And their profitability is overestimated three times in relation to the market assessment of their riskiness. The termination of the self-serving [самоедской] policy of the monetary authorities, who are borrowing money which is objectively unnecessary to the budget at exorbitant prices, will allow us to save billions of dollars. If the sanctioneers try to prohibit the purchase of the foreign currency bonds of Russian corporations, then it will be possible to compensate for the missing financing for the purchase of imported equipment by buying them out at the expense of part of the excess foreign exchange reserves. If foreign loans are cut off to them, then the risk of their default will fall on the European and American banks themselves.

There is also a potential risk of seizure of Russian state assets. But we can respond to this symmetrically by imposing an embargo on servicing debt obligations to Western creditors and also arresting their assets. The losses of the parties will be approximately equal.

There remains, in fact, one threat – to take away foreign assets from Russian oligarchs. For all its popularity among the common people, this will stimulate the return of capital exported from the country, which will also have a positive effect for the Russian economy.

At the same time, we need to protect ourselves as much as possible from the expected escalation of US-European sanctions. The most vulnerable place for our economy is its excessive offshoring. Up to half of the assets of the Russian industry belong to non-residents. There are more than a trillion dollars of capital exported from the country abroad, half of which is involved in the reproduction of the Russian economy. The simultaneous freezing of these assets can really dramatically worsen the situation of a number of strategically important enterprises dependent on the external market. The Americans showed how this is done using the example of Rusal, establishing their control over it under the threat of stopping foreign trade activities. We could respond to this by nationalizing at least the giant hydroelectric power plants transferred to this corporation for a song and on dubious grounds, on the operation of which the lion’s share of its profits is based. But for some reason, they did not protect this one of the structural branches of our economy from the raider seizure by the US Treasury.

Image
Source: http://johnhelmer.net/ (April 2018)

From the above, what follows is the need for effective measures for the real deoffshorization of the economy, as well as bringing the policy of the Bank of Russia in line with its constitutional duties. Measures to tighten currency regulation in order to stop the export of capital and expand targeted lending to enterprises in need of financing investments and working capital will also not prevent. It is advisable to introduce taxation of currency speculation and transactions in dollars and euros on the domestic market. We need serious investments in R&D in order to accelerate the development of our own technological base in the areas affected by sanctions — first of all, the defense industry, energy, transport and communications. It is necessary to complete the de-dollarization of our foreign exchange reserves, replacing the dollar, euro and pound with gold. In the current conditions of the expected explosive growth in the price of gold, its mass export abroad is akin to treason and it is high time for the regulator to stop it.

GOLD, ONE-MONTH PRICE TRAJECTORY

Image
Source: https://goldprice.org/

It is necessary to introduce a digital ruble as soon as possible, which could be used for cross-border payment and settlement operations bypassing the banking system subject to sanctions pressure. We should hurry up with the creation of our own exchange space and ruble pricing mechanisms for the commodities produced in excess here. To invite partners in Asia to introduce a global payment and settlement currency based on the index of national currencies and exchange-traded goods. It is possible to unilaterally lift sanctions from Ukrainian enterprises, at the same time easing the situation of the Russian population employed by them. It may be possible to come out again with the initiative of a single economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok, encouraging a healthy part of the European business and political elite. To try to create a broad international coalition for the restoration of the norms of international law, including the norms of the WTO and the IMF, which Western sanctions officials shamelessly violate with their sanctions and trade wars.

In general, much remains to be done to strengthen national sovereignty in the economy. American sanctions are the agony of the outgoing imperial world economic system based on the use of force. In order to minimize the dangers associated with it, it is necessary to accelerate the formation of a new – integral – world economic order which restores international law, national sovereignty, equality of countries, diversity of national economic models, principles of mutual benefit and voluntariness in international economic cooperation.”

http://johnhelmer.net/black-box-defence ... more-47600
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

Post Reply