Ukraine Part 7: Russia’s Geopolitics, USA’s Bluff and EU’s Big Mistake

Announcement:

On Friday, March 7, 2014 I will be on the Time Monk Radio’s show PLANE TRUTH. We will be talking in detail about the situation in Ukraine, Russia’s role, USA/EU, geopolitics and my predictions. 

The interview is here: The Road to Moscow Goes Through Kiev

Latest news: #G7 countries have announced a suspension of preparations for the #G8 meeting that was supposed to be held in #Sochi in June. #USA and #EU also announced they would be imposing sanctions on #Russia for “invading” their own naval base in #Crimea, protecting Russia’s own fleet and millions of Russians that were openly threatened by the #nazis taking over #Kiev.

Those who came here late, may read my prior posts with thorough analysis and video proofs of what is really happening in Ukraine. Particularly Part 4: Nazi coup succeeds. At the bottom of this post also find a link to: Dr. Paul Craig Roberts’ analysis of the Western media double standards and lies regarding Crimea and Ukraine. Also there is a link to the new leaked conversation between EU Foreign Minister and Estonian Foreign minister in which it is revealed that the snipers EU tries to pin on Yanukovich that shot demonstrators and police in Kiev were hired by the opposition.

The above news and their implications I want to discuss in this piece. However, before we start, I want to point out one of many obvious insanities of the US and EU, which will eventually result in a big problem for both. Note: in the Western news this was not reported at all, or it was twisted to appear that black was white and vice versa.

Berkut

I am talking about the Ukrainian special police units called #Berkut, who were given orders (by Yanukovich, who was under pressure of sanctions from EU/US) not to defend themselves, while being shot at and burned with Molotov cocktails. After nazis won, many of the Berkut were captured by them, some tortured, and in western Ukraine all of them were made stand and apologize in front of the crowd. After that, Berkut was disbanded with no salary paid, no pension arrangements – some after a lifetime of service, just thrown out on the street and publicly humiliated.

While US/EU were supporting Ukraine’s new “government” that humiliated the country’s police, what did Russia do? After Berkut was disbanded and humiliated, Russia announced that all Berkut personnel was granted Russian citizenships. To say that this was a brilliant chess move, not to mention an awesome humanitarian gesture, is to say nothing. Considering that in the past 2 weeks alone Russia received an estimated 150,000 urgent asylum requests, primarily from southern Ukraine, and at least 675,000 northern Ukrainian refugees (living near Russian border) have crossed into Russia, this grant of Russian citizenship to Berkut is a very powerful move.

What most in the West simply don’t grasp is that as Russia is growing and as it’s increasingly seen in the world as only protector against unabated Western aggression, Russian citizenship is becoming increasingly coveted. It is certainly very much coveted by the people living in the former Soviet republics and in many Slavic (and not only) countries.

I have stated in Part 1 (where you can learn in more detail what was happening during Kiev riots with Berkut) that I am in no way the fan of police or army in any country. I am a decidedly peaceful person. This allows me to be absolutely unbiased and neutral in analysing this situation.

While Western MSM is doing a super job at subverting the truth, we thankfully live in the era of the Internet. Therefore, the real picture of what was happening and what kind of forces US/EU brought to power in Ukraine has, and will continue penetrating through the Iron Curtain of Western propaganda.

Besides, consider this: US/ #UK/ #France armies fought against the ancestors of these same nazis (Western Ukraine SS division #Galichina was considered especially vicious during #WWII even by SS standards). How many US/UK/France army & navy officers might approve of the US/EU being in bed with them?

Question: When US/UK/France army and police find out who their governments are really supporting in Ukraine and how these nazi thugs have treated the country’s police, how do you think they will feel? After all, those were also people in uniform, who swore – and were given order by the democratically elected president – to protect their country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. How much do you think US/UK/France police, navy and army would trust their own leadership? How high would their morale be?

My guess – not so much and not so high.

By the way, videos of how nazis humiliate, intimidate and beat police and judiciary, how they make them apologize publicly are freely available on YouTube, where they were thoughtfully posted by said nazis to show the world how tough they were and as a warning to those who might resist. All you have to do is google or do YouTube search to find them.

Note, it is possible that Ukraine nazis will be advised by EU/US to remove such videos because it’s bad publicity.  It already happened on Facebook where Ukraine nazis posted a public appeal to Russia’s most wanted Chechen terrorist Doku #Umarov to help them out and start terror against Russia. Apparently, #Nuland and #StateDepartment had told them it wasn’t good for their image.

Should this happen to other similar videos, don’t fret. You can see how they are threating a prosecutor at the bottom of Part 5. Also, you can go to RT channel whose videos about Ukraine include these graphic images.

How Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea was divided

Couple the above with the fact that Ukrainian army were not paid for months. Also, Ukraine navy and military stationed in Crimea has switched to the de-facto independent Crimea’s side, swearing allegiance to the new Crimean government. This is not surprising. I know for a fact that Ukrainians serving in the navy/military usually come from the old navy dynasties, whose fathers and grandfathers served in the RUSSIAN fleet and army. My aunt was married to a navy officer in Ukraine, and he was from a long line of Russian navy officers.

The so-called Ukrainian fleet is in fact the Russian fleet that was hastily and without any proper legal procedure in place split between Ukraine and Russia after the breakup of the USSR. In the beginning of the 1990s, wrong decisions followed by worse adjustments to said wrong decisions, were made thoughtlessly and without any legality involved by the overlords, Yeltsin and his Ukrainian counterpart. I dare say, Yeltsin and those who he brought to power with him had no idea what they were doing. Some analysts, including the highly respected geopolitical author Nikolay #Starikov, suggest that there was a direct betrayal involved.

Witnesses recall how the elite Russian Black Sea Fleet’s marine units were split up. They simply called out names and said, you stand to the right and you go to the left. And after that, those who had served together, and who had a bond as only marines could form, stood facing each other like enemies. The illegal division of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which was stationed in the Russian Crimea since 1783 resulted in mass defections of Ukrainian officers to Russia. Of course, Crimea was illegally, in circumvention of any legal procedures, “gifted” to Ukraine in 1954 by Khrushchev, a native Ukrainian. More about that here.

What was happening behind the scenes, how much was in fact stolen – no one knows. But more and more documents are surfacing indicating that the division of the Russian #BlackSeaFleet in Crimea without any say by the country’s population was very much like the criminal “privatization” of the 90s. During the 90’s privatization, the class of oligarchs had risen. #Yeltsin’s privatization was done with no legal basis or authority, creating huge disparity in the country. Most oligarchs were either appointed because of their connections or bought their way into the ownership of the prized Russian assets for kopecks on the ruble, most of the time with foreign interests money.

In my metaphysical thriller THE EARTH SHIFTER, I describe in detail what happened in the 90s and how the oligarchs came about. One of the main characters in the book is oligarch Boris Konukovsky. Konukovsky’s conspiracy, connections to the West and his plans for Russia and the world are one of the major themes in the book.

Consequently: Ukrainian navy uses Russian vessels, Russian bases and infrastructure. Who do you think these officers really have an allegiance to?

At the bottom of this post you will find a link to the post about the internationally ratified Russia/Ukraine agreement re. the 25,000 Russian troop allowance, as well as other facts about Crimea you want to know. Russia has only 16,000 troops currently in Crimea. Either US/EU leadership and MSM are extremely inept and unfit for their jobs that they don’t know about these publicly available, internationally recognized agreements, or they are engaged in a systematic and deliberate distortion of the truth. I don’t know which one is worse.

In fact, the howling about the non-exitent Russian invasion of the Crimea by the EU/US and Ukraine is a carbon copy of what they had done in 2008 during the so-called “Georgia-Russian war.” Read my analysis of the striking similarities between Sochi2014-Ukraine and #Beijing2008-Georgian war.

Western press, US/EU governments and la-la-land Ukrainian “leaders” in Kiev can say what they want – the truth of the matter is that Ukrainian army and navy are demoralized and are en masse disinclined to follow orders from Kiev. Sure, US and EU could try to buy them. That might work in the short run as they have not been paid for a while. However first, look at what has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq with those local forces US tried to train there and then use against their own people. It wasn’t very successful, by US government’s own admission. Another thing, as a leftover from the Russian days, at least some of the Ukrainian officers still retain such notion as honor, so buying a lot of them might be hard.

Meanwhile per reports, Ukrainian army and police are resigning in droves, especially in eastern Ukraine, refusing to follow orders from Kiev. Replacing career officers with newbies? This will further degrade the already poor condition of the army. In other words, Ukrainian army will never fight for the illegitimate, totally compromised powers in Kiev.

Premature elections in May 2014 will be considered equally illegitimate as they would have been organized by the illegitimate force having ousted a legitimate president. No matter how US/EU try to spin it, long-term this will never work.

US/EU and Ukraine nazis have already lost, but they are so clueless that they have no idea they did!

G8 meeting in Sochi

US and EU countries, in other words, the old G7, all said that they would not be coming to Sochi where Russian president Vladimir #Putin is supposed to host a G8 meeting. Really, G8 is inconsequential and decides little in the world today. #G20 is much more powerful, although US/UK still try to manipulate it in every way they can. But this is a separate topic and I may do a post and video about how these things really work when I get the chance.

It is much more important what goes on behind the scenes. The way these G8 meetings usually work is that the host country’s leader would also have private meetings with each of the visiting country’s leaders. After EU and US leaders didn’t come to #SochiOlympics, I am sure Putin was planning individual meetings with all of them on the sidelines of the summit. These meetings are necessary to discuss mutual trade issues, agreements and disagreements and to keep tabs on each other. Just like with interpersonal affairs, communication is key as without it more misunderstandings would arise.

Therefore, US/EU leaders missing opportunities to meet in Sochi and then during G8, speaks volumes of how unreasonable these leaders really are. If they have disagreements, they should have common decency and “courage to address them face to face,” as the new International Olympics Committee president pointed out in his Sochi Olympics speech. I am in complete agreement.

In the long, and probably in the short run as well, G7 countries bowing out of the G8 meeting in Sochi will have no effect on Russia. Russia was already prepared for this development as signaled by the #Obama, #Merkel, and the UK boycott of the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi Games.

In my opinion, Russia should announce that it is exiting G8 and instead concentrate fully on developing the Customs Union, BRICS and SCO, and perhaps G20 to some degree. G8 is quickly becoming irrelevant. The global power is transitioning quickly to the East. The West-oriented G8 doesn’t decide much any more. Except USA, the largest GDP producers are all in the East or South, China officially being #2 economy. Russia is now officially #5 economy, surpassing Germany.

By the way, whether USA is still the #1 economy is open for debate. It really depends on how GDP is calculated. Current, in my opinion grossly incorrect GDP calculation slants the result towards consumerism, instead of production and natural resources, as it should be. For example, 71% of US GDP as calculated today is consumption. Consumption of the same goods that had been produced by China. How can this be part of US GDP then? I want to remind that GDP means gross DOMESTIC product. This is an involved discussion, which all economists shy away from because then we would have to throw away the entire world economic system as it exists today. I am planning to address it in a separate article.

Customs Union exists presently between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, and de-facto Armenia. More countries are seen as entering soon: requests from Turkey and India, among others.

SCO – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization includes China, Russia, Kazakhstan and countries of Central Asia. Many more have observer status or submitted applications, including India, Pakistan, Iran, to name a few.

BRICS is obvious and the development of this organization is going very well.

Besides, as I mentioned Russia may consider beefing up its presence and influence in G20, but I believe that G20 is not as important.

Sanctions against Russia

As a very old Russian joke goes: “To spite my enemy I will kill my goat so my children would have no milk.” It appears this is what EU is trying to achieve with its threat of sanctions against Russia. Let me explain.

USA has admitted that without EU sanctions, US sanctions against Russia will have little effect. This is of course because the US never repealed its dubious old act that prohibited trade with COMMUNIST countries. Russia is still on the list of communist countries, you see. But CHINA, with its ruling Communist Party – is not. Isn’t that interesting!

Because of the above, any economic relations with Russia are negligible, hence US has no leverage to do anything meaningful in regard to sanctions.

Let’s see what EU can and is ready to do. They are talking about slowing down visa process and suspending talks with Russia on a variety of issues. There was even a mention of freezing Russian accounts in the West.

What effect will any of this have and is there a possibility of implementing these?

Visas: very little effect, apart from seriously pissing off a lot of Russians. Will this add any good will towards Europe and US in Russia – what do you think? Considering, the world is not centered around Ukraine, life goes on, and Europe and Russia are intrinsically linked economically, this will eventually backfire on Europe’s economy as fewer Russian tourists and business people will travel to Europe. For those who don’t know: Russian tourism has been feeding the EU tourism industry for the past 12 years and that’s why it has not collapsed yet.

Slowing down talks on issues: again, politically, as well as economically, Russia and EU equally need each other (certainly much more than both need US), and therefore, any sabotage of talks and agreements will hurt equally both sides. So what will EU achieve, except weakening itself and increasing its dependence on the US?

I love Europe in general and many countries there in particular. I love England, Austria, Spain and Germany for instance. European culture in many ways is my culture as I spent a long time in Europe. As a comparative linguist, I studied several European languages and most cultures. It especially pains me to see how EU is betraying the real interests of the continent and its people with their insane and sold-out policies. #Germany is the most important country in the EU, whose policies influence the entire continent. I am supremely disappointed in Angela #Merkel, who is hiding her head in the sand every time she needs to make a decision. What a pity that German people, whom I respect, have not been able to find a better leader.

Merkel and Germany simply swallowed US refusal to give them back the German gold that was supposed to be stored in the NY #FED vaults. Out of 400 tons of German gold supposedly stored in the US, only 5 tons were shipped back so far, and not a peep from Germany! Incidentally, after Germany’s re-unification, #USSR gave back all of East German gold stored in Russia. USA – not.

Germany was both the victim and perpetrator of fascism and #WWII. Germany has strict laws prohibiting propaganda of fascism. In Ukraine, nazis are the de-facto power in Kiev. They run around the country threatening Jewish and Russian population; they threaten and intimidate local authorities; they openly display swastika and other SS and nazi symbols on their Facebook page, and on buildings and squares all over Ukraine. And German government, together with the rest of the EU, supports this new “power” in Ukraine! Need I say more.

Russia’s clout & direction

Freezing of Russia’s accounts in the West will never work. Most accounts in the West belong to Russian #oligarchs. Just like in the case of #Cyprus, EU will be stealing was has already been stolen from the Russian people. You can find my Cyprus articles/video in the archives of this blog where I talk about that at length.

The offshore money of the Russian oligarchs (a lot of it stored in #London, by the way) Russia considers as already lost. Russia will just watch on the sidelines how accounts of those who stole from the country are frozen. This is what will happen next: many, both Russians abroad and non-Russians/Europeans, will stop trusting US/UK/EU banks and withdraw their assets en masse. Russia can only win here as some of these assets, just like after Cyprus debacle (another brainless operation by EU) will be transferred to Russian banks.

EU cannot freeze operational trading accounts of Russian companies like #Gazprom because they will again be hurting themselves more than Russia as then Russia would not be able to sell gas to Europe.

Will trying to impose any economic sanctions against Russia work? As mentioned before, Russia is the #5 world economy. As only 4 telling examples of mutual trade penetration between Europe and Russia: 30% of European gas is supplied by Russia; 40% of European cars are purchased by Russians; there are lots and lots of joint EU/Russia ventures, from gas pipelines to new manufacturing facilities; and of course the Russian tourism as mentioned above. There is much more of course.

In all fairness, let’s remember that EU as a whole is the largest world economy and Europeans on average have the highest salaries in the world. The purchasing power of the EU as a whole in considered higher than any other country. Yes, EU has all that – as a whole. At the same time, each EU country individually has many problems – more about that below. The economic past does not equal the same future. In this post, I am talking about the future trends and directions of development.

Any attempt of sanctions will hurt EU much more than Russia. Why? In response, Russia can always suspend imports of European goods, like cars or food. There were precedents of that in the past: examples being suspension of the long-standing chicken imports from the US and suspension in 2008 of very long-standing traditional wine and mineral water imports from Georgia (the two largest export items of Georgian economy). In both cases, it only hurt the respective exporters and boosted their competitors inside and outside Russia.

Russia has many other import sources for all its needs, such as Asia, Middle East and South America. I suspect that the EU leaders, and that goes for the US leaders as well, despite their tough rhetoric understand this very well, and this is why they will talk tough, but do basically nothing. Unlike Europe, Russian territory borders with many Asian and Middle Eastern countries; via the Far East Russia has direct sea lines to South America. Switching to imports of different goods from different countries will not be a problem and this will also add fuel to the economies of the developing countries.

That will also prompt Russia to increase production internally, which will be a huge positive for the country. Russia is sitting on HUGE reserves – roughly $500 bln, third largest reserves in the world. They can and will direct part of these reserves towards building new production facilities. This is already done, albeit slowly.

Meanwhile, EU is in an ongoing crisis and overburdened with debt, with unemployment in countries like Spain reaching 26% officially! Taking away more jobs from Europeans will not help. Russian unemployment is one of the lowest in the world at 5%. Russian debt is probably the smallest in the world.

Prediction: the one thing any EU sanctions will result in with 100% certainty is this: it will give Russia a kick in the rear to expedite Russian economy’s re-orientation to the East, especially to #China. Russian pipelines to China are almost complete and China will be happy to purchase much more of Russian gas and oil. Despite economic downturn there, the economy is still growing stronger than those of the EU and many other countries. China buys a lot of oil, gas and other resources from the Middle East and Africa, where US does everything to destabilize the situation through proxies in oder to unseat China.

China would be much happier to get a stable, secure supply of natural resources from Russia.

IF Russia feels squeezed even a tiny bit by Europe – off to China, Vietnam, India and other countries they go. EU will start experiencing gas supply shortages as more gas is diverted to Asia.

#Brussels, UK and Merkel can still do basic math, I hope.

Therefore, I do not see any serious or far-reaching sanctions against Russia. As I said in previous posts, links to which you can find on the side bar of this blog or below, time is on Russia’s side as it can sit and watch US/EU bury themselves deeper. Of course, there will be lots and lots of yelling and saber-rattling. This is nothing new and Russians have seen it time and again from the West. The side effect of this whole Ukraine disaster is that even the most naive Russians, who are still holding any sort of illusions towards US and EU will wake up.

In conclusion, as pointed out in Part 6, EU needs to wake up and realize that it needs to work with Russia, not against it. Europeans also need to understand how and why they are being played against Russia. It is being done to prevent a development of tighter connections and increased trust between EU and Russia. I am planning an article and YT video explaining all that in the future. For now, check out my older post: New Economic Axis of Power and The Grand Chessboard, which will explain a little bit what’s going on.

Also read:

• Ukraine Part 6. Striking Geopolitical Similarities: Georgian War – Beijing2008 and Ukraine – Sochi2014
• What is Really Happening in Ukraine? Part 5: US, EU, Civil War and Bankruptcy
• What is Really Happening in Ukraine? Part 4: Nazi Coup Succeeds
• What is Really Happening in Ukraine? Part 3: Ukraine’s Future
• What is Really Happening in Ukraine? Part 2: Predictions
• What is Really Happening in Ukraine? Part 1: Analysis

More analysis and news:

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: Propaganda Rules The News, analysing Western media lies, double standard and hypocrisy in regards to Russia and Crimea.

New leaked conversation between EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet who had just returned from Kiev, in which is revealed that the snipers killing people in Kiev were hired by opposition.

Also: Estonia’s Foreign Ministry confirms authenticity of leaked tape!

Russia’s 25,000-troop allowance & other facts you may not know about Crimea

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For more read new page Predictions

Check out books by Lada Ray that take place in Russia: The Earth Shifter and Gold Train