Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Amaunet]

CT, regarding our conversations on the reemergence of the Soviet Empire.

This is a little jumbled and certainly not complete. Most you already know as you are well aware of what is really going on, but when I came upon the picture presented in a broader perspective I thought you would be interested. I did not realize the magnitude of the metamorphosis.

Putin will probably move from the Russian presidency to the presidency of the Union in 2008.

The war in Iraq is a diversion. Hasn’t the resistance in Iraq escalated in the last two months at about the same time Putin started his series of bald imperialist initiatives?

Bush can’t leave now, he’s trapped.

Putin has gained control of the Murmansk project and is in the process of securing the southern route.

I did not anticipate how fast Putin can move. He must feel comfortable with the level of intrusion that the KGB enjoys not only in the’ neighborhood’ but throughout the world.

Without economic and political expansion within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and beyond, Russia cannot preserve its own territorial integrity and resources.

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav102703.shtml

Remember the Russian-sponsored "elections" in Chechnya? Putin and his close circle of former KGB supporters have also been developing a strategy to oust Georgia’s Shevardnadze over the past two years.

Russia’s increased economic leverage in Georgia could soon translate into Moscow’s rising political influence in Tbilisi. Russia also appears to be making Kyrgyzstan an economic takeover target. I believe Azerbaijan is also very high on Putin’s list. Azerbaijan is the key, always has been to the entire region. It is an open secret that Azerbaijan takes an extremely important strategic position in the region - it borders on Iran.


Janes Georgia
By Khatya Chhor
Prague, 13 November 2003 (RFE/RL)
JANE'S INTELLIGENCE DIGEST:

An analysis by "Jane's Intelligence Digest" says Georgia's 2 November parliamentary elections were "a disaster waiting to happen." While final results have not yet been announced, the large gap between pre-election opinion polls and preliminary results has prompted many observers to accuse President Eduard Shevardnadze and his For A New Georgia party of manipulating the vote.

Interim returns indicate Shevardnadze's party enjoys the support of more than 20 percent of the population, while early surveys placed this closer to the 7-percent mark. Supporters of the opposition continued to rally last night outside Georgia's Parliament building, some calling for Shevardnadze's resignation.

"Jane's" says the "escalating destabilization" in Georgia is "playing into the hands of the Kremlin hard-liners who have their own agenda for subversion" in the country. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his close circle of former KGB supporters "have been developing a strategy to oust Shevardnadze over the past two years."

Some of the Georgian president's policies -- particularly growing military cooperation with the United States -- have caused concern in Moscow. Thus, the Kremlin has moved to create a Georgian "government-in-waiting" based in Moscow and led by exiled Lieutenant General Igor Giorgadze, a former KGB colonel and chairman of Georgia's State Security Service.

"Popular disillusionment with the government, fuelled by economic difficulties, [is] also encouraging mass demonstrations against the president and his administration." But Russian agents are actively working to foment unrest. The overthrow of Shevardnadze and the resulting disorder may enable Moscow to finally install Giorgadze in Tbilisi.
As protests continue, Georgia risks descending into civil war -- an outcome "Jane's" warns will only benefit the Kremlin's hard-liners.

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/11/13112003193126.asp


We have poked and prodded the Russian bear and now the sleeper has awakened. What the following text does not mention is that Putin saw our recent botched invasion attempt of Russia through Yukos CEO Khodorkovsky and his close business associates in the nefarious Carlyle Group coming from a long way off. The Russian president and the former secret police members who now dominate his staff struck at Khodorkovsky when it became clear that the billionaire was preparing to spend $100 million to win a large bloc of seats in Duma elections next month and eventually to run for the presidency himself. The sale of Yukos shares to a U.S. company would entail that representatives of American big business would be sitting in the Russian parliament. Russia would cede its sovereignty if it allowed transfer of strategic assets to corporations that are, in turn, closely linked to foreign governments. This would be like having a representative of Russian business in the U.S. congress voting on or blocking key legislation relating to the national interest. Knowing that Khodorkovsky has been siphoning profits from the impoverished Russian people under the umbrella of privatization compliments of democracy and is associated with not only the Carlyle Group but the elder Bush and others it becomes painfully obvious that his allegiance is with the United States and not Russia yet he would be president. This is betrayal, he’s lucky Putin does not try him for treason.

To the following article I would add Armenia, Azerbaijan (just a hunch), Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan.

Mr. Putin's Neighborhood

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, November 10, 2003; Page A25


Some in the West may still be wondering if there is really any larger meaning to the campaign being waged by Russian President Vladimir Putin against the country's wealthiest private businessman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. If so, they need only consult the would-be independent leaders of more than a half-dozen nations bordering on Russia, for whom the consolidation of KGB-style authoritarianism in Moscow this fall has been matched with an acceleration of Putin's effort to rebuild an empire.

While American and European leaders have been preoccupied with Iraq and the Middle East, a series of bald imperialist initiatives by Putin has passed nearly unchallenged during the past two months. The chronology begins on Sept. 19 in Yalta, where the Russian president pressured the leaders of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan into signing a far-reaching economic treaty providing for a "single economic space." This would require the three former Soviet republics to cede sovereignty to a supra-national body dominated by Russia. None of the three countries wants the union -- but all are dependent on Russia either for the supply or the transport of oil and gas, allowing Putin to force their acquiescence.

On Sept. 29, Russian naval forces, with no warning, began building a causeway into the Kerch Strait north of the Black Sea in an attempt to seize control of an island and the adjacent shipping channel from Ukraine. Construction was suspended after Ukraine rushed reinforcements to the area, but Moscow achieved its aim: Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has had to agree to "negotiations" over control of the strategic waterway and adjacent Sea of Azov, where new reserves of oil may be located.

On Oct. 5 came the farce of the Russian-sponsored "elections" in Chechnya, a Muslim republic whose attempt at self-rule was crushed by a Putin-ordered military invasion three years ago. Having driven all significant challengers from the race, Moscow gloried in the ratification of its unpopular puppet regime. On Oct. 9, Putin and his defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, appeared at a press conference and boldly expanded what Russians know as the "Putin doctrine": Moscow, they said, reserves the right to settle any disputes in its neighboring states with military force, and to maintain oil and gas pipelines running from Central Asia and the Caucasus to the West, "even," said Putin, "those parts of the system that are beyond Russia's borders."

Everywhere in the sprawling borderlands between Russia and the Central European states now joining NATO and the European Union, weak and isolated governments are under new pressure. Belarus has been given a target date of Jan. 1, 2005, for adopting the Russian ruble as its currency, part of a Putin-sponsored plan to reincorporate the country into a new union ruled from the Kremlin. Pavel Borodin, Putin's appointee as secretary of the nascent superstate, told the Financial Times in an interview last month that his boss would probably move from the Russian presidency to the presidency of the union in 2008, lead its expansion into other countries and consolidate "a post-Soviet space."

De-facto Russian annexation of two provinces of Georgia meanwhile is proceeding as Russian troops remain at their bases in violation of international treaties. Flouting the latest of several agreements with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Russian troops are also remaining on station in Moldova. There, Putin is demanding that the elected government scrap its constitution and agree to a "federal" union with the breakaway province of Trans-Dniester, which is ruled by an ethnic Russian criminal mafia backed by Moscow. If Moldova yields, Russia will have a de facto veto over its government and foreign policy in perpetuity.

"The Putin doctrine is dangerous for democracy in Russia itself, but it's also dangerous for the independence of the countries that surround Russia," says Iuri Rosca, the president of Moldova's Christian Democratic People's Party. "We are all suffering from the new Russian policy of imperial expansion."

Rosca and two other Moldovan politicians were in town last week in a forlorn and largely futile attempt to solicit support from the United States for their country's independence. Though they found some sympathy from Democratic staff on Capitol Hill, Rosca said there was none at the State Department, which has endorsed Putin's "federal" takeover. That shouldn't have been surprising; the Bush administration also has been lukewarm, at best, about the sporadic attempts of Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia to fend off Moscow by linking up with Western institutions such as NATO. As in the case of Khodorkovsky, Bush's aides are quick to say they don't like what Putin is up to in his neighborhood. They'll also concede that, at least for now, they aren't prepared to do more than talk about it.


© 2003 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20670-2003Nov10.html