“Only an Insane Person and only in a Dream…”
By JC
Vladimir Putin sat down with several Italian newspapers recently, in advance of his visit to Italy, and weighed in on many topics: relations with Europe and the U.S.; Ukraine; empire; and much more.
Consider this an open thread on the resurgence of the Cold War.
“…As for some countries’ concerns about Russia’s possible aggressive actions, I think that only an insane person and only in a dream can imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO. I think some countries are simply taking advantage of people’s fears with regard to Russia. They just want to play the role of front-line countries that should receive some supplementary military, economic, financial or some other aid. Therefore, it is pointless to support this idea; it is absolutely groundless. But some may be interested in fostering such fears. I can only make a conjecture.
For example, the Americans do not want Russia’s rapprochement with Europe. I am not asserting this, it is just a hypothesis. Let’s suppose that the United States would like to maintain its leadership in the Atlantic community. It needs an external threat, an external enemy to ensure this leadership. Iran is clearly not enough – this threat is not very scary or big enough. Who can be frightening? And then suddenly this crisis unfolds in Ukraine. Russia is forced to respond. Perhaps, it was engineered on purpose, I don’t know. But it was not our doing.
Let me tell you something – there is no need to fear Russia. The world has changed so drastically that people with some common sense cannot even imagine such a large-scale military conflict today. We have other things to think about, I assure you…”
Recent Comments
June 6, 2015 at 2:20 pm
Mr. Color Revolution has his loot all up in Ukraine:
June 6, 2015 at 6:26 pm
And others invest in Lockheed Martin. The F-35: “Currently seven years behind schedule and $167 billion over budget, the F-35 program could cost over $1 trillion over its lifetime.” – Jeremy Bender, Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/lockheed-martin-f-35-guide-2014-4
June 7, 2015 at 9:48 am
I suspect that Putin is correct in stating that the fear of Russia, among Americans especially, is overblown. At the same time, his comment that “suddenly this crisis unfold[ed] in Ukraine” (as though it caught him totally off-guard) and his claim to have had nothing to do with the crisis are patently ridiculous.
June 7, 2015 at 11:19 am
Anything specific you could add? What did Putin do to make it his doing
June 7, 2015 at 11:41 am
no, it’s not ridiculous if you consider the broader context of the region. when Georgia initiated a military conflict with Russia in 2008, Bush let Saakashvili get his ass kicked by the Russian response instead of risking an escalation. this is Bush the Neocon invader/occupier, mind you.
fast forward to February, 2014. the Maidan protests had been going on for months, but there were productive talks that looked to be moving forward. then snipers triggered a massacre:
that is the correct terminology, a coup. it’s not ridiculous to think this escalation surprised Putin. and it you think it was Russia behind the sniper-triggered massacre, you might want to take into consideration what the evidence points to:
I dunno, Turner, you may prefer to believe the Nazi version of what happened on Black Thursday. I certainly don’t.
a year later, the BBC actually interviewed one of these snipers who was apparently groomed:
to mitigate this awkward disclosure, one of the Maidan organizers tried depicting these snipers as spontaneous, aggrieved Ukrainians looking for payback:
but the sniper’s story the BBC got doesn’t fit that cover story:
anyway, the situation in Ukraine is still persistently referred to as the result of Russian aggression.
to believe this, though, you must remain willfully ignorant of what the evidence points to.
do you wish to remain willfully ignorant, Turner?
June 7, 2015 at 12:22 pm
Turner, there are quite a few journalists and observers who believe that Putin was distracted by the Sochi Olympics, as he was personally quite involved in the games, and attended them from beginning to end. The coup unfolded right after the games ended.
I tend to think that Russia has pretty good SIGINT (signals intelligence). They trapped the phone call from the U.S. Undersecretary for State, Victoria Neuland, talking about the coup and its successors before it happened. They released the call to the public for a reason.
So if Russian intelligence had this information, then the analysts and Putin himself needed to make the determination that the coup was forthcoming or not. There is a lot of noise with this sort of SIGINT, and it appears that a) Putin is being honest and their analysis didn’t point to the coup actually happening, thus the surprise element; or b) the Russians knew exactly what was unfolding, and Putin’s exclamations are just politics; or c) Putin’s comments are covering up the inadequacy of their intelligence (and his own personal failing, as he is a career intelligence officer).
I tend to think “b” is the correct answer here. Be that as it may, to think that Putin had something to do with the coup is a bit of a stretch. To what end would Russia benefit from the deposing of Yanukovitch? None. And if Russia were in such control of the Ukrainian government before the coup, why would they have not stepped in, in some fashion and intervened? They didn’t.
What happened in Crimea and the Donbass are just reactions to the coup. One needs to analyze the history of the chain of events leading up to the coup to understand what occurred, and what is currently happening. Taking Crimea and the Donbass out of context is to further the west’s propaganda: ignore the triggering events, focus on the blowback, and demonize Putin.
June 7, 2015 at 3:34 pm
I think if you look at the timeline, Russian intervention in Syria had something to do with it too. The western powers were getting ready to close the trap door on Assad when the Russians intervened with a show of force. Not too long afterward, Ukraine blew up. From a geopolitical standpoint, Ukraine would then be a distraction and a threat to keep the Russians at home as they go about their terrorist attacks elsewhere.