Do Biden's 'tough new sanctions' give Putin Nord Stream 2?

Western media is greeting the Biden administration’s Russian sanctions as “signaling a tougher stance on Russia than under former President Donald Trump.” Vladimir Putin likely thinks otherwise.

It looks as if the Biden administration has blinked on Putin’s key foreign policy objective — the completion and operation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, delivering Russian gas to Europe. The sanctioning of a few Kremlin officials is petty change compared to the decade-long profitable effects of Russian pipeline politics.

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"Woke" Amnesty International revokes the prisoner of conscience status of Russia's most "woke" political figure, Aleksei Navalny

Consider the irony of the unwoke Kremlin holding the feet of Western institutions to the woke fire. As a result, Amnesty International fell victim to the Kremlin's smear campaign — as did, perhaps, Navalny's chances for a Nobel Peace Prize. Putin could hardly ask for anything more.

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Navalny proves too hot for 'poisoner Putin'

Navalny offers a “Beautiful Russia of the Future” that can be gained, starting in September, by voting against any parliamentary candidate who sides with the Kremlin. The Kremlin has decided it can no longer ignore "the blogger" and "the Berlin Patient." These are significant victories.

The outcome is far from certain. It seems time for the Nobel committee to take note.

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The Kremlin, FSB, and the 'Berlin patient's' underpants

The Navalny poisoning should remove any last doubts about the Kremlin’s routine use of political murder as an instrument of state policy. Navalny was scheduled to follow Boris Nemtsov, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, and many others to their early graves. Prior to Navalny, Putin and his Kremlin allies could always blame sinister false flag operations, lone mavericks, or ethnic gangs for these murders. With an exposed assassination squad, aided by military weapons labs and transportation coordinated by transport police, it would strain credulity to argue that the Navalny poisoning was not an operation of the Kremlin itself.

A conversation in Moscow:

Where do you work?

In the FSB.

What department?

The Department of Underwear.

 

They say that every morning before Putin puts on fresh underpants, he gives them to his guards to wear first.

 

Switching out jars of urine, washing other people's panties. The FSB still has many “wet” cases ahead. The whole world should tremble and fear!

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Navalny Poisoning Just A Bump In The Road For Nord Stream 2

The smart money would be on NS2’s eventual completion and Russia’s continued domination of the European gas market. Navalny has survived, NS2’s defenders and lobbyists are in full swing. The Trump administration may have run out of sanctions options. The European Union has bigger problems to deal with. With the feeble demand for gas associated with COVID-19, Germany and Europe can take their time as Russia pulls out all stops in its defense of NS2.

NS2 will be completed. The only question is the duration of the delay.

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Don't expect Europe to hold Putin accountable in Navalny poisoning

The Kremlin has already made clear there will be no “transparent” investigation of the attempted murder of Aleksei Navalny. How can there be when the chief suspect is the head of state?

The West is not able to deal with a rogue state located in its heartland. Russian forces still occupy Crimea, Eastern Ukraine and Georgian territory; Russia still denies being involved in shooting down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over Eastern Ukraine in 2014. Russia ranks among the most dangerous countries for journalists, and any number of political assassinations remain unresolved.

When Putin is caught red handed, he keeps on playing for time and throws preposterous theories against the wall to see if any stick. 

It seems that only the Russian people – somehow, some day – can find a solution.

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Is Putin getting away with poisoning another political opponent?

Irrespective of Navalny’s health outcome, we can pretty well predict what will happen next: The Kremlin will cook up all kinds of alternative explanations for Navalny’s presumed poisoning. Almost certain will be charges that Navalny poisoned himself to get back at Putin, that the CIA slipped him the poison, or that it was those dastardly Ukrainians who did so. If necessary, Putin can raise the volume to blast the entire Russian Federation with the good news that their president (for life) is not to blame.

Perhaps the tried-and-true Putin playbook will not work this time; Russia already is sufficiently riled up — and Navalny is a sympathetic figure with a beautiful wife and daughters. Maybe Putin can no longer go to this well. But does he have other tricks up his sleeve? The smart money would bet that he does.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/513276-is-putin-getting-away-with-poisoning-another-political-opponent 

Overlooked in Putin's Reelection: The Kremlin's Challenge Is From The Left

Stalin famously remarked that "the people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." Under Putin, voters are nothing compared to those who decide who can be on the ballot. Indeed, Putin’s Central Electoral Commission rejected Putin’s main liberal rival (Navalny) on a technicality. Other potential contenders have been assassinated (Boris Nemtsov) or subjected to death threats (Mikhail Kasyanov). There should be no talk of a Russian “election” when the sitting president chooses his opponents, controls mass media, and has all the instruments of power behind his campaign.

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Nationwide Protests Against Corruption Catch Russia's Authorities Off Guard

Chances are that Putin will regain the initiative, but he must pile repressive measures on top of already repressive measures. There are limits. Many pundits believe that the Putin regime is unstable. It cannot go on, but we have difficulty picturing the scenario under which the Putin regime falls. If nationwide demonstrations accelerate and people are indeed “no longer afraid,” could this be it?

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Putin Plans For Reelection Without Crimea Euphoria And The Trump Bubble

Putin has exhausted the popularity gains from Crimea and has gotten no boost from Syria. He has the admiration of vast segments of the Russian population, who can see no one other than he as their president. Donald Trump must be on Putin’s mind. Trump supposedly had no chance to win. Putin should be a shoo-in. Life and politics occasionally play tricks.

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Putin Puts An End To Electoral Politics In Russia

The Sunday September 18 election for the Russian parliament has given Vladimir Putin another pro-Putin parliament (Duma) to routinely rubber-stamp his most ludicrous and repressive legislation. His United Russia party gained a majority (54 percent according to preliminary results). No opposition party crossed the five percent hurdle; instead, the reliable Communist (13 percent), Liberal Democrat (13 percent), and Just Russia Parties (6 percent) will join United Russia in the new Duma. Only sixteen candidates from the so-called small parties gained seats in regional parliaments. In a word: The Duma election was a total wipeout of legislative opposition in Putin’s Russia. This is no big deal in itself because the legislative branch has little power, but the election signaled the end of hope for change through elections in Russia. Palace coups or the streets are the only remaining options of the Russian people.



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2015: 2015. Mr. Putin's No Good Rotten Year

I have a strong feeling that the tables have turned. Ukraine has a real chance but Russia does not as long as Putin remains at the top of his power vertical. Will 2015 be another year of “anyone but Putin”?

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Is Putin's Non-Denial An Admission That Russia Shot Down MH17?

Anti-corruption blogger and Putin opponent, Alexei Navalny, offers the following advice to Putin in a piece in Echo Moskvy:

“It seems to me it would be simpler if the separatists and Russia say the following: The aircraft was destroyed by armed forces operating in east Ukraine. No one planned this action. This was a tragic error. Such things happen but that does not make things easier. We share the grief and we are shamed. We will pay compensation to the victims’ families.”

Navalny offers this “simple solution” knowing Putin cannot take it. It would cost Putin his domestic support and humble him in the eyes of the world. It is also against his KGB training, which teaches always deny, deny, no matter what.

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Why Putin Cannot Afford Runoffs: Navalny and the Moscow Election

As Vladimir Putin was running circles around Barack Obama,  opposition mayoral candidate Navalny was giving Putin’s Kremlin a lessen in American retail politics. Putin won big on Syria but lost big in the Moscow mayor’s race, whose outcome may change Russian politics in the long run.

In the September 8 Moscow mayoral election, incumbent, Sergei Sobyanian, narrowly avoided a run off with 51.2 percent of the votes. Challenger, lawyer, anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, officially received 17.2 percent. The Moscow Electoral Commission subsequently declared Sobyanian the victor. Navalny continues to challenge the vote in the courts with truckloads of evidence of voter fraud. Navalny has a snowball’s chance in hell of reversing the outcome in Russia’s courts.

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Images of Navalny and Putin

Putin at Work

Not vultures, I presume

Poor opponent stands no chance, like Navalny

Two fools

Reset at work

Welcome guest?

Putin's future?

Navalny in court

Navalny and wife after sentence

Putin Declares Himself Dictator With The Navalny Verdict

Alexei Navalny’s five-year prison sentence on fabricated charges removes Vladimir Putin’s last political opponent from the scene. Navalny was charged with stealing a small amount of money during the course of giving pro-bono legal advice to a regional government on the sale of timber.

Navalny, the charismatic anti-corruption blogger and activist, was one of the key organizers of anti-Putin demonstrations following the disputed parliamentary and presidential elections of December 2011 and March 2012. He had been a thorn in the side of the Putin machine by exposing its high-level corruption on his blog, which is followed by millions of Russians. He was indicted by Putin’s Investigative Committee – an extrajudicial body that works like the troikas of the Stalin era. Among those exposed by Navalny for the theft of billions were the very members of the Investigative Committee that indicted him. Navalny coined the term widely applied by the Russian people to Putin’s United Russia, as the “party of thieves and scoundrels.”

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Storm Clouds Ahead for Putin as He Takes on McCartney, Madonna and the LGBT Community

Virtually the whole world now knows that three girls wearing colorful mini-skirts, tights and masks were arrested in a Moscow cathedral for performing a punk prayer: “Holy Virgin: Drive Putin Out.” After a half year in jail, undernourished and sleep-deprived, the three Pussy Riot feminist punk band girls were sentenced to two years in jail for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”  The judge refused to allow testimony that their’s  was a political act aimed at Putin and the corrupt head of the orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill (widely known to have been a KGB agent during the Soviet era). The girls maintained they acted against Putin and Kirill, not against the church.

A new term is now ensconced in the Russian vocabulary – “khamsud”. Both the Pussy Riot and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky trials were held in Moscow’s Khamovnichesky Court.  Khamsud, roughly translated, is a court run by dishonest judges and prosecutors.

The harsh sentence to two years in a labor colony shook the world diplomatic and artistic communities, but prison terms are an integral part of Putin’s strategy of  attacking “low hanging fruit” to show  that dissent will not be tolerated. Putin sentenced  Khodorkovsky, not once but twice, in  “khamsud.” Other oligarchs were silenced or fled the country. But Khodorkovsky was one of those crooked oligarchs, people concluded and paid no attention. Similarly, Putin calculates that few Russians will care about bizarre punk rockers, whose short skirts revealed their rears as they genuflected on the church altar.


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Putin Is Scared of Girls! Is He Losing It?

Commentators predicted that the weakened Vladimir Putin would compromise with his political opposition as he began his third (actually fourth) term as Russia’s head of state. Our pundits do not understand Putin. For “once-KGB-always-KGB” Putin, compromise is an admission of weakness. Opposition is to be crushed, not bargained with. If  one hundred thousand demonstrators go on the streets, beat some of them arrest some, fine them a year’s salary, or jail them as “inciters of mass disorder.”  If anti-corruption bloggers attract too large an audience, pass anti-defamation laws, harass and interrogate then, and then stick them in jail to rot. If investigative reporters get too close, look the other way when they are murdered.

Putin’s persecution targets to date have been grown ups, such as  Oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, popular anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, investigative reporter (deceased) Anna Politovskaya, Chess master Gary Kasparov, or ex-KGB (deceased) Alexander Litvinenko. Putin’s new enemies are young, naïve, and often female. Muscular, rock-ribbed, macho Putin is picking fights with girls! This doesn’t look good.

On February 21, Putin’s security forces arrested three members of the Pussy Riot feminist band, baklavas covering their faces, as they entreated the Virgin Mary to “get rid of Putin” in a “happening” performance in the Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. Two band members escaped underground, where they are available for interviews. The arrested Pussy Riot girls –Nadya, Katya, and Masha -- are in their early twenties. They have husbands. Two have young children. In April, Amnesty International declared them prisoners of conscience.

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Buy Shares of Russian State Companies: This Time We’ll Behave

Russia’s advertising supplement in the New York Times carries an amusing headline: “New Russian Government to Back Privatization Effort.” Apparently the new Russian government wants to sell minority shares in ten state companies, including Sberbank, United Grain, and Novorosiisk Port. The article immediately below it is entitled “Moscow Welcomes Foreign Business.” The red carpet is out for foreign investors, so it seems.

The lead article explains that First Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov is prepared to go ahead with the sale but that “influential” Deputy Prime Minister Sechin wants to wait until the prices are higher. I think Sechin would have to wait quite a while.

Sechin might be asked why share prices of Russian state companies are so low?  Gazprom, for example, has more reserves than ExxonMobil but sells for a tiny fraction. Why? Everyone knows how corruptly and incompetently Russian state companies are run. Gazprom is among the worst. Now the new Russian government expects naïve foreign investors to forget that there are no real audits of the companies to be sold, that the true owners are masked, and that these companies are run in the interests of the insider shareholders from Putin’s inner circle. Do not forget the past history of dilution and other cavalier treatment of minority shareholders. But the new Russian government is promising that this time will be different. Let’s wait and see.

The only reason to consider buying shares of Russian state companies is to wager that the corruption and mismanagement have been more than fully discounted. Investors cannot invest for value considerations.

If any one doubts what I am saying go to Alexei Navalny’s publication on his web site of the official audit commission report that shows that the management of the state pipeline company stole $5 billion. Navalny is not citing secret documents, but publicly available documents. This news did not seem to turn any heads. This is business as usual in Russia.

Consider United Grain and Novorosiisk Port. Both engage in activities that invite corruption and embezzlement by management. Tales of the corruption of Novorosiisk port have been floating around for a decade.

We’ll see how many foreign investors will walk down Russia’s new red carpet.

Dr. Gregory's latest book can be found at Amazon.com.