PUTIN IN THE WHITE HOUSE!
Plus: Concrete Steps against the Kremlin’s Hybrid War against the West
On April 2, 2018, several major publications reported that Trump had suggested a meeting with Putin at the White House.
Unless it is a belated April Fool's joke, we are entering a new level of reality. And it does not sound like a prank. According to the New York Times, “the White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that the White House was among “a number of potential venues” discussed during the March 20 phone call… Mr. Trump had told reporters in the Oval Office shortly after his call with the Russian leader that ‘probably we’ll be seeing President Putin in the not-too-distant future’.”
Well, the American public might as well get a closer look at who is coming to the White House. And I am in a perfect position to present you with a detailed report.
On March 16, 2018 — three days before Vladimir Putin became president of Russia for another six-year term — twenty-five international luminaries, including the former president of Estonia Toomas Ilves, prosecutor Preet Bharara, investor Bill Browder, the Guardian senior correspondent Luke Harding, former world chess champion Gary Kasparov, and other prominent political analysts, journalists, historians, forensic accountants, psychologists and cybersecurity experts from around the world, presented the analysis of the current political situation in the world, with focus on Vladimir Putin:
- Since 1999, a criminal government, headed by Putin has been running Russia as a mafia state.
- Motivated partially by the security of the fortunes stolen from the Russian people and stored in the Western banks and offshores, and partially by the ambition to establish a new world order, the Kremlin is waging a hybrid war against the West.
- The Kremlin uses propaganda as the major weapon and cyberspace as the main battlefield, targeting the collective mind and psychosphere to crumble the liberal democracies from within. Other means and strategies are also employed.
- The West needs to acknowledge the threat and take immediate action by developing and implementing a united strategic response to the attack. The following concrete and practical steps for securing liberal democracy in the West were offered:
→ Freeze Putin’s accomplices’ assets and bank accounts.
→Stop accepting anonymous money from anonymous corporations.
→Ban anonymous shell corporations from buying property.
→Prohibit the Western real estate and law companies from acting as banks.
→Organize a cyber league of democracies to address asymmetric threat models.
→Ban the Western countries' entry visas for Putin’s accomplices, officials, managers, and producers of the state-owned Russian media
→Establish strict control for entry visas to Western countries for Russian citizens.
→Ban the oligarchs, Putin’s accomplices, officials, managers, and producers of the state-owned Russian media, from owning property in the West.
→Ban Russian officials’ families from studying at Western educational institutions.
→Impose sanctions on the officials, managers, and producers of the state-owned Russian media.
→Establish better transparency by monitoring and covering the repression of journalists in Russia.
NB: Visiting the White House was not on the list.
DETAILED SUMMARY
“I hope the information presented will drive home the gravity that Putin’s regime poses.” — Gary Kasparov
A CRIMINAL PRESIDENT
In 1998, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, and, in the early 90s, a member of an organized crime gang responsible for thefts, fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking, murders, and other crimes, got promoted to the Prime Minister position by Boris Yeltsin to cover up Yeltsin’s family corruption after the election.
In 1999, Putin won his first presidency as a result of a mass terrorist act committed against the people of Russia — residential apartment blocks bombings of 1999 — and a resulting Chechnya war.
“The terrorist action similar to Reichstag fire, planned and executed in cold blood, brought Putin to power,” noted David Satter, an American journalist and author of four books on Russia. “The West accepted the Russian government’s explanation of the apartment bombing and left it without consequences.”
PROPAGANDA: THE MAJOR WEAPON
Unhindered, Putin continued to use the state-funded propaganda machine (mass media, TV, press, and Internet resources) to propel the concepts of internal and external enemies and the incitement of hatred.
“Complete control of mass media and TV is the most characteristic feature of Putin’s regime,” said Evgeni Kiselev, a legend of Russian independent journalism.
“Putin’s most powerful and terrible weapon is propaganda,” said Arkady Babchenko, Russian war journalist and a former soldier in the Russia-Chechnya war. “Putin’s power is based on dehumanization of the population; this is the most important thing to understand. People are told that values and morals are obsolete. Killing is allowed.”
The Kremlin propagandists apply a universal psychological warfare tactic. A continuous flow of catastrophic news and graphic images in mass media creates atmosphere of fear and panic. When a human brain is exposed to constant stress, physiological changes occur. New behavioral patterns are created. As a result, individual and collective mentalities change. Since 1998, the Russian population developed the pseudo-patriotism needed for the aggression and expansionistic intentions of the Kremlin.
“Like all dictators, Putin needed an external enemy so he built a state media empire and promoted the image of Russia as a besieged fortress,” said Gary Kasparov. “He used it to fight the Russian and world opposition.”
The Kremlin and former KGB, now FSB, have also been using assassinations, kidnapping, poisoning, torture, and other methods of physical execution, to silence the opposition and witnesses for decades.
A CRIMINAL GOVERNMENT
“In the 90s, gangsters and KGB fused into one structure. Putin and his accomplices then took the corrupt system to the Kremlin,” said Olga Litvienko, a politician who served in the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg from 2007 to 2011 and an estranged daughter of Putin’s ally and long-time friend.
Motivated by the interest of personal wealth and invincible power, Putin and his circle — a number of his long-time allies, mostly from St.Peterburg — appropriated and siphoned out of Russia the enormous riches of the Communist party, gains from the natural resources trade and illegal cash. The money is laundered through a network of offshore accounts, shell companies, and proxies.
Anders Åslund, a senior fellow at the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, estimated that Putin’s circle owns about 250 billion dollars, Putin’s kleptocracy pumps out $40–50 billion per year from Russia, and the US is the biggest money-laundering hub in the world.
MAFIA STATE
Western experts and the general public should take into account the cultural differences of the Russian capitalism.
The Russian oligarchs do not own their fortunes. They work for Putin, a mafia boss, who can take away their fortunes, corporations, and lives at any moment. Similar to the Godfather model, the Russian system of political and financial “protection” is called krysha (“the roof.”)
This dependence ensures loyalty to Putin, said Nikita Kulachenkov, a forensic accountant and political activist fighting against corruption in the Russian government, who has also served as a principal investigator at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Moscow and founded by Alexei Navalny.
The Kremlin’s first priority is to secure its investments in the West.
RUSSIA AND THE WEST
THE KREMLIN’S GOALS IN THE WEST
POLITICAL GOALS
Short-term
- the weakening of the NATO
Long-term
- remodeling of the existing world order
- restoring the USSR-model empire
ECONOMIC GOALS
Short-term
- removal of the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and EU
Long-term
- increasing profits from the worldwide sales of natural resources, mainly oil and gas.
IDEOLOGICAL GOALS
- dismantling the concept of liberal democracy
- promoting the ideas of traditionalism, fundamentalism, and nationalism.
HYBRID WAR
“Putin is waging a war on the Western democracies.”
James Kirchick, the author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, The Daily Beast correspondent and Tablet Magazine columnist.
“In the words of Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, the Kremlin wants to install a post-Western world order.”
HYBRID WAR GOALS
Hybrid warfare is aiming at eroding our psychological defenses. It alters our perception of ourselves, said Molly McKew, a cyber security analyst. Demoralization of the army and population of the enemy is the number one goal of the Kremlin propagandists. In other words, they aim at suppressing our will to fight.
HYBRID WAR METHODS AND STRATEGIES
The hybrid war methods and strategies include but are not limited to planting disinformation; inciting racial, ethnic, religious, gender, and generational conflicts; silencing the press; funding separatist and oppositional groups, covering the whole specter from radical left to ultra-right; operating troll factories; meddling in elections by committing election and referendum fraud; hacking infrastructure and state networks; supporting terrorism; and installing puppet governments.
Another strategy is “finladization,” the process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country abide by the former’s foreign policy rules while allowing it to keep its nominal independence and its own political system.
Traditional warfare means are also used. The defense expenditures have increased twenty times during Putin’s reign. Military training ends up with simulated nuclear tests, according to Kirchik.
Corruption is another weapon in a hybrid war. The Kremlin recruits accomplices in the West by using bribes, personal favors, blackmail, threats, and murder, the signature tactics of the KGB/FSB. Putin recruited his allies the way he recruited foreign persons of influence while working for the KGB in Germany in the 1980s’. The recent poisoning of the former Russian spy in the UK was used as a non-verbal message to any potential deflectors, said Luke Harding, the Guardian senior correspondent.
THE WESTERN RESPONSE
The response from the West is inadequate. “Sanctions do not work because we can not identify the money that came from Russia,” said Anders Åslund. Politicians, economists, analysts, and the press need to start an honest and open discussion, acknowledge the hybrid war, and deliver the message to the general public.
Immediate action needs to be taken. Several experts expressed the opinion that the most effective measures are the arrest of the Kremlin assets in the West and the ban of Putin’s accomplices from entering Western countries.
(Apparently, the White House officials did not attend PutinCon and didn’t have a chance to read my articles when they decided to invite Putin over. I suggest someone shares this information with them.)
Private citizens can make a difference. A lot can be achieved by a private citizen in fighting autocratic regimes like Putin’s, said Pret Bharara. Considering an individual role and reassessing one’s potential would be the first step, added the experts.
I am not an expert but I can tell you what you can do: share this information before it is too late. Before Putin comes to rule this country the way he enslaved and suffocated Russia.
Copy-paste, check facts, and quote other experts but let the American people know that as of today, April 2, 2018, we are one step closer to the end of our democracy.
Is it satire? Well, you tell me.
You can read the detailed reports and view some videos from the conference here: Part 1 and Part 2.
- For more details on #PutinCon read excellent coverage by Paula Chertok, Alice Stollmeyer, Polygraph, Virginia Heffernan.
- For more articles on the Russian cyberwar, oligarchs, and art click here.
* Click and hold the clapping hands on the left bottom corner so more Medium users can read it. The longer you hold it, the more claps the article gets and more people will be able to find out this article. Share on social media: we need independent research.
