What Russia's been doing in Ukraine since you stopped paying attention

THEWEEK.COM ^ | 31 Dec 15 | Terrell Jermaine Starr

[TigerLikesRooster]

I know the score reaching way back to 80's. Unless we killed them all, a choice has to be made. We don't really have an expectation that what replaces Assad will be definitely better. We are dealing with Assad and Al-Baghdadi. What about Al-Nusra Front? By the way, Obama ceded Iraq to Iran.

You may be OK with ISIS/Al-Nusra, Qatar, Saudi, and neo-Ottoman Turkey, but many think otherwise.

The best case scenario which is next to impossible is that:

(1) Somehow Assad is toppled and Syria is reborn as vibrant stable secular democracy.

(2) Saudi, Qatar, Turkey, and Obama finally come to their senses, and set out to exterminate ISIS.

(3) Gulf countries vow to stop exporting their Wahabism.

(4) Iraq Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds band together and with Obama full military support, drive out Iranians from Iraq.

(5) Syrians slaughter Hezbollahs to extinction.

(6) "Evil phony Christian Putin" is driven out of power and hung from a lamp post in Moscow's Red Square.

[odds]

“Seeing how Russia can become Islamic at much more risk than most other countries, enjoy your thoughts.”

My thoughts are very much based on reality on the ground & sound information regarding today as well as history. Where do your thoughts come from?

Russia is a vast land (located East and West), larger than the U.S. — Neither communism nor today’s right wing Russia are about to become Islamist, Islamic or succumb to them - not without a very long and hard fight, the result of which will still be in favour of Russia, not muslims. Culturally at least, the Russians are down the line when it comes to their original and Christian traditions.

Unfortunately, there is much more of a chance of the USA becoming a Muslim nation, most likely by default. And, taking every other non-muslim nation with it. We have already witnessed the direction the USA has taken towards Islamization in the last 15 years, at least.

No need to argue the point. You will see, in time.

[ETL]

The Kremlin's Troll Army: Moscow is financing legions of pro-Russia Internet commenters:

A June article by Max Seddon of BuzzFeed reported the Kremlin was spending millions of dollars to pay English-speaking Russians to promote President Vladimir Putin and his policies in U.S. media like Fox News broadcasting and The Huffington Post and Politico news sites. Trolls are reportedly expected to manage multiple fake accounts and post on news articles 50 times a day, often with sentiments as simplistic as “Putin makes Obama look stupid and weak!”

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-kremlins-troll-army/375932/
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"Trolls are reportedly expected to manage multiple fake accounts and post on news articles 50 times a day, often with sentiments as simplistic as 'Putin makes Obama look stupid and weak!'..."

They do this only in an attempt to win the trust of anti-Obama folks -- a disingenuous attempt to add credibility to their pro-Russia, pro-Putin BS.
Yet it seems to work on some of us! In reality, Obama is the best thing that has happened to Russia in a long time. He has (intentionally) paved the way for their long-awaited post-Soviet Union comeback.

[ETL]

Documents Show How Russia's Troll Army Hit America:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/documents-show-how-russias-troll-army-hit-america

[ETL]

Kremlin pays internet trolls to flatter Putin
Ben Hoyle - Moscow
October 11 2013

Russian investigative journalists and bloggers have uncovered an army of internet trolls paid to pour invective on the Kremlin's opponents and heap praise on President Putin.

Posing as job applicants, the reporters discovered the government hacks working at a small company called the St Petersburg Internet Research Agency. ..."

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article3891720.ece

[ETL]

Russian Propaganda Is Taking Over Online Comment Boards

Pamela Engel
May 4, 2014

British newspaper The Guardian notes that recently, readers have been complaining of pro-Russia propaganda being posted in the comments section of articles about Russia and Ukraine.

One reader wrote to The Guardian:

"One need only pick a Ukraine article at random, pick any point in the comments at random, and they will find themselves in a sea of incredibly aggressive and hostile users (the most obvious have accounts created since February 2014 ... but there also exist those who registered with the Guardian before the high point of the crisis) who post the most biased, inciteful [sic] pro-Kremlin, anti-western propaganda that seems as if it's taken from a template, so repetitive are the statements. Furthermore, these comments are consistently capturing inordinate numbers of 'recommends', sometimes on the order of 10 to 12 times what pro-Ukrainian comments receive."

Guardian comment moderators believe this is an orchestrated campaign.

Russia has worked hard to make people believe that the country is supporting the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine and defending those people against some type of threat. These "comment mills" play into that strategy.

Last year, The Atlantic wrote about how the Russian government apparently pays people to "sit in a room, surf the Internet, and leave sometimes hundreds of postings a day that criticize the country's opposition and promote Kremlin-backed policymakers."

This practice isn't new, according to The Atlantic. But it can stifle open discussion about political issues in Russia, giving a louder voice to those who support the Kremlin.

http://www.businessinsider.com/putin-paying-people-to-post-pro-russia-propaganda-in-comments-2014-5

[ETL]

Russia, try to be popular with your neighbors.

OSCE says spots deadly Russian rocket system in Ukraine for first time
Reuters, via Yahoo News ^ | Oct 2, 2015 | Anton Zverev

MOSCOW (Reuters) - International monitors say they have spotted a new kind of Russian weapons system in rebel-held Ukraine this week, possible evidence of Moscow's continued interest in Ukraine even as it focuses on Syria.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which is monitoring a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, reported that its monitors had seen a mobile TOS-1 'Buratino' weapons system for the first time.

The Buratino is equipped with thermobaric warheads which spread a flammable liquid around a target and then ignite it. It can destroy several city blocks in one strike and cause indiscriminate damage.

Only Russia produces the system and it was not exported to Ukraine before the conflict broke out, according to IHS Jane's Group and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which track arms exports.

The OSCE's findings are embarrassing for the Kremlin, which has turned down its rhetoric on Ukraine and shifted attention to Syria, where it has begun air strikes. The report comes before President Vladimir Putin holds talks in Paris on Friday with the leaders of Germany, France and Ukraine on the peace process.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...

[ETL]

Vladimir Putin is not Finnish

Jim Treacher
March 31, 2014

And if he gets his way, which he will as long as Obama is president, nobody else will be either.

Jack Moore, International Business Times:

"One of Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest ex-advisers has claimed that the ex-KGB agent ultimately wants to reclaim Finland for Russia.

Andrej Illiaronov, Putin's economic adviser between 2000 and 2005 and now senior member of the Cato Institute think tank, said that "parts of Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and Finland are states where Putin claims to have ownership..."

Illiaronov admits that Finland is not Putin's primary concern at present but, if not stopped in other areas of Eastern Europe, the issue will one day arise."

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/31/vladimir-putin-is-not-finnish/#ixzz3vXvUhxDC

[odds]

Do a favour for the USA and quit posting garbage. Instead try to pull in the reins of American politicians gone loose and every which way.

Too bad Trump and Cruz have to deal with people like you and gain your vote.

[ETL]

Trump: Iran Deal Requires U.S. Protecting Iran in Event of Israeli Strike

by Jacob Kornbluh
Sept 2, 2015

In a phone interview with CNN Tuesday evening, Trump claimed that there's "something in the Iran deal" that "people don't understand" saying if someone attacks Iran, "we have to come to their defense."

"Does that include Israel?" Trump asked. "And most people say yes, they don't have an exclusion for Israel. So if Israel attacks Iran, according to that deal, I believe, the way it reads, unless they have a codicil or they have something to it, that we have to fight with Iran against Israel." ..."

Trump was most probably referring to language highlighted by the opponents of the deal. On page 142, the deal includes a clause that states, "Co-operation through training and workshops to strengthen Iran's ability to protect against, and respond to nuclear security threats, including sabotage, as well as to enable effective and sustainable nuclear security and physical protection systems."

Washington-based Center for Security Policy asserted that Annex III appears "to commit the United States and other world powers to the defense of Iran's nuclear program."

http://jpupdates.com/2015/09/02/trump-iran-deal-requires-u-s-protecting-iran-in-event-of-israeli-strike/
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Aug 2015...

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Russian build-up in Syria part of secret deal with Iran's Quds Force leader

September 11, 2015
Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson
FoxNews.com

As the Pentagon warily eyes a Russian military build-up in Syria, Western intelligence sources tell Fox News that the escalated Russian presence began just days after a secret Moscow meeting in late July between Iran's Quds Force commander - their chief exporter of terror - and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Fox News has learned Quds head Qassem Soleimani and Putin discussed such a joint military plan for Syria at that meeting, an encounter first reported by Fox News in early August. ..."

The Quds Force is the international arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, involved in exporting terrorism to Iran's proxies throughout the Middle East including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. ..."

Officials who have monitored the build-up say they've seen more than 1,000 Russian combatants - some of them from the same plainclothes Special Forces units who were sent to Crimea and Ukraine. Some of these Russian troops are logistical specialists and needed for security at the expanding Russian bases.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/11/russian-build-up-in-syria-part-secret-deal-with-irans-quds-force-leader/
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Pro-Hezbollah Paper: Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah Form Alliance

Sept 23, 2015

A prominent pro-Hezbollah newspaper in Lebanon reported Tuesday that Russia and the terrorist organization have formed an alliance and will fight together in Syria. "The parties to the alliance are the states of Russia, Iran, Syria, and Iraq, with Lebanon's Hezbollah as the fifth party,"

Al-Akhbar Editor in Chief Ibrahim al-Amin wrote. The pact would be called the "4+1 alliance", a pun based on the P5+1 that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran. Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran based in Lebanon and Moscow has been working with Tehran to save Bashar al-Assad's regime, even sending men and weapons to Syria.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/09/22/report-russia-partners-with-hezbollah.html
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From Real Clear Politics, Sept 10, 2015...

"In a 2014 New Yorker interview, Obama said his goal was to create a 'new equilibrium' in the Middle East.

In the short run, at least, his signature diplomatic undertaking can be counted on to bring more violence to this volatile region.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, [aka as the Obama-Putin Iran deal] agreement is formally known, provides the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism an infusion of somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion of unfrozen assets and a great deal more of continuing revenues as businesses and governments around the world rush to profit from oil-and-gas-rich Iran's reintegration into the world economy.

The agreement relaxes the international isolation of the Islamic Republic and ratifies Tehran's status as a nuclear threshold state. And it relieves restrictions on Iran's acquisition of weapons, including ballistic missiles. ..."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/10/iran_deal_throws_sparks_on_mideast_tinderbox_128034.html

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[ETL]

Clancy's last (real) book presented a real President stopping the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

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"I think that I would probably get along with him [Putin] very well."

--Donald Trump, CBS' Face The Nation, Oct 2015

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TRUMP: Vladimir Putin's praise is 'a great honor'

Business Insider ^ | December 17, 2015 | By Maxwell Tani

Republican US presidential front-runner Donald Trump is apparently "honored" that Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the real-estate magnate a "flamboyant" and "very talented" man.

"It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond," Trump said in a statement, according to Politico.

He continued: "I have always felt that Russia and the United States should be able to work well with each other towards defeating terrorism and restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all of the other benefits derived from mutual respect."

(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...

[silverleaf]

What, that Putin “ created the quagmire in Easter. europe”.

Gee maybe George Soros and the crack obama regime can bring back stability

Sarc

[ETL]

Too bad Trump and Cruz have to deal with people like you and gain your vote.

People like you need to be booted the hell off this site. You're an obvious pro-Russia troll attempting to sway good folks here into supporting the reemergence of the Soviet Union. You are a despicable dishonest POS.

[ETL]

Russia Boosts Arms, Training for Leftist Latin Militaries

Moscow defense minister inks deals with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua for joint exercises

BY: Bill Gertz
February 20, 2015

Russia agreed to provide military training for three leftist regimes in Latin America and increase military visits and exercises following a visit last week to the region by Moscow's Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu, Pentagon officials said.

Shoygu met with defense and military leaders in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and signed several agreements on warship visits and military training during the visit, which ran from Feb. 11 to 14. It is not clear whether any new arms deals were completed during the visit.

Defense officials said the Russian leader is seeking bases in the region for strategic bomber flights that Shoygu recently promised would include flights over the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.

U.S. intelligence agencies closely monitored the visit but a Pentagon spokeswoman played down the Russian military encroachment.

"Just as we have bilateral and multilateral relationships around the world, so do other nations," Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen M. Lainez told the Washington Free Beacon. "All nations are free to choose their associations as they see fit."

The U.S. Southern Command, the command responsible for maintaining security in the region, also played down the visit.

"We respect the sovereign right of nations in the region to seek constructive relationships with the international community," said Col. Lisa Garcia, a command spokeswoman.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), a member of the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, said "the Russian bear is out of hibernation from Damascus, to Donetsk, and from Pyongyang to Peru."

"Putin and his coterie of "former" communists smell weakness," Pompeo said. "Their window to expand Russian influence is now and they are acting with great vigor and with nearly zero resistance from America and the West. Russian military expansion into Latin America is simply one more manifestation of their resolve and American inaction."

Defense officials familiar with intelligence reports said Shoygu discussed future arms sales and signed military training and joint exercises accords during his four days of meetings.

All three Latin states are members of the 11-member Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, known as ALBA, a leftist alliance set up by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004 as an anti-U.S. grouping of states.

The Russian news site Pravda reported that the defense minister's visit appeared to set the stage for a future visit to the region by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian leader is under growing isolation as the result of diplomatic and financial pressure from U.S. and European states that U.S. officials have said are beginning to cause serious economic problems for Russia.

The Shoygu visit also comes amid heightened tensions between Russia and the West over Moscow's military annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and continuing Russian military destabilization, despite a recent ceasefire accord, in eastern Ukraine.

The Obama administration has remained largely silent on Russian military encroachment in the western hemisphere. Russian Tu-95 Bear H bomber flights have increased sharply near U.S. coasts in recent months, with one recent air defense zone incursion simulating a practice nuclear cruise missile strike on the United States from northeastern Canada.

British jets on Thursday intercepted Russian bombers flying along the coast near Cornwall, in southwest England.

In Nicaragua, Shoygu signed an agreement aimed at simplifying procedures for Russian warships to make port calls. A second accord was reached that will increase military training in Russia for Nicaraguan military personnel.

Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista President Daniel Ortega announced last year that he plans to build up the armed forces with Moscow's assistance.

Russia also agreed previously to supply naval gunboats to Nicaragua beginning in 2016.

Venezuela also is a major recipient of Russian weapons, including an estimated $12 billion in arms, including Su-30 jets, Mi-17, Mi-26 and Mi-35 helicopters, T-72 tanks, Smerch multiple launch rocket launchers, S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, and artillery.

Venezuela also agreed during the Shoygu visit to increase visits by Russian warships, and Caracas will hold joint military exercises with the Russians. Joint Russian-Venezuelan air defense training also was discussed, and Russian warship visits will take place in the future.

"We will most certainly take part in your air defense and artillery drills," Shoygu was quoted by state-run Sputnik news agency as saying in Caracas.

Pravda reported Russian air force aircraft may make use of Venezuelan bases in the future.

In November, Shoygu announced that Russian strategic nuclear bombers would conduct long-range training flights over the Gulf of Mexico. "In the current situation we have to maintain military presence in the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific, as well as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico."

Marine Corps. Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, confirmed the likelihood of future Russian bomber flights during testimony earlier this month before the House Armed Services Committee.

"Moscow has made significant progress in modernizing its nuclear and conventional forces, improving its training and joint operational proficiency, modernizing its military doctrine to integrate new methods of warfare and developing long range precision strike capabilities," Stewart said.

Stewart said Russian military forces, including Tu-95 bombers, conducted "record numbers" of out of area air and naval deployments.

"We expect this to continue this year to include greater activity in the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas," he said.

In an article published Tuesday, Pravda quoted Putin as saying Russia would not permit the United States to achieve military superiority, and Moscow will continue to bolster its nuclear forces, space weapons, navy, and long-range aviation.

The newspaper also said Moscow lacks a system of bases to achieve its objectives.

In Cuba, Shoygu met Cuban dictator Raul Castro and noted that military relations continued to "develop constructively." The Russian leader also thanks the Cuban communist regime for hosting port visits by Russian naval vessels, including the intelligence-gathering ship Victor Leonov, which made a port call in Havana in January, coinciding with the Obama administration's diplomatic initiative to seek normalized relations with the regime.

Cuba also agreed to send military personnel to Russia for training.

U.S. defense officials said the Leonov was anchored some 25 miles off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, last week, where it is suspected of conducting surveillance of U.S. nuclear missile submarines based at nearby Kings Bay, Georgia.

"This long-term strategy imposes obligations on Russia to supply its allies in Latin America with advanced weapons, including air defense systems, aircraft, and warships," Pravda stated.

Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton said the Russians appear to be filling a power vacuum in the region by the lack of focus from the Obama administration.

"Russia's perception of American weakness under Obama has fueled their new adventurism in this hemisphere," Bolton said. "Since I see no chance of Obama waking up to the potential threat, I am very worried about the situation a new president will face in January 2017."

Dan Goure, a Russia expert with the Lexington Institute, said Russia's current moves into Latin America "are like a page Xeroxed from the Soviet political-military playbook."

"Now, like then, the Kremlin is attempting to counter what it perceives as western encirclement by operating in America's backyard," Goure said.

"The U.S. deploys missile defenses in Eastern Europe and sends warships into the Black Sea so the Russian military is attempting a riposte by orchestrating naval visits to Venezuela and seeking to reopen its intelligence facility in Cuba."

Goure said Moscow is seeking to encourage anti-American sentiment in the region "much the same way as it perceives the U.S. has done to Russia in the so-called color revolutions."

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-boosts-arms-training-for-leftist-latin-militaries/

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How Russia arms America's southern neighbors

Ioan Grillo
May 9, 2014

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Russia's push into Ukraine has put many on edge. But less known is that Russia is also strengthening its military links south of the Rio Grande and re-establishing itself as a power in the region.

Vladimir Putin has been strengthening military links here, and Russia is now the largest arms dealer to governments in Latin America, surpassing the United States.

Russia has even floated the possibility of building new military bases in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and putting its warships permanently in the Caribbean.

In the midst of the Ukraine crisis, Russia's top diplomat Sergei Lavrov recently visited Cuba, Peru, Chile, and Nicaragua, where he announced that Russia would also pour money into the new Central American canal project. ..."

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140508/russian-arms-military-trade-latin-america

[ETL]

"For 16 years Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.

He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging,[3] and was reelected in 2004."

"On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

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From a 2007 article titled "Putin's Russia"...

"KGB influence 'soars under Putin,' " blared the headline of a BBC online article for December 13, 2006. The following day, a similar headline echoed a similarly alarming story at the website of Der Spiegel, one of Germany's largest news magazines: "Putin's Russia: Kremlin Riddled with Former KGB Agents."

In the opening sentences of Der Spiegel's article, readers are informed that: "Four out of five members of Russia's political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious [Russian] Academy of Sciences. The influence of ex-Soviet spies has ballooned under President Vladimir Putin."

The study, which looked at 1,061 top Kremlin, regional, and corporate jobs, found that "78 percent of the Russian elite" are what are known in Russia as "siloviki," which is to say, former members of the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB. The author of the study, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, expressed shock at her own findings. "I was very shocked when I looked at the boards of major companies and realized there were lots of people who had completely unknown names, people who were not public but who were definitely, obvious siloviki," she told Reuters.

Other supposed experts - in Russia and the West - have also expressed surprise and alarm at the apparent resurrection of the dreaded Soviet secret police. After all, for the past decade and a half these same experts have been pointing to the alleged demise of the KGB as the primary evidence supporting their claim that communism is dead.

From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russian security apparatus Cheka (and its later permutations: OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB) had been the "sword and shield" of the communist world revolution.

"We stand for organized terror," declared Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka for Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin. In 1918, Dzerzhinsky launched the campaign of arrests and executions known as the Red Terror. Krasnaya Gazeta, the Bolshevik newspaper, expressed the Chekist credo when it reported approvingly in 1918 of the terror campaign: "We will make our hearts cruel, hard and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood."

Unflinching cruelty and merciless, bloody terror have been the trademark of the communist secret police, from the Cheka to the KGB. Obviously, the demise of such an organization would be cause for much rejoicing. Hence, when the KGB was ordered dissolved and its chairman, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, was arrested in 1991 after attempting to overthrow "liberal reformer" Mikhail Gorbachev in the failed "August Coup," many people in the West were only too willing to pop the champagne corks and start celebrating our supposed victory over the Evil Empire.

But, as Mikhail Leontiyev, commentator for Russia's state-controlled Channel One television, recently noted, repeating a phrase popular among the siloviki: "Americans got so drunk at the USSR's funeral that they're still hung over." And stumbling around in their post-inebriation haze, many of these Americans have only recently begun noticing that they had prematurely written the KGB's epitaph, even as it was arising vampire-like from the coffin.

However, there is really no excuse for Olga Kryshtanovskaya or any of her American counterparts to be stunned by the current siloviki dominance in Putin's Russia. For nearly a decade, even before he became Russia's "president," THE NEW AMERICAN has been reporting on Putin's KGB pedigree and his steady implementation of a long-range Soviet deception strategy, including the public rehabilitation and refortifying of the KGB-FSB. ..."

(continues at link)

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia

[ETL]

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131219/185734707/Putin-Says-Stalin-No-Worse-Than-Cunning-Oliver-Cromwell.html
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"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...

"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'..."

"The more I see and read about Mr. Putin, in power since 1999, and his 'managed democracy,' the more apprehensive I become about the future of Russia and the safety of its neighbors.

If Putin believes that the dissolution of the Soviet Union into 15 independent states represents the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,' then it follows that Putin might well believe he should do something to repair the loss..."

http://web.archive.org/web/20090415000000*/http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
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"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/article/11102.30640.0.0/asia/moscow-puts-the-soviet-squeeze-on-neighbor-nations
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"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism's crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100711090651/http://article.nationalreview.com/365528/forgetting-the-evils-of-communism/jonah-goldberg
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"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"

[ETL]

Putin, once critical of Stalin, now embraces Soviet dictator's tactics

Carol J. Williams, reporting from Moscow
June 11, 2015

Only six years ago, President Vladimir Putin visited the Polish port of Gdansk, birthplace of the Solidarity movement that threw off Soviet domination, and reassured his Eastern European neighbors that Russia had only friendly intentions.

Putin spoke harshly that day of the notorious World War II-era pact that former Soviet leader Josef Stalin had signed with Adolf Hitler -- an agreement that cleared the way for the Nazi occupation of Poland and Soviet domination of the Baltics -- calling it a "collusion to solve one's problems at others' expense."

But Putin's view of history appears to have undergone a startling transformation. Last month, the Russian leader praised the 1939 nonaggression accord with Hitler as a clever maneuver that forestalled war with Germany. Stalin's 29-year reign, generally seen by Russians in recent years as a dark and bloody chapter in the nation's history, has lately been applauded by Putin and his supporters as the foundation on which the great Soviet superpower was built.

Across a resurgent Russia, Stalin lives again, at least in the minds and hearts of Russian nationalists who see Putin as heir to the former dictator's model of iron-fisted rule.

Recent tributes celebrate Stalin's military command acumen and geopolitical prowess. His ruthless repression of enemies, real and imagined, has been brushed aside by today's Kremlin leader as the cost to be paid for defeating the Nazis.

As Putin has sought to recover territory lost in the 1991 Soviet breakup, his Stalinesque claim to a right to a "sphere of influence" has allowed him to legitimize the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and declare an obligation to defend Russians and Russian speakers beyond his nation's borders.

On May 9, the 70th anniversary of the Allied war victory was marked and Stalin's image was put on display with glorifying war films, T-shirts, billboards and posters. Framed portraits of the mustachioed generalissimo were carried by marchers in Red Square's Victory Day parade and in the million-strong civic procession that followed to honor all who fell in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.

Putin's embrace of Stalin's power-play tactics is applauded by many Russians and other former Soviet citizens as the sort of decisive leadership they longed for while watching communism collapse around them. To the proponents of a reinvigorated Russia, reformist Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, are seen as having submitted Russia to Western domination.

Over the last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has presented dictator Josef Stalin's bloody 29-year reign as the foundation on which the Soviet superpower was built.

Stalin lives again, at least in minds and hearts.

Stalin "kept us all together, there was a friendship of nations, and without him everything fell apart," said Suliko Megrelidze, a 79-year-old native of Stalin's Georgian birthplace who sells dried fruit and spices at a farmers market. "We need someone like him if we want peace and freedom from those fascists in Europe and America."

Such sentiments are no longer confined to those with actual memories of the Stalin era. A poll this spring by the independent Levada Center found 39% of respondents had a positive opinion of Stalin. As to the millions killed, 45% of those surveyed agreed that the deaths could be justified for the greater accomplishments of winning the war, building modern industries and growing to eventually give their U.S. nemesis a battle for supremacy in the arms race and conquering outer space.

The share of Russians who look back approvingly has been increasing steadily in recent years, and the segment of those who tell pollsters they have no opinion on his place in their history has shot up even more sharply, said Denis Volkov, a sociologist with the Levada Center.

He points to this year's massive Victory Day events as the Kremlin's message to ungrateful neighbors that they owe their peace and prosperity to the wartime deaths of more than 20 million Soviet citizens.

"The figure of Stalin is being justified through the war," Volkov said. "There is an attitude now that, yes, there were repressions and, yes, there were huge losses, but we won the war after all."

Victory exonerated Stalin's excesses, just as it does Putin's "strongman" posture toward neighbors and former Soviet subjects now outside the Russian Federation's borders, Volkov said.

Stalin's standing among his countrymen has waxed and waned with the political upheavals that have wracked the Soviet Union and Russia. He was so dominant a figure in Soviet citizens' lives by the time of his death on March 5, 1953, that hundreds of thousands poured into the streets of Moscow in a chaotic outbreak of mourning when word of his passing reached a public taught to believe that life was impossible without Stalin -- the Bolshevik nom de guerre he adopted, signifying "man of steel."

Nikita Khrushchev, who finally prevailed in attaining the leadership after five years of Kremlin infighting, began a campaign of de-Stalinization in 1961, moving Stalin's embalmed remains from public display next to Vladimir Lenin's to a less prominent grave near the Kremlin wall. Stalingrad, the hero city that symbolized the Soviets' watershed battle to turn back the Nazis, was renamed Volgograd, and statues and busts were removed, and streets, institutes and schools were renamed.

But the erasure of Stalin's name and likeness served also to stifle discussion of his vast crimes: Siberian exile or death sentences for political opponents, collectivization of agriculture during which millions starved, deportation of minorities and property seizures that impoverished generations. It wasn't until Gorbachev came to power in 1985 that a candid recounting of his era was attempted.

Even Putin, earlier in his presidency, fell in line with the collective spirit of criticism of Stalin’s errors. During the visit to Poland in 2009, a year after he had sent troops to seize territory in sovereign Georgia, Putin appeared to reassure Russia's nervous neighbors that the nonaggression pact that paved the way for war and division 70 years earlier was to be remembered as immoral.

The Aug. 23, 1939, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact's secret protocols doomed Poland to Nazi occupation a week later and gave the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania to the Soviet Union. Millions of citizens of those betrayed territories died at Stalin's hand, in political purges, summary executions and slave labor camps.

The scope of Stalin's brutality remains a topic of heated debate. Late Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn once claimed in an interview that as many as 110 million died from the dictator's vast array of repressions between 1921 and 1959, including prisoners who succumbed long after Stalin's reign. Historian Viktor Zemkov, at the other extreme, puts the number of deaths attributable to Stalin at 1.4 million.

"The estimates of 110 million to 1.4 million speak for themselves -- a hundredfold disagreement," said Dmitry Lyskov, a state television talk-show host who mounted a failed campaign four years ago to put Stalin's visage on city buses to commemorate Victory Day.

The Russian Military-Historical Society, established by Putin in 2012, announced this year that a new Stalin museum was to open in May in the village of Khoroshevo, 140 miles northeast of Moscow. Stalin spent the night of Aug. 4, 1943, in a small wooden home there, the closest he came to visiting frontline Soviet troops during the four-year fight to defeat Germany.

The sanitized exhibits recounting Stalin's contributions to the war effort and postwar recovery were ready by the planned May 9 holiday. But the opening was postponed amid local opposition led by the Tver regional leader of Memorial, a group dedicated to shedding light on Russia's totalitarian era.

Yan Rachinsky, a leader of Memorial's Moscow chapter, calls the museum "ridiculous," and Stalin's single night there irrelevant to the war victory two years later.

The stillborn museum was one of several official efforts to honor Stalin this year: A statue was erected in the southern city of Lipetsk, and splashed with red paint the night it was unveiled. A bronze likeness of the dictator was put up to mark the February anniversary of his 1945 meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt at Yalta, a Black Sea resort now inaccessible to most of the world as only Russian aviation serves the contested Crimean peninsula.

Stalin has weathered more than six decades of historical revisions to maintain his standing as a rival to the West, "which is the context in which he interests Putin," said Nikolai Svanidze, a writer and historian whose grandfathers died in Stalin’s political purges.

"Just as Stalin defeated the West 70 years ago by capturing half of Europe," Svanidze said, "we are defeating the West again today. Crimea is our Berlin, our Reichstag, and there is no way it will be restored to Ukraine in the foreseeable future."

Svanidze also predicts there will be no more credible elections as long as Putin chooses to stay in power. That, he said, is another parallel with Stalin's lifetime sinecure as Soviet leader.

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-stalin-model-20150611-story.html