The Putin Syndicate (Russia's mafia state)

RFE/RL ^ | 6/9/2015 | Brian Whitmore

[lodi90]

When Russia annexed Crimea, the Kremlin installed a reputed gangster known as "the Goblin" to run the peninsula. When Moscow's agents abducted Estonian law enforcement officer Eston Kohver, they used a mafia-run smuggling ring to set him up.

And of course, organized crime groups have played a prominent role in the Moscow-instigated conflicts in Transdniester, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Donbas.

It has become something of a cliche to call Vladimir Putin's Russia a "mafia state." But cliche or not, the term actually fits. Not just because the Kremlin and organized crime groups are closely linked. And not just because Moscow uses gangsters as instruments of policy.

The term is most apt because the Putin regime actually operates like a crime syndicate. It uses threats, intimidation, and extrajudicial violence to achieve its goals. It has teams of enforcers to harass, harm, and -- if necessary -- kill its enemies.

[lodi90]

In comparison, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic eliminated Communist influence within a few years of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Unlike Germany or Japan, nations that had a viable middle class and an organized, orderly society, with a relatively short period of tyranny (12 years in Germany’s case), Russia does not have the human infrastructure to establish what has never existed there.

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None of those countries have super power delusions. As this article shows, a kleptocractic petrostate like Russia will never be a super power because Putin’s mafia will steal the nation’s wealth before it can grow into a vibrant economy. Russia has no economy, no hope and no future. Sad, really.

[ek_hornbeck]

Important read especially for those FRiends amongst us deluded into believing Putin just wants to "save Mother Russia".

Putin follows the trajectory of many tyrants. He began by doing some good for his country - restoring civil order, investing some money into crumbling infrastructure, having some sensible financial advisors stabilize the banking system, etc. Once this was accomplished and his popularity was assured, he could increasingly consolidate power and enrich himself and his cronies to his heart's content while wreaking havoc with (increasingly ineffectual) dissenters at home and perceived enemies abroad. When the policy of theft and repression causes the economy to collapse, he can then scapegoat domestic and foreign enemies while making himself look like the people's champion.

This was more or less the path followed by other tinpot dictators like Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Joseph Mobutu, Suharto, Juan Peron, etc: do some good for your country and people to build trust, but then give yourself absolute power and rob your subjects blind once you have it.

[lodi90]

This was more or less the path followed by other tinpot dictators like Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Joseph Mobutu, Suharto, Juan Peron, etc: do some good for your country and people to build trust, but then give yourself absolute power and rob your subjects blind once you have it.

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Spot on. I have long thought of Putin as a tin pot Czar. His behavior fits right in with the rest of that crew.

[ek_hornbeck]

Spot on. I have long thought of Putin as a tin pot Czar. His behavior fits right in with the rest of that crew.

Putin resembles Saddam, Amin, Suharto, Peron, etc. in another way: all of them initially presented a facade of being reasonable and pragmatic leaders who the US and other western nations could work with, and to prove their point, they partnered with US/Western interests in certain scenarios. Just like their initial gestures of goodwill at home (infrastructure investments, etc), this was all part of the plan to consolidate power, after which the beneficence at home and cooperation abroad would evaporate.

[Sam Gamgee]

Gee, and he wonders why Russia lacks American investment. You have to be off your meds to put a single penny into that country.

[Krosan]

Putin also got pretty lucky. He was installed to power just in the beginning of an oil boom. His "economic miracle" is very much like that of Chavez - being a head of a petrostate during an oil boom.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

I’ve noticed that the Putin troll ‘trclf’ or whatever, hasn’t responded to this expose’. I wonder why.

Oh, I know. He’s a Putin propagandist. Nevermind!

PS: Police in New York certainly believed, if not knew, that the Russian Mafia in the Big Apple was made up of former KGB officers, or worked directly with them (extortion of emigres, robberies, drugs, “hits”, pro-Soviet propaganda).

One of the great Cold War secrets not really exposed by the mass media.

PS: It’s good to have a late/former (then active) NYPD intell officer as a friend. We often shared general intelligence on terrorists, Communist Party operations, and even Red Chinese penetration ops, and communist thought penetration of the Catholic Church in NYC.

We even helped to stop a domestic terrorist attack which is still classified today.

Ah for the good old days when cops were cops, not hamstrung, PC-led eunuchs in blue.

[ETL]

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]

KGB Putin thinks the COLLAPSE of the Soviet communist empire was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe' of the 20th century

"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.'
http://www.hoover.org/research/putins-russia-stalin-lite
____________________________________________________

"'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://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY0MjI1MDgyYjg1M2UwNDMzMTk2Mjk5YTk0ZTdlMWE=

KGB Putin thinks the COLLAPSE of the Soviet communist empire was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe' of the 20th century

"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.'
http://www.hoover.org/research/putins-russia-stalin-lite
____________________________________________________

"'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://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY0MjI1MDgyYjg1M2UwNDMzMTk2Mjk5YTk0ZTdlMWE=

[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

"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

[lodi90]

I’ve noticed that the Putin troll ‘trclf’ or whatever, hasn’t responded to this expose’. I wonder why.

Oh, I know. He’s a Putin propagandist. Nevermind!

---

Yes. Tcrlaf continues to post on FR banned Kremlin propaganda content and refuses to retract the now self admitted by Putin Russian lies parroted here over the last year on this conservative American website.

A Russian journalist with a conscious did just that today

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3298837/posts

But apparently our local Putinist “conservatives” are still all in for the mass murdering KGB filth. Sad. Really, really sad.

[Randall_S]

What’s not mentioned is the EU and the role of Obama.

Obama and the EU forced Ukraine, an independent nation, to choose between trade with Russia and the EU/US.

Yanukovych was shipping arms to Syrian rebels, too, to fight the Russian-backed Assad regime.

To look at the situation in Ukraine in isolation is a mistake. Compared to Obama, Putin is a responsible and patriotic leader. He’s adored by his people.

You can call this propaganda or whatever, but the fact is... Soros (i.e. Obama) is very active in Ukraine. We know what they act like, even domestically.

If you think that Putin woke up one day and decided to invade Ukraine for the hell of it, I’d recommend reflecting on American foreign policy since Obama entered office, and the series of fires it has started around the world - from Indonesia to Malaysia to Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria to Egypt to Libya - and yes, to Ukraine.

Finally, remember that Putin and Bush had a relatively GOOD relationship. It was OUR MUSLIM BROTHER/SOROS POTUS who loosed a Russian bear.

[Randall_S]

You think that Obama in “incompetent” ???
Pshhhhhhh.....

No, sir. He is evil. See here for proof:
http://theamericanreport.org/the-betrayal-papers/

[lodi90]

Sorry, Obama and the US have nothing to do with Russian chauvinists invading and killing their neighbors. They have a long, long history of doing that.

[free_life]

And this why Putin will disappear, Russia has defeated itself, no one is going to invest in Russia because it is run by the mafia.

[free_life]

Vladimir Putin says he has never made a mistake because God wanted him to be perfect.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-says-he-has-never-made-a-mistake-because-god-wanted-him-to-be-perfect-10309628.html

The Russian mafia Don will regret hell soon. Meanwhile his FR lovers swear he is St. Paul of our times.

[AdmSmith]

The targeted cyber-attack on French TV company TV5Monde in April may have been the work of state-backed Russian hackers and not a pro-ISIS group, as originally thought. The hack forced several channels off the air.

French magazine L’Express yesterday claimed that local investigators have linked the attacks to a group thought to operate with the Kremlin’s blessing, dubbed APT28, ‘Sednit’ and ‘Pawn Storm’.
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/russia-pegged-cyber-caliphate/

[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/
____________________________

Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America:

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

Paid as a Pro-Kremlin Troll: 'The Hatred Spills over into the Real World'
Der Spiegel ^ | June 01, 2015 – 03:48 PM | Benjamin Bidder

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/
____________________________

Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America:

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

Paid as a Pro-Kremlin Troll: 'The Hatred Spills over into the Real World'
Der Spiegel ^ | June 01, 2015 – 03:48 PM | Benjamin Bidder

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/
____________________________

Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America:

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

Paid as a Pro-Kremlin Troll: 'The Hatred Spills over into the Real World'
Der Spiegel ^ | June 01, 2015 – 03:48 PM | Benjamin Bidder

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

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

[ETL]

[AdmSmith]

Strelkov/Girkin: only an idiot will deny that “republics” in Donbas are a Kremlin creation

http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/06/10/ex-terrorist-leader-only-an-idiot-will-deny-that-the-republics-in-donbas-are-a-kremlin-creation/