by The Ister for The Saker Blog
The 1990s was a time of immense suffering for the Russian people. As the impending collapse of the USSR became discernable, insiders such as Nikolai Kruchina, Viktor Geraschenko, and Leonid Veselovsky created a planning group to ensure the continued influence of Soviet-era officials by transferring Russian state assets to offshore shell companies and thus stripping the country’s wealth. One such offshore company, FIMACO, was used to pilfer an estimated $50 billion from the nation. Viktor Gerashchenko, the head of the central bank of Russia, sent a memorandum demanding transfers from FIMACO be covered up. It was through this looting that liquid capital was generated and used by future oligarchs to build their fortunes. An early beneficiary of this arrangement was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had started his career as a minor Soviet official and whose Yukos oil conglomerate was tied to FIMACO. In return for his help Viktor Gerashchenko was later given a position as the chairman of Yukos by Khodorkovsky.
In 1991 the Soviet Union finally collapsed. That August, state treasurer Nikolai Kruchina, responsible for Russia’s gold reserves, died by falling from his window. He had been a member of the planning group which originated the plot to steal state assets. His successor Georgy Pavlov fell to his death from a window two months later: the oligarchs were cleaning house.
In September, the Russian central bank announced the Kremlin’s gold reserves had inexplicably dropped from the estimated 1000-1500 tons to a mere 240 tons. Two months later, Victor Gerashchenko announced Russia’s gold reserves had actually entirely vanished. While the Russian public was horrified at the revelation, European bankers were less surprised. It was whispered frequently among those circles that Soviet transport planes had been flying to and from Switzerland for months and selling off large amounts of gold. Boris Yeltsin announced his plans to privatize the nation’s assets and the real looting began.
During the privatization period, international capital wasted no time in opportunistically swooping in to take over Russian industries. The Clinton administration sought to redesign the economic policies of the nascent Russian Federation according to the Washington Consensus: privatization, deregulation, austerity, and the opening up of Russia’s companies to purchase by ultra-wealthy Americans. They gave the role of economic planning in Russia to the Harvard Institute for International Development, which sent Harvard economists to meet with Anatoly Chubais, Boris Yeltsin’s head of privatization. The close relationship with Anatoly Chubais allowed a select group of American investors to be on an inside track of financial dealings in the new Russia. One Harvard grad involved in this scheme was Jonathan Hay, convicted inside trader. He became senior advisor to the GKI, Russia’s new state privatization committee.
Certain members of this network, which included Harvard graduates Hay, Jeffrey Sachs, Andrei Shleifer, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, David Lipton, and others, misused funds from USAID that were intended for Russian economic development and rigged deals for privatization to gain control of key Russian industries in backroom negotiations. In one 1995 off market deal, Anatoly Chubais created a closed bidding process for prime national properties in which the only approved bidders were Harvard Management Company and George Soros. This resulted in the acquisition of major stakes in Sidanko Oil, Novolipetsk Steel, and Sviazinvest.
Foreign investors flocked in and the level of greed among this fifth column of new Muscovites was truly astonishing. The 1999 RICO suit Avisma Titano Magnes v. Dart Management is particularly enlightening. RICO allows victims of a racketeering conspiracy to sue conspirators for damages caused by their illegal conduct, and the following defendants were named in the action:
Kenneth Dart; Dart Management Inc, address unknown
Jonathan Hay; Dart Management Inc, address unknown
Michael Haywood; Dart Management Inc, address unknown
Michael Hunter; Dart Management Inc
Francis E. Baker; Andersen Group Inc
William Browder, Hermitage Fund
Barclays Bank, PLC
The complaint document alleges the following: the defendants and a cooperating bank called Bank Menatep, owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, had a controlling interest in titanium producer Avisma. They forced Avisma to sell its titanium below market price to offshore companies which they secretly controlled. Next, these offshore companies sold the titanium at a correct price on international markets for profit, which was then funneled back from the offshore companies to the defendants and Bank Menatep. Money that should have been booked as profits for Avisma was siphoned away, and the majority shareholders who were in on the scam benefitted at the expense of minority shareholders, the company, and Russian tax authorities.
Defendant Francis E. Baker described the actions in a private letter as, “An immense Russian bank money laundering scheme, clearly a criminal matter.” According to the complaint, the actions were discovered when defendants attempted to swap Avisma shares for shares of mining company VSMPO and replicate the same scam at VSMPO. Baker and other defendants later excused their actions by claiming the suit was Russian targeting. Sound familiar?
The criminality was not limited to foreign speculators. During the early period of privatization in the 90s a secret society of seven Russian oligarchs entirely controlled Boris Yeltsin’s administration. This group called itself Semibankirschina, named after the Seven Boyars who controlled Russia during the 17th century. The secret society included the following oligarchs: Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, Vladimir Gusinsky, Vladimir Potanin, and Alexander Smolensky.
A Russian journalist named Andrey Fadin described their overwhelming power in an article, “they control the access to budget money and basically all investment opportunities inside the country. They own the gigantic information resource of the major TV channels. They form the President’s opinion. Those who didn’t want to walk along them were either strangled or left the circle.” Less than one year after publishing the article Andrey Fadin was killed. Through their front man Anatoly Chubais, Semibankirschina used control of television networks to prop up Boris Yeltsin’s low approval ratings. From the mid-90s to 1999 this clique had total authority over Russian policies and industries, judiciously using violence to enforce its monopoly. In one case Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his underling Leonid Nevzlin carried out the murder of the mayor Vladimir Petukhov, who was pursuing Yukos Oil Company’s evasion of taxes.
In late 1999, Vladimir Putin became president of Russia and the fortunes of these self-appointed rulers rapidly turned for the worse. A new group of Putin insiders such as Gennady Timchenko, Vladimir Yakunin, and Sergey Chemezov formed and began supplanting the previous access that the Semibankirschina had to the president. In 2001, a state takeover of media seized the television networks previously owned by oligarchs Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Badri Patarkatsishvili, prompting Patarkatsishvili to denounce Russia to the New York Times and flee the country. While exiled in the UK, Patarkatsishvili died suspiciously at the age of 48. The Georgian government has called his death an assassination. Boris Berezovsky also died suspiciously in the UK after having sold his Russian assets and denounced Putin. After his television networks were seized, Vladimir Gusinsky was criminally charged with money laundering and forced to flee the country as well.
The sweep continued as three other allies of the Semibankirschina were killed: Nikolai Glushkov, Alexander Litvinenko, and Boris Nemtsov. Bill Browder was deported in 2005, and later convicted in absentia for fraud. Fraudster Konstantin Ponomarev was also convicted, sentenced to 8 years in prison for crimes relating to his extortion of $1 billion from IKEA. Jamison Firestone, an associate of Ponomarev and Browder, was forced to flee Russia due to his involvement in the Magnitsky case, and his associate Alexander Peripilichny mysteriously died while jogging near London. George Soros was banned from Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
Once the richest man in the country, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s fortunes turned for the worse as well. In the early 2000s, Putin pushed through a number of populist reforms for criminal, tax, and land law, which the oligarchs of the 90s had strongly opposed. As the most blatantly criminal member of the original Semibankirschina, Khodorkovsky’s Bank Menatep had been founded with funds stolen as part of the looting of state assets. The bank operated as a hub of money laundering and engaged in countless financial scams, even delaying government funds to Chernobyl victims while using their money to financially speculate. It was Bank Menatep through which American fraudsters had allegedly ripped off Avisma shareholders with the titanium dumping scam.
In 2003, Khodorkovsky was criminally prosecuted by Putin for tax evasion and fraud for which he ended up serving 10 years in prison. His protege Leonid Nevzlin was convicted of ordering multiple contract murders on Khodorkovsky’s behalf, and sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. Associate Platon Lebedev was also convicted and imprisoned. This wave of prosecution sent a message and gave Putin a strong position, which was used to negotiate a “grand bargain” with the remaining oligarchs: they retained most of their existing assets in return for alignment with Putin’s vertical rule of Russia. The era of financial gangsterism from the 1990s was over.
Stolen Russian gold reserves have now been restored and are at the highest levels in history. Because of the lack of collaboration with other central banks it is certain that Russian gold is present in Moscow’s vaults: there are none of the surreptitious leasing or swap agreements which call into question the claimed size of Western bank holdings. So instead of buying US treasuries or dollars for its reserves, the Bank of Russia can demand physical gold delivery into Moscow vaults. This will continually strain the fraudulent COMEX and London Bullion Market systems with the pressure of physical shipments and threaten the dollar. Unlike China, Russia is in the position to attack the dollar as a net commodity exporter, meaning when its gold purchases bid up the price of metals it is simply increasing the receipts of its own domestic commodity producing companies like Norilsk Nickel and VSMPO-AVISMA.
The economic crisis of 1998 has heavily influenced the Kremlin’s financial policy, and the last twenty years have been spent creating a resilient system. One of Putin’s first agenda items was to pay off all debt to the IMF and holdover loans from the Soviet era. Russia is now positioned to attack the dollar, as the only powerful state not operating on a debt-based system. A decade of economic warfare in the form of sanctions has cut off access to international capital: the result is one of the lowest levels of external debt of any country in the world, with cash reserves large enough to pay off all debt at once. These low debt levels have tangible benefits, primarily that Russia is now able to withstand large economic fluctuations without crumbling as a result of internal defaults. By comparison, the financial system of America would disintegrate if it attempted to sustain the decline in GDP Russia incurred from 2013-2016.
The Bank of Russia actively enforces stringent lending standards in order to prevent the emergence of consumer credit bubbles, and forces banks to hold extra cash on their balance sheets (as a result, most applications for personal credit are declined). So sanctions have actually made the country stronger, as hubris of the McCain class of American politicians has created a competitor state with no stake in the survival of the existing debt-based financial order. Russia’s mission to create resiliency and restore sovereignty foreshadows a tumultuous future, while America bets everything that the world will remain the same. The concerted plot to loot Russia has been foiled.
In December of 1999, Edmond Safra was murdered at his fabulous mansion, the Villa Leopolda in Monaco. The Safras are one of the oldest and most secretive of the banking families, with a fortune dating back to the gold trading caravans of the Ottoman Empire. Coincidentally, Safra means yellow, or gold, in Arabic. It was Edmond Safra who served as Bill Browder’s mentor in Russia, providing him with an initial seed funding of $25 million to start his Hermitage Fund. When Browder needed protection during a business dispute with an oligarch, Safra sent his emissary four armored vehicles and fifteen bodyguards led by a former Mossad agent. While Edmond Safra spent much of his later life defending himself from drug trafficking and money laundering allegations, he was accomplished, nonetheless. He founded his first bank at 23 years old and had dreamed of creating a banking dynasty that would last 10,000 years.
Just after Putin’s takeover as president, Villa Leopolda was broken into. Safra’s nurse, a former Green Beret named Ted Maher, was stabbed by two masked intruders who entered the premises, after which Safra was killed. Under pressure from Monacan authorities, Ted Maher was forced to sign a nonsensical confession in which he claimed that he stabbed himself and admitted to setting the fire in order to attempt to gain his employer’s adoration. He has since recanted this confession, saying that his defense attorneys coerced him into signing and threatened he would never see his family again otherwise. Jean-Christophe Hullin, the chief judge in the case, revealed in 2007 that the guilty conviction was a predetermined outcome which had been planned in a secret meeting with himself, Maher’s attorneys, and the chief prosecutor of Monaco: in short, Ted Maher was a fall guy for the real murderers of Edmond Safra. Now free, he believes Safra was ordered killed by Putin, “in retaliation for a plot orchestrated by Safra and Russian oligarchs to take control of all of Russia’s assets.”
It was during the purge of oligarchs and vulture capitalists that the true power behind Mikhail Khodorkovsky emerged. When it became likely he would be arrested, he arranged to have all his shares from the Yukos Oil Company transferred to the ownership of Jacob Rothschild. The transfer took place in November of 2003, giving Lord Rothschild control of shares estimated by the Sunday Times to be worth $13.5 billion. Putin subsequently liquidated and nationalized Yukos by seizing and selling off its shares to state oil companies at much below market value.
So Putin has declared war on the most powerful people on the planet.
The Ister is a researcher of financial markets and geopolitics.
And, why is this relevant now?
“Now free, he believes Safra was ordered killed by Putin”,
But what he believes ( the Green Beret, Maher, i understand..) is relevant when he worked for such a person without scruples?
IMO, this article comes to reinforce the Western meme “Putin as assassin”, we are accsutomed to, wnatever the good pretended purposes…
This comes in a moment when another wave of Russophobia is being launched this time with Garmany, at other times a good partner, at the head…
A new reshaping/cast of the world is at work right now.
Disagree that Putin is depicted as assassin-true, it is maher’s “opinion,” for whatever that is worth, not clear as to whether it was forced or freely offered.
I have seen speculation, nothing firm, that browder and/or berezovsky were involved in the murder of safra (sorry, I do not have links). Again, FWIW.
I appreciate the detail here as to the absolute criminal looting of Russia during the Yeltzin years, instigated, managed, encouraged by the boyz from harvard and the clinton admin.
Putin did a major service to Russia and to the Russian people for kicking that filth out and taking back control of the country.
Thanks to the author! I have ordered his book.
If someone could recommend a truly good book on the pre-Putin looting of Russia, I would really appreciate it.
The United States is heading towards meltdown and I want to get a feel for what happens when meltdown hits.
Mike from Jersey: I think Auslander would be the guy to point you in the right direction. I would love to read about it too and watch a few videos if they are available.
One of the best articles about Bill Browder one of the thieves mentioned in the article.
https://www.unz.com/article/bill-browder-a-billionaire-accused-of-being-a-fraud-and-liar/
“Globalization of poverty” by Michel Chossudovsky has a very powerful chapter about the collapse and looting of the USSR. The whole book is an amazing record of Western looting of the world.
Thanks.
Also this excellent and very informative video by a once leading American
https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-how-the-u-s-caused-the-breakup-of-the-soviet-union/5619579
I can recommend a Documentary series on YouTube – at least I assume it’s still there – called “The Unknown Putin”. You have to do searches, as they were put together with English subtitles separately. There are actually 5 episodes, not the two which normally pop up.
They were put together by a noted and respected journalist, who said, he wanted to answer the question “what was the Russia which Putin took on, and had to deal with”.
There are extensive interviews with many people – Yevgeny Federov, Duma politician, University dept heads of physics, politics, many people. It’s a very good insight, into the so-called “product sharing agreement” where American took about 90% of the oil revenues, when even in African countries it was held to be unacceptable that they were taking 50%. And Russia paying them US$1 billion a year on top of that for the privilege. The deals both Yeltsin and Gorbachev made, selling off huge parts of the Arctic Ocean with their massive fossil fuel deposits, just for money to try to beat each other at the elections.
It’s such an eye opener, realising what Putin had to do – and I’ve often wondered, with the corridors of Power in the Kremlin swarming with over 10,000 Yanks writing the laws, and the group of Russian Kleptocrats ruling, how on earth did he do it – how did he manage not to get himself assassinated?
We will ,I suspect, never know the full story – but what a fabulous story it would be, what an adventure, and achievement.
I found the link to the first episode at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCU4C6ajgBI
Fascinating – think I’ll be watching it again.
Thanks for the video link. One very interesting part concerned an assassination attempt against Putin foiled in Azerbaijan. This is very relevant today in light of Moscow’s easing of tensions in between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Hi, Pamela,
I started watching this; will continue later.
Would love to view the rest of the episodes, if you can locate them.
Regards,
Katherine
They should have been executed for the damage they did to the Country.
Thank you for your feedback Taras 77! I hope you enjoy the book and as a reader of The Saker I imagine you will like the chapter “Confrontation in Central Asia” which relates to the geopolitical battle, pipelines, and nuclear warfare.
My intention is not to portray Putin as an evil person or an assassin along the lines that another user suggested. During the late 90s and early 2000s he was fighting for control of Russia with ultra-wealthy people who had a demonstrated willingness to steal, lie, and murder to stay on top.
I would like thank you also – I’ve been following this period of Russian history and what Putin and his team had to face, with great interest, and you’ve been very illuminative here.
As to doing what he had to do – I’ve expanded on that on my comment above, but in response to your last sentence “(Putin).. was fighting for control of Russia with ultra-wealthy people who had a demonstrated willingness to steal, lie, and murder to stay on top” — I”d like to quote from a popular movie of a few years back — “never take a knife to a gun fight” . :-)
I’d say, if you take a gun to Russia, be prepared to be fired on – with “extreme prejudice” :-)
The Ister
Is this part of the book Escape America? Want to get hold of copy. Fascinating.
“I have seen speculation, nothing firm, that browder and/or berezovsky were involved in the murder of safra”
Yes, so have I. Not sure where.
There was such a spate of Browder-related info a few years ago and now that has tapered off and I cannot recall the details. However, it is on the record that Safra greased the ways to insert Browder into a financail power position in Russia with the Heritage Fund. It is not beyond possible that Safra was getting in the way of or threatening something that the arch-criminal and international Zionist Gauner Browder was up to . . .
Here are some speculations from Martin Armstrong, who ties Browder to Robert Maxwell. Enough funny business to fuel plenty of hypotheses (but where are the investigations??? Oh, maybe they did some in . . . Russia!!).
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/magnitsky-affair-the-murder-of-edmond-safra-in-monaco/
Katherine
.
Thanks, Katherine
No investigations will be forthcoming, obviously. The entire scenario is so murky that one must suspect the “intelligence agencies.”
To say that browder leads a charmed (read protected) life would be an understatement. He certainly has been a useful tool in the West’s rabid hatred of putin and russia. He travels freely in and out of the us, altho renouncing us citizenship which normally would have severe tax consequences. He owns a villa in Aspen, CO where he spends time.
Just a wild guess but he may become more into play IF the extremist russian haters of the biden admin swing into action.
Yes, how can Browder come and go at will (but runs away if someone tries to lay a subpoena on him!!).
Wonder whether he is in communication with Ghislaine Maxwell. Israeli connection.
Katherine
Where you see an assassin I see a patriot.
It´s not me who sees an assassin, but the “former Green Beret”, which is not exactly the same.
I am precisely calling the attention to that fact in the article…which I find makes no good to Russia at this moment, and which i find it strange in an allegedly pro-Russian, sometimes also pro-Putin, blog.
Tell me of a single British, American, Israeli or French prime minister or president who has not assassinated people.
In his new book, Obama is saying he did not enjoy droning people – between 400-800 civilians were killed. Of course, that does not include famine, disease, shootings, bombings, poisonings, abductions and much more.
Alfred: Or let someone tell us of any US, British or French Oligarch who did not make his money from slavery, slave wages, crime, stock market manipulation, mining scams, and death of innocent people?
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Putin assassinated these people. When Putin took over, he took over a mess.
It was not just a mess but it was a mess being looted by gangsters who would not hesitate to murder people.
Putin is smart and ruthless – but patriotic.
I would not be surprised if he sent out an advertisement to the Oligarchs that says, “go ahead and try to loot Russia again and just see what happens to you.”
But then, again, that is just a guess. I have to no inside information
This article, and this blog, live by the one of the mottos from AA/Al-Anon: take what you like and leave the rest.
There is so much in this article which anybody would find worth “taking”.
So why
1) attribute to the author what is a quotation of somebody else
2) focus on the once sentence which bothers you
is that really the best you can do?
Almost all this information is known time ago for people reading this blog and others related to Russia.
May be the “event” on this Safra banker is what is new for me, then it is major player implied in the “event” who asures “he believes” Putin assassinated his master…I found quite phony he was a former Green Beret, which could give him a certain credibility amongst your mostly US audience…all the more after Trump, whose followers also are numerous here, just named one former Green Beret as head of Pentagon…
You know, these details switeched some red lights in my clearly suspicious mind…
For me this equates the US/UK usual think tanks accusing Putin of assassinating Litvinenko, Nemtsov, Politkoskaya, and trying with Skripals/navalny… more recently..
I was asking what is the opportunity of publishing this right now, which, as I understood, is a question every analyst must ask always, amongst others…
Then, going to the link about his book to Amazon, there is no information about this author…Strange…Allow me to think…
I am surprised you don’t recognize the quintessential american debating strategy : Seize upon some stray word, totally misinterpret a phrase, find something he might have said 40 years ago, call him unpatriotic, fellow-traveller, commie, socialist, Russian, un-woke, … … . No need to address the reasoned arguments.
Experienced trolls frequently employ an advanced form : Simply throw in any offensive phrase; and watch the discussion run baying off into the swamp.
You sound like there is no difference between economical assasination of the country and some dirty crooks being picked off? We can start a 7 billion questionnaire and see what comes out of it…
This article shows Putin behaving like a boss. Imprisoning sociopathic oligarchs. Right on.
Seriously, with all the good info in this article you are hang up/on the opinion of a pond (Green Beret(
I learned a lot:
1. about Edmond Safra
2. 13.5 Billion Yukos Oil Company transferred to the ownership of Jacob Rothschild.
etc…
get a life
I read that Rothschild offered Putin one billion bucks to let khordokovsky loose.
I should add – Putin refused.
Now everyone has read about Yukos – a piece of news today of how these disgusting thieves are still trying to steal via the EU courts – who gave them jurisdiction over Russian companies or law?
“New twist in $50bn Yukos battle as US court sides with Russia over oligarchs & suspends controversial case……”
https://www.rt.com/russia/507409-us-court-suspends-yukos-case/
Well let’s see what the Dutch courts do……..
“IMO, this article comes to reinforce the Western meme “Putin as assassin”, we are accustomed to,”
I was interested that you instantly saw the claim that “Ted Maher (…..) believes Safra was ordered killed by Putin, “in retaliation for a plot orchestrated by Safra and Russian oligarchs to take control of all of Russia’s assets”. as an attempt to portray President Putin as an assassin — and thus this is a bad thing; an insult; and shadow casting.
You are, of course, correct in stating that the Imperialist Empire has frequently tried to portray V.V. this way – mostly using made up stories, about non-lethal combat gases, untraceable amounts of high power radioactive material etc etc.
However, should Russia be invaded by a gang of terrorists, would anyone then depict the elimination of such as “Putin being an assassin”? I would say not. When he sent the Russian Army into Chechnya and Dagestan to protect against terrorists destroying a people and threatening Russia’s “underbelly” border, was he thought of as “assassin”.? No. Why? Because they were clearly war scenarios. A Leaders’ primary job, when not working to make his nation grow in wealth and happiness, is to protect the people from incursion.
The West is stuck in the mindset that an invasion, threat, and war are only present when the tanks are rolling over the borders and planes are dropping bombs. But this is an outdated perception. Any threat made with a view to subduing sovereignty is a threat equivalent to military “hot” war. And Russia has been at war for years now.
As Uncle Bob has shown below, these murdering, thieving Kleptocrats are probably responsible, whether directly or indirectly, for about 20 million Russians dead – closing on the number of dead caused by an overt invader and destroyer Hitler and WWII. But no less lethal for being covert and underhand.
If this Safra was truly about to take control of Russia’s assets, then he was a threat as great as Hitler. Putin ordering his execution would be no different to launching an attack on Berlin and shooting Hitler if they got the chance.
It is said – I believe truly – that we have one major value, which we have a right to and none has any right to take it away – and that is our life. No-one can take a life – with one exception. That is when someone commits the greatest crime of all and initiates the use of force to deprive others of life. If you start the use of force to deprive others of life, you have, voluntarily, laid down your right to your life.
In such a case, the right lies with the defender – for we have not only a right to defend our lives, we have an obligation.
There is a terrific illustration of this in a scene from Josh Whedons’ popular TV series “Firefly”. In order to defend a young girl taken hostage at point of a gun, the Captain shoots the hostage taker, someone well known to him. At the attackers shocked “you shot me Captain” he replies sadly “No son, you shot yourself. I just carried the bullet for a while”.
If Safra was intending lethal harm to Russians, then even if Putin did order his execution, he didn’t kill him – it doesn’t make him an assassin. Safra killed himself. Putin just carried the means for while, is all.
Anonymous
Yes, why is this relevant now ? That Putin curtailed the powers of the oligarchs is well known. That he stopped the plundering of Russia is also well known. As for the stated assassinations, does the author have any proof who ordered them and why ? Accusing Putin is highly suspicious, and one has to wonder what the motive for this article is.
This is surely one of the best articles of the year at this site.
apparently not
looks how some are bitching!
but thank you for your kind words of support
as for those who bitch – they can ask for a refund of their donations if they want :-)
Cheers
The Saker
I am not bitching. I want to feel good about Putin, that he is truly Russian nationalist to the hilt, not corrupted by the money bags Zionists..is indeed incorruptible in that way. this makes me feel good about Putin
I knew Putin had done house keeping when he came in, but this gives a wider perspective on that project, details I did not know like his seizure or Yukos assets and their liquidation at favorable prices to Russian nationals…after those assets were given to Jacob Rothschild by Khodorkovsky
I did not know that. that’s powerful!
These people were financial terrorist’s and I’m sure no one will shed any tears for them,now if a man comes to your house to steal what you have ,rape your wife and kill your children you don’t wait till its done before you take action.Now me I really don’t care how many he sent to their final resting place but he did one of a hell of a good job for Russia, and I’m sure the good Lord will bless him for that.!!!
Exactly! Live by the sword, expect to die by the sword.
@anon
” I want to feel good about Putin”
Thanks for letting us know, that it’s about you and your “feelings”, and not about Putin.
What makes you feel good is distinctly irrelevant to what VVP might have done to protect Russia.
Removed, no personal attacks, Mod
Katherine
FWIW, I have learnt a lot from this article, which shows not just the “what” but the “how”. It was nasty business in Russia of the 90’s and we know what happens when crooks in high places start feeling the heat. Chances are they cleaned – or tried to – clean their own dirty laundry, by doing in those who could tell.
I’ll note that Putin has shown every inclination of trying in court and jailing the oligarchs. This makes much better sense – both politically and strategically – than just offing them. IMO, when it comes to assassination we should look at who had the most to gain from them and also who seemed to have practiced them before. Certainly the Russian oligarch mafia hardly shied from ‘arranging” a few mysterious deaths, when needed (those window jumpers! almost as good as the Americans penchant for suicide by hanging in secure jails and shots to the back of the head).
Truth is, when thieves fall out, mayhem happens. Far more likely than some Putin “revenge”. Putin would far rather use leverage to get benefits, tangible ones, than resort to silly crude cancelling of enemies. That is rather more typical of the favorite british MI5/6 ploys, judging by the past.
An aside: I was interested to see jeffrey sachs name among those Harvard graduates. based on the many good things sachs has written in the past 8-10 years, I’d consider him a “penitent”. Have a list of those and I like to give them the benefit of the doubt but also extend a hand when they seem sincere in their repentance.
Easy to be a penitent once one has cashed out and reinvested at home. Are you serious?
Most have cashed out and never bothered to offer an iota of repentance.
That’s why I am a bit more tolerant. Frankly, on our meager side, here in the US, we need all the help we can get.
I originally was not going to post, but feel compelled to chime in.
This is one of the best articles I have read on thid site, and makes me appreciate what Putin did in Russia.
I was born in the USA in early 80s and have lived my whole life here through the roaring 1990s, and I had no clue that the “good guys – NATO/USA” were looting Russia.
I also had no idea that international zionist finance was behind the looting! So, i truly appreciate the article as I am sure many of us “americans” do. We are hated by so many around the world and for good cause, but we are so ignorant of the truth!
Any article that illuminates us with truth is good!
Precious Iconodule. Thank you for keeping an open mind…and sharing.
Its just sooooo US State Dept at work …if ya wana know where the real bad guys are herein this Exceptionalistism country.
I’d leave this country for Russia in a heartbeat… I was forced into the military, WIA, disabled, in the rice paddies of Viet Nam. Nothing patriotic here, pure assassin/mercenaries of which i was a reluctant grunt.
Precious, cuz it reminds me of growing up in the early 50’s, when the politicians were all about keeping China out of the UN! and Palestine was suffering mightily and the repugs loved it (suggest/google: If Americans Knew).
I swear the ‘Putin’ haters aren’t just coming out of the woodwork, or out from under a rock…no, these idjits are dancing in full view. Two wives of best bud friends are educators grade and high school and both of them hate Putin denigrate Russia…uhhh no we don’t associate much. I cannot be with that malarkey.
Vladimir Putin is a world class hero. It would be propitious if there were more articles and books such as “America Escape” i will order it. Yes, the authors bio would be nice…I’m sure it’s coming.
I figured why would you not want a country at the table to talk thru the issues ? at age 8. Why does the denigration of such a fabulous wonderful country as Russia, continue? Why in the first place? The denigration goes back a few years, i’d say 1947 Bretton Woods conf but maybe further back..doesn’t matter ‘cept if you look at CUBA this, this Universal Dominance, this is what ‘murikkka wants for Russia and China…all to prove Capitalism rules. The folks who voted for Trump were probably Pro-Capitalism so there’s no other choice…don’t ya knoe, Sean Hannity.
To begin with, Trump is better than HRC ie Hillary Rodham cuz she’d had us in a shooting war with Russia in a heartbeat.
I tried to post as soon as i read the article ~ well it didn’t post so here it is if you will …
WOW! I’m always impressed with Vladimir Putin ~ i’d give a lot to sit down and have drinks with him.
Anyways this is revealing ! auspicious to be sure.
I hope it gets traction in the US of A cuz ya knoe all they say is Russia bad US gud. The means of being able to take down the miscreants on a universal level is no small wonder. And i’m thankful.
I’m not sure why he wants impunity after leaving ofc? I imagine he’s fearful of the dreaded oligarchs slithering back in and making life difficult for him…?
I’m also glad to announce in our city of Billings, Montana…Flyover Country a little Russian cafe has opened, Alissa’s Russian House ~ and its soooo kewl, replete with scale models of the Kremlin ‘n St B’s floor to celling! Good location too. Open bout 4 weeks, the BEST DESSERTS, for now, an later a Russian menu…? Georgian food would be perfect. Went out to Georgian restaurants a couple times in St Petersburg…so good and the ambiance…lemme tell ya for my short time in Russia, I was immersed in the Ambiance everywhere!
By age 9 i had a stamp collection…and since dad was a raving John Bircher i made it a point to have a Special Russian Stamp collection. I see all these people as assassins, dad fershere…
Viva Russia
I have always wondered how Putin really took the power in Russia, who was behind him at the time and how he did manage to reach an agreement with the mobsters Oligarch.
Either he reached an agreement with them because they somehow agreed to have him in place under some control), or he reached an agreement with them because he frightened them.
This story supports my belief that he frightened them, which is probably the only way to deal with those people. And it is a very good thing that he did.
The further up the pyramid of power you are, the less pure you can be when it comes to wielding it against self proclaimed enemies.
“I have always wondered how Putin really took the power in Russia”
Yeltsin stole a massive IMF loan money. These gangsters used this to blackmail Yeltsin. In desperation, Yeltsin turned to Putin for help. Putin offered to not prosecute Yeltsin or his family for their looting in return for getting the backing Yeltsin. Putin has kept his promise.
“So Who Really Tried to Blackmail Yeltsin & Takeover Russia – NSA, CIA or Investment Bankers?”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/so-who-really-tried-to-blackmail-yeltsin-takeover-russia-nsa-cia-or-investment-bankers/
I would take anything that a convicted fraudster like Martin Armstrong says – who believes The Great Reset is a Communist conspiracy [sic] – with a shovel of salt.
Martin Armstrong is not a convicted fraudster. He was never convicted but put in jail for contempt of court for not handing over the source codes for his software. The maximum sentence for contempt is 18 months, yet he was held for far far longer.
You seem bitter about something. Do you want to tell us what it is?
The real crime of M. Khodorkovsky
Jan 05, 2011 12:00 AM
by F. William Engdahl
The final decision in the Russian trial against former oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has drawn dramatic statements of protest from the US Obama Administration and governments around the world labelling Russian justice as tyrannical and worse. What is carefully omitted from the Khodorvkorsky story however is the true reason Putin arrested and imprisoned the former head of Russia’s largest private oil giant, Yukos…….
However, the real crime that landed Khodorkovsky behind Russian bars was the fact that he was in the middle of making a US-backed coup d’etat to capture the Russian presidency in planned 2004 Russian Duma elections. Khodorkovsky was in the process of using his enormous wealth to buy enough seats in the coming Duma elections that he could change Russian laws regarding ownership of oil in the ground and of pipelines transporting same. In addition he planned to directly challenge Putin and become Russian President. As part of the horse trade that won Putin the tacit support of the wealthy so-called Russian Oligarchs, Putin had extracted agreement that they be allowed to hold on to their wealth provided they repatriate a share back into Russia and provided they not interfere in domestic Russian politics with their wealth. Most oligarchs agreed, as did Khodorkovsky at the time. They remain established Russian businessmen. Khodorkovsky did not.
Moreover, at the time of his arrest Khodorkovsky was in the process of negotiating via his Carlyle friend George H.W. Bush, father of the then-President George W. Bush, the sale of 40 % of Yukos to either Condi Rice’s former company,……
http://www.gasandoil.com/oilaround/2011/01/the-real-crime-of-m.-khodorkovsky
I am so glad Putin arrived when he did!!
thank you, saker & ister, i invariably find the all but mystical escape of russia through putin from the dungeons of western oligarchs inspiring. i never cease to learn something new from these revelations. i wonder how putin managed to convince yeltsin to appoint him or whether yeltsin had a come to jesus moment or possibly putin, b/c he’s so very facile, allowed yeltsin to deceive himself. if anyone has any knowledge/suspicions/speculations i would be most open.
Yes. I have not yet come across a satisfactory answer to the question: why did Yeltsin annoint Putin? I would also appreciate the thoughts of others.
People like this Saffra get topped because they know too much and they are of no use to their masters. Which beggs the question who are the true masters? Western deep state sewerage or some powerfull individuals? Doesn’t really metter in my humble view. The world has changed and they might be next.
Edmond Safra was no low level guy. His brother is currently the richest banker in the world, although certainly there are other hidden powers we are not aware of.
Joseph Safra, a descendant of a banking family from Syria, is the world’s richest banker.
In Brazil he owns Banco Safra, the country’s 8th largest bank, while in Switzerland he owns J. Safra Sarasin, a bank created in a merger in 2013.
His oldest son, Jacob, is responsible for J. Safra Sarasin, Safra National Bank of New York and real estate holdings across the U.S.
His son David manages Banco Safra in Brazil; his son Alberto left the bank’s board of directors in October 2019.
He also owns 50% of banana grower Chiquita Brands International; the other 50% is owned by Brazilian orange juice billionaire Jose Cutrale.
Edmond Safra used his cousin, Joseph Shalam (AKA The Rabbi) as a front since De Picciotto acquired TDB in 1990. At the time Shalam wished to remain with UBP and Edmond not wanting to stop working with his cousin offered that he fronts on his behalf in Brazil. Shalam never knew how many companies he was effectively fronting for on behalf of his cousin. Just before his death in 2018, Joseph and the Safra family had to sort things out. He discovered that he was fronting in more than 800 companies, some worth several hundred million dollars. Some owned entire city blocks in Brazil’s main cities. This is a first hand account.
Is TDB Toronto Dominion Bank?
Katherine
Trade Development Bank or TDB was a bank founded by Edmond Safra here in Geneva which he later sold to American Express. He later wanted to buy it back but was refused so he started a new bank in competition. American Express smeared Edmond, later admitted it and paid a contribution to a charity of Edmond’s choice.
Though I am inclined to believe this account, it provides zero documentation, and especially no links to any sources; so, I cannot link to or otherwise rely upon it, no more than I can rely upon a work of complete and self-declared fiction — which is to say, not at all. Why is such stuff even being published here? I am not saying that I disbelieve it, but that it is waste, in its present, undocumented, form. I won’t rely upon anything that reasonably should be considered unreliable, and that might be basically hogwash — fiction.
I have written about some of this narrative myself, but always with links to my sources, such as here:
https://archive.is/gMbIq#selection-431.0-451.1890
I wish that I could fill in some of the details by relying upon what “The Ister” relies upon, but he/she doesn’t even let me/us know what he/she is relying upon. Removed – no attacking the author. Mod.
I post articles which I believe are informative.
This blog is a blog, not an academic review.
Oh, and, by the way, “sourcing” an article can be important, true
but it hardly proves or disproves the veracity of the quotations.
As for calling this trash, this is insulting to both me and the author.
I am very disappointed by rude tone this comment Eric!
Thank you — I have since verified on my own enough of this article, so that I fully intend to link to it in articles that I shall do. I am astounded: everything that I have checked is true! I am going to continue checking it, however, because the narrative it presents is awesome. I am now inclined to believe the comment by “drb”: “This is surely one of the best articles of the year at this site.” But even if I do end up finding an error in it, I at least feel confident that this article is true in its main details. This article is eye-opening. America — especially Harvard — was a gangland operation since at least 1989. Putin has brilliantly saved Russia from that gang-rape by America’s elite. I wish that America had such a gifted patriot leading us.
no chance, Zuesse, that America will have its Putin hour: the whole country has gone gangrenous. jingoism is not patriotism.
Just as Putin was 100% underestimated (and initially trusted!!) to be a meek underling of Yeltsin and his fellow looters of Russia, you hamparsoum make the same error a great many people here have made about Trump for the last 4 years.
Apparently you did not yet digest what was happening right under your cynical nose yesterday
/trump-campaign-legal-team-holds-press-conference-in-dc-11-19-20/
as you wrote this absurd comment propping yourself up as virtuous, aggrieved and offended………. while writing off 340 million Americans the same way the author depicts the oligarchs and western carpetbaggers disregarding not just all non-oligarch Russians……….but EVERY common person in ALL former Warsaw Pact countries.
Hopefully you’ll learn something in the next 4 years.
What is even more precious than the always virtuous man or woman??
The sinner who atones…..and redeems his or her soul as they come to grips with their mortality and seriously consider the effect of their having existed at all, in The Grander Scheme of Things.
SO I consider the case of fast fading Mega-Sinner Boris Yeltsin in his last days (if the reports are true) as he faced what he had done to his Motherland, and selected Putin as his heir to power with two words that he, sadly, did not even know were possible, given the enormous damage he himself had done:
“Save Russia”.
I don’t know about Jeffrey Sachs (a real evil doer in the 90’s) but as one commenter here suggested might have possibly happened with him (a change of heart and mind??? Dunno!) I would not preclude his possible redemption……….or any other human being’s, for that matter…………as you so blithely do with 340 million Americans ….including commenter above, iconodule:
/putin-expels-the-families/#comment-876235
Just as that miracle of atonement and redemption is rare (and rarity increases preciousness) in individuals…but IS possible……so it is possible in entire nations……over a slightly longer time frame…..usually.
Cheers!
I believe Jeffrey Sachs was in the late 80s Chicago boys cohort that test/ rolled out Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism in Chile using Pinochet to remove Allende. If my memory serves this is found in Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine where Jeffrey Sachs’ name was mentioned. Now it seems Sachs’ opinion is sought in a number of interviews by CGTN (China Global Television Network).
I am surprised that the role of Harvard in the rape of Russia is news to Eric Zuesse.
This is one of the better=known aspects of the whole debacle.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/2/10/tawdry-shleifer-affair-stokes-faculty-anger/
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b150npp3q49x7w/how-harvard-lost-russia
The use of USAID as an umbrella entity for the Russia swindles ultimately led to the imploding of the Harvard Institute for International Development. Summers should have been disgraced but somehow slithered out with his you know what intact. Unfortunately a number of truly worthwhile long-term development projects whose funding was also overseen by USAID were bombed along with HIID and destroyed as a result of Summers’s and his mentee Schleifer’s (and I believe his wife’s) Russian machinations. A few international projects were able to manage to survive because their project directors had enough contacts and standing in the international donor community to organize eleventh-hour rescue funding from sympathetic international donors.
Schleifer is still at Harvard. Summers looks set to have a role in the Biden administration.
Katherine
That’s a bit hard on Eric. He makes a valid point – that sources would enhance the credibility of the article. I always read Eric’s pieces because he has reference sources.
I find it intriguing that you do not actually have a counterfactual argument about the accuracy of any of the claims in the article. As TheSaker.is has a well educated and informed audience more than capable of fact-checking using the internet, my goal in writing this article was not to spoon feed you or other readers a long list of various approved sources or to teach basic online research skills, but to present the historical facts in a systemic and chronological manner that can help clarify the position of Russia today.
If you do basic due diligence you will find that every claim made in the article is correct.
Yes, everything in that comment by you is true, but I normally don’t trust any writer, I need to be able to confirm or dis-confirm every allegation that’s possibly false. I now have checked enough of your article so that I trust the little of it that I have not checked. But, as a general rule, I link only to sources that cite their sources. Much, Even Most, Trash On The Internet Fails To Link To Its Sources. As a writer, I never stoop low as to do that. You did, even though (as I now know), you could easily have linked to your documentation. Your article is terrific, but it is extremely inconsiderate of its readers, and its lacking links to its sources means that it will never convince any reader at any site whose audience isn’t already sympathetic to Russia in international affairs. Your article, sad to say, is “preaching to the choir.”
On evaluating a datum or data for its truth:
If it makes sense; if it does not contradict any well established facts; if it aligns with other, confusing data in a way that helps sort out the confusion; if it explains/clarifies s/g heretofore unexplanable or confusing;
if it predicts other, hitherto unknown data that can then be found and verified; if the data can be used to yield consistent results…the the data has truth.
Is the data absolutely true?…there is no absolute truth in the real world.
The source or sources does not make it true. The above tests will establish its relative truth. There may be other tests in addition the the above collection.
I realize sources are very important to you as I follow your articles and appreciate them.
Nonetheless I have to agree with TheSaker, that this is not an academic journal and most of us, simple readers that we are, do tend to provide the benefit of doubt for claims made in various articles (even yours sometimes), unless and until someone else took the trouble to dispute them or prove them wrong.
I am glad you took the trouble to do the research and can confirm most of the details in this article. Hopefully you’ll share your own insights with us in due course.
Re you taking on the author, I think that among us, anti-Imperialist little crowd that we are, it’d be better to first approach the author privately rather than air misgivings publicaly. It’s a necessary courtesy, IMHO.
All that said, I was aware from my own sources (private ones) of at least two of the details mentioned in the article. So that kind of provided me with some confidence as to the other claims.
The one thing I wish The Ister has not done in his writing is to leave the impression (not necessarily intended at all) that somehow Putin might have been responsible for that spat of Oligarch demise. No matter what and how those things happened chances are there were many factors involved, with the leading one, as I suggested above, the usual falling out between thieves. Whether or not individuals in the FSB helped along those “fallings out” we’ll never know and just as well.
I don’t think the article can be described as “preaching to the choir” because it has generated a certain amount of discussion.
Ausserdem, calling the commentariat here “the choir” that accepts being “preached to” is a bit rude, kind of like “sheeple.” A number of comments have also reinforced that this is a valuable contribution. Presumably these commenters could see its worth without “fact-checking” every contention made.
The Saker, too, often writes pieces that convey a summing up and essence of numerous observations without chapter and verse.
And, I thought there was a rule in place not to badmoutth the writer, which in this case is The Ister . . .
Katherine
So can we at least expect a list of references in the book?
“Boris Berezovsky also died suspiciously in the UK after having sold his Russian assets and denounced Putin.” – this implies that Putin had Berezovsky killed after he did the above – sold his Russian assets & denounced Putin. The fact is that BB fled to the UK in 2000 & died in 2013. Are you implying that Putin nurses grudges to the point of eliminating those who oppose him wherever they may be? Was BB a threat to Putin’s hold in Russia after he fled to the UK? I think far from it. In fact BB wrote Putin for forgiveness & asked to be allowed to return to Russia in the period after he lost his court case, & financial woes. BB was a spent force. Yes, it seems BB’s death could be murder or it could possibly be suicide. After losing a court case against another Russian oligarch, Abrahamovich, BB was in financial straits. At the time of his death he was living in his ex-wife’s property. I am equally doubtful about your insinuating that Putin is also behind the murders of Litvinenko, Nemtsov, & the female reporter. What would be the essential reasons & benefits to Putin & Russia’s credibilty or neccessity to eliminate them? Why not add Skripal to the list? I think that was sneaky & fishy…
“Kremlin’s gold reserves had inexplicably dropped from the estimated 1000-1500 tons to a mere 240 tons”
And that apparently went to Switzerland, according to the article.
Ukraine’s gold vanished too, after the coup. That gold apparently went to New York.
Switzerland should not be regarded as neutral when it is often used to steal billions from other countries.
Interesting comment about Ukraine’s gold, I was not aware of that. Remember that over 30 tons also went missing after the intervention in Libya.
I’ve wondered specifically which banks based in Switzerland were involved in the laundering of Russian gold. There are a few reasonable suspects particularly one bank known for scams like this…but no evidence as of yet.
I don’t recall the details, but I know I have read more details on how the Ukrainian gold was made to vanish.
I believe it went from a provincial airport not long after the coup,then not very long after our friend Yats left the Country,i don’t know where he is now,probably Israel.
During the takeover of FR Yugoslavia in 2000 by the AZ cabal, the subsequent head of national bank barged into the bank with friends and AK47s, all the gold mysteriously disappearing. It was never revealed who and how.
Жељко из Крајине
It seems like a miracle that Vladimir Putin was able to save Russia. The Country was on the brink of total collapse when he took the reins. Twenty years later he has brought Russia back to a strong and sovereign position, admired not only by his fellow Russians, but countless people in the rest of the world as well.
A couple of videos to show how Putin handles corruption and takes on the the oligarchs – head on;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjrlTMvirVo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co8s0egftsc
To think that any Western leader would have the fortitude to deal with corruption in their own Countries in a similar fashion makes one have to laugh…Come to think of it, many of them are part of the corruption themselves.
In the West criminals like Bill Browder walks the streets and truth tellers like Julian Assange is rotting away in an English prison.
Thanks very much for providing this essay, Saker! Few really understand the genuine circumstances under which Putin took over Russia’s reins–War was being waged on Russia in an attempt to devastate it so it could never again become a force within Eurasia. Missing from the article’s context are events in Chechnya and other terrorist attacks aimed at Russians that were part of that War. The Outlaw US Empire’s parasitic Neoliberal fanatics were drunk over their success in using Yeltsin and other Russians in their Rapine; what we now see is their long, depressing hangover from that drunken giddiness and the weakness of their gibes thanks to their own actions in gutting the fundamental power base of the USA–its Human Capital.
I hope the writer pens a sequel as clearly there’s more to the tale. Having the names makes finding the sources very easy. Please send my thanks to The Ister!
One of the worst results of the uncontrolled looting of Russia in those years. Was the utter chaos over the country. That allowed some regions to think they would be better off outside the RF. Most of that never came to anything. But that among the Chechens lead to war. A horrible savage dirty war that the Russian military wasn’t prepared at all to fight. Many thousands of conscripts were thrown into a meat grinder as cannon fodder. That whole period was as destructive as the Russian Civil War. And collapsed Russia’s economy while costing the Russian population millions of casualties. As an example Russia’s population today is several millions “less” than it was in 1991. And since then Russia has had several millions of immigrants, and the inclusion of Crimea’s population to todays totals. Making the losses even more horrible. Think about that, while most countries were increasing population over those 29 years,Russia’a population went backwards. Bad living conditions, health system collapse, massive alcoholism,drug addition,crime,warfare,immigration overseas,families not having as many children,etc. Cost the Russian people probably over 20 million people if taken together. But as well as those macro tragedies that still linger today. There are the sad micro tragedies of individual Russian people. Here is a video with English subs that tell the sad story of one simple soldier from that 1st Chechen war.Whose life was destroyed by those years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjg7WSd8dyQ&ab_channel=%D0%B2%D0%94%D1%83%D0%B4%D1%8C
I ask myself how much better life in Russia would be today if those traitors named in this article (and others as well) had not been permitted to do their criminal deeds. They were/are responsible for one of history’s most horrible crimes. And those still alive and still profiting from their actions need to pay for those crimes.
Thanks for sharing this video story of the Chechyan War vet.
I would be interested to know what the author’s opinion is about Karen Dawisha’s book concerning Putin.
I have not read it but I just took a look at the Wikipedia page and mostly disagree with what is written there.
It decries for example that today 110 people control 35% of Russia’s wealth. Does she compare that to when a secret society of 7 bankers ran the entire country and controlled Yeltsin as a puppet?
What are your thoughts on her book?
I saw Kapricorn4’s comment and went looking for Dawisha’s book myself and found a whole lot of commentary alongside.
this lengthy commentary by N Baldwin grabbed my interest:
http://natyliesbaldwin.com/2014/12/should-i-waste-my-time-reading-karen-dawishas-putins-kleptocracy/
so far I don’t see that I have to read the book myself, but I will dig into the commentaries and reviews a bit deeper before I decide
I have come to the conclusion that Karen Dawisha’s book was a hit piece against Putin. The tell is the way she uses derogatory adjectives when referring to him and his coterie of oligarchs instead of just sticking to the facts. Not doubt Putin cut some corners when he was deputy mayor of St Petersburg by skimming off profits from state contracts by using offshore tax haven bearer share intermediary corporations. Of course this is frowned upon in the US when private citizens do it, but quite legal for US corporations to accumulate tax free profits offshore.
No one rises to political power in any country without access to funds either directly or indirectly in order to pay off to pay off politicians. Establishment money – the banking cabal – objects when a previously unknown upstart usurps their monopoly.
“Stolen Russian gold reserves have now been restored…”
Otto Von Bismarck knew it:
“Do not expect that once taken advantage of Russia’s weakness, you will receive dividends forever. Russians always come for their money. And when they come – they will not rely on the Jesuit agreement you signed, that supposedly justify your actions. They are not worth the paper it is written. Therefore, with the Russians you should use fair play or no play. “
These gold reserves have been “restored” suggests that Putin got the gold back which had been stolen. My impression is that this was not what happened. Through wise economic management the gold reserves have been rebuilt. An entirely different matter. What happened to the gold that was stolen in the 90s. Surely Putin is trying to get it back?
A very interesting and well presented article.
Thank you for providing a bright view into some very shady places.
Cheers!
Of course, nothing is new, although some things are still under a cloud or shoved under the carpet. E.g. the links with Kosher Nostra and its tentacles in the ‘deep state’, the role of the forgotten Robert Maxwell, the story of the Bank of New York and Russian money laundering (to the tune of $ 7.5 billion) scandal of 1999 settled in 2009 for a mere $14 million by the then Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, Bernie Madoff, Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich (the “Ukrainian” ‘boss of bosses’ of “Russian” Mafyia, described by no less than the FBI as “the most dangerous mobster in the world”). But be sure that FSB knows all that and the ‘deep state’ knows that they know, hence the ‘Magnitsky Acts’.
Isteer,
Thanks for a most enlightening article.
Enlightening us must be what you had in mind when you contributed this, not training us to be academicians, those so verbose, so ‘correct’ and who sometimes get lost in their own words. In these internet days, all I need do is to open another window to check your statements almost as I read. So, thanks, and I am learning.
We do not have all the facts available to Putin in the 1990s, but on balance of probability, we who have been round the block a few times, can safely say that he did well by Russia, and by extension, he bought the rest of the world sufficient time to perceive the utter evil that is the anglo-zio west.
And thanks to The Saker too, for this site, and for your effort to open our eyes. None so blind as those who see ‘faults’ in others, but fail to see the war on humanity.
Thank you! I sincerely appreciate the feedback. It was my hope that this article would prompt people to “fact check” and thus do their own research on what is quite an interesting topic.
A few days after Crimea rejoined Russia, Jacob Rothschild stated”Vladimir Putin has betrayed the New World Order”. An interesting choice of words.
The Russian tragedy of 1991 has always caught my attention and I have wondered how it happened, because the Russians were not able to make a smooth transition to the system to which they fell if there was not, say, a war in military terms that would lead to collapse. . This text clarifies many dark points of that time for me and I begin to understand what happened.
“Stolen Russian gold reserves have now been restored”
Does this mean that Russia’s stolen gold was returned?
Or does it mean that Russia rebuilt its gold reserves by buying gold?
Russia pulled a Rumpelstiltskin and turned oil into gold when it was still worth $80+ a barrel.
Martin Armstrong claims that he was invited to the Russian “party” – but he declined.
Here is his version of the Safra story. Very revealing and interesting. Real life is much better than anything by Ian Fleming.
“Magnitsky Affair & the Murder of Edmond Safra in Monaco”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/magnitsky-affair-the-murder-of-edmond-safra-in-monaco/
Thanks for a great and informative article Ister!
I agree as well that it is likely that Putin did order many assassinations. That was the reality of the situation and one of the strongest cards he held.
The result was the resurrection of Russia and probably one of the lowest body counts in history to achieve such a thing. Now Russia is in a position where it no longer needs to assassinate. An enviable position compared to the other power centres in the world.
In my view Putin is that “rarest gift to humanity” according to Plato and Socrates, a true philosopher king. Your essay relates his battle with the “gang of tyrants” and his ultimate victory.
The Russian people are now amongst the small fraction of the world population that are not debt-slaves.
In the course of years I have read various theories about some of these murders among Russian oligarchs/exPats/etc.
I am somewhat intrigued, but have never read anything too convincing. Of course they may not be related, except by the character and associations of the people involved. Little seems to come out, even in terms of speculation, since the MSM already has a theory about everything.
Awesome article. Thanks for sharing.
However, 2 short comments:
1. There was never a Yelstin: his real name was Jeltzmann, and yes, the mofo belonged to the tribe, which actually was his real nationality. He probably was even an agent for one of the alphabet agencies, and he accomplished his mission, which was to loot all the riches of the Russian state and give them away to the top ziomafia.
2. “Stolen Russian gold reserves have now been restored”…
You mean, really restored or simply replenished. I guess that the gold has simply been stolen (by the kosher nostra) and could never be recovered.
The original stolen gold, known as the “Party’s Gold” was never recovered. The 1,200-1,500 ton reserves that the Soviets had however, has been surpassed due to new purchases authorized by Putin: reserves are currently 2,300 tons
It is absolutely arguable that the Harvard Institute for International Development’s leadership back then should be in the dock at the ICC on charges of genocide.
I have zero tolerance any more for any American being allowed to escape the consequences of their genocidal actions, from Russia to Syria, Libya to Iraq, Afghanistan to Ukraine.
The list of US atrocities is endless.
The US refuses to recognise the ICC.
Perhaps if the choice were the ICC vs nuclear armageddon they would change their minds??
Wipe out Boston with 100% attrition if Harvard refuses to be put on trial in the ICC.
Rape the entire Harvard endowment fund as reparations.
Oh dear, Harvard shown to be an absolutely useless place unfit to educate anyone.
What a pity….
My views are not extreme, they just apply US foreign policy against Harvard.
I should be praised for having learned well under the tutelage of Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld…
The so-called International Criminal Court (ICC) was set up the leaders of the gangsters themselves. It is just another AngloZionist Deep State outfit. I confess that I was also deceived until recently.
<>
“Lord Malloch Brown Revealed: The British Hand Behind the Coup Shows Its Scales Again”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/11/17/lord-malloch-brown-revealed-the-british-hand-behind-coup-shows-its-scales-again/
Harvard is (primarily) in Cambridge, not Boston!
But not everyone in Cambridge deserves to be pulverized more than they have been already by the presence of an expansionist Harvard.
Katherine
Thank you, Ister, for a very informative article! If I may add to the source material, Naomi Klein wrote an excellent book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” in 2008. In it, she had a large section on the bringing-down and looting of the USSR. A few pertinent quotes:
p.229
“But Russia wasn’t a repeat of Chile — it was Chile in reverse order: Pinochet staged a coup, dissolved the institutions of democracy and then imposed shock therapy; Yeltsin imposed shock therapy in a democracy, then could defend it only by dissolving democracy and staging a coup. Both scenarios earned enthusiastic support from the West.”
p.230
“Following the coup, Russia was under unchecked dictatorial rule: its elected bodies were dissolved, the Constitutional Court was suspended, as was the constitution; tanks patrolled the streets, a curfew was in effect, and the press faced pervasive censorship, though civil liberties were soon restored. So what did the Chicago Boys and their Western advisers do at this critical moment: …liberated from the meddling of democracy, they went on a law-making binge.”
“With the country reeling from the attack, Yeltsin’s own Chicago Boys rammed through the most contentious measures in their program: huge budget cuts, the removal of price controls on basic food items, including bread, and even more and faster privatizations — the standard policies that cause so much instant misery that they seem to require a police state to stave off rebellion.”
p.231
“In theory, all this wheeling and dealing was supposed to create the economic boom that would lift Russia out of desperation; in practice, the Communist state was simply replaced with a corporatist one: the beneficiaries of the boom were confined to a small club of Russians, many of them former Communist Party apparatchiks, and a handful of Western mutual fund managers who made dizzying returns investing in newly privatized Russian companies. A clique of nouveaux billionaires, many of whom were to become part of the group universally known as ‘the oligarchs’ for their imperial levels of wealth and power, teamed up with Yeltsin’s Chicago Boys and stripped the country of nearly everything of value, moving the enormous profits offshore at a rate of $2 billion a month.”
p.233
“The scandal wasn’t just that Russia’s public riches were auctioned off for a fraction of their worth — it was also that, in true corporatist style, they were purchased with public money. As the Moscow Times journalists Matt Bivens and Joitas Bernstein put it, ‘a few hand-picked men took over Russia’s state-developed oil fields for free, as part of a giant shell game in which one arm of government paid another arm.’ In a bold act of cooperation between the politicians selling the public companies and the businessmen buying them, several of Yeltsin’s ministers transferred large sums of public money, which should have gone into the national bank or treasury, into private banks that had been hastily incorporated by oligarchs. (The two major oligarch-connected banks were Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Bank Menatep and Vladimir Potanin’s Uneximbank.) The state then contracted with the same banks to run the privatization auctions for the oil fields and mines. The banks ran the auctions, but they also bid in them — and sure enough, the oligarch-owned banks decided to make themselves the proud new owners of the previously public assets. The money that they put up to buy the shares in these public companies was likely the same public money that Yeltsin’s ministers had deposited with them earlier. In other words, the Russian people fronted the money for the looting of their own country.”
—
Many more quotes at my review of Ms Klein’s book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1M93P4YXMWZT6
While there’s little new here, this article gives us a breezy cook’s tour of the looting of Russia.
It disappoints, however because the one thing I’ve been unable to find is how Putin came to power, how he managed to hold on to it and how he was able to wield it with such astonishing speed, ruthlessness and efficiency while maintaining an equally astonishingly presidential decorum. We’ve all heard the popular story of him being foisted on the hapless Yeltsin in a lightning succession of ever higher positions culminating in Yeltsin’s resignation in less than a year after being appointed Director of the FSB, but there’s got to be a lot more to it than that.
Putin, I’m sure, was not a “lone gunman” who arose from obscurity by the sheer power of will, or even sheer luck. Late ’90s Russia was a very rough neighbourhood, with the world’s roughest operators. He must have had powerful people behind him, and they must have had a plan to which they were committed on a do-or-die basis. In addition, they must have the muscle it would take to outmuscle the oligarch/mafia’s muscle.
Who were they? How long had they been planning, and to what end, exactly? How did they force, cajole, convince the utterly corrupt nomenklatura and apparatchiks across an enormous country to do their bidding and ignore the hand that had been feeding them? How did they suppress the Mafias that had been operating even during Soviet times?
How exactly he expelled the families is a story that I’m sure would be fascinating.
This story is worthy of the Medici’s, though they preferred poison. I agree that a big question is how a KGB security analyst colonel in E. Germany ascended to the position of president of Russia so quickly. He had help but from whom? Toward what agenda?
During the Roman empire in order for a general to overthrow the current emperor and set himself up, he needed the absolute support of the army. I assume Putin has that support plus the absolute support of the FSB. But why didn’t he just become another Yeltsin? Presidents are plug-and-play accessories to power. Real power changes leadership like dirty boxers, so how was he able to gain power with an agenda so foreign to the firmly established elite and avoid assassination himself?
This sounds like something out of Dostoevsky.
There is obviously other ‘elite’ who pushed Putin to the front and sustains him. Russia certainly has its ‘deep state’. The difference is that it is a patriotic one. People can’t conceive anymore that patriotism still exists and that ‘elites’ do not necessarily mean banksters, fraudsters, mafioso ‘oligarchs’. They cannot understand that Russians are still a proud people. They cannot believe that Russia is under the Protection of the Mother of God.
Apart from a gap of some months, it’s not hard to see how Putin “rose” from being an ex-KGB Lt. Colonel, a deputy Major of a major provincial city, to be President.
He was out of work. The Major for whom he worked, Sobchek, had lost the election to very very dirty electioneering. Putin left, spurning the successful new Mayer’s job offer with the statement that it was better to be hung for loyalty than shot as a traitor!! He was out of work for months – and it’s this period which I suspect holds the key. Nothing is said in his autobiography, or anywhere else, but Putin is not now or then a person to sit on the sidelines twiddling his thumbs. The mess Russia was in was very plain – and as an ex- KGB with links, he must have known more than most of what was going on.
He has talked of how he just used an established St. Petersberg network to finally get landed a job in the Presidential Dept, in Moscow, looking after legal assets abroad. But he was – as he is now – very very good at what he does. He quickly went from heading that dept to another, then to head of FSB – which he didn’t want, and hated – to Chairman of the Security Council as Head of FSB when he met Yeltsin. They didn’t get on especially socially, he said “he used to hold tennis parties – and I dont play tennis” !!!
But Yeltsin was going more and more alcohol affected, firing one after the other of the Prime Minsters. Finally Putin caught his eye, and he made him PM. Putin took on the Chechnya disaster and sorted that out “tout suite”.
From here he was very much in Yeltsin’s sight, and then it was that Yeltsin wanted him to run for President.
There is much more. I suspect that those months out of work in St. P’s weren’t passive. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was putting together a team of people he could trust, especially ex-KGB, because everyone had forgotten about them – and maybe was planning a classic subversive move:- “Infiltrate, then liquidate”.
We have no proof: these are merely suppositions of mine own. But they would have been no international intrigue, no Jewish Bankers, nor NWO types.
Just a passionate patriot, with a good mind, great training, and huge determination.
Thanks Pamela, but we knew most of that already and your “suppositions” are entirely plausible. It’s the holes remaining in the story that I’d be interested in.
The issue is that, having been dissipated under Yeltsin, the de facto powers of the Presidency didn’t amount to much. The Oligarchs had pretty much taken over the govt and the bureaucracy across the country, doubtless including much of the KGB.
I too believe he either put together, or was approached by “a team of people he could trust”, especially ex-KGB”. I lean heavily to the latter, that he was approached by people who had put together a network of networks across the country ready to move as soon as they gained the Presidency.
My supposition was that they lacked a “sleeper” they could place, a competent, disciplined patriot who commanded respect but whose personal style wouldn’t raise alarms as he moved through the ranks of the Presidential hierarchy. They needed someone who appeared smaller, rather than larger than life.
Putin was perfect for the role and his rise to the Presidency stunned everyone. Everyone, domestically and internationally assumed he’d be a pushover, until they realized just who he was and (I believe) the intents and capabilities of the faction he represented. Internationally, the initial assessments that “the Oligarchs will eat him alive” quickly gave way to “He’s Hitler II”.
Networks of networks don’t come together “in a few months”. It takes years and it takes an extraordinarily well thought out plan to execute wholesale changes in a disciplined and effective way across as vast and lawless country like ’90s’ Russia.
Who was at the centre of that network of networks, how they built it it and and how they executed over the initial 2-3 yr period after gaining control of the Presidency is the story I’d love to hear.
I agree. Putin represents somebody. Somebody with power. There is an old expression; Fight fire with fire. You can do good things with fire and you can do bad things with fire. But you can’t do anything without it.
Funny thing about Russian oligarchs. Some of them are still patriots, of sorts. Oligarch Viktor Vekselberg bought out Forbes collection of Faberge eggs, name your price, bought a palace in St. Petersburg, and put them on display for the public. That reminds me of all the charitable works people like Carnegie and Rockefeller did. I think they did their good works for show rather than true altruism, but at least some Russian oligarchs are truly interested in the public good.
Solzhenitsyn’s ‘line between good and evil’ at work.
“My supposition was that they lacked a “sleeper” they could place, a competent, disciplined patriot who commanded respect but whose personal style wouldn’t raise alarms as he moved through the ranks of the Presidential hierarchy. ”
Indeed, VVP was considered basically a faceless nobody, some kind of pathetic lower-level bureaucrat who suddenly found himself at head of the Power Table instead of nibbling crumbs under it . . . when Yeltzin turned Russia over to him.
I remember it well–the stories in the US media. Who is this odd little fellow??? This nobody?
The name Putin was almost a joke.
And then, slowly . . . the hero reveals himself . . . but never with bombast.
It’s a good enough tale for the Greeks, or the Brothers Grimm, or a an epic by Pushkin. Or an opera. Putin as Prince Tamar in Turandot.
Actually, as Putin revealed himself an effective leader, the more western media tried to ridicule him by showing him riding a bear or some such, presented in such a way as to imply that Putin was a childish macho man. But actually it soon became apparent that this little twerp Putin was a disciplined athlete with an ethic of personal modesty.
And, in addition, links provided at this blog showed those who were interested a Putin who possessed an impressive command, in press conferences and TV interviews, etc. of facts and figures regarding all aspects of the new Russia (and, presumably, the old . . .) who could think, on his feet, in coherent topic sentences and paragraphs.
The world is lucky that Putin appeared on the scene when he did. Nothing would have been far better for the USA and for everyone than if Trump had succeeded in forming some kind of productive relationship with VVP.
Katherine
Katherine
I am getting more than a little tired of Russian “nationalists” claiming that the USSR could not have been saved and that the collapse was “inevitable” and/or “beneficial”. Not only was it not inevitable, it was not a collapse, it was deliberate murder. As in any criminal investigation, the first question is, “Cui bono?” Who benefits? Well, who benefited from the murder of the USSR? The answer is obvious.
Also, even if one believes (as I emphatically do not) that Putin was a “saviour” of Russia, in 1991 Putin was an obscure officer in the KGB. Nobody short of clairvoyance would have been able to predict that he would ever get into power (or, more precisely, be put there by Yeltsin in return for a blanket immunity for the latter’s crimes in office). In fact Russia was supposed to collapse and disintegrate entirely, and it’s rather surprising that it did not. As such, the intent of the murderers of the USSR was not just personal enrichment at the expense of the Soviet Union. It was personal enrichment at the cost of the total destruction of Russia.
And if Putin eliminated the oligarchs, he only did those that meddled in politics and so were a threat to him. The others, including Yeltsin, were left strictly alone.
isn’t there a kind of puzzle in there?
“if it was the murder of a State, then a whole lot of Russians sold out and participated in the set up of the destruction of the Soviet Union. who were, and are those Russians, given many of them are surely still alive?
there were all the well known faces up front at the time including Gorbachev. was there like an all powerful Russian elite deep state involved also?
who planed and effected, actually carried out the murder of the Soviet Union, obviously with the collusion of Russians of the Soviet elites: And at the same time set up what was to be the actual destruction of the Russian nation by your claim?”
Saviour talk is inaccurate, at best religious propaganda…nothing happens in a vacuum. yet by what you describe or claim Russia should be no Russian Federation standing as we speak. Russia should have been destroyed as the result of the murder of the Soviets state and the Russian nation. It did not happen…why?
Obviously you have answers. I have none. I would love to read your take on these questions that flow from your comment
I think why “Russia” didn’t collapse has several parts. But one main one is that in Russia the population was 83% ethnic Russian .Most of the other ethnic groups were in small numbers,many Russianized. Among the larger non-Russian groups the largest were/are the Volga Tatars. And they were known in Soviet times as very loyal to Russians. After the breakup there was some talk of them trying to secede. But in their Republic over half or almost half the population there is ethnic Russian,and they are landlocked inside Russia. Only Chechnya hated Russia so much as to try it.And they were in a border region massed together,not spread out. And while before the Soviet breakup Chechnya had a good sized ethnic Russian population (29%-40%). After,the Chechens started to cleanse the non-Chechens,especially Russians,from their Republic.
Another would be that Russians as an ethnic people saw what was happening to them in the ex-Soviet States,purges,driving them out,loss of rights,over 5 million of them fleeing to the RF. And thought ,we aren’t losing this too.Another was that nationalist leaders worked together to save the RF. Which putting those together was probably the main reasons Russia did not split up
. To me the main crime of the Soviet breakup was that the Slavic “Rus” states didn’t stay in union ,with Moldova,and the northern mostly Russian area of Kazakhstan. Russia really lost little with those other states seceding. The Balts were never loyal, the Central Asian states were a drain on the treasury. And the Caucasus 3 Republics were at each others throats constantly,,crime ridden, and except for the Azerbaijani oil fields,a drain on the treasury.
Had those stayed together we would see none of the problems we see today. The West wouldn’t be able to meddle in those areas.And Russia’s strength and population would be much increased. We would have seen no maidan revolt in Kiev,no attempted color revolution in Belarus.And when Putin chopped the oligarchs down to size,it would have included the Ukrainian ones as well.The strengths that made Ukraine a industrial powerhouse in the Soviet days would have been available in a united “Russia”.
To add a twist to this:
“ the Volga Tatars. And they were known in Soviet times as very loyal to Russians. After the breakup there was some talk of them trying to secede.”
One of the figures trying to secede was none other than Russian ex-military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov, who first announced the existence of Novichok back in the early 90’s in a Russian newspaper. https://natsouth.livejournal.com/5518.html
“And if Putin eliminated the oligarchs, he only did those that meddled in politics and so were a threat to him. The others, including Yeltsin, were left strictly alone.”
Purkayastha does not know if the content is these 2 sentences is is true or false. he has expressed an opinion there, a conclusion based on what we all see but that can interpreted in other ways as well
what or where is Putin ideologically?
Putin appears to be capitalist and nationalist, not socialist, Marxist or anything of that sort. as a capitalist he would not be concerned with nor interfere with the wealth of others legitimately earned, but as a nationalist he would do as he has done with those whom the commentator claims threatened Putin.
But why would dispossession and criminal prosecution of illegal activity be a response to a threat to Putin himself, that he responded to by attacking those who were reduced, jailed etc., and not a threat to the Russian nation itself that he had to respond to?
then again do we know what the actual relationship is between Putin and the oligarchs he reputedly has left alone…more than indication of Putin’s own criminal intent and action as president?
what has Vlad Putin done relative to Russia but restored Russian gold and general wealth stolen from the nation during the period immediately prior to his rise to power, by dispossessing such as those who were among the nationalist thieves whom Purkayastha claims were a threat to Putin…which is why he dispossessed them. Purkayastha leaves the nationalist in the situation aspect begging.
and exactly how were those dispossessed were a threat or danger to Putin?
Indeed Putin seemed afraid of nothing at all for he is reputed to have carried out some assassinations of his very own. I imagined the dispossessed oligarchs had the money and surely the skill and connections to attempt to assassinate Putin themselves
I do not appreciate the way Purkayastha talks. He creates mysteries rather than says what he knows which may verify the claims he makes, clarify his implications and so on. I find that way of talking in the circumstances of the Vineyard to be unhelpful.
if Putin is not a savior then why not…what is he? if Putin left oligarchs alone whom he should have prosecuted who are they and why did he not prosecute them?
come on! even if Purkayastha does not exactly know, he can speculate las he did with his last 2 sentences relative to Yeltsin etc
“what or where is Putin ideologically?”
President Putin has told us that himself. He is a pragmatist.
He is a State Capitalist practically, because Capitalism is NOT a political system as America tries to pretend, it’s an economic one, and Putin holds a Ph.D. in economics. One of his examiners, said of his thesis defence “its the best defence of thesis I’ve heard; by a man who really truly understands the market”.
If Capitalism works to generate income for Russia and jobs and a good life for Russians, then that is what Putin is “for”. The Government is the major Capitalist, owning huge works in the name of the people, in order to generate funds to keep Russia safe and growing.
As Oleg Deripaska said “Putin is creating a Russia which is Capitalism, with no Capitalists. ”
Ideologically, he is a patriot,with a huge love of Russia, with everything which that means, a dedication and compassion to making life as happy and good for Russians as he can. And a typically Russian, “softly softly” method; he is persistent, he keeps softly coming back again and again, until he gets where he wants to be. He is a Libra – he seeks for balance and sees that the other person and nation have their own point of view, and that must be taken into account.
I would suggest that the old, tried and worn out labels from the Western Empire dont fit him at all. He’s making his own label, for himself.
And this famous video featuring the same Deripaska shows that in Putin’s mind capital is not king. Rather it is national interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48Kk7kobMQY
It is well understood that in US business, being tall is definitely an asset. Height commands respect, and is an advantage in bullying. It is delightful to see a tall bully put in his place by a smaller, smarter, and quicker man.
This is a great piece. Good on you.
Perhaps one of the best and most informative essays to appear here apart from the Saker Sitreps which is why I come here. Anyone with slightest hint of compassion in their heart cannot but rejoice at the liquidation of these monsters may we look forward to similar events in the West and then the human race can heave a huge sigh of relief. We cannot leave it forever to the Russians. We are already in their debt for their huge sacrifices in defeating Hitler and on two occasions saving us from a nuclear annihilation. See the the submarine captain during the Cuba Missile crisis and the film The Man Who Saved the World.
Interesting read. I was aware of many (not all) the elements but not how they fit together.
Interestingly the Rothschilds also manage Petro Poroshenko’s trust. What a coincidence, lol
“(Reuters) – The wealth management arm of Rothschild Group set up a trust it handles for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in line with international standards for the treatment of assets of politicians in office, the company said on Thursday.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN0X411I
Does anyone have any ideas on how such a minor offical has the means and money to pull this off ? A ” minor ” government official just happens to start a massive oil company ? What am I missing ?
” An early beneficiary of this arrangement was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who had started his career as a minor Soviet official and whose Yukos oil conglomerate was tied to FIMACO “
Thank you, Ister. Thank you, Saker.
Excellent article.
But there is a minor point that doesn’t seem to add up. Villa Leopolda is in Villefranche-sur-Mer, France sitting high above the Cap-Ferrat peninsula approximately 6 km outside the borders of Monaco.
Wouldn’t it be the French authorities to offer the deal for a murder scapegoat? How would Monégasque authorities have anything to do it?
Or am I just missing something obvious here?
It is cristal clear that the whole western political system is nothing but the cover up of the biggest criminal scheme in history. Nothing to do with democracy,freedom or the market. Quite the opposite. A bloody ripping monster led by psychos.
Alex Krainer wrote a book in 2017: amazon banned the book because it was a take down of the loathsome browder’s book: Red notice.
/how-my-book-unmasking-bill-browder-was-censored-by-amazon-by-alex-krainer/
I note that Saker did a review –
Here is the review. Mod:
/how-my-book-unmasking-bill-browder-was-censored-by-amazon-by-alex-krainer/
As noted in the linked article, the book is useful in getting info on the Yeltzin era and the obscene and criminal programs: shock therapy and the voucher program. These crimes committed by the Harvard boyz, led by despicable larry summers, should never be forgotten as I’m sure the Russians will never forget. Estimates of deaths range as high as 20 million from disease, poverty, etc as result of these programs.
BTW, summers has figured prominently in speculation that he will have a key role in the proposed biden admin (if it happens).
Sorry, link takes me back to article, not saker’s review.
Yes, I have the book.
The title could have been better.
It is decidedly an amateur affair, from a book production p.o.v. (very poor type designe, badly needs editing), which is a shame because it contains a lot of valuable info. I guess Krainer did it himself.
Looks like there is a new edition with a new title. Perhaps Krainer got some additional professional assistance on the new edition.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Grand_Deception.html?id=G7hmuQEACAAJ
Definitely worth a read.
Katherine
Putin did right thing and no wonder that sotonists hate him and Russia with passion.
But now it is not enough any.more. RF Government MUST RISE LIFE STANDARD and they have limited time.
I talk to young russian people, I watch blogs and what young Russians say and think.
They compare Russia with West and many of them are not pleased.
Very often I notice that they have completely wrong picture about life in West. It is ridiculous sometimes but fascination with life in West is still very strong in Russia
Young people are very easy for Western manipulations and young people are engine of Color Revolutions.
I can see that Mishustin Government is moving in right direction but they have to move forward quickly. They do not have too much time.
And one more thing – this text above is excellent and give many details that many people did not know.
And from this text, one thing is obvious – Russia MUST NOT TRUST THE WEST.
Never ever trust the West, West wants to destroy Russia and while it is ruled by Anglo-Zionist gang, they will never stop trying.
I agree completely! Do not trust anything or anyone from the West or any Western govt-agreements with them are not worth the paper they are written on.
I have some personal experience with that Yeltzin era, lived and worked in Moscow from 1995 to late 1998 until the ruble and the economy blew up. As a result, I relocated to almaty, Kaz with the same international acct firm.
I have no direct personal information of what transpired during that time other than my impressions as an observer, what I read in Moscow Time, and the matt tiabbi/mark ames tabloid Exile, which actually carried some decent news. My Russian was ok but got better via tutoring and watching Russian News TV.
I had young Russian professionals working for me as staff and my impression was they were the quickest and most intelligent of any professional staff anywhere in my experience. I was proud to know them and to consider them my professional associates.
What infuriates me still to present day was the shock therapy programs which caused enormous suffering amongst the Russian people. Pensions were reduced down to $30 per month, for example. Average salaries were bare subsistence level. My language tutor indicated that in previous years, she had trouble feeding her family because of either no money or no food products to buy.
Gaidar and Chubais at the instigation of the Harvard crime family (listed above in article) basically took down the economy to bare subsistence levels. Then they came up with the voucher program whereby the Russian oligarchs and western criminals, e.g. browder, were able to loot and strip Russian industry for pennies on the dollar.
The Western manipulators swung into action in 1956 to get drunken Yeltzin re-elected as the battle cry (read propaganda) was to prevent the communists from regaining control. Millions were spent to fly Yeltzin around electioneering,, e.g dancing drunkenly with young women on stage, etc, etc. And of course, he won and communist party chief zhuganov did not know how it could have happened.
The group around Yeltzin seemed to try to keep him drunk and pliable: daughter Tanya, oligarch goon Berezovskiy, and yeltzin’s bodyguard, whose name escapes me.
I was unaware how Putin came into the picture big time as I was in Almaty but the Russians I worked with were very supportive of his initial moves as they were totally embarrassed by Yeltzin and by the ruin of Russia.
And Larry Summers was instrumental in this manipulation, looting, and control. Now we may have him coming back with the biden admin, along with anti-russian extremists such as the kagan family, robert, nuland, susan rice, samantha power, Flournoy, and the other happy zionist extremists.
Obviously, Putin is a hell of lot smarter than all of them and I’m sure he is well aware of the insidious dangers they pose; he needs to keep an eye on the Western infiltrators who ever present and active, such as : Kudrin, Chubois, et al
I believe you meant 1996.
I was working in Moscow, btw.
Absolutely correct, 1996.
Apologies.
And did I hear that Lawrence Summers is thought to be offered a cabinet post in an upcoming Biden administration? Too bad the Empires jackals are running out of countries to loot! But who knows what these people are planning ?
The moral of the story is oligarch power can be stripped away with apparent ease when a government has the motivation to do so. It will naturally be played differently in the USA and their oligarchs . Everything in this world has an expiration date .
Vladimir Putin Is The Leader Of the Moral World
By Paul Craig Roberts – October 27, 2014
Vladimir Putin’s remarks at the 11th meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club are worth more than a link in my latest column. These are the remarks of a humanitarian political leader, the like of which the world has not seen in my lifetime. Compare Putin to the corrupt war criminal in the White House or to his puppets in office in Germany, UK, France, Japan, Canada, Australia, and you will see the difference between a criminal clique and a leader striving for a humane and livable world in which the interests of all peoples are respected.
In a sane Western society, Putin’s statements would have been reproduced in full and discussions organized with remarks from experts such as Stephen F. Cohen. Choruses of approval would have been heard on television and read in the print media. But, of course, nothing like this is possible in a country whose rulers claim that it is the “exceptional” and “indispensable” country with an extra-legal right to hegemony over the world. As far as Washington and its prostitute media, named “presstitutes” by the trends specialist Gerald Celente, are concerned, no country counts except Washington. “You are with us or against us,” which means “you are our vassals or our enemies.” This means that Washington has declared Russia, China, India, Brazil and other parts of South America, Iran, and South Africa to be enemies.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/10/paul-craig-roberts/why-is-putin-hated/
Why The Elites Hate Putin
On Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews (Part III)
by Justin Raimondo Posted onJune 30, 2017
As the “Russia-gate” farce continues to dominate the American “news” media, and President Trump’s foreign policy veers off in a direction many of his supporters find baffling, one wonders: what the heck happened? I thought Trump was supposed to be “Putin’s puppet,” as Hillary Clinton and her journalistic camarilla would have it. The Russian president, in his extended interview with filmmaker Oliver Stone, has an explanation:
“Stone: Donald Trump won. This is your fourth president, am I right? Clinton, Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama, and now your fourth one.
“Putin: Yes, that’s true.
“Stone: What changes?
“Putin: Well, almost nothing.”
Stone is surprised by this answer, and Putin elaborates:
“Well, life makes some changes for you. But on the whole, everywhere, especially in the United States, the bureaucracy is very strong. And bureaucracy is the one that rules the world.”
This is a reiteration of something the Russian president said earlier in the context of Stone’s questions about the US election. Stone asks what he thinks of the various candidates: Trump’s name doesn’t come up, but Stone does ask about Bernie Sanders. Putin replies:
“It’s not up to us to say. It’s not whether we are going to like it or not. All I can say is as follows … the force of the United States bureaucracy is very great. It’s immense. And there are many facts not visible about the candidates until they become president. And the moment one gets to the real work, he or she feels the burden.”
https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/06/29/elites-hate-putin/
USSR ended very abruptly and many people of the day (Soviet and westerners) did not expect it to happen. Who would?
As of late 1980s, USSR was the 2nd largest global economy, a military powerhouse in equal parity to USA, a superpower with numerous allied states in Eastern Europe , Asia and Africa.
People had stability, secure jobs, guaranteed housing, free public healthcare, education and social security. All of these achievements are now lost or downgraded to a great extent. Of course there was also censorship, travel restriction, police state rules and party propaganda etc (but some or many of these negatives exist in the West too but without the benefits of welfare and social security !)
But Soviet Union dissolution – disintegration did not happen by an economic crisis or a “revolution” (as western propagandists like to promote), it was a staged dissolution designed and implemented from the top by party and bureaucracy elites. There was also involvement of foreign governments and secret services.
All this tragedy was caused by the desire of the Soviet elites to plunder state and national assets of the Soviet Union as well as the desire of western powers to plunder Soviet assets and eliminate USSR as a superpower. USSR was a competitor with alternate ideology and politics and Soviet economic doctrine eliminated western capitalists from exploiting Soviet Union
But Soviet Union and eastern bloc could still exist today, with minimal or major reforms.
China followed a state capitalist model but retained communist party control and institutions and became a global economic power (albeit with massive western investment and cooperation)
All other “communist party” Soviet influenced states also survived. Countries like Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos who had quite undeveloped economies. All these countries were far poorer than USSR and suffered under various sanctions but still managed to function as communist party ruled states as of 2020..
The USSR dissolution caused immense hardship to millions of people, caused geopolitical catastrophes (turning the balance in favour of globalization and a western neoliberal capitalist world order)
A fascinating read, the end of this story has yet to play out.
In recent news, Russia “in the spirit of reciprocity” will apply sanctions to match the “Magnitsky Rule” imposed by the west.
https://www.rt.com/russia/494043-russia-impose-sanctions-uk-magnitsky-list/
Whilst the 25 sanctionees and their penalties are not made public, I think it reasonable to assume all the surviving criminals mentioned in the article & commentary would be included – that is, Jacob Rothschild. A declaration of war.
The other names, Soros etc (who is already sanctioned) are merely tools of this dynasty.
Great article. Great moves by Putin.
Putin and his team have shown the strength the Stalin had as he cares about the Russian people and will not let foreign agent 5th columnists loot the country.
This sort of approach needs to be taken in the US and Europe – in US not by state control but forcing the breakup of Microsoft, Amazon, Google etc…. to small shareholders. It also needs to be done in most other countries.
Those in UK & EU who have funded this orgy of looting not only in Russia but Eastern Europe and around the globe (Sth America, Africa, Asia) we have to ask havent they already got enough over the centuries ? And is it time they were stopped dead in their tracks and forced to repatriated much of their ill gotten gains. Is suspect the current COV-19 scam will be the trigger for that and their time is up.
WOW! I’m always impressed with Vladimir Putin ~ i’d give a lot to sit down and have drinks with him.
Anyways this is revealing ! auspicious to be sure.
I hope it gets traction in the US of A cuz ya knoe all they say is Russia bad US gud. The means of being able to take down the miscreants on a universal level is no small wonder. And i’m thankful.
I’m not sure why he wants impunity after leaving ofc? I imagine he’s fearful of the dreaded oligarchs slithering back in and making life difficult for him…?
I’m also glad to announce in our city of Billings, Montana…Flyover Country a little Russian cafe has opened, Alissa’s Russian House ~ and its soooo kewl, replete with scale models of the Kremlin ‘n St B’s floor to celling! Good location too. Open bout 4 weeks, the BEST DESSERTS, for now, an later a Russian menu…? Georgian food would be perfect. Went out to Georgian restaurants a couple times in St Petersburg.
I love president VLADIMIROVICH PUTIN He is the most awesome president this world has ever seen
I will vote for him for 1000 years!