Glasnost and Perestroika
During an interview in 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev is quoted as saying “I detest lies” (1.). It was this yearning for the truth that lead him to introduce the policy of glasnost literally openness in English. The liberal press exploited this leeway and continuously challenged its boundaries. Glasnost. Hardliners tried to retain their grip on people’s minds by frequent attacks on the radicals in the conservative press. Prada the flagship Communist Party newspaper thundered “that extremists and nationalists were hiding their true face behind a mask of commitment to perestroika (2.).
Today, Russia is full of contradictions and this is precisely what Vladimir Putin demands.
There is very little change from the previous Soviet Union to Russia today. The former USSR suffered financially and brought down the Kremlin while the remake of Russia is full of starts and stops. World leaders know very well that Russia today operates with the old KGB model while straddling two governing standards, that of communism and that of controlled capitalism.
This is where the Russian mafia, collusion by oligarchs and the Kremlin as well as countries that are forced to interact with Russia get caught up in the web of thuggish and deadly scandals including Europe, the Baltics and the West.
Spending time with those pesky Wikileaks cables tells us some proven histories. In one cable from January 2010, Spanish prosecutor Jose “Pepe” Grinda Gonzales claimed that in Russia, Belarus and Chechnya “one cannot differentiate between the activities of the Government and OC (organised crime) groups”.
On the heels of the Soviet loyalists shooting a commercial aircraft out of the sky killing all on board over the Russian/Ukrainian borders, Putin still refuses to come clean with any explanation as evidence mounts his people under his orders are guilty. This leads to foreign state leaders seeking tangible consequences for this action against Russia and Putin. To date, many Russian oligarchs have fled the country due to selective prosecution and prison by the Kremlin and those that have remained in Russia are pressing the panic button for what sanctions are still to come as a result of the downed aircraft.
Countries are boxed in by having to do business with Russia for obvious reasons that included existing agreements like in the case of France already in the pipeline and most especially for oil and gas energy resources but most of all will Putin continue his threatening annexing of other Baltic States?
The British government set up a judicial inquiry Tuesday into the strange death eight years ago of former KGB officer and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who authorities believe was slipped a lethal dose of radioactive polonium in his tea at a London hotel, possibly at the behest of the Kremlin.
Litvinenko was not the only person in the old KGB who was publically blowing the whistle but he was the most aggressive. If anyone within the Kremlin, any businessman, any dissenter challenges Putin, the thug personality comes out and the result is prison or even deadlier.
Then there is the case of money laundering and how Putin controls the oligarchs, his loyalists and his adversaries. Yet, Putin himself is well known among elitist circles are being a money-launderer himself and all global leaders just look the other way. Very little is written about Putin’s own secret money-laundering schemes for obvious reasons. So one only need to investigate SPAG. There is even a documentary on how Putin was up to his chin in money laundering where the road to Germany began in Columbia.
‘PUTIN, it turns out, may be a less than perfect pitchman for his anticorruption campaign. New revelations are focusing attention on a murky episode from his past in St. Petersburg, a city known to many Russians as the country’s “criminal capital.” The indictment of a onetime business associate in Western Europe on charges of money laundering and fraud is raising serious questions about Putin’s former role in the affairs of a mysterious Russo-German property-development firm. The company, called the St. Petersburg Real Estate Holding Company (known by its German acronym, SPAG), has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing, but U.S. and European intelligence officials suspect it is linked to the laundering operations of Russian mobsters and Colombian drug dealers. Until he was inaugurated as president, Putin was on SPAG’s advisory board and, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials as well as a SPAG director, he spent more time on its affairs than the Kremlin will now admit. Since then Putin has also maintained a close relationship with the onetime head of SPAG’s Russian operations, Vladimir Smirnov.’
In summary, the Russian mafia, the thug network is world-wide by design and even includes our Southern border and it even goes into Chicago, at least.
More than 200 years ago, the renowned Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin summed up the situation in his country in two words: “They steal.”
They still do, and the news in Russia lately has been dominated by one high-profile corruption scandal after another. Allegations of wrongdoing have reached high into the defense and agriculture ministries and the Russian space program, among other institutions. Nearly nine in 10 Russians say corruption is the nation’s biggest problem.
All the theft, corruption, lies ad fraud has a leader that approves, Vladimir Putin. Glasnost and Perestroika be damned.
