RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-most-dangerous-speech-of-the-post-cold-war-era/

This address should make one question Putin’s sanity.

The Russian government has formally recognized Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, two sections of Ukraine that have been subjected to years of fighting between Russian- and Ukrainian-backed militias. This recognition amounts to the Russian government giving itself permission to intervene to protect these breakaway nations in an undisguised way.

But just as distressing was the speech Vladimir Putin gave to announce it to the world. Earlier today I wrote a piece that in one line offhandedly suggested that Putin was a rational actor. I repent of having written it. If that ranting, grandiose, aggrieved wreck of a speech was delivered sincerely, then Putin has addled himself with his own propaganda, is now unpredictable, and will likely drive his nation and others to a disaster. I grant that there may be insincerity in it as well. But reports of his meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron suggest that Macron was subjected to six hours of this same ranting and could never bring Putin down to what Europeans see as the brass tacks: the Minsk agreements, the withdrawal of Russian irregulars, and a series of next steps, including diplomatic talks on the long-term security arrangements of Europe.

His speech featured the Russian litany of post–Cold War grievances, namely the broken promise not to expand NATO. “They try to convince us over and over again that NATO is a peace-loving and purely defensive alliance, saying that there are no threats to Russia. Again they propose that we take them at their word. But we know the real value of such words,” he said. More disconcerting, he suggested that the expansion of NATO was meant to “serve as a forward springboard for the strike.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18247/putin-crackdowns

The [recently closed] Memorial Human Rights Centre focused on documenting current abuses, including keeping track of political prisoners. “Memorial creates a false image of the Soviet Union as a terrorist state,” state prosecutor Alexei Zhafyarov said. “It makes us repent for the Soviet past, instead of remembering glorious history.” The court, in its decision, cited the need to protect “the right of citizens to access reliable information” and prevent the “creation of a false image of the USSR.”

Also in late December, a Russian court ordered the prison sentence of historian Yuri Dmitriev extended to 15 years. Dmitriev worked with International Memorial for three decades to uncover, among other things, mass graves from the era of Stalin’s rule.

Now, in Putin’s most recent crackdown, anti-corruption activist and opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest critic — already serving a sentence of 3½ years in a penal colony on trumped up charges of fraud — is facing a new trial…. The latest charges could lead to up to 15 additional years in prison…

Last month, Russian authorities labeled Navalny himself a “terrorist and extremist”…. The designation means that Navalny has been added to Russia’s official Rosfinmonitoring register alongside organizations such as the Taliban and the Islamic State…. People on the terrorist list are effectively banned from Russian society, as their bank accounts are frozen and they cannot take loans or jobs.

Even in prison, Putin is trying to break down Navalny completely. Other prisoners are not allowed to talk to him and since his hunger strike, two inmates have been ordered to follow him around at all times, from morning until night. “Without a doubt, even the simplest decisions about my life here [in the penal colony] get made in the Kremlin, and the important ones—like whether to allow the doctors in—by Putin himself.” — Alexei Navalny, Time Magazine, January 19, 2022

[Navalny] also asked US President Joe Biden to stand up to Putin by imposing new and more efficient sanctions on the Russian president and his fellow Russian elites who have large assets abroad.

“Putin is without a doubt the wealthiest person in the world. The source of his wealth is power and corruption. And the basis of his power is lies, propaganda and falsified election results. You want to influence Putin, then influence his personal wealth… Everybody knows the names of the oligarchs and friends of Putin who hold his money. We know those who finance his yachts and palaces. Those who support his second and third families. It takes a majority of these oligarchs to split Putin’s elites. Give them a signal that the regime in Russia today will not be an eternal paradise where they can rob the people inside Russia while easily and freely spending their earnings in Europe and the U.S.” — Alexei Navalny, Time Magazine, January 19, 2022.

Republican Senators have announced their own sanctions package, the Never Yielding Europe’s Territory (NYET) Act, which would not only sanction the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but also “Putin’s cronies, enablers, and major banks before Russia further invades Ukraine to ensure Putin pays a price now for hybrid attacks already launched.”

“Total Russian private wealth held abroad is assessed at $800 billion…. Putin’s crony capitalism condemns Russia to near stagnation for as long as he stays in power. No political or economic reform is on his agenda, since reform would undermine his political power. Instead, Putin needs foreign adventures, such as the wars in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria to rally his people around the flag. The best defense of the West against Putin’s authoritarian and kleptocratic regime is transparency, shining light on this anonymous wealth, which is probably held predominantly in the United States and the United Kingdom….” — Anders Åslund, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the book Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy.

While the world focuses on the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is in the midst of a massive crackdown on what remains of the opposition to his rule.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/19/requiem-for-a-nation-n1560630

It may seem hard to believe that America’s neighbor to the north is now a full-fledged, up-and-running police state. Heavily-armed police are arresting and, in some cases, roughing up, severely beating, and trampling with horses members of the truckers’ Freedom Convoy in Ottawa as well as bystanders. The country has gone off the rails.

Justin Trudeau’s ineffable Justice Minister David Lametti is on record threatening those who hold the wrong political views that they are liable to have their bank accounts seized. “If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing,” he said, “then you ought to be worried.” The assumption that Trump has something to do with Canadian trucker donations seems particularly unhinged.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who sits on the board of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum—an obvious conflict of interest—has moved to freeze the bank accounts and other financial instruments of the “protesters” and private citizens who have donated to the trucker fund. Hacked documents revealed the names of these offenders, some of whom have been “interviewed” by news media like the CBC and The Washington Post. Others have been doxed and menaced.

No less distressing, a substantial majority of the Canadian public have approved of the government’s jackbooted and manifestly illegal handling of the situation, taken in by the prime minister’s bought-and-paid-for media’s slanted and mendacious coverage. They are, to adapt a phrase from Daniel Goldhagen, Canada’s willing executioners, a compliant and unthinking populace presiding over the extinction of a once-democratic country. It couldn’t get any worse—though it probably will, with the assistance of the people’s sodden parliamentary representatives and a morally bankrupt media fifth column.

Lots of people are not happy. I have received a number of emails from correspondents claiming that the Convoy Event was Justin Trudeau’s Reichstag moment. I would be loath to say anything so demeaning of the leader of my country, but Elon Musk had no compunction addressing the prime minister in a now-deleted, mordantly funny tweet couched in the voice of der Füehrer: “Stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau.” Fast food for thought.