Focus on Putin

This is an important interview because it raises questions about what the role of Russia and specifically President Putin is going to be vis-a-vis western aims of regime change in Syria and moves to war against Iran.

The interview says that Putin presents a far more effective foil to western imperial ambitions than that of President Medvedev – as indicated by responses to Libya as opposed to Syria.

The desire of the west to oppose Putin is indicated by the support the United States (supported by the media) given to an opposition that has little real support in Russia and attempts to foment trouble within Russia.

It is necessary, I think, to separate Putin and his national policies within Russia from his role of countering American imperial ambitions.

It is important to recognise that, to this day that he is popular within Russia (to this day) because he has given Russians their longest period of stability since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

I am reposting an excellent interview with Prof. Stephen Cohen which makes this very clear.

Putin and the Future of Russia - Eric Draitser on GRTV

Eric Draitser of StopImperialism.com joins us to discuss the geopolitical significance of the reelection of Vladimir Putin as Russian President. We talk about the differences between Putin and Medvedev, the future of Russian-American relations under Putin, and the future of Syria.

Russian Opposition Caught Filing into US Embassy in Moscow

by Tony Cartalucci

Global Research,

6 May, 2012

In mid-January 2012, just days after Michael McFaul arrived in Moscow to begin his stint as US Ambassador to Russia, Russian opposition leaders lined up outside the US Embassy (Russian) to meet him in a bizarre confab that reeked of both treason and duplicity.

 

Images: Caught red-handed - Russia's opposition, long accused by the Kremlin of being foreign-funded, and who have well documented ties to the US State Department, are caught filing into the US Embassy in Moscow in January of 2012, just days after agitator Michael McFaul began his stint as US Ambassador to Russia. (click on image to enlarge)

Approached by journalists inquiring as to why they had all come to greet the US Ambassador, their responses ranged from silence to dismissive gibes. Later, the group of opposition leaders emerged responding only with "Вы сурковская пропаганда," or "you’re Surkov’s propaganda," meaning the journalists represented government efforts to undermine their work and legitimacy. It is a common response given by Russia's opposition members when media attempts to question them about their increasingly overt ties to Wall Street and London.

Video: This video captured outside the US Embassy in Moscow, Russia, shows prominent leaders of Russia's US-funded, backed, and directed opposition attending a confab with newly appointed US Ambassador Michael McFaul. Both the opposition leaders and McFaul himself are directly connected to the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

....

Present at the US Embassy confab were regular mainstays of the Westernmedia's coverage of anti-Vladimir Putin protests, including Boris Nemtsov, Yevgeniya Chirikova of the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded "Strategy 31," Lev Ponomarev of the NED, Ford Foundation, Open Society, and USAID-funded Moscow Helsinki Group, and Liliya Shibanova of NED-funded GOLOS, an allegedly "independent" election monitoring group that served as the primary source of accusations of voting fraud against Putin's United Russia party. Clearly, this wasn't the first time both words and cash had been exchanged between the Russian opposition and the US State Department, but is perhaps the most overt example of such flagrant conspiring yet

Image: A screen shot from the "Moscow Helsinki Group" clearly subsidized from abroad. The significance of this group & its affiliates leading protests, indicates nothing less than foreign-funded sedition unfolding in the streets of Russia.  US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul himself, is a card carrying member of both Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), two organizations notorious for extraterritorial meddling in the foreign affairs of sovereign nations and demonstratively funding, supporting, and directing Russia's so-called opposition. It was accurately predicted in October 2011's, "Agitator Nominated forNext US “Ambassador” to Russia," that McFaul's primary goal would be to continue with America's "disingenuous front of “resetting” with Russia, while simultaneously subverting the Russian government with US-funded political unrest." It appears that McFaul has begun his work in earnest. Despite damning exposure of the Russian opposition's ties to Wall Street and London, the Western media, even as recently as this weekend during protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin's inauguration, insists that such connections are the creation of Kremlin-controlled propaganda. The Associated Press in their article titled, "Putin Returns to Presidency in a Changed Russia," accuses Putin of portraying the protesters as "in the pay of the Americans and intent on bringing about a revolution that would take Russia back to the instability and humiliations of the 1990s." AP adds, "with Kremlin-controlled television still the main source of information for most Russians, many believed him." In reality, Putin's assessment of the opposition is verified by the National Endowment for Democracy's own website, the "About Us" pages of the opposition's various websites, and confirmed by confabs conducted by the opposition themselves with foreign interests in foreign embassies on Russian soil. And indeed, many of those leading Russia's opposition are members and representatives of the corrupt oligarchies that plundered Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990's. The treason is so overt, it begs the question as to whether the United States has indeed become this recklessly brazen, this desperate, or playing at a broader geopolitical gambit yet revealed. With Russian opposition leaders on video climbing over themselves to get into the US Embassy to confer with regime-change specialist (Russian), US Ambassador Michael McFaul, and as their funding and affiliations become more widely known to the public, their work and legitimacy will be undermined by public awareness of the facts, not "Surkov’s propaganda." Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Stephen Cohen on Russian Protests and "The Soviet Union's Afterlife"

Democracy Now!