Putin's Terrorism and What to Do About it
Congratulations, you survived January 2022! Now it’s time for another disaster -- Putin’s scheduled escalation of his ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which he announced months ago, thus giving his oligarchs plenty of time to get their dirty financial affairs in order. We dig deep into this complex conflict, examining the humanitarian toll it takes on Ukraine, Putin’s ambitions for other regions of the world (more on that in our Patreon bonus!), the American exploitation of the conflict for partisan purposes and the way the West can force Putin’s hand and clean its own house at the same time: sanction the oligarchs!
Sanctions on the international band of oligarchs propelling the Kremlin are long overdue, and it is time for the West to quit taking dirty money and instead strip the Kremlin and its mafia partners of their power. We speculate as to the oligarchs’ backup plans and what will happen in the months to come should the sanctions actually be enacted. We also discuss Trump’s ongoing coup attempt and his dream of Putin-style rule – a dream that may come true since the DOJ refuses to act.
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Interviewer:
If it really is a calculation based on grubby self interests, in some respects that makes our job simpler, doesn't it? Because if, for some people suggest, the way to his heart is through his wallet and that maybe involves manipulating—not manipulating, but restricting—access to things like the SWIFT system through which banks, including Russian banks, to move money around the world, or even very targeted, specific sanctions on Russian individuals, you can see how that might work?
Bill Browder:
Well, it's absolutely correct. And most importantly, as you introduced this segment, you know, nobody wants to go to war. Nobody wants to be in harm's way. Nobody wants bloodshed. We should avoid that at all costs and we have a real opportunity here because of Putin, the way that Putin has held his wealth. So he can't keep all this money he's stolen in Russia and he can't keep this money in his own name. And so this money is held through oligarchs, these rich people that we know as oligarchs, and it's held in the West and that's his Achilles Heel. So on one hand, he's thumping his chest and threatening invasions and threatening death and destruction and on the other hand, he's a person who values money more than human life and that's where he's exposed because that money is being held in the UK, in the US, in Europe. And we have a piece of legislation, which I was responsible for advocating for, called the Magnitsky Act which allows Western countries to freeze those assets. And instead of going to war and all this kind of stuff, the first course of action, which is something I believe is very strategic and very tactical, is to go after the assets of the oligarchs who are holding Putin's money and in doing so, I think we could potentially avoid all sorts of other terrible things.
[intro theme music]
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the bestsellers, The View From Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight, and of the upcoming book, They Knew, coming out this September.
Andrea Chalupa:
I am Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, which will explain to you through showing, not telling, NATO expansion.
Sarah Kendzior:
Mmhmm <affirmative>. And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world.
Andrea Chalupa:
And our opening clip was Bill Browder pointing out the obvious. We've had Browder on the show to talk about his global movement for the Magnitsky Act, named for his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian whistleblower tortured and killed for exposing corruption inside Russia. The Magnitsky Act sanctions anyone accused of corruption and other human rights abuses and is a necessary law in the global war on kleptocracy, which allows authoritarianism to flourish. If you cannot get enough of Gaslit Nation—and who could blame you?—Sarah and I publish two episodes every week. If you're not subscribed at the Truth Teller level or higher on Patreon, you're missing every other episode. We also answer questions in our regular Q&A's so sign up for more. In this week's bonus show, out now, we discuss the Michael Flynns in the Kremlin. Yes, Putin is surrounded by conspiracy theorists, and we discuss also whether Merrick Garland's investigation will stop at low hanging fruit like Robert Mueller's Russia investigation did.
Sarah Kendzior:
His Potemkin Investigation, as one of our listeners coined it, which I think is a good phrase, but go on.
Andrea Chalupa:
All that and more. Here's a clip.
[begin audio clip from bonus episode, “Michael Flynn’s in the Kremlin”)
Sarah Kendzior:
If you want to see the real corollary to what's happening now—people keep bringing up Watergate, it's not Watergate—it's Iran Contra; the sprawling nature of Iran Contra, the transnational criminal nature of Iran Contra, the fact that there was a shadow government, an actual deep state, an entity called “The Enterprise” that nobody could really define, that people like Oliver North would get up and testify to Congress and be like, “Yeah, yeah, I did that.”
[end audio clip]
Andrea Chalupa:
All right, Sarah. So Putin, mad man or evil genius? <laugh>
So, the latest there is that the US and Russia are going back and forth sending each other these morbid Valentines on what to do, right? They're just trying to have a Cold War rematch. He's very upset that Russia lost the Cold War. A lot of former Russia-occupied nations, like the Baltics, are members of NATO. That is an alliance, that is a defensive alliance. It spread eastward because countries that suffered under the sadistic terrorism—this is the state terror of Russian occupation—scrambled to get into NATO as soon as they could. So, the countries that were formally Russian-occupied, AKA the gaslighting term known as “the Soviet Union”, it was not a union. It was forced Russian imperialism. So, the countries that got in first hustled, worked hard, made it a top priority and rushed in. Ukraine was further east.
Andrea Chalupa:
Ukraine is stuck with Russia right on top of it and Ukraine is a big old jewel of the Russian empire and was left out for far too long. Some of that had to do with the West itself. Look at George Bush, Sr., who raised an idiot son who unleashed the Apocalypse. Oops. Look at George Bush, Sr.'s infamous Chicken Kyiv speech where he was warning Kyiv like, “Slow down, you don't need independence.” And Kyiv was like, “Stop taking away agency. You don't know what it's like under Russian genocidal colonialism. We want to be independent.” Ukraine's independent movement is what initially helped bring down the Russian empire known as the Soviet Union and it's been moving westward ever since. It has had two major popular uprisings, both which stood up to Putin's Trumpian puppet, Yanukovich. If you go to Kyiv today, or plenty of major cities across Ukraine, you see a lot of restaurants, cafés, straight out of Brooklyn.
Andrea Chalupa:
You see hipsters that look straight out of Brooklyn and Silver Lake. Not saying that's a good thing <laugh> but I'm saying Ukraine really wants to be with Europe. Ukraine really wants to be in the West. It's never been more united and Putin cannot stand that, so he's unleashing terror. And unfortunately, three Michael Flynn characters that are running his security agencies are straight up conspiracy theorists who are promoting all sorts of nonsense about Ukrainians being non-humans, about the West being so vile they allow humans to marry animals, and pushing all sorts of conspiracy theories that Ukraine's pro-democracy government is authoritarian and so forth. And they seem to be so convinced of their own nonsense that they are ramping up war. They're bringing Russian mercenaries from the group Wagner that are committing mass atrocities in several African nations, carrying out coups against several African nations.
Andrea Chalupa:
They just shot up a village and killed dozens of people in CAR (Central African Republic). So several of those Russian mercenaries from this infamous Wagner Group have been pulled out of Africa and the expectation is that they're being sent to Ukraine to destabilize it. Wagner does all sorts of special ops. Putin is known for special ops. They like to go into countries like Belarus, where they were in 2020, creating all of the sort of destabilization leading up to the big election there as the dictator of Belarus who's been in power for decades was being met with the fiercest popular uprising resistance against his autocratic rule. And, of course, you had Wagner and Russian forces on the ground to try to destabilize Belarus and keep their proxy dictator in power. You had Putin today, on February 1st, 2022, giving a press conference with his dictator friend, his aspiring autocrat friend, Orbán, who is dismantling rule of law and empowering corruption in Hungary, a NATO member. Orbán is in Moscow right now. Putin and Orbán just did a press conference.
Andrea Chalupa:
Putin broke his silence on Ukraine, saying that the West is not living up to his demands. Putin's demands are completely unrealistic, alright? Putin wants the demand that NATO will not extend membership to Ukraine. That's the stupidest demand ever. He keeps saying that to create a false flag event, to justify his invasion of Ukraine because he needs to seize it in order to bring back his Soviet Union. Why is that a stupid demand? Because NATO doesn't want Ukraine to be a member. NATO, the West, the EU, no one wants this headache. No one. We all have a million other things we should be doing with our time than worrying about Putin, right? NATO does not want to extend membership at this time to Ukraine. No one wants that because there's an active invasion going on in Ukraine and it just wouldn't make sense from a NATO perspective. Ukraine wants to join NATO.
Andrea Chalupa:
NATO's never been more popular in Ukraine, but unfortunately Ukraine missed the boat on that opportunity. Other countries that suffered under Russia got in first, but Ukraine did not and Ukraine has to wait. And so while Putin was talking, one of his propaganda arms… And remember, Russian propaganda falls under the military. The head of RT has talked about the work she does as, in military terms, how it's important in waging Russia's war against the West. So, while Putin was talking, there was a tweet sent by RT (Russia Today) saying that there was some Ukrainian drone attack in Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine. This would 99% be a false flag event. Ukraine has survived this long because it knows the Kremlin playbook very well having suffered under it for so long. So Ukraine is being extremely disciplined in not firing first and in taking a defensive stance, not doing anything that would justify the Kremlin ramping up its invasion right now. So I'll stop there, Sarah, if you want to comment on all that.
Sarah Kendzior:
No, I'm just trying to take it all in. I mean, we're recording this at about noon Central Time—that's my standard time—on Tuesday and there's just so much breaking news regarding this conflict. It's just a strange time to discuss it and there's something surreal about the fact that this was a preannounced invasion, a continuance of the previous invasion by Russia of Ukraine from 2014. But they first announced that they were planning a full on incursion a few months ago, so every move that we hear about, every announcement, feels choreographed. Obviously, a lot of this is an extension of long held desires that Putin has had from the moment he came into office and before, you know, because he's referred to the end of the Soviet Union as the “great tragedy of his lifetime”. He's been overt in his desire in trying to repiece it.
Sarah Kendzior:
But it is strange to have a scheduled war. There's something about this that reminds me a bit of the run up to the Iraq War in 2003, just in the sense that you know it's coming, there's this ominous, horrible feeling, you know that potentially the earth could shift in a direction that is going to create incredible humanitarian catastrophes, reorient world powers, you know, because we see so many other regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and countries like China who are in play here who Russia is making moves on. This is all happening with a very weakened United States, a United States that was overseen by a Kremlin asset and his mafia network for four years. We'll get into that a little more later. And, of course, a global plague. So if I sound a little disoriented here or Andrea sounds a little breathless here, it's because we're trying to pull back and see the big picture here. Trying to predict what the next few months are going to bring, who benefits, who's going to get hurt, but this is a lot.
Sarah Kendzior:
We're a podcast that has always looked at Ukraine from our first episode, looked at the Kremlin and it's mafia oligarch network and its connection to global plutocracy and to corrupt plutocrats and politicians in the United States. This is our area. This is something we know, yet we are reeling. We are trying to keep up and it's also just genuinely frightening. It's an emotional thing to see because, never forget, there are lives on the line. There are Ukrainians who are bracing for a military incursion or for just general chaos, manipulation, blackouts. I’m sure Andrea will get into all this, but never forget that human toll.
Sarah Kendzior:
It’s a horrific irony, I think, that after two years of a global pandemic in which so many people have died who, you know, they didn't need to. A lot of this was preventable. The hope would be that there would be more empathy, that there would be more compassion, that there would be more respect for human life and more of a desire to protect it wherever you can, that antiwar, anti exploitation of human frailty would prevail, but instead there's this sort of hardened, nihilistic… I don't know, cruel attribute where people look at the world, they look at others, as pawns. They look at themselves as a pawn being weighted to be manipulated by greater powers. People have lost faith, I think sometimes, in their own humanity. You know, I’m going on and on here, so I'm just gonna shut up.
Sarah Kendzior:
But I just want to, you know, keep that in mind whenever you hear anyone discussing this conflict. I mean, first of all, keep in mind Russia is invading Ukraine. That's what's been happening the whole time. This is an Imperialist militaristic power. This is not the Soviet Union and some communist paradise or whatever nonsense you're being sold. This is probably why it's reminding me of the United States invading Iraq. This is a baseless invasion. This is an invasion that shouldn't be happening and that will have grave human consequences, but just never forget the human toll. Okay. Go on.
Andrea Chalupa:
Okay. So now we're going to go over a summary of where things stand now and solutions, solutions that benefit us all, of what can be done to finally, finally contain Putin’s terrorism. So let's get into that now because if the West actually acts on what we're about to go over, all boats rise. And yes, we'll get to the Irish fishermen who are amazing <laugh> if you've been following that story of how they stood up to Putin's Navy. So let's get into solutions that will make the world a better place for all of us and secure our future and push back against the rise of autocracy. Around 130,000 Russian troops are amassed on Ukraine's borders in three key locations, including in Belarus which is only a few hundred miles from the capital, Kyiv. This means Russia's military, the second most powerful military in the world, could take Ukraine's capital, or at least lay siege to it to force new leadership in the government in what's known as a coup <laugh>, a word Americans are all too familiar with these days.
Andrea Chalupa:
There was a report released by the UK that the Kremlin planned to install pro Kremlin politicians who are deeply unpopular among the Ukrainian people and have ties to, guess who… Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's longtime friend and neighbor who ran his presidential campaign for free, allegedly to pay back a Russian oligarch close to Putin by the name of Oleg Deripaska, a notorious oligarch we've gone over in past episodes. So it's a name that should be familiar to our longtime listeners. Quick recap: Oleg Deripaska is the thug who won the aluminum wars in the car bomb 1990s. The aluminum wars had an actual body count and Deripaska emerged victorious, becoming one of the richest, most powerful oligarchs in Putin's court where he lavishly spends his money in Western countries like the UK. He's been persona non grata in the US, where he's not welcomed…
Andrea Chalupa:
Except under Trump, they lessened sanctions for Deripaska and his company, then went on to invest millions to try to open an aluminum plant in Kentucky. It should be noted Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, as Senate Leader, reportedly led the effort to minimize Russian sanctions. Alright. So, Ukraine's national police just announced that they uncovered a well-organized plot to create fake uprisings in major Ukrainian cities, complete with paid and organized agitators who would essentially recreate the January 6th, 2021 coup attempt at our nation’s Capitol but in Ukrainian cities. This is already a well known tactic used by Russia in parts of Eastern Ukraine which are currently under occupation. So Ukraine is used to these sort of false flag events. The idea is that an organized, paid and trained militia creates unrest, which leads to violence and ideally the overthrow of the local government, and Russian special forces come in and seize the city.
Andrea Chalupa:
That is how Crimea was taken over, as well as the far east region of Ukraine currently under occupation. The Russian military brings in their heavy machinery and soldiers make themselves at home. How is Crimea doing, by the way? Well, it's currently riddled with human rights abuses, including many against the indigenous group known as the Crimea Tatars. How are parts of Eastern Ukraine doing under Russian occupation, known as Donbas, where my mother's family is from? Well, it's a Mad Max wasteland of lawlessness. When Russia invaded, they do what terrorists like the Taliban do: They released prisoners, hardened, violent criminals. So what happens? Rule of law breaks down, corruption and criminals take over. It's completely lawless and has displaced around 2 million Ukrainians. That's what Putin's trying to force on the Ukrainian people: an Orwellian nightmare.
Andrea Chalupa:
In all, only around 7% of Ukraine is currently under Russian occupation. Putin initially claimed he was going to seize significantly more than that and bring back what is known as Novorossiya (New Russia), the parts of Ukraine seized by Catherine the Great. Putin instead did not make it that far. What stopped him? Well, when Russia invaded, Ukraine's army was in terrible shape after years of corruption under Yanukovich and other leaders. People from across the country from all walks of life, men and women, had to scramble and quickly assemble as volunteer fighters. Many of the activists in Kyiv who fought in the revolution that overthrew Yanukovich went straight to volunteering for the military. How did Ukraine's volunteer soldiers and hobbled military stop the second most powerful military in the world led by a ruthless mass murdering dictator? For one thing, Ukrainians had something to fight for; their freedom and independence, their children.
Andrea Chalupa:
Putin thought he would be welcomed as a liberator and instead he got pushed back by a fierce Ukrainian resistance that hates his guts. Second, Obama and the EU moved quickly to pass sanctions for Crimea and then again for Putin's invasion of the East. This forced Russia to slow things down and think things through. The Russians were not being welcomed as liberators and Russia is increasingly isolated on the global stage that dictators like Putin crave. The third reason, Ukraine received a lot of NATO support in the form of military training and defensive aid, which was sorely needed, and the volunteers that sprung up to help in any way they could from leading medical trainings to volunteering in military hospitals were extremely committed. I sat with a friend who's a musician who would go around to patient's beds in hospitals—military hospitals—and sing songs for wounded soldiers. That's what she did in her free time.
Andrea Chalupa:
There was a lot of national unity in pitching in like that. That unity, east and west, across Ukraine, Russian speaking Ukrainians, Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians, all multicultural communities in Ukraine, including Jewish Ukrainian communities spoke out and continue to speak out against the war. That unity has never been greater today. People fear, of course, that we're headed into a disaster like the one we saw in Afghanistan. That, of course, could be true if Putin is an absolute madman. We know he's surrounded by conspiracy theorists. We know that he repeats the crazy things that the Michael Flynns in the Kremlin around him say. We know that his propaganda machine, all the TV networks that Russians are limited to in terms of “media” are like Fox News on acid and any independent journalism practiced inside Russia is done so with great risk and pressure. So, if Putin wants to level Ukraine like Hitler wanted to level Paris, he could do that. One big and crucial difference between Ukraine and Afghanistan is that the Ukrainian army is a professional army backed up by a united country with many willing to fight and volunteer any way they can. With that said, Ukraine cannot succeed alone. It needs NATO support and offensive aid to combat the advanced weaponry of Russia.
Andrea Chalupa:
It needs strategic support and communication systems. In the early days of Putin's invasion, Ukraine's military used cell phones—cell phones—to communicate with each other so the Russians always knew their positions. That's how disadvantaged Ukraine's military was when it was caught off guard by Putin's invasion, sprung on it in the days following the spontaneous popular uprising that ousted Putin's puppet, the Donald Trump of Ukraine, a corrupt clown who enriched himself and his family while the people suffered. And like Trump, he had a thing for gold and living in a gold, decked out palace. So when it comes to puppets, I have to point out Putin definitely has a type. And a gold loving clown is Putin’s type. Putins war against Ukraine currently includes terrorist attacks. As mentioned earlier about the plot to stage fake violent uprisings around the country.
Andrea Chalupa:
It also includes cyber attacks, shutting down websites of major government agencies, and bomb threats to kindergartens and other places people depend on to live their lives. This is all ongoing. Putin's propaganda machine constantly threatens war, not just against Ukraine but also against the Baltics, which were former Russian-occupied territories during the Soviet period, as well as Sweden. Putin has a long history of terrorism against all of Europe, including cutting essential undersea cables, kidnapping various nationals including an Estonian security agent, murdering several people or attempting to murder people on British soil, massive and destructive cyber attacks including against US hospitals during the pandemic, waging propaganda warfare including spreading anti-immigration panic to try to tip elections across Europe and the US, funding far-right candidates across Europe, invading the countries of Georgia and Moldova and creating frozen conflicts that continue to this day, and deliberately bombing civilians in Syria to worsen the refugee crisis to further divide Europe by inflaming the far-right Klown Kar of European candidates supported by the Kremlin, and propping up the dictator of Belarus who is facing the most substantial resistance movement in his decades long reign, including by flying in refugees from the Middle East into Belarus to flood the EU, to further stress and divide Europe.
Andrea Chalupa:
What can be done to finally contain Putin’s terrorism? For a solution, let's explore Angela Merkel's fear of dogs. In 2007, Putin and Merkel were getting ready to meet. Their teams met to prepare for this big meeting. The Russian side asked the German side, Is there anything we should know to make this meeting a success?, or something to that effect. The German side let the Russian side know that Merkel is afraid of dogs. She was attacked by a dog and now fears them. The Russian side made a note of this. So what does Putin do? He and Merkel sit down for their meeting before the eyes of the world, journalists and press cameras. Of course, Putin brings out a dog, his large black lab named Konni, and Merkel just sits there and grins and bears it. What did the German side expect? They told a former KGB agent and the former head of the Russian FSB their leader's weakness and the former KGB agent exploited that weakness because that is what he is trained to do.
Andrea Chalupa:
Everything I just described is a perfect metaphor for how the West has let Putin get away with his terrorism and mass murder. It's a perfect metaphor for how Germany entrenched its dependence on Russian gas through Putin's geopolitical weapon known as Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that transits gas directly from Russia to Germany, cutting out countries like Ukraine that depend on transit revenues. Nord Stream 2 is something you hear a lot about on this show because it's Putin's Trojan Horse. Russia has shut off Ukraine’s gas in the dead of winter to try to punish Kyiv. Germany knew this, but like the dog incident, they went ahead and gave Putin leverage over them by supporting the Nord Stream 2 project. Nord Stream 2 is a geopolitical weapon by the Kremlin to blackmail Germany into submission by threatening to shut off Russian gas, driving up gas prices.
Andrea Chalupa:
It was originally greenlit by former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, a Putin propaganda machine who jumped from being chancellor of Germany after losing power to joining Nord Stream 2, a project which is headed by Putin's old Stasi buddy. The Stasi were the secret police of East Berlin. So, he joined Putin's old Stassi buddy from his KGB days in East Berlin. I will keep talking about Nord Stream 2 because it explains the heart and soul of why Putin's terrorism has been allowed to go unchecked for this long. Western Europe keeps giving a former KGB agent leverage. That takes us to Great Britain, a laundry mat of Russian stolen wealth and the laundering of reputations for kleptocrats from across former Kremlin proxy states like Belarus, Kazakhstan and elsewhere. We could do an entire episode on the Russian oligarch money flowing through the alcohol-fueled blood of the Tories. We interviewed a Welsh investigative journalist, Carole Cadwalladr, who is being sued by an alleged British Kremlin proxy for her reporting exposing the Kremlin's alleged massive financial and psy ops that tipped the scales in the extremely close Brexit vote.
Andrea Chalupa:
Remember, the Brexit campaign was championed by Nigel Farage, a massive fanboy of Putin. Farage has unabashedly talked about how much he admires Putin. The British government under Boris Johnson didn't even bother investigating how much help they got from Putin in coming to power. “They won, who cares, carry on,” and Russian oligarchs—Putin's court of oligarchs—continue to hide their stolen wealth in the UK. And a lot of British elites are getting rich off of this as the Russian people, the Ukrainian people, the people of Belarus and Kazakhstan suffer. Simon Nixon, a columnist for the Times, pointed out on Twitter, “Britain's persistent refusal to close down the London laundromat or agree to sanctions that hurt the city has helped embolden the Putin regime and it's becoming a source of tension with allies. My latest on Britain's own equivalent of Nord Stream 2.” In the show notes for this week's episode we’ll link to his damning piece.
Andrea Chalupa:
Why does this all matter? Because Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who Putin tried repeatedly to kill using a chemical weapon, returned to Russia and into the arms of an army of police waiting to drag him to prison. He used this high profile event of returning to Russia, despite what awaited him, to command the world's attention and demanded the West sanction 35 names, including eight who are the main architecture of Putin's corruption, including British darling Roman Abramovich, the owner of the Chelsea football club, a Russian oligarch who is like a son to Putin. Navalny said the sanctions against Russia have not gone far enough and it's time for the West to finally go after Putin's wealth, which he hides in his army of oligarchs who spread his influence and golden handcuffs abroad, helping the Kremlin dodge accountability.
Andrea Chalupa:
Another opposition leader told me that it's time for the West to sanction Germany's Nord Stream 2. All of those things I just listed should have happened already. So when you pundits and politicians on the Left and the Right downplay the effectiveness of sanctions or argue that sanctions hurt the Russian people, keep this in mind. Russian opposition leaders who risk their lives and their freedom, who risk the lives and freedom of their families (because the Kremlin goes after families in their sadistic crackdown of human rights activists and journalists), remember the Russian opposition itself is calling on the West to finally sanction Putin and his criminal elites. And remember this: Putin began his invasion of Ukraine in 2014 claiming he would seize significant portions of the country. What helped stop him? Sanctions. Sanctions work. Imagine if the EU, Canada, Australia, Japan and other countries sanctioned Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and froze whatever bank accounts and properties they had abroad, refused to allow them to enter their countries.
Andrea Chalupa
The majority of Americans would jump for joy. The West has refused so far to go there with Putin and his wealth hidden in his army of oligarchs. The problem is that the West relies on Ukrainians making sacrifices to stand up to Putin's aggression, to be cannon fodder in Putin's global war on democracy. Yet the West refuses to make any sacrifices for cleaning up its own corruption. It's much more comfortable enabling and enriching themselves off Russian stolen wealth. Western leaders will make statements of concern as Putin invades Ukraine, cracks down on anti-corruption protesters in Kazakhstan and Belarus, meanwhile, Putin’s stolen wealth surges through the veins of banks, accounting firms, law firms, and PR companies in Western capitals. Angela Merkel is afraid of dogs. Putin uses that against her. The West loves Russian oligarchs and their easy, dirty money. Putin uses that against them. Putin, the former KGB agent, is a master of leverage.
Andrea Chalupa:
If the west wants to finally stand up to Putin's terrorism, they must stop willingly giving him so much leverage. It looks like that might actually finally maybe be happening. Biden's White House just announced that a sanctions package has been prepared, targeting Putin's court of oligarchs. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced, “I can confirm we have developed specific sanctions packages for both Russian elites and their family members if Russia further invades Ukraine. Nord Stream 2 will be sanctioned by the US so that it's not operational.” That's another bit of this that the US is working on. Germany and the rest of NATO support this. Germany has no choice. Its leadership depends on keeping a coalition together, which includes the Greens, a party that is wonderfully anti Kremlin aggression. The US is already making alternative plans to rush gas and gas alternatives to Europe should Putin, like the terrorist he is, continue to limit or cut off completely gas to Europe, driving up prices.
Andrea Chalupa:
Keep in mind countries like Italy get 40% of their gas from Russia. This will be a big blow, but also keep in mind a lot of other countries like Spain and the Netherlands stand to possibly get rich off of alternatives to Russian gas. So where Putin stands to lose, other nations stand to financially gain by jumping in to fill the gap. That's very important. Boris Johnson, who is in Kyiv today (2/1/2022) and then has a call with Putin as well, Boris Johnson who unfortunately has a tendency to humiliate himself in the UK over a partying scandal while people across great Britain stuck to the rules and stayed apart and stayed home. Boris Johnson's government is now trying to cosplay his hero, Winston Churchill, by claiming the UK will finally get tough on the stable rattling dictator by going after the stolen wealth of Russian oligarchs hidden in the UK. That is a very, very big deal and would be a game changer, should it happen.
Andrea Chalupa:
From The Daily Beast, I'll read it now: “Britain appears to have zeroed in on the Kremlin’s sore point with a potential plan to seize London properties belonging to Russian oligarchs in an attempt to deter president Vladimir Putin from ordering an invasion of Ukraine. Britain's top diplomat, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, said Sunday that she intends to introduce new laws this week to punish for amassing troops on the Ukrainian border. Truss told Sky News there will be nowhere to hide for Putin’s oligarchs and added that ‘nothing is off the table’ when asked if Britain could seize property.”
Sarah Kendzior:
I wanna just raise an issue here because I keep, I mean, first of all, I think this is a big deal. We've been wanting these sanctions for a long time, and by we, I mean anybody who wants governments that are not bound by plutocratic corruption and transnational mafia networks, which ideally should include all of us. But one thing I keep thinking about is that in the past, when they have sanctioned these Russian oligarchs—oligarchs who have Russian citizen citizenship or citizenship in Ukraine or Georgia or other countries of the former Soviet Union—the backup plan of many of those oligarchs has been to get citizenship in Israel and then to use that Israeli passport to move around the world, putting their money in offshore accounts or funneling it into various proxy organizations. Haaretz has covered this a great deal in Israel.
Sarah Kendzior:
There's been a huge demographic transformation in the last 15 years. And just to give one sort of high profile example, Roman Abramovich was—or is—one of the richest people in the world. He's one of the people suing Catherine Belton, who wrote the book Putin's People about the network of oligarchs and mafioso who holds him up. Very powerful guy. And then in 2018, in response to that, decided to move to Israel. And this is just a brief quote from an article from AP News. It says, “Abramovich is perhaps the most high profile Russian oligarch to relocate to Israel but hardly the first. Alex Kogan, a journalist who has covered the Russian oligarch phenomenon in Israel for the local Russian language press says some 30 to 40 tycoons have taken Israeli citizenship or residency, with most staying only part-time or temporarily because of scrutiny over their affairs. Others were closer to the government and sought the advantages of an Israeli passport, such as visa free entry to the European Union. Some were drawn by tax breaks for new immigrants to Israel. They are more protected in Israel against the threat of extradition for real or for trumped up charges.”
Sarah Kendzior:
So I keep looking at this and I'm thinking, you know, if I’m an oligarch and finally, finally the day has come where the West has decided to crack down on my corrupt and illegal activity instead of using it to fund their universities and think tanks and governments and businesses, what would I do? I'd get a backup plan. And I'll stress here, some of these oligarchs aren't Jewish, or at least it seems like they're not. They look into their background, they come up with like a Jewish great grandma or somebody to justify abusing the right of return, which is meant to allow, Jewish citizens of other countries to get citizenship in Israel.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is not the designed purpose of this law. It was not designed so that criminals and oligarchs could move their assets and their dirty money around, but that's what's been happening for a while. Meyer Lansky, the American mobster, tried it when he was under indictment for RICO laws in the 1970s. And back then, Israel said, No, forget it, you're going back, you're going back to the United States. And they kicked him out and he went here, but people learned from that experience. Semion Mogilevich, who we have discussed on the show many times, the head of the Russian mafia, when he was in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s before it collapsed, he got an Israeli passport and then used that passport to set up a base of operations in Hungary, and then from there in Western Europe, and then from there in the United States, including in Philadelphia. He rebuilt—or built—this giant global criminal empire.
Sarah Kendzior:
And so I keep wondering, Will the extension of sanctions and actual repercussions on these oligarchs, in an attempt to sanction them in order to control what the Kremlin is doing, in order to stop their military invasion of Ukraine, will it work or are they just going to resort to this move where they use Israel as a backup? Also what is Israel, what is their government going to do? Because this isn't Netanyahu, who always welcomed this corrupt activity. He was very much in favor of it, very much encouraged it, thought it bolstered the Israeli economy, couldn't give less of a shit about corruption. You know, he's still having his own corruption trial. I think generally speaking, the hard-right Israeli government still tends to welcome this, but this is not the same nexis of corruption that we've seen before.
Sarah Kendzior:
But anyway, this is just something I worry about, especially because Russia announced this plan to invade Ukraine, again, far in advance. They announced it in, what? October, November? They were like, Yeah, this winter we're invading Ukraine, we're invading another part of Ukraine. This gives all the oligarchs time to get their financial affairs in order and start moving that money around, start parking in offshore accounts, start getting new passports. I mean, a lot of these guys have not just an Israeli passport. They've got a Cyprus passport. They've got passports for other countries in the West and around the world. Citizenship means nothing to them. The nation state itself is just this inconvenient thing filled with bureaucratic apparati, filled with prosecutors and judges who might actually try to limit their actions and keep them from funding illegal wars and doing all this nefarious activity. So, yeah. I haven't seen this discussed very much, but I'm just thinking if I was them, that's what I would do because that's what they've done in the past. I guess we'll see what happens.
Andrea Chalupa:
It should be pointed out that the Russian oligarchs abroad are also a potential risk for Putin because these guys could be informants. You had one Russian oligarch who ended up dead in a hotel in Washington, DC. He was bludgeoned to death. He was the founder of RT, Russian propaganda, and he was apparently going to flip and Putin was like, No, you're not. So Putin has issued all these sort of veiled threats to his Russian oligarchs abroad using his propaganda machine, saying, “Watch out in the West, you're not safe in the West, they’re gonna seize your money,” and all sorts of things along that line because, as any dictator, you rule through keeping people terrified. You rule through terror. And as close and dependent as he is on many of his oligarchs, he also has to keep them in line and you do that through fear and you do that through all sorts of threats.
Andrea Chalupa:
So yeah, I agree to the point where as much as he needs his oligarchs abroad to spread his golden handcuffs and keep the West in check, he also has to keep those guys in line. And I think the big long buildup on Ukraine's border, which has been really ramping up since February of last year, so it's been an entire year of this. So the storm clouds have been growing and the oligarchs have seen this trouble coming, so who knows how they're repositioning themselves. The best thing that all of us could do right now—and I'm talking about people in halls of power—is to clean up their damned corruption and stop giving these guys—these criminals—so much leverage because it's destructive and we're tired of it.
Sarah Kendzior:
And stop taking their money. Just one quick thing, you brought up Deripaska before and I wanna note yet again that Deripaska’s partner who has American citizenship, Len Blavatnik, is one of the biggest donors to both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. One of the people he gives the most money to is Nancy Pelosi. He also gives generously to Kevin McCarthy. I think it's difficult to look at this situation with all of these oligarchs who are going to be sanctioned and then not also think of them, of their American partners, their proxies, the way that they move money into our political system in order to create the political outcomes in America that they desire, the most notable of which, of course, was the installation of Trump as the President of the United States and people like Flynn and these other Kremlin lackeys—and in some cases Kremlin agents—into the government, and they need to stop that as well. They need to stop taking money from Blavatnik and from others who are working directly with sanctioned Russian oligarchs. This shouldn't be hard. This should be something you want to do if you're a good American, if you're a Patriot, if you care about this country, if you care about protecting other sovereign, independent nations like Ukraine from this insidious financial corruption and also military invasion. It should be really easy for Pelosi and McCarthy to turn that money down, yet they haven't. So, it's time.
Andrea Chalupa:
What's really interesting is how, obviously, this could play out with Putin being an utter madman and succumbing to the conspiracy theories pumped out by the Kremlin in internal discussions. They really do believe what they're saying. Angela Merkel had a phone call with Putin and she got off and was like, Oh my God, this guy is on another planet. She really did make the comparison of Putin being on another planet. So just when we hear Trump talk and release these weird statements that he's in this warped reality, Putin's there, too. So Putin could either be a madman and pull the trigger and unleash all this destruction and it's game over for him on a lot of different financial fronts. Nord Stream 2 is dead. The UK will be forced to, you know, there'll be anger from allies. The UK will be forced to clean up its oligarch corrupt money crisis and so forth.
Andrea Chalupa:
So it'll be a huge house of cards coming down, should Putin do that. But what's really interesting is how he clearly saw the disaster of the Afghanistan pull out as weakness in one respect. And I think he's banking on the West being weary, the West being divided. He created a lot of damage towards democracies worldwide while Trump was in power through Trump, especially against the US. Not only was he hacking American hospitals during a pandemic, he was also hacking several American major companies in the Solar Winds attack, which is considered the cyber Pearl Harbor of attacks. So I think Putin also just thought that we were all at our weakest and that he could just come in with a gun to our heads with this big invasion build up on Ukraine, which would destabilize Europe if this were to go through with a refugee crisis and so forth.
Andrea Chalupa:
And he thought, you know, I can hold this gun to their head and then I'm gonna avoid accountability and they're not gonna sanction me and all these things. But he miscalculated there. What's happened instead is that Europe and NATO have never been more united. We've seen a mass mobilization with the main focus, finally, being listening to Navalny and other Russian opposition leaders by going out for the criminal elite, going after Nord Stream 2. There should be a report coming from the US exposing Russia's criminal elite, a report that would greatly hurt their standing as they desperately try to launder their reputations abroad through PR companies, through donating to big cultural institutions. Keep in mind this sort of report was ordered by Obama on his way out. The oligarchs were freaked out over this.
Andrea Chalupa:
Trump was supposed to do this report and he instead just took a list off of Forbes of Russia’s richest people and just copy-pasted it. That was the report, so oligarchs got off the hook. But now a new substantial report may be coming which will just humiliate them and basically just stink them up so if you have their name associated with your university, with your museum, whatever, it's embarrassing for you and you're gonna get pressured publicly and so forth. Around a dozen countries and the Council of Europe have called for an investigation into the legitimacy of Putin's presidency. Obviously, like all dictators, Putin wants to die in power. He had a fake referendum that allows him now to die in power. And so the Council of Europe is saying it’s going to do this investigation saying you're actually not a legitimate president. This matters because dictators like Putin go out of their way to create an air of legitimacy.
Andrea Chalupa:
So what is missing from this list of things that are actually happening? What more should happen? Russian oligarchs should have their residency visas (for the UK, France, the Caribbean, wherever they hide their wealth, have their homes, send their kids to school). Russian oligarchs and their families should lose their residency visas from all over the world and be forced to live and stay in Russia. They should be forced to witness every day the poverty and corruption their stolen wealth created. They should witness the countless Russians who suffer because of them. That's just a no-brainer. So part of all the sanctioning and all of it should be to force the Russian oligarchs back home. The Irish fishermen understood all this, of being tough to dictators, and they reminded the were old of that. As I mentioned at the top of the show, Irish fisherman saved the day by standing up to Russia's Navy, which planned to do military drills over cables off the coast of Ireland that connect the internet between Europe and North America.
Andrea Chalupa:
This, of course, is a direct threat to critical infrastructure that, like the Kremlin's big cyber attack, Sandworm, which we featured on the show, which was a devastating cyber attack that created massive economic destruction. So Putin could do that again by cutting underwater internet cables. That is why the Russian Navy chose that location to do an active military drill, but Irish fishermen rely on those waters to fish and earn a living, so they staged a protest. Their boats planned to go out to that same spot where the Russian Navy planned to be, and they're gonna be so organized about it that if one boat had to return to port, another one would come out to take its place so their numbers would never dwindle. Their presence was their protest, they said. Russia responded with threats because it's Putin's Russia and said, you know, people might get hurt.
Andrea Chalupa:
The Irish fisherman did not back down. Instead, Russia backed down and agreed to hold its exercises farther away from the waters that the Irish fisherman depend on. So that is a reminder of how you do this. You don't blink, you don't back down and you don't give away all this leverage on a silver platter that will be used against you. And another thing that has to be pointed out: For the love of God, don't force another reset with Russia. Fiona Hill and other inside-the-beltway think tankers wrote an op ed for Politico calling for another Russia reset. What do you think happened next? Navalny was suddenly poisoned by the Kremlin with a chemical weapon. It's like, obviously this guy is a mass murderer. This guy is a terrorist. This guy is a dictator. You can't do business with him. You cannot trust him. So Fiona Hill and others have to stop with the “respect Putin” doctrine that they like to push.
Andrea Chalupa:
A number of these folks keep promising us from inside-the-beltway, from all their cloistered think tanks, that if you just give Putin the respect he craves, all of this will go away. The “give Putin respect” doctrine does not work. Stop trying it. People die needlessly. Kleptocracy is empowered and we lose valuable time hitting our heads against the wall. Like Nord Stream 2 and easy dirty Russian oligarch money, the “give Putin respect” doctrine is a Kremlin geopolitical weapon. Stop falling for it. Understand we got into this crisis because the West refused to stop enabling Putin's kleptocracy, because the West profits from it. All of these measures I just listed should have happened and could have happened a long time ago. Think about all the lives that would've been saved. Brexit might not have happened. Hillary Clinton might be on her second term as president. We would be living in a very different world today if the West had only stopped keeping Putin leverage over it and over our sovereignty.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, exactly. It reminds me also, of course, of the way the media and most of our politicians seem to constantly go into this mode of trying to negotiate with Trump, negotiate with the Republican Party. You cannot have a kumbaya moment with the mafia and that's what this is at this point. It is transnational crime infiltrated into our government, infiltrated into our corporations. These are people who operate by blackmail and threats and bribes and physical violence. Their objectives may be different. Putin has actual geopolitical strategies, geopolitical goals. With Trump, it's always been about money, power, and especially about immunity from criminal prosecution. But they have been working in tandem this entire time. And this isn't a secret. We know how this works. We know that all of these oligarchs are the same people who pumped money into Trump's properties, who inflated his wealth, who made him relevant again. When Mark Burnett launched The Apprentice, his original goal was to create a show, a reality TV show about Vladimir Putin and make him seem likable to an American audience.
Sarah Kendzior:
And he did this twice. He initially wanted to do this, I think it was in 2001, and then a decade later he had the same goal but he had to settle for Donald Trump. These are people who work together in tandem. Yes, obviously we're dealing with the collapse of systems, we're dealing with deep seeded institutional rot that predates any of these individuals coming into political power. You know, it goes back into the ‘70s for sure, into the Nixon era, but it predates that as well. Some of this is just the way corruption becomes streamlined and normalized and white-collar crime is labeled less dangerous than other types of crime, even though it is literally blood money. But some of this has to do with the same people committing the same crimes over and over and over again, and simply expanding their circles.
Sarah Kendzior:
You see this in the UK as well. You see this with Boris Johnson. You see this with Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein and their tentacles stretching all over all of these people, which brings me to my other point, which is that it is surreal to watch the Biden administration or just anybody talk about this conflict as if we have not just had a Kremlin asset and career criminal in the White House for four years, someone who has absolutely no regard for our national security or public safety, somebody who has explicitly said he wants to profit off of chaos, off of death, off of destruction, someone who has never cared whether America collapses. And in this way, he shares Putin's goal. I think the ultimate goal for Putin's revenge—it's not just Putin, it’s a lot of ideologues in or associated with the Kremlin—would be to partition the United States, partition it into little oligarch fiefdoms, none of which would have rights that we are used to as Americans. Our rights are, of course, in grave jeopardy at the moment, but we have them or we wouldn’t, for example, be able to do this podcast where I'm criticizing everybody.
Sarah Kendzior:
Anyway, there are all of these objectives and they just skirt over this. They need to deal with the fact that, one, our institutions are obviously compromised or somebody like Trump wouldn't have been able to get in. Somebody who couldn't pass a rudimentary security clearance was able to become the President of the United States. All of the people working with him—Kushner, Flynn, Bannon, etc.—are also people who wouldn't have been able to pass a rudimentary security clearance. For example, having illegal financial ties, illicit financial ties, shady relationships with foreigners, having a criminal record, having a long history of bankruptcies. These are all things that traditionally can disqualify you for a top secret clearance or for high level office. None of that applied there. And the reason they have these stipulations is to protect our national security, to prevent things. For example, like the selling of state secrets, the trading of state secrets for leverage, illicit deals being laid out.
Sarah Kendzior:
Everything should be viewed in this context of the fact that we have been jeopardized greatly in a way that was always going to be very difficult to dig ourselves out of. It requires an intense confrontation with the corruption that allowed this to bloom in the first place, but they just are ignoring it. You know, that's always been the Biden way: Don't look back, just look forward, it'll work out, la la la. Never any kind of deep dive into this corruption. And now we're at the point where there may be an actual land war between Ukraine and Russia and all of that… What kind of leverage does the Kremlin have? What kind of leverage do Kremlin-supporting individuals in Ukraine—people who are corrupt in Ukraine and rooting for the Kremlin side—what do they have? What state secrets have been passed? What do they know about our military system, our power grid, you know, all of these classified bits of information that can be used not only to greatly harm people in Ukraine but Americans as well. This, to me, is such an incredible crisis and it is just glossed over. Politicians don't discuss it much. The media doesn't really discuss it at all. They discuss everything like a horse race.
Sarah Kendzior:
And just one final point, I just can't stop thinking about how weird this is: For all of 2019, once the Democrats took the House, Andrea and I were saying, “Of course, Trump needs to be impeached” and we had a long list of crimes that he had committed that were impeachable; abuse of the pardon power, abuse of migrant families and obstruction of justice which, of course, was laid out in great detail in the Mueller Report, which Merrick Garland also continues to ignore. But anyway, we were like, Okay, Mueller's investigation basically sucked and wasn't thorough and left a lot out, but he still managed to come up with all these charges. Use this to impeach Trump. Instead of doing that Pelosi, who did not wanna impeach at all, decides to impeach on this sort of strange fringe issue that emerged only in 2019. And they tried to strip away the entire background context of this issue which was the shakedown call that Trump made to Zelensky over the summer of 2019. And we were like, Of all the things to impeach him on, this one is weird. But what that did, for those who did manage to pay attention, I think it was difficult for a lot of Americans to even follow what was going on here because there were all these other things happening that were worse in a lot of respects, in terms of how they directly affected the American public.
Sarah Kendzior:
But anyway, this revolved around Biden. Hunter Biden's name was brought up in regard to this conflict, so Biden and the Democrats became synonymous with Ukraine as the GOP and Trump had become synonymous with Russia. That is a terrible framework—that is the framework that the media still views this now—because it takes away the broader context of corruption. It takes away the individual history of each country. They start to think of Ukraine as some sort of proxy of the Democratic Party instead of an independent sovereign nation that has been repeatedly invaded by an imperialistic neighbor with Russia. And I keep wondering, Why did they do that? Because it kind of set the stage for a conceptual barrier that people are experiencing now when they're just analyzing what's going on in Ukraine and Russia. When they try to figure out what side to take, it's often linked to which political party they favor or what they think that party’s objectives are, where it should not be about that.
Sarah Kendzior:
It should not be about partisanship at all and it's sad to me that people can't see that. It's very weird. There's a lot of stuff about this that I just think is very strange. It's up there with all of our questions like, Why is the coup and attack on the Capitol that we got to watch on live TV not being prosecuted with the utmost urgency as the neo-Nazi candidate gives speeches saying that he's going to come back in and pardon everybody who participated in it and then throw everyone who investigated him in jail? These all seem like things that should really be the priority of an administration that values, in any way, our public safety, our democracy and our future assured sovereignty and existence as a nation. And the Biden administration is not behaving this way. I expect that if you dig down into the horrible web of relationships between mafiosos and oligarchs and corrupt politicians and corporations and Big Tech and all the stuff we go through all the time, you'll get some answers. And they're going to be very unpleasant and disgusting. Oh, and also I'll add the FBI and intelligence agencies because obviously their reaction to this whole situation has been very strange. But yeah, I guess, just another reminder: Don't look at it this way. Don't fall for all this and kind of be suspicious of how these narratives even manage to get implanted in the public consciousness.
Andrea Chalupa:
This has been another Gaslit Nation Greatest Hits. If you are outraged, like we are, go to the Gaslit Nation Action Guide at gaslitnationpod.com and support one of those many crucial organizations that need our support right now in taking back and rebuilding our democracy.
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Andrea Chalupa:
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