MOSCOW (Realist English). He who promoted and concluded this deal cared the least about safeguarding with Russia’s interests, he least of all thought about how the Russian people would react to this, what impact it would have on the moral and strong-willed attitude of Russian soldiers fighting in the former Ukraine.
Turkey and the opinion of Joseph Biden, the rest of the West and — very slightly – the poorest countries of the Third World were more important to him.
I’m talking about Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
And who did you think of?
In the “past life”, the author happened — not a year, not two — to serve as a political intelligence officer, including 7 years in the countries of the ” main adversary” — the United States and Canada.
Based on this — limited, of course — experience, I would like to report the following.
From very good and decent – patriotic–minded people – you often hear something like this: “Well, yes, this is the Kremlin’s move that seems unsuccessful… But, after all, we don’t possess the information that in its entirety and fullness comes through numerous channels “there”… Hopefully, there is a very subtle and far-reaching a plan that will still change…”
That is both true and not. It is true that “we do not possess…”.
And it is wrong — because politics is a public sphere. And secrets in this area do not last long. Often, the very “information that comes “there” through numerous channels” becomes public in a day or two, or even hours after it has been reported “there” in a sealed form. Not necessarily, however, in “its entirety and fullness”, but in sufficient volume to understand what is going on. (A note on the margins: this is a kind of intelligence paradox peculiar to the activities of all intelligence agencies in the world: political intelligence, the pinnacle of intelligence activity — because it obtains specifically protected information about the emerging aspirations and plans being developed by the very “tops” of the opposing side – produces the most “perishable” product that is about to be torn, shredded and spewed out by news agencies, TV channels, newspapers and magazines. The “products” of scientific, technical, military and other types of intelligence are much more “enduring”. Theirs can remain secrets for twenty, thirty years or longer.)
And when intelligence agencies reveal these aspirations, ideas and plans of the enemy’s military-political leadership, the usefulness of the information they have obtained is not always obvious — much, if not everything, depends on the point of view, the position of the “consumer” of intelligence information – the first person of a particular state. And he has his own relations with “partners”. This person is a living being with fortitude, firmness, courage, self–confidence, with the confidence in the forces of his environment, people, country. Or lack thereof. And history shows that all these are equations with many unknowns, the solutions of which are not always unambiguous and straightforward.
Sometimes intelligence information may seem unthinkable to this “first person”. And in this case, the information of political intelligence, for the sake of obtaining which a lot of smart and brave people could well have risked their lives, and some could have lost it, goes down the drain. (A note on the margins: it’s not for nothing that the unscrupulous bastard Churchill one of his operations to be launched together with the Americans (and the Germans!) – to unleash a war against the USSR back in 1945 – called “Operation Unthinkable”*. (By the way, the Soviet intelligence managed to obtain information about this top-secret operation in a timely manner.)
When the implementation of previously adopted, but until that moment sealed, decisions begins, when political secrets disappear, then all the abomination of what was previously “classified” appears to the eyes of the peoples.
Think, for example, of Colin Powell at the UN and shaking a test tube with some white powder.
Or — someone will say, shameful — Stalin’s withdrawal of Soviet troops from Iran in 1946 under pressure from Washington and London. Made of steel Stalin did not make it; he bent.
So, in politics, everything falls into place pretty quickly, and the complete inconsistency of the argument about the lack of “of information received in its fullness and entirety through various channels” becomes obvious.
And the determination or indecision, courage or cowardice of this or that leader, firmness or weakness of his will becomes equally obvious. Especially if the nature of the actions of the decision-maker is repeated over and over again. There is a secret, however, that the decision-maker, as a rule, takes with him to the grave. Did Gorby ever admit to anyone that he was a traitor? Did he even admit it to himself when he fell asleep every night or when he passed away? I doubt it very much.
By the way, Erdoğan has been demonstrating all the highest leadership qualities for quite a long time. Let’s remember, at least, the war of 08.08.08. Then, in order to support Tbilisi — albeit only morally and politically, because they didn’t have the guts to fight us even in 2008 – US warships were rushing into the Black Sea. And Erdoğan has “marinatied” the Americans on the Mediterranean side of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles for 15 days (this is the period that, according to the Montreux Convention, must pass from the moment of filing an application for passage of the straits by warships). By the end of this period, the war with Georgia had already ended with a known outcome.
At that time, there were no modern “enticements” in the form of the Akkuyu NPP or a gas hub, etc. for Turkey, but there was a principled posture and firmness of the country’s leader entrusted with the implementation of an international legal act. And a clear understanding of what the honor and dignity of a leader and a country are. This can hardly be denied, regardless of the attitude towards Turkey and its leader.
And what do we have in the Russian limits?
2001 – the unilateral shameful departure from Lourdes and Cam Ranh.
2014 – the phone call “at the request” of Obama to Yanukovych with a “proposal” not to use force against neo-Nazis.
The same year – the treacherous (there is no other way to call it!) non-recognition of the results of the referendum on the sovereignty of Lugansk and Donetsk.
Eight years of refusal to recognize the DPR and LPR or to provide direct military assistance to the Russians of Donbass.
The current year – the Istanbul “agreement”, a “gesture of goodwill” in the form of leaving Kiev to please the Ukronazists. And after all, no one has not only repented of the sin of betrayal, but also constantly refers to the fact that, they say, then it was almost “agreed to”!
The shameful exchange of “Azov”* members. Personally, I would not have any issues with this if Medvedchuk had not been among those received. Is this greedy Ukrainian oligarch worth even a fingernail of any of our helicopter pilot’s smallest toe that could have been exchanged instead of him? His “rescue” cannot but raise the question that all this action was only organized in order to get him. Whose godfather is he? And what if, in order to free him, they demanded to leave Kherson? Or Zaporozhye? Who can guarantee that this would not have been done? After all, what the hell for have they given away the Anglo-Saxon bastards sentenced to death – those who came here on a “russnya safari”!?
For this intention alone, every such SOB who shows up here should be turned into shoelaces for the boots of our guys! Had an American president thrown out such a trick, he would have been instantly — according to 25th Amendment to the US constitution — removed from power due to incapacity. This does not even require an impeachment procedure in Congress — “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
The way this is done, the Americans showed in the film Lockout, (2012). It considered a situation in which a US president was slow to make a decision on the use of special forces because his daughter was held hostage at the facility to be stormed. The daughter, not some lousy godfather! That’s, it, get off the throne! And it doesn’t matter that the film is fantastic — the constitutional mechanism of the removal of the president is real!
Small peanuts?
I’m not even talking about such now almost forgotten “peanuts” as putting Vika Nuland, who hates us fiercely and is actively working to make us disappear, on the sanctions lists, and then shuffling in front of her in high Moscow offices…
I’m not talking about the cowardly looking away when the Americans confiscated our diplomatic property from us (this shame was all the more disgusting because in some places our “diplomats” (are they “ours” after all?) they didn’t even lower our flag from the flagpole over our buildings themselves; the FBI did it with their dirty paws.
I’m not talking about how the shame of the “anti-doping” scandal and the consent to the appearance of our athletes without the national flag and the national anthem. It is difficult to even remember when our country suffered such shame and humiliation. And most importantly – without trying to properly and adequately respond.
Does anyone still need some more “diverse information from different departments in its entirety” to see that the same thing has been repeated for decades? In Soviet times, this was called “kowtowing (kneeling, bowing — the reader can choose the option that he likes) to the West.”
And after that, does anyone else have the tongue to speak with high-sounding invectives against this very West?
Shouldn’t we better remember the great Ivan Krylov: “Isn’t it better to turn around on yourself, godmother?”
And how about the recent “statement” by Deputy Minister Sergei Ryabkov – the one to whom the Foreign Ministry’s PR people, apparently, have signed off the role of a kind of departmental tough guy. (Have you seen this “tough guy”?)
Ryabkov touched upon the most important issue of the negotiations, saying that he could repeat that Russia is open to dialogue without any preconditions.
It seems more than strange that Ryabkov’s phrase that “Russia has no obstacles here, and there should be no preconditions for dialogue” – presumably, not the personal position of the Foreign Ministry, albeit a high-ranking, and still only an appointed bureaucrat, but the official position of a much higher authority.
Should we understand this position as the readiness of the Russian leadership to discuss with the Ukronazies the provisions that Kiev had previously — and persistently — put forward: the return of the Russian armed forces to positions before February 24 of this year, i.e. Russia’s withdrawal from the DPR and LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson — regions that have already become part of the constitutional territory of the Russian Federation, negotiations on the “further status” of Crimea? How about reparations to the Ukraine? Nothing has been heard for a long time from the Kremlin demanding the return of illegally frozen funds of the Russian gold and foreign exchange reserve. Are these reserves facing the same fate as the Russian diplomatic property stolen from us by the Americans? Which Putin wanted to return through the American courts?
If the Kremlin is ready to discuss — no matter with the Americans or with the Ukronazies — the LPR, the DPR, the Crimea and further down the list, then it might be ready to agree to some of this?
If the Kremlin is ready for this kind of “negotiations”, then the situation, translating it into day-to-day realities, will look something like this: your sister is being raped with a knife to her throat, you stand up for her, you get into a fight, and then at some stage you stop and say that you are ready to negotiate with the rapist without any preconditions. Don’t you say in this way: “Go ahead, rape her! You can even kill her! I’m stepping aside, don’t touch me!”?
Isn’t it time for the Kremlin to explain to the society the words of its deputy foreign minister? Maybe the society should know what kind of future it is being prepared for it?
P.S. I wonder how Erdoğan would react if in some country its authorities requisitioned the Turkish diplomatic property? Would he invite the diplomats’ children of this country to any events?
So that they spit contemptuously in the inviting hand?
Please, don’t make my slippers laugh!
Sergei Dukhanov is Colonel of the SVR of the Russian Federation (Retired), Knight of the “Order of Military Merit”, special to the Realist News Agency
“Operation Unthinkable” was the name given to two related possible future war plans by the British Chiefs of Staff against the Soviet Union in 1945. The creation of the plans was ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in May 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff in May 1945 at the end of World War II in Europe.
One plan assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany to “impose the will of the Western Allies” on the Soviets. “The will” was qualified as “a square deal for Poland”, which probably meant enforcing the recently-signed Yalta Agreement. The planners decided that without massive American help, Britain would probably fail. The assessment, signed by the Chief of Army Staff on 9 June 1945, concluded: “It would be beyond our power to win a quick but limited success and we would be committed to a protracted war against heavy odds”.[not specific enough to verify] The plans was highly secret and was not made public until 1998[5] although a British spy for the Soviets, Guy Burgess, had passed on some details at the time.
* * “Azov” is recognized in Russia as a terrorist organization, its activity is prohibited.
