“Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. Winston Churchill
The Russian Bear is a widespread symbol (generally of a Eurasian brown bear) for Russia, used in cartoons, articles and dramatic plays since as early as the 16th century, and relating alike to the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the present-day Russian Federation. It often was and is used by Westerners, originated in British caricatures and later also used in the United States, and not always in a flattering context – on occasion it was used to imply that Russia is "big, brutal and clumsy".
The bear image was, however, on various occasions (especially in the 20th century) also taken up by Russians themselves. Having the bear cub "Misha" as the mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games was evidently intended to counter the "big and brutal Russian Bear" image with a small, cuddly and smiling bear cub. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was some support in the Russian Parliament for having a bear as the new Russian coat of arms – with the proposers pointing out that "Russia is anyway identified in the world with the Bear" – though eventually it was the Tsarist coat of arms of the Double-headed eagle that was restored. In heraldry and vexillology, the double-headed eagle is a charge associated with the concept of Empire. The eagle has long been a symbol of power and dominion. The double-headed eagle motif appears to have its ultimate origin in the Ancient Near East, especially in Hittite iconography. Vladimir Solovyov’s poem, The Third Rome describes Russia as the Third Rome, which claimed to be the successor of the Eastern Roman Empire whose emblem of a two-headed black eagle was also adopted as the symbol of the Russian state. In the poem Solovyov expresses a vision of Russia’s destiny that, a century later, has made him a philosophical hero of Putin, who reportedly assigns his political underlings to read him.
What this all adds up to is that the Russian bear has emerged from hibernation.
After the Cold War, Russia lost its superpower status, making the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecy seem unlikely in some people’s eyes but Russia is no longer the defeated Cold War relic of the past. Its political, economic and military resurgence will likely have major prophetic significance in events leading to Jesus Christ’s return.
Vladimir Putin
I could spend pages on the rise of Putin, his childhood, his career as a KGB agent or his obsession with Russian philosophers like Vladimir Solovyov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Ilyin who wrote “We trust and are confident that the hour will come when Russia will rise from disintegration and humiliation and begin an epoch of new development and greatness,” but “to enter into the world of Putin’s favourite philosophers is to enter a world full of melodrama, mysticism and grandiose eschatological visions” wrote David Brooks of the New York Times.
On a lighter note, his state news channels have “action man” appearances, in which he engages in manly feats that sometimes are later shown to have been staged — including his alleged discovery of ancient Greek pottery while scuba diving and shooting a tiger that purportedly was about to spring upon a group of cameramen, photographers snapped shots of him building a fire, swimming laps in a Siberian lake, and yes, engaging in some shirtless horseback riding.
It is clear in Russia that Putin is trying to create political instability in all the West in order to make governments focus on domestic problems and their political survival. When necessary Russia will adopt a new needy pawn by backing dissenting EU members who are more willing to give them their support.
backing Putin gives to Miss Le Pen of the National Front in France to unsettle President Hollande and then in 2016 French election Le Pen turned to a Russian bank to fund her anti-immigration, anti-EU party.
the support for the extreme Right (NPD and the AfD) and Left (Linke) in Germany directed against Chancellor Merkel
the support for Berlusconi and the Northern League in Italy,
Nationalists in Britain, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, and the new left (Podemos) in Spain.
in February 2015 it was the new Greek Syriza government, as the country teetered on edge of bankruptcy - its Left-wing prime minister Alexis Tsipras dropped a meeting with the European Council’s president, Poland’s Donald Tusk, to go to Russia’s old imperial capital of St Petersburg to meet Putin instead. “Ever since he became premier Mr Tsipras has gone to great lengths to accentuate Greece’s cultural and historical ties to Russia. Cosying up to Russia is part of his brinkmanship with Greece’s creditors. All this adds to fears that if Greece exits the eurozone, Russia is waiting in the wings.” said Nicholas Spiro of Spiro Sovereign Strategy.
Moscow has increasingly, and with considerable success, targeted an anti-NATO and anti-U.S. audience. Jeremy Corbyn, newly elected leader of Britain's Labour Party, has frequently given interviews to RT and in 2014 was more than happy to repeat Putin's propaganda about "fascists" in Ukraine. He has been totally silent about serious human rights violations in a way disturbingly reminiscent of the myopia demonstrated by left-wing intellectuals during Joseph Stalin's repressions
When RT’s new parent organisation, wholly funded by the Kremlin, was created in 2013, Putin’s spokesman said: “The tool of propaganda is an integral part of any state. It is everywhere. and Russia should use it as well. Propaganda in the good sense of the word”.
RT and Sputnik are widely regarded as two of the major players. The former launched in 2005, the latter in 2014. The amount of state money behind both is significant. In 2016 RT’s budget was $247 million. This explains much of its professional editing, impressive studios, and high profile guests. Back in 2016, Sputnik News - a state mouthpiece of Vladimir Putin's increasingly uncompromising Russian regime – opened its first British hub in the Scotland and has continued to publish on its website the claim that the 2014 referendum on Scotland’s independence was rigged. The brainchild of the Russian government's propaganda chief, Dmitri Kiselyov, Sputnik says its aim is to challenge what it regards as the news orthodoxies of the "unipolar" American-led world media. The agency has planned to open new hubs around the world including Beijing, Berlin, Paris and Washington DC.
The European Values thinktank recently published a report that listed more than 2,000 US and European politicians who have appeared on RT.
In 2016, the European Parliament called on the EU and its states to do more to counter Russian “disinformation and propaganda warfare”. Disinformation is false information spread deliberately to deceive. A motion endorsing a committee report, which also called for more effort against attempts by Islamic State to radicalize Europeans, passed by 304 votes to 179. Members on the far left and far right were opposed; many in the center-left abstained. "The European Parliament ... expresses its strong criticism of Russian efforts to disrupt the EU integration process and deplores, in this respect, Russian backing of anti-EU forces in the EU with regard, in particular, to extreme-right parties, populist forces and movements that deny the basic values of liberal democracies," the 59-point motion read.
Every week, Putin finds new ways to scare the world:
shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing by a Russian army BUK rocket
the systematic campaign of state-sponsored doping of Russian athletes at the Sochi Olympics
Russia has used tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia to influence public opinion in elections
he moved nuclear-capable missiles close to Poland and Lithuani
he sent an aircraft-carrier group down the North Sea and the English Channel
In several instances NATO and Russian aircraft and ships have been on collision courses in the Baltic, Black and Mediterranean Seas
He has threatened to shoot down any American plane that attacks the forces of Syria’s despot, Bashar al-Assad.
invasion of Ukraine and Georgia
annexation of Crimea
The Russian parliament authorised the liquidation of terrorists and ‘enemies’ overseas in 2006. And Putin gave tacit authorisation to these operations back in 2010 when Skripal and ten other imprisoned US and British agents were exchanged. He promised that these ‘traitors … would choke on their 30 pieces of silver’. But the Russian law is very specific in that it permits the president - alone, and apparently without consultation - to take such a decision.
BuzzFeed News released the first two parts of a two-year investigation detailing how US spy agencies gave the British government, upon its request, evidence linking the murders or deaths of 14 Russians and Brits in the UK to the Kremlin, the FSB, Russia's security agency, or the Russian mafia, which sometimes works with the government. But the British government has ruled out foul play in each case. Putin, a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB, and ex-head of the FSB — is suspected of assassinating:
The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.
the attempted murder of the former military intelligence colonel Sergei Skripal.
Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist who was critical of Putin. In her book "Putin's Russia," she accused Putin of turning his country into a police state. She was murdered by contract killers who shot her at point blank range in the lift outside her flat.
Natalia Estemirova was a journalist who sometimes worked with Politkovskaya. She specialised in uncovering human-rights abuses carried out by the Russian state in Chechnya. She was abducted from outside her home and later found in nearby woodland with gunshot wounds to her head. No one has been convicted of her murder.
Boris Berezovsky was a Russian oligarch who fled to Britain after he fell out with Putin. During his exile he threatened to bring down Putin by force. He was found dead at his Berkshire home in March 2013 in an apparent suicide, although an inquest into his death recorded an open verdict. Boris Nemtsov was a former deputy prime minister of Russia under Boris Yeltsin who went on to become a big critic of Putin — accusing him of being in the pay of oligarchs. He was shot four times in the back just yards from the Kremlin as he walked home from a restaurant.
It is the aggressive, self-pitying nationalism whipped up by Mr Putin — allied to the persecution and now murder of his domestic opponents — that is truly reminiscent of the politics of Russia and Germany in the 1930s. Mr Putin has sought to offset vulnerability at home with aggression and disinformation abroad.
When the oil price was high, Mr Putin could resist the West by buying support. Now he shores up his power by waging foreign wars and using his propaganda tools to whip up nationalism. He is fiercely protective of everything Russian, be it territory, culture, history, respect and reputation. The Kremlin-relying on the secret services, the Orthodox Church, the Kremlin youth "Nashi," and the rehabilitated Cossacks-is preparing for an imperial revival, most recently in the form of a "Eurasian Union."
Quotes that reveal the mind of Vladimir Putin:
"I would like to tell those who have been trying to escalate the arms race for the past 15 years, to gain unilateral advantages over Russia, and to impose restrictions and sanctions … The attempt at curbing Russia has failed,” he said. Speaking in a nationally televised address to the country’s political elite weeks before the presidential election, March 2 2018.
“I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.” interview with TF-1 Television Channel (France), taken on July 12, 2006
“There is no such thing as a former KGB man.” Responding to Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who called himself a former KGB officer.
"I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence." interview with TF-1 Television Channel (France), taken on July 12, 2006.
Oil is the lifeblood of the Russian economy
Oil and gas wealth empowered the Putin to strengthen his hold on power domestically and expand Russia’s muscles internationally. Russia is a major player in oil and gas production worldwide. It is the second largest producer of natural gas and the third largest producer of oil.
Low oil prices are bad news for the Russian economy. Unlike the United States where dependence on oil is consumption driven, the Russian economy depends on the profitable production of oil to pay for the costs of government, prop up the ruble, and provide a majority of its exports. In short, the Russian economy grows or shrinks with the price of oil. Russia is in the same precarious financial boat as Saudi Arabia, but unlike the latter, Russia is failing to diversify
“We are too dependent on oil and this is what stops our currency from being stable and makes it too volatile … as the price of oil dropped so did the Russia ruble," Alexei Kudrin, who is a reportedly a long-term confidant of the Russian president, made his comments at the 2016 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, at which Vladimir Putin also spoke.
“Today, having cut costs dramatically, U.S. producers are enjoying a second wave of growth so extraordinary that in 2018 their increase in liquids production could equal global demand growth,” reports the International Energy Agency.
New York Times reported back in 2014 that “when Russia seized Crimea in March (2014), it acquired not just the Crimean landmass but also a maritime zone more than three times its size with the rights to underwater resources potentially worth trillions of dollars. Russia portrayed the takeover as reclamation of its rightful territory, drawing no attention to the oil and gas rush that had recently been heating up in the Black Sea. But the move also extended Russia’s maritime boundaries, quietly giving Russia dominion over vast oil and gas reserves while dealing a crippling blow to Ukraine’s hopes for energy independence.”
Russia has three major pipelines flowing through Ukraine. The largest, the Bratstvo pipeline, supplies Western Europe. The Soyuz pipeline feeds Central Asia. The Trans-Balkan pipeline goes to the Balkans and Turkey. Putin thinks strategically. So that Russia would not become dependent on Ukraine, the Kremlin initiated in recent years the development of two other supply routes. The Nord Stream runs from Russia to Germany, and the new South Stream aims to have natural gas flowing via the Black Sea to Eastern Europe by 2018.
The extent of European dependency on Russian energy is astounding. According to the European Commission, fifty-four percent of the EU’s current total energy needs are fulfilled by Russia. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is most dependent. It receives thirty-six percent of its natural gas from Russia, followed by Italy (twenty-seven percent), and France (twenty-three percent). Half of Poland’s gas imports, and roughly two-thirds of the Czech Republic’s, come from Putin. Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Moldova are nearly entirely dependent. Finland and the Baltic States are one hundred percent dependent on Russia for their energy.
Arms
According to a 2015 article in The Telegraph, “in the relatively low-tech, high fire-power weapons that have defined the Ukraine conflict, it remains unsurpassed, with more tanks, self-propelled artillery, and multiple rocket launch systems than any other country on the planet.”
However, Russia still lags far behind the United States in total power and many other Western countries in terms of technology, with much of its vast arsenal still made up of ageing Soviet-designed equipment. Up to one third of Russia’s 23 trillion ruble 2010 to 2020 modernisation programme may have to be postponed or cancelled as a result, according to estimates by the Centre for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST).
The strategic modernization program is clearly evident in the Ukraine and Syria wars, and Russia is using these conflicts as training a ground to test new weapons.
NATO-Russia Relations
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)–Russian relations between the NATO Military Alliance and the Russian Federation were established in 1991 within the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. In 1994, Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program, and since that time, NATO and Russia have signed several important agreements on cooperation. According to Vladimir Putin, he proposed the idea of Russia joining NATO to President Bill Clinton in 2000 during a visit to Moscow, to which Clinton responded that he "didn't mind".
The Collective Security Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance that was signed on 15 May 1992, Russia's own international treaty organization in response to NATO. In 1992, six post-Soviet states belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States—Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—signed the Collective Security Treaty (also referred to as the "Tashkent Pact" or "Tashkent Treaty"). Three other post-Soviet states—Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Georgia—signed the next year and the treaty took effect in 1994. Five years later, six of the nine—all but Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan—agreed to renew the treaty for five more years, and in 2002 those six agreed to create the Collective Security Treaty Organization as a military alliance. Uzbekistan rejoined the CSTO in 2006 but withdrew in 2012.
On 1 April 2014, NATO unanimously decided to suspend co-operation with the Russian Federation, in response to the Ukraine crisis. On 18 February 2017, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said he supports the resumption of military cooperation with the NATO alliance. In late March 2017, the Council met in advance of a NATO Foreign Ministers conference in Brussels, Belgium.
On December 26, 2014, Putin signed off on a new military doctrine that listed NATO as Russia's main existential rival while extolling the value of further militarization of three main spheres of forward Russian power.
The U.S. supplies much of NATO and Middle Eastern allies like Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Russia supplies other BRIC nations, as well as Iran, much of Southeast Asia, and North Africa. But Russia’s national budget has been battered by falling oil prices, international sanctions, and rampant inflation.