NB. Vadim, what do your sources say about the strange voyage of the Arctic Sea and the way it was spinned by Vladimir Filin of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) and the Russian “investigative journalist” Yulia Latynina?

VS. To put it briefly, it was a very dangerous provocation, inspired and organized by a group of US militarists with the help of their partners in the GUR. The provocation was preceded by a meeting in Washington between Filin and Vice-President Biden. It had followed their meetings in Kiev during Biden's recent official visit there. We don't know any details about these meetings but the way the whole affair was plotted is pretty clear by now. Here is my reconstruction.

Filin and his Far West LLC partners Ruslan Saidov and Anton Surikov (aka US citizen Gregory Orloff) are former senior officers of Soviet and Russian military intelligence, who for many years were involved in both illegal and legal international arms trade. (I mention Saidov and Surikov because they accompanied Filin during that meeting with Biden in Washington). Their use of the ill-fated ferry “Estonia” for arms and drugs smuggling was one episode of their international activities relevant to the Arctic See case. In the 2000s they became active in anti-Russian politics—Filin from his base in Ukraine, Saidov—in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and Surikov—about everywhere. In this capacity they were brought into the fold of what we call the intelligence cabal—the assortment of extremist Russophobic elements in the intelligence, military, and political establishments of the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, and some other countries. Before this US administration, their “Dear Leader” was Vice-President Cheney and his office. Their partners in the US were and still are Fritz Ermarth and Robert Gates. Filin and his partners hoped that McCain and Palin would win the presidency and in the spring of 2008 they developed relations (through Ermarth) with Robert Kagan and Randy Scheunemann, McCain's senior advisor on international affairs. At that time General Filin controlled the flow of military-political intelligence from Ukrainian intelligence to the Georgians who didn't have serious intelligence capacities. This gave him the opportunity to manipulate the decision-making process in Tbilisi.

So in August of 2008 after his meetings in Washington Filin went to Georgia and several days later the Georgians, supported by Ukrainian military specialists and mercenaries attacked South Ossetia.  1  The goal of the Ukrainians and their US partners was to create a military-political crisis that would allow the hawkish McCain to win presidency and to produce a new cold war against Russia, preventing further reapprochement between Russia and Europe. We now think that the Georgian-Ukrainian provocation in South Ossetia had also another objective of making Obama to choose Joe Biden as his running mate. In this way, Biden owes one to Filin. The adventure in South Ossetia misfired. Nobody expected that the Russians would punish the Georgians so swiftly and convincingly.

The defeat in the Caucasus made the Ukrainian extremists in the military and intelligence to call off the Operation “300 Spartans” that was to begin with the attack on the Russian naval base in Sevastopol, its blockade and the reprisals against the pro-Russian “fifth column” in Ukraine. After several months of changes in Washington, they found their new “Dear Leader” in Biden and their place in the wide international conspiracy against Obama's policy of a 'reset' in US—Russian relations. The Arctic Sea provocation is part of this conspiracy.

NB. Can you describe what actually took place?

VS. Of course, we don't know everything but only a general outline and sequence of events. Russian secret services include a number of groups who are engaged in business and who use their services for the sake of their businesses. This was how the Soviet army and secret services were incorporated in the capitalist restoration—they were given the opportunity to have their piece of the Soviet pie. Usually, it's arms trade, sometimes drugs, like in the case of Filin and his partners who used to be some the largest heroin traders in the Eurasia. These groups operate by having “protection” of the corrupted government officials, including those in the Kremlin; they bribe, they corrupt, they use sometimes violence against each other. That's capitalism, no better no worse than in any other country, their US counterparts included as equally corrupt and violent. So one such group in the military intelligence (GRU) used a group of smugglers they controlled for a shipment of light weaponry to some place in Africa. This cargo was not intended for Iran, Syria or Venezuela as Filin alleged. Another GRU business group, their competitors, tried to intercept this shipment in the Baltic Sea. I have information that the attackers were guided by the Ukrainians, their former GRU colleagues—Generals Filin, Likhvintsev, and Kosyakov. That was the episode described by now in all mass media when a group of men in black raided the ship and held her for 12 hours. Now it is clear that they did not find what they were told was on the ship. The Ukrainians set them up too. What for? Well, they needed to create a “pirate” situation that would justify the ceasure of the ship by the Nato Navy, Americans or British. In that case, the smugglers, their cargo, and the “pirates” would be televised around the world and the crew could be intimidated to tell anything they were asked to. A great juicy anti-Russian scandal was in the cooking—the Russians (are coming!), their secret services, corrupted and bloodied, Russian “pirates” in the center of Europe, good Europeans in the claws of the Russian Bear! I mean this was a feast the West badly needed in the last throes of the “Bailout Bubble.” But the Kremlin felt a rat. It was rather late in the game but not too late. Putin did not allow Nato to have its great victory over “piracy” in the European Sea. But in terms of counter-propaganda the Russians could not do much. Understandably, they could not tell the true story. After all, there were smugglers, there were people from Russian state agencies involved, there were even “pirates” of a sort. They had to allow Filin's and Latynina's lies to continue unopposed. And lies they were. There were no KH-55s Kent and the “biochemical” weapons on the ship heading to Iran. There were no American special forces boarding the ship as Filin has announced. The energetic, no-nonsense maneuver of the Russian Navy made the provocateurs back off the Arctic Sea. The Kremlin was able to avoid the trap prepared by the Ukrainians and their partners in the US.

NB. You mentioned Latynina, the controversial fifth columnist who last year was awarded a medal by the State Department. But Filin's version was also backed by Tarmo Kiuts, the former commander of the Estonian Defense. He claimed that the Arctic Sea had KH-55 on board though, like Filin, he offered no evidence for his allegations.

VB. Kiuts is associated with the FarWest crowd. He helped Roeva to obtain Estonian passport for conducting subversive anti-Russian activities together with Paul Goble, former CIA and State Department “expert” on the “nationalities question” in the Soviet Union. 2  Roeva, Goble, Estonians, and Finns run a racket under the title of “the independent state of Idel-Ural” -- this was an old project of Alfred Rosenberg and his Ministry for the Occupied East in 1941-44. I am not surprised that Kiuts helped out Filin. The partition of Russia into a patchwork of client states is their common dream.

NB. Do you feel that this provocation was a reaction to President Medvedev's recent public thrashing of Yushchenko and his Russophobic policies?

VS. Absolutely, Filin himself wrote about this. But this was not just a knee-jerk emotional reaction to revenge the thrashing of the neo-Banderite regime. The provocation had clear political objectives. We feel that the main goal of this provocation was Israel. The US militarists and Ukrainian extremists want Israeli-Russian relations to deteriorate because of their tactical or, hopefully, strategic differences with the Israelis. Israel would like the United States to “take care” of Iran first and foremost. This is why the Zionist Lobby in the US and in Obama's administration wants a 'reset' in US-Russian relations, including some concessions in regard to Georgia, Ukraine and the anti missile defense system in Europe. The Russophobic elites in Ukraine and Eastern Europe hate Obama (and Jews) for this and want the opposite: the United States must not deflect its frontal attack against Russia for the sake of Israel. They find support in the US military-intelligence cabal that continues to reproduce itself from the days of the Cold War—Brzezinski, Gates, Ermarth, Woolsey, the neocons like Robert Kagan and Joshua Muravchik, the Hudson Institute and the CSIS crowd and you name them. The informational provocation with the Arctic Sea aims to incite animosity to Russia in Israeli society and to breed distrust to Russia in Europe.

NB. To summarize what you've said, there is a wide intentional conspiracy to subvert Obama's policy to normalize the relations between the United States and Russia. A group of US militarists, led by Vice-President Biden uses the extremist top brass of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) for black psyops operations against Russia. Is it a fair summary?

VS. Well, I would add that they are engaged not only in black psyops and false flag operations. They are war mongers and have to their credit at least one war in South Ossetia. But as we have seen even a black psyop like that with the Arctic Sea can easily trigger something much more nasty.

There are icebergs moving from the Arctic. They are the icebergs of the new cold war against Russia, against peace, against mankind. However the adversaries now find themselves in a very different situation. They are no longer capable to wage anything close to the Cold War between Western ultraimperialism and the Soviet Union. The Titanic of the West is full of water and can go down any moment once the “Bailout Buble” bursts. Nor do the Russians have the resources and the ideology to hold forth for long. There is a mean saying nowadays in Russia. It goes like this: “Before, when wronged, the Russian used to embrace his birch tree and cry. Today, he leans, with an evil smirk, on the maple tree.” The unhealthy humor of this inside adage can be understood in the West only by a few Russian language experts, employed by corporate think tanks and universities who are the least interested in letting their population know the truth about the outside world. 'Topol'--Russian for maple tree-- is also the name of Russia's most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), considered to be unstoppable by any existing and future antimissile defense systems. The post-Soviet Mother Russia is becoming nuclear trigger-happy as she finds herself encircled and pushed into the corner by the likes of Mr. Biden and his buddies in the military-intelligence-industrial complex. The good ol' boys, who look at the fast changing world with fear and hatred, might not care much about the Russian “maple trees.” But the young America and the young Europe must care, they have lives to live. And they better take control of their lives and their countries before the political descendants of the Nazis in Washington and London push the Russians just a bit too hard.

August 26, 2009

Notes

1  “A Trap for Russia: U.S Neoliberals and Ukrainian Fascists Behind Operation 'Clean Field'.” Left.ru , 10 (2008) <http://left.ru/2008/10/stolz_en179.phtml>

2  Natalia Roeva (nee Valiakhmetova)--former TV anchorwoman in Izhevsk, Udmurtia. Member of the FarWest circle, specializes on inciting Ugro-Finn nationalism and separatism, lives in Finland, wife of a wealthy oil-trader. Besides Goble, Roeva has political contacts with Zeyno Baran and her husband, State Department diplomat Matthew Bryza. Both belong in the core of the Washington anti-Russian lobby.