Managing Russia’s Dissolution: Truth or Desire?
SouthFront
At the start of the year, on January 9, The Hill, a leading US political newspaper, as if setting the year agenda put out an article entitled “Managing Russia’s dissolution”. The article reviews the measures needed to dismantle Russia and instigate civil conflicts on the territory of Eurasia. The author describes Russia as “a declining state that disguises its internal infirmities with external offensives”. He further claims that “Russia is heading toward fragmentation” under “rising social, ethnic and regional pressures” and simultaneously blamed the federal government of both failing “to develop into a nation state with a strong ethnic or civic identity” and working to centralize control over regions.
The text below is a quote from the aforementioned article (emphasis added):
“In reality, Russia is a declining state that disguises its internal infirmities with external offensives. Russia’s economy is stagnating. According to World Bank statistics for 2017, Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita ranks 62nd in the world.
Even the defense budget is shrinking and barely reaches a tenth of the U.S. Through a combination of low fossil fuel prices, infrastructural decay, pervasive corruption and Western financial sanctions, state revenues are declining, living standards are falling, social conflicts are intensifying and regional disquiet is mounting.
Although economic performance alone is insufficient to measure susceptibility to collapse, rising social, ethnic and regional pressures indicate that Russia is heading toward fragmentation.
Russia has failed to develop into a nation state with a strong ethnic or civic identity. It remains an imperial construct due to its Tsarist and Soviet heritage.
The unwieldy Russian Federation consists of 85 “federal subjects,” of which 22 are republics representing non-Russian ethnicities, including the North Caucasus and Middle Volga, and numerous regions with distinct identities that feel increasingly estranged from Moscow.
Instead of pursuing decentralization to accommodate regional aspirations, the Kremlin is downgrading their autonomy. This is evident in the new language law designed to promote “Russification” and plans to merge and eliminate several regions.
Pressure is mounting across the country, with growing anger at local governors appointed by the Kremlin and resentment that Moscow appropriates their resources. Indeed, regions such as Sakha and Magadan in the far east, with their substantial mineral wealth, could be successful states without Moscow’s exploitation.
Emerging states will benefit from forging closer economic and political contacts with neighboring countries rather than depending on Moscow, whose federal budget is drastically shrinking. Collapsing infrastructure means that residents of Siberia and Russia’s far east will become even more separated from the center, thus encouraging demands for secession and sovereignty.
Given Russia’s ailments, an assertive Western approach would be more effective than reactive defense. Washington needs to return to core principles that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union by supporting democratization, pluralism, minority rights, genuine federalism, decentralization and regional self-determination among Russia’s disparate regions and ethnic groups.
While Moscow seeks to divide the West and fracture the EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by backing nationalist and separatist parties in Europe, Washington should promote regional and ethnic self-determination inside the Russian Federation. This would send a strong signal that the West is fully capable of reacting to Moscow’s subversion.
The rationale for dissolution should be logically framed: In order to survive, Russia needs a federal democracy and a robust economy; with no democratization on the horizon and economic conditions deteriorating, the federal structure will become increasingly ungovernable.
To manage the process of dissolution and lessen the likelihood of conflict that spills over state borders, the West needs to establish links with Russia’s diverse regions and promote their peaceful transition toward statehood.
NATO should prepare contingencies for both the dangers and the opportunities that Russia’s fragmentation will present. In particular, Moscow’s European neighbors must be provided with sufficient security to shield themselves from the most destabilizing scenarios while preparations are made for engaging with emerging post-Russia entities.
Some regions could join countries such as Finland, Ukraine, China and Japan, from whom Moscow has forcefully appropriated territories in the past. Other republics in the North Caucasus, Middle Volga, Siberia and the far east could become fully independent states and forge relations with China, Japan, the U.S. and Europe.
Neglecting Russia’s dissolution may prove more damaging to Western interests than making preparations to manage its international repercussions. To avoid sudden geopolitical jolts and possible military confrontations, Washington needs to monitor and encourage a peaceful rupture and establish links with emerging entities.
The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union should serve as a lesson that far-reaching transformations occur regardless of the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns or the West’s shortsighted adherence to a transient status quo.”
Bugajski’s ideas are not new at all. Globalist think tanks have been advancing the same for decades.
Mud-slinging in order to undermine Russian statehood aims at fueling radicalism, nationalism and regionalism. It has the wave-like behavior. The previous wave top targeted pretty much the same regions: the North Caucasus, Middle Volga, Siberia and the Far East. Tricks and methods employed are not divers. The only difference between them is geographical location and names of the influenced ethnic groups.
These approaches could be provisionally marked as the “Polish style”. This term has no links to modern Poland. We employ it only because the approaches provided below, except for the first point, Poland really has a great written history, are quite similar to the ones that were first used to fuel Polish nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries and applied to the same geopolitical area.
The main ideas of this model are:
- Creation of a pseudo-history of a nation or ethnic group. Usually this pseudo-history is dated back to the ancient world and legendary times. This “history” is based on pseudo-historical works and research papers composed by authors unknown to the world academic community.
- Promotion of ideas of exceptionalism among members of the nation or ethnic group. These ideas argue that the nation or ethnic group is superior to neighbors and instigate a grotesque sense of national identity (exceptionalism based on ethnicity).
- Creation of the myth of a historical archenemy, who has been oppressing the nation or ethnic group, often attempting to eliminate its “exceptional” culture. This historical archenemy is described as the reason for the group’s undoing and thus its poor state in the modern world. The historical archenemy can be constructed from various states existing in different periods of history but, through which a historical succession or links can be traced. For example, the Golden Horde, the Moscow state, the Russian Empire, the USSR and the Russian Federation. The myth is actively fueled by speculation regarding historical events, which can neither be confirmed nor denied using factual data.
- Creation and promotion of the idea of the nation as once great but now defective, where this position of greatness had been stolen from it.
- Instigation of religious or intra-religious tensions, if the nation or ethnic group has a similar religion to that of its neighbors. The main approaches employed are:
- Promotion and creation of religious cults, including heathen customs, which are allegedly linked to the “ancient history” of the nation or ethnic group;
- Promotion of discords or sectarianism within the main religion of the nation. For example, for Orthodox Christianity: the Old Believers or Schismatical cults; for Islam: Sunni sects or Shia branches;
- Instigation of religions tensions between the religion of the ethnic group and other religions of the state. For example: Islam/Christianity or Orthodox Christianity/Catholicism.
- Promotion of myths about rich natural resources in the territory, where the ethnic group lives. Therefore, if this ethnic group were to rule this area “independently”, its wealth would grow and grow. A part of this effort is propaganda against government actions concerning the use of natural resources from the territory, where this ethnic group lives. The negative impact on the ecological situation is nightmarized by dissemination of myths about the barbaric exploitation of nature. A vivid example is the disseminated information about the alleged irreparable damage to Lake Baikal that is harmed by the plant producing bottled mineral water.
- Instigation of territorial and intraregional economic disputes between the neighboring nations or ethnic groups.
- Discredit of everything linked with the dominating state culture, language and history. For example, bashing everything “Russian”, the creation and promotion of offensive language and terms (Russian – Vatnik), a wide spread of derogatory language and the mutilation of words, terms and names.
The previous wave of information onslaught on nations and ethnic groups of Russia was aimed at the following targets:
The Northern Caucasus. The influence was mostly aimed at the Kabardians living in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, Stavropol Krai and the Republic of Adygea. The Ossetians in the Republic of North Ossetia – Alania were also targeted. Recently the Ingushs living in the Republic of Ingushetia, Moscow and St. Petersburg were again considered as a priority goal in “the Northern Caucasus target list”.
The Southern Federal District. The main effort was to instigate nationalism, regionalism and separatism among the Cossacks, mostly in Rostov Oblast. The Cossacks are not an ethnic group. However, they are a large social group, which makes them a likely target.
The Northwestern Federal District. The goal was to instigate regional nationalism among Finno-Ugric ethnic groups. Another point of pressure was to create nationalism tendencies among ethnic Russian population in the Republic of Karelia and Arkhangelsk Oblast in order to form a new large ethnosocial group. For example, in April, the city of Arkhangelsk experienced a series of rallies held in breach of law. This situation happened under the passive eye of regional authorities. Furthermore, initial reactions and attitude of the regional authorities played a notable role in fueling the protest moods. These protests, caused by a project of landfill site in the nearby area, is being actively exploited by the so-called non-system opposition and “liberal media” to fuel tensions between the different groups of local population as well as the regional government.
Separate efforts were contributed to influence the population of Saint Petersburg, which in terms of culture is one of the most westernized city of Russia alongside with Kaliningrad. There was also an attempt to instigate local separatism using the concept of Ingermanland.
The Volga region. Ethnic nationalism and religious radicalism were instigated among the Kalmyks, Bashkirs and Tatars. Small ethnic groups and nations, often described as Russians: the Mokshas and Erzyas also became the target of foreign influence. Among small ethnic groups and nations, local nationalism can take ugly forms.
Western Siberia. The goal was to create a separate ethnic-social group describing itself as the citizens of Siberia and separating itself from the rest of Russian citizens. The main targets were the Altai Republic, Novosibirsk Oblast and the city of Novosibirsk (the capital of the Siberian Federal District). The foreign influence achieved notable successes in these areas.
Eastern Siberia. The campaign in this region was aimed mostly at Buryats and Tuvans. Yakuts were also a target.
The Far East. Local regionalism and separatism were actively fueled in Khabarovsk Krai and Primorsky Krai, especially in the cities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. Besides this, the foreign influence is actively exploiting simultaneously both pro-Chinese intentions and the myth of the Chinese threat.
It should be noted that the article “Managing Russia’s dissolution” published by The Hill points to the same regions for further operations designed to dismantle Russia. These operations will be more dangerous than the previous ones because they will exploit the successes already achieved in some fields. For example:
- the nationalism and religion issues in the North Caucasus;
- the nationalism of ethnic groups in the Volga region – Bashkirs, Tatars, Erzyas, Moshkas;
- the nationalism and regionalism of Buryats in eastern Siberia.
- the creation of a new separate pro-western identity by a good part of the people living in the cities of Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad, that distance itself from the rest of Russia;
- the creation of a separate ethnic-social identity in Western Siberia:
The regions have been targeted by multiple campaigns undermining and discrediting nationwide traditions and behaviors, for example the New Year traditional family holidays, social events of Soviet or Old Russian origin as well as common history of Russia. Individualism, neoliberal attitudes and values are successfully promoted in Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Western Siberia. Education is simplified and westernized. Meanwhile stakeholders describe these tendencies as ugly and hostile examples to residents of the North Caucasus, southern Russia and other regions, promoted ultra-hardline or far right ideology. Local regionalism and ideology tensions are being successfully fueled.
In large, this situation has become possible due to a de-facto inaction of or even unofficial ideological protection from authorities. If one takes a detailed look at the Russian elite, he will find that a significant part of it consists of westernized adherers to “liberal democratic order” while another consists of representatives of national family clans. Many of these persons do not associate themselves with the ordinary population and consider the territory of Russia only as a source to increase their personal wealth. The term “new aristocracy”, which has recently got spread in Russian media, has initially appeared as a proud self-designation among Russian elite families emphasizing exceptionality of their members.
Nonetheless, supporters of Bugajski ideas do not consider the aforementioned tendencies as sufficient for dismantling Russian statehood without additional strivings. While on the regional level they have achieved some results, the identified nationwide goals have not been accomplished. The system of Russia has not yet come close to an imbalance, that is, to the condition where destructive trends are already beginning to grow on their own, without additional artificial influence. The negative tendencies so far set in motion could still be stopped and reversed. In this situation, we may expect a new wave of information onslaught toward Russia, traditionally backed by Western funds.
Copyrights 2015-2019. SouthFront (SF).
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And the disinfo agents in Washington say that the Russians are spreading lies.LOL.
I can see why president Putin does not bother with them anymore .
I first heard about that from an Australian Russian speaker, born here to Russian/Polish Ukrainian parents around the time of the Brisbane G20 = 2014. I thought that he was paranoid, talked too much with the wife’s relatives back in Russia. Breaking up Russia into 7 pieces? That’ll leave dwarf countries of around 20 million each, easier to bash?
Obviously, in the 5 years since, destroying Syria and Yemen got priority over Russia, Libya and Iraq were done already.
Now it’s Russia’s turn to be destroyed? The propaganda everywhere would certainly point to it. Excessive militarism in the West, asking people to make more sacrifices for soldiers and kit, even taking in children, analyizing Russia’s ‘overwhelming military’ in many publications, whipping up anti-Putin sentiment – the Western propaganda is on high rotation in all publications.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/whale-russia-norway-harness-military-navy-weapon-finnmark-a8890926.html
This just in! The Independent reports a beluga whale seen in Norway was put there for military purposes ( not porpoises) by the Russian Navy. They know because it had a tag on it saying Equipment of St Petersburg, in English?
You can’t make it up.
This view perfectly summarises the psychopathic, soulless, utterly evil peddlers of the NWO.
Such silliness. Obviously. It there were serious plans to attempt such a thing, you wouldn’t read about it in The Hill, or any other US political publication. By every measure, both Russia and China have been seeing significant progress while the US has maintained its long decline (self-destructing) since the 1980s.
Thanks for the well written and comprehensive rebuttal of the Bugajski article. Your analysis should be compulsory reading in political science classes.
An excerpt from:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/26/clash-of-civilizations-2-0-sponsored-by-prince-and-bannon/
“One of the more important revelations in former Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 election is the close working relationship Bannon established with Prince. Sensing fertile political ground for their far-right beliefs, Bannon and Prince have established, under the aegis of their professed Catholicism, a movement that threatens both the current pope and the European Union.”
Try googling “could Emmanuel Macron be the antichrist?”
Macron the Antichrist? It’s impossible because Tory B.liar is still alive.
This is pure projection.
All the faults and failings and problems listed apply far more to the United Snakes and EU than to Russia.
There is a remarkable continuity in western aggression towards Russia from Hitler till the present day.
Carve up Russia into artificial mini states and loot its resources.
Bismarck used to say, Russia is not as strong as it seems. But it’s not as weak as it seems either.
People point to the discrepancy in GDP and military spending. US v. Russia $21 trillion and $1.6 trillion, and $1,134 billion and $49 billion respectively.
That’s true so far as it goes, but money buys 3 x as much in Russia. So that 1.6 figure is more like 4 plus, or around the size of the German economy.
Then there is the artificial dollar yardstick. The US organized a speculative attack on the rouble, driving it down from 30 to 80 to the dollar. So in dollar terms, the economy was reduced to less than half its previous size. But they were producing just as many cars and just as much oil and wheat as before. Exports were cheaper. The rouble was allowed to float back to around 55. Gold and foreign currency reserves were not wasted defending it, as Washington wanted. There was a great boost in domestic production. America can bankrupt itself with its endless wars and bloated inefficient war machine if it wants.
And if you look at the US economy, 40% is unproductive, rent seeking finance, Wall Street spivs pushing around worthless derivatives toilet paper and pretending it is worth trillions. Or the bloated rent seeking of the drug and insurance companies, 17% of the economy, charging $5,000 per hospital journey and $750 for a pill that costs a few cents to produce. So much else is accounted for by the military boondoggles.
When you take that into account, the figures are more like 8 trillion v. 4 trillion.
So much US wealth is eaten up by the gargantuan level of graft and corruption.
It is the US and EU that are at far greater risk of collapse – maybe a lot sooner than anyone realises.
Anti Russian policies really took off in the 1780’s when Catherine the Great was moving South (including taking Crimea). The British saw Russia as a threat to its business empire in India and possibly replacing parts of the Ottoman Empire if that was to finally crumble. The icing on the cake for the Russophobes came with Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. Russian soldiers bedded down on Parisian streets in 1814 got the paranoid juices flowing, from that time on the narrative has been that Russia is expanding aggressively and intends to dominate Europe while destroying European colonies in Asia. The Revolution just increased Western paranoia; Russia was no longer just Russia but a Communist State and one immensely stronger with the formation of the USSR. When the Union collapsed and Russia was suddenly so much smaller and less powerful it was no surprise that plans developed to finally divide it up while hostility continues unabated. It’s almost as if the West needs the threat but not the war. In 250 years Britain has only once attacked Russia head on, during the French, Turkish, British attempt to seize Crimea in the 1850’s. Although Sevastopol was destroyed the Allied forces had to withdraw. Usually Britain has fought with Russia, against Napoleon and then the Germans in both World Wars.
In global terms , Russia is particularly stable …but, for reasons best known to itself – is risking global contagion due to its own neoliberal ideology (see below: reply to TTIC). Other than that, it is the whole integrated system that is susceptibly fragile to contagion. Russia and America are separated only by discourse – as revealed by capital flows. And the epicentre of debt inertia could just as easily be the East – centred on China. For the precise reason that China built its way out of GFC 1.0. It won’t build its way out of GFC 2.0 – which is likely to be many times the magnitude of the first one …due to the debt hangover. We will discover what moral hazard and contagion really mean this time. And there will be no easy restart – negative interest rates and massive credit stimulus to reinflate the ”mother of all bubbles’?
There are so many contradictions and fragilities, that predicting the where and when is a mugs game. But neither will there be any morality or false karmic retribution to it. The deliberately impoverished poor, sucked dry of their life essence by BOTH America and Russia (and Britain and China – see below) will suffer the most. The best thing humanity could do is reject as ecologically and evolutionarily redundant the entire hierarchical tributary system of globalised debt and death. Entropically and ecologically, we can’t afford it any more. But, psychologically, we probably won’t. Some people seem to like it too much. They are not all American or European though. Even in their home countries – humanity has been left behind.
The M$M lies: everyone knows its main purpose is para-state political propaganda – the integrated Fourth Estate. But it does not lie without purpose – there is the Herman/Chomsky model of controlling consent and consensus in the debatable public forum of acceptable discourse …the Overton Window that focuses on the liberal democratic ‘extreme centre’. It creates the spectacle of electoral politics – including Brexit and its transatlantic equivalent …’Obstructiongate’. This political ‘bread and circuses’ spectacle is extended into the fantasy imaginal of East/West geopolitcs. So is there intracapitalist inter-relational tensions and contradictions between East and West? Of course, ones that might get us all killed if they develop. But it also obscures what is happening beneath the radar – within and without the trained and political propaganda focused microscope – which is an International World Capitalism that is killing us all softly …while our gaze is averted and focused on simulated and superficial spectacle elsewhere.
After the other day, I thought I better wind my neck in and do some actual research into international loans and FDI. There is plenty, if anyone wants to substantiate what I have said – there is no East and West to International World Capitalism (IWC). This should be obvious, but it isn’t …because the focus is on the ripples – sometimes large – on the surface of the pond. IWC works below the surface as integrated flows and counter-flows – round-tripping for treaty, tax, and money-laudering of illicit flows purposes. All of this is deregulated – and occurs ‘elsewhere’ …beneath the public radar, and beneath the created spectacle that is deliberately narratively constructed to conceal it.
Nick Shaxson is a prime source, and one of the few journalists that cover the ‘spiders web’. A web that is still centred on the City of London Corporation – that controls 25% of world trade. The other main centres are NY and Switzerland (Zurich – the BIS is ‘elsewhere’ to). Analysis of actual capital flows is not easy – deliberately so, as it is deliberately made to conceal the capital origination …and through a series of accounting measures – make it look as it originated ‘elsewhere’. But what analysis is available consolidates Wallerstein’s World Systems Theory of a core, semi-periphery, and deliberately pauperised periphery.
Like it or not, (and downvotes won’t change anything), it also shows that the ‘network core’ is the aforementioned ZUSUK (‘Z’ for Zurich) extended alliance of ‘Pax Americana’ and the City’s post-colonial ‘British Empire’ – supported by a sub-imperial semi-periphery of the ‘Eastern Block’ and ‘Greater China’ …as this paper shows.
https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/events/Haberly%20and%20Wojcik,%20Regional%20Blocks%20and%20Imperial%20Legacies,%20Oct%202%20(WP).pdf
So my unpopular proposal is that IWC is a parasitical hierarchical tributary system based on interest bearing debt, and Compounded Annual Rates of Growth (CAGR) that are are drawing the entire world into a deflationary death spiral. ZUSUK is the imperialist network core: with Russia/China as the sub-imperial, semi-periphery – drawing on the rest of the world. One that costs the poorest countries $1.2tn pa (in 2008). It is not a dynamic that anyone can do anything about, particularly when it is deliberately kept as a stealth dynamic – below the public radar. You can thank the media for that. But then, that’s their job. Our job is to expose the lies and the underlying dynamics of death. It is globalised and integrated – and arranged hierarchically – not hemispherically. There is no East and West to capitalism …not beneath the surface.
As Wallerstein has said: to understand World Systems – you have to forget what we have been inculcated with about the nation-state. We do not live in that regulated space anymore. The real world was deregulated for capital decades ago – though the neoliberal restructuring is ongoing. As soon as humanity realises that the teleology for capital accumulation is not an Ecological Civilisation – but deregulated Global Governance …it may be able to consolidate the considerable anti-globalisation pushback growing in every country. Maybe, if and when we stop pretending the East has a capitalised Eco-Shangri-La rising. That, I’m afraid …is capitalist propaganda.
https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/04/ukraine-political-crisis-poroshenko-dominated-electoral-commission-refusing-to-recognize-zelenskys-victory-towards-what-end/
Meanwhile in the Ukraine region of Russia the butcher Poroshenko like his pal Hillary before him refuses to accept the results to buy time to deep six Zelensky and destroy the paper trail of all that actual Nazi megacorruption the Nato has been sponsoring.
The referred article from The Hill makes no sense as it builds conclusions based on statements that can’t be further from the truth.
Take “crumbling infrastructure” (and compare it to the UK).
That’s in a country that just hosted Winter Olympic games and hugely successful Football World Cup. For the Olympics brand new multiseason resort was built from scratch, from ski lifts to stadia to airport to train lines and stations. For World Cup every city got brand new stadium, airport and multiple smaller improvements.
Virtually every other large city have built or building new airports. How many are we getting in the UK? Manchester is being rebuilt by Chinese investors, and Leeds is building a new shed (sorry departure lounge).
In Moscow 18 new underground metro stations we opened last year alone and 53 are planned to build by 2023. Probably by the time the will complete Crossrail.
Did they mention railways? No one can compete with China where it took me 40 minutes to get from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. But Russia will come probably second with massive investment in transsiberian lines which serves both Russian export and Chinese goods transit to Europe. What we have in the UK? Hs2 pie in the sky which won’t be built in my lifetime?
What else, house building? Over million new flats/houses a year for every budget – that’s 10 times more than the likes of Persimmon are building in the UK (for 2/3 of the population, 70m vs 120m). So maybe it’s not all immigrants fault that UK people can’t afford to buy a half-decent house (350000 3 bed in Bradford, thank you!).
Military spending? If to compare $1,500bn it cost so far to develop F35 to $2.8bn it cost to develop SU57 it just looks silly. Just yesterday they launched a mammoth nuclear submarine carrying Poseidon nuclear drones designed to detonate in the ocean creating 100m radioactive wave capable to wipe out the entire coast. It does not matter if if cost 1bn to build it it’s such a bad ass and hope it will never be used. UK? Gavin Williamson – “when we get our first and only aircraft carrier we’ll send it to the South China Sea and show them”. Oh ffs …
Check the-village.ru to see how many restaurants, cafes, shops, parks, schools, hospitals are being opened every week.
Living in the UK I feel envy and dispair when I see how OUR infrastructure is crumbling after decades of underinvestment, mismanagement, privatisation and corruption. No wonder UK regions are trying (unsuccessfully so far) to break free!
Just like in other “news” or “research” all facts are not just lies but just pure nonsense. And the funniest bit is they probably believe in what they are writing …
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
“.. believe what they’re writing” yes they do and no amount of well reasoned argument is going to change their minds, unless it’s a green argument (no not that planet saving green argument, the other one.)
The funniest bit? That’s the scariest bit – if the elites actually do believe and swallow their own vomit, then that tells you how deranged they are.
Slava, very well said, on all counts. As a UK expat living in Moscow, whenever I fly into London these days I feel like I’m taking a 15-year leap into the past.
Leaving a dynamic and exciting place like Moscow and coming back to London is always a disquieting jolt to the system. Crumbling infrastructure is all I see around me – as is a mean-spirited nihilism which has in its grip an indoctrinated population dumbed down and propagandised by Netflix and superhero movies and other forms of braindead American cultural sewage.
The deranged psychopaths who comprise the entire political class in America have been using the Goebbels tactic of flipping the script for a long while now. I can only hope that their wet dream of dissolution for Russia happens to them soon, and I hope it’s every bit as brutal as the justice wished upon them by their countless victims all over the world.
Try going to Detroit or any other American rust belt city. The roads and bridges are a Third World.
Good comment Slava.I fully agree.There is no more to add.
“Emerging states”, eh? What a fascinating and comprehensive overview of completely non-interfering good-natured plans and programs on the part of our democracy-and-human-rights-inflicting civilised Western partners. As if all is prosperous and wonderful in all the different states and regions of USA, UK and other Western states, no increasing mass shootings, no terrorist attacks, no natural disasters, healthcare, jobs and housing for the poor are all sorted, which means billions of free cash and all this extra time to dismantle Russia! Wow! God, save us!
Thank you for the excellent article and for your vital work, Off-Guardian!
Same feeling here. I have been living in this hell hole of a so-called state, this latter-day Mordor, for 25 years, 22 of them married to one of the indigenous Orcs. I have only visited the land of my birth 5 times in those years of exile — 5 very short visits and 5 too many in my opinion. On those rare occasions that I have visited the land of my birth, I have not been able to get away quickly enough.
The last time I visited the place was in 2016 because the elder two of my 3 Anglo-Orc children wanted to visit London. After one week in the capital, we headed off for Lancashire, my old neck of the woods, to visit my pensioner sister there, who regaled me with her tales of woe about the decline in living standards, the cost of living, the rickety health service etc.
Yet day after day, whenever I browse through the Western media, I look around me and wonder if that place described in those articles, that ramshackle so-called state where there are repeated demographic crises and rampant poverty, an AIDs epidemic, drug abuse that is, apparently, now out of control and endemic bribery and corruption; where there is the sheer misery of existence under the mortal fear of state security agencies; where there are fearsome places hidden away that Westerners call “GULags”, and “oppositionists” who, under the leadership of someone called Navalny, are chewing at the bit, bracing themselves for the overthrow of the “tyrant” president; where there is no “democracy”, where alcoholism is a plague; where there is a lack of basic services, a collapse of the infrastructure; a land in which the natives never smile and who all yearn to emigrate to the “free world” in order to escape the bondage of their native land, which has been isolated from “the community of nations”; an impoverished land from which there are, nevertheless, continuously reported flights of capital etc., etc. ad nauseum, I ask myself whether this is same Russia where I have lived for so many years.
By the way, in case my sarcasm is misunderstood by some, I have referred to “Mordor” and “Orcs” above because that maniacal Russophobe Edward Lucas once indeed did draw comparisons between Russia and Tolkien’s fantasy world.
The enemy is not Russia – the enemy is the media, and the interests of those (in the west) the media so slavishly pander to.
From 3:50
Go Gabbi Go..
Dear Anglo-Saxons – you will be gone at least one second before us. Wanna try?
One of the more salient features of the western propaganda offensive against the Russian Federation (and China for that matter) is what has been termed ‘Russophrenia’ This frame of mind involves a mental double-think which on the one hand regards Russia as a dangerous revisionist power engaged on a crusade to conquer the world under the scheming aggressive urges of Putin. Per contra, Russia is a weak and declining power visibly falling apart at the seams. As Hitler once put prior to June 1941, ‘we have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.’ Of course it didn’t turn out that way and it goes to show that a mis-estimation of a rival power on the part of the West’s propaganda machine is both naive and dangerous. Moreover, inasmuch as the West under-estimates the resilliance of the RF, it has a tendency to overestimate its own power. Unquestionably the west unquestionably still powerful is in an unstoppable decline. Much is made of the relative size of the Russian economy as compared to the US. However, Russian sovereign debt is 15% of GDP, US sovereign debt is 105% of GDP and the US twin deficits on trade and Federal expenditure make it the most indebted country in the world. It always strikes me as odd that when the Russophobes draw attention to the US economy – pumped up by paper gains on a bloated stock market – being worth $20 trillion, no mention is mad of sovereign debt $21 trillion. Western propagandists don’t seem able to look at both sides of the ledger. The real and fatal problem for these propagandists is that the believe in their own bullshit. Always a fatal weakness.
” The real and fatal problem for these propagandists is that the believe in their own bullshit.”
Worse: they believe in the bullshit that their own ruling class buries them with. Not because they actually believe it, but because the smell is familiar.
The imperial imagination needs an enemy.
Not only that but the imperial psyche needs something to destroy.
Russians, both in Russia and abroad, are well aware that ‘the West’ wants to destroy their country and make 7 countries out of them. That would be like 20 million each.
Ukraine would be bigger and via Ukraine they could exercise influence. Each of the smaller units could be more easily manipulated than the current Russian Federation.
Slap sanctions on a country to harm their economy and then say ‘they don’t do well economically’. Pretty stupid.
No. The “West” wants only to destroy. It is running a scorched earth algorithm on all life. We see ourselves as machines.
“Mass man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity. The electronic age angelizes man, disembodies him. Turns him into software.”
Marshall McLuhan
Great article and not a bad site either. Highly recommend it.
https://www.stalkerzone.org/macrons-press-conference-an-invitation-for-the-yellow-vests-to-continue-their-mobilisation/
The dissolution of the EU continues to gather pace under the caring felicitations of Macron…the antichrist.
If you view the cover of the Economist 2017 Year in Review you can seen in the ‘Hermit’ card the yellow vest marching. On the globe atlas the cojoining of the UK and French borders…tearing the EU apart. A lighning bolt striking Alsace Lorraine…and remember the recently signed treaty between France and Germany. And you will see a ‘Tower’ card with a christian tower on fire and to one side of it those rallying around the cross whilst on the other side those rallying around ‘communitarian’ ideals. You will understand that Macron constantly tries to frame the Yellow Vests as communists. Despite the Vests bring pan-spectrum politically. Macron is firming sticking to the script outlined on the Economist 2017 Yewr in Review cover.
Macron means a ‘mark’.
Macron will defeat the Yellow Vests and rebuild Notre-Dame as a pagan temple to the gods of nature to underpin his ascent to the green hued thrown of the antichrist.
BTW, have you heard that the French govt. has started taking away the kids of jilets jaunes protesters? Apparently, people who oppose Macron are ‘unfit’ to raise their own kids!
https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/gilet-jaune-enfants-places-1556211984?
In a nice touch, the police even described the living conditions of the kids as–get this–déplorables!
Obesity is more common among poorer households as mass produced ‘junk’ foods replace more expensive fresh meats and vegetables.
The sociopathic slugs who call the shots in the US and most of its compliant puppet states are well aware of their own issues around general citizen dissatisfaction with growing inequality rampant homelessness etc, that is one of their motives for getting down and dirty with Russia.
A conflict provokes nationalism so the mugs wear inadequate food and housing in the name of patriotism.
You only have to look at WW2 where rationing in England was used to deny the citizens until the mid 1950’s. The landed gentry lived off the bounty of their estates and sold the surplus into the growing black market.
The rich got richer and ordinary englanders lived off crap food. This is bad news for children and in fact I couldn’t believe how much lower the median height of citizens appeared to be when I first visited in the early 1970’s as my age peers had endured a poor diet in their infancy & childhood.
I always reckoned it was that which had more to do with brit’s resurgence in international sports competition in the last quarter of the 20th century. The elites put it down to ‘more investment’ but the reality was young brits had begun to eat as well as the rest of the developed world.
Anyway using external conflict as a means of ‘soft’ oppression of the masses is a major from the western playbook much more than the Russian one where most citizens have heard the tales of how bad things got in the war against fascism.
That will continue to instill a reluctance for conflict by Russians for a while yet. The other issue is that there are a number of other major nation-states who greatly favour Russia continuing on a different path than that trod by FukUS. The most salient example being the People’s Republic of China because they rely on an increasingly multi-polar world to allow for their own freedom from interference from fukus.
If you have spent any time among normals in the various states of the Russian federation, you will know the Joe/Jo Citizens there are like the ordinary citizens in the ME, forever moaning about authorities and or their neighbours but they usually qualify that by saying it is nothing compared to their antipathy towards america and their hatred of conflict.
Since the Iraq debacle normal people everywhere have woken up to the fact that it is the US and it’s enabling offsiders who are the real troublemakers.
As long as RF and PRC do spread the wealth around they ought to be fine.
Well a lot of people say the diet under rationing was actually much healthier than todays…..and I see a lot of the older generation learnt to be really tough and persevere with life and circumstances… eg my mum is 90 and still gardening every day for example…..I am not so sure that many of our younger self adsorbed generation have the physical mental and moral stamina that the current older generation has.
Needs a bit more qualification. Yes, hardship and toughness good.
However: malnutrition (rickets, stunted growth) and abuse bad.
Dutch saying: “In olden days, the men were made of steel and the ships of wood…”
If your mum is 90 she would have been born in 1929 meaning that she had already passed the crucial ‘milestone’ phase by the time rationing came in. Children grow taller if they have a high protein diet in their first 6 to 8 years. From what I can understand of the rationing diet, proteins meat, fish, milk cheese) were restricted, when I had a quick shufty at ww2 rationing on wikipedia, it discussed testing of the diet but only on adults.
Back then there hadn’t probably been much research on dietary needs of children as opposed to adults.
The big takeaway about rationing for me is that the wealthy types ‘with a place in the country’ were unaffected at worst ,at best they made a good earner selling to the black market. I read a diary of the bloke Lascelles who was secretary to George the sixth and Brenda, that lot moaned about the limited selection on restaurant menus but did it nowhere like as tough as normal people. Their ‘seat’ was the Earl of Harewood’s hang out as they been kissing royal arse since Bill the conquerer. (if you see a copy grab it I got mine for next to nothing before the netflix soap created a demand) It’s a real insight into high tory attitudes and the network where everyone who is anyone knows everyone else in a position of power. Hard not to vomit reading it.
The thing is although some things have probably changed a bit, they haven’t changed as much as we like to imagine, and altho many think war is a great leveller, in fact it is a much favoured time for clawing back a lot of the privileges most think died with queen Vicki.
I remember my grandmother (born 1902) once describing to me her thoughts about WWII rationing. She pointed out to me that every cow has 2 filet steaks, but in over 6 years of rationing, she not once saw one and wondered where they had all gone.
I well remember the tail-end of WWII rationing. I was born in 1949 and as a small child, I had to take a ration book to the corner shop in the slum street where I was brought up in order to buy a penn’orth of sweets.The shopkeeper tore a talon out of the sugar ration book before I could make a purchase. That would have been around 1955.
I was born in early 1947 and some food stuffs were rationed until 1953 – the last to go were sweets, something not to be forgotten by 5 year olds. The last ration we had was half a Mars bar. But until that time our diet was deliberately low in fats and sugars and in addition we received free orange juice and other supplements like castor oil as well as having free unrestricted access to a Doctor. I remember my Aunt often extolling what we had compared to her generation; free orange juice and milk every day particularly seized her imagination. As prematurely born twins she would often say we would never have survived without the NHS. It’s hard to imagine that the rationing regime did us any harm; we weren’t starved, on the contrary. It probably explains our great resilience?
There were small glass bottles of concentrated orange juice and big white tins of milk powder. And small third of a pint bottles of school milk.
I still have one of those tins of milk powder with Ministry of Food written across it. It’s sometimes forgotten how food was ‘nationalised’ in WW2. After the war men who’d worked for food companies were drafted into the MoF. The milk was often too warm in the little bottle, a memory that still makes me feel ill.
In the late 60s at primary school we still had those small bottles of milk to drink each morning, and the same milk bottle style containing orange juice for those who could not drink milk. And then very decent school lunches on top of that, all the way through the end of secondary education. Neoliberalism has decimated the health and wealth of the West.
“In reality, Russia is a declining state that disguises its internal infirmities with external offensives.”
Didn’t Freud have a name for this kind of thing?
Projection,…
the United states and the UK have been attempting to break up Russia, or the Soviet Union, for a long time and invariably this crass racist ‘nationalism’ has been the preferred organising principle.
It really had to be in the Soviet Union because, putting aside its numerous shortcomings, it really didn’t operate like an Empire: the peripheries benefited as often as they lost; the most prosperous parts of the USSR, like those of the Russian Empire, tended to be non-Russian. It differed in this from both the British Empire, in which race and religion were generally defining factors for people, and the United States where racial hierarchy was the basic organising principle.
The Imperialists’ problem is that the fault lines in Russia today are socio-economic: there is not much future in more Chechen insurgencies but there must be a growing appetite, among the long suffering people, for repossessing some of what was stolen in the process of establishing capitalism in a society in which, though there were many inequalities there was nothing like the class divisions found in the ‘west’.
But promoting a militant trade union movement, for example, or financing a resurgent Communist Party both of which would likely cater to popular political appetites, is not very likely to find favour in Washington’s most influential circles.
On the contrary. Those predicting the imminent, and easily manageable, break up of Russia ought to take a look at their own societies, riven by massive inequalities, with living standards in steady decline as austerity sets in permanently, with the masses so many flocks of sheep to be sheared and butchered by ravenous capitalist rentiers, privatising every common good and setting up tollgates at every public service.
Clearly “The Hill”‘s editors have no conception of the shaking social foundations on which they and their system stands, one in which the saving grace of Russian society-the sense that there is a crisis which dictates unity in the face of aggression from outside- has no credibility. There the aggression is all internal-it is not foreign based power but the greedy ruling class which threatens all.
I put out an article on Mike Norman’s Economics the other day which stated that the U.S.could be heading for civil war as the conservatives and liberals detest each other.
Division and divisiveness in the 21st century
https://www.creditwritedowns.com/p/division-and-divisiveness-in-the?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxODIzNzM0LCJwb3N0X2lkIjo1MDc5NywiXyI6IkllMGVGIiwiaWF0IjoxNTU1ODMwMzA3LCJleHAiOjE1NTU4MzM5MDcsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yMTM0Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.HEgbWmZkjqH3aMxIDFlrxGR4HyPgB4twB_QkXOPb5t4
I agree and think that there is a specific misunderstanding of Russia in the west. They view Russia from their own imperialistic back ground. Which is a ruling class history vs class uprisings and by nature imperialistic in its methods of invasion and control. Russia itself has transitioned from communism to capitalism through a period of primitive accumulation which started in the 90’s. It has its problems but they are not quite the same as the class struggle divisions wrought in the west. 75 Years of communist state provision plus individual resourcefulness created a different cultural dynamic.
If you want a graphic model of oligarchic fracture along nationalist lines outlined in the Hill, look to Ukraine – a US backed project which along with others globally is failing. None of this is happening in or to Russia. The global not the Russian economy is stagnating and the US empire is falling into decline with it as the major hegemon. If you measure wealth, or the accumulation of wealth then it looks as if the US is omnipotent on paper, but the wealth division is stark. But and this is a biggie rather like the banking crisis of 2008 whose contagion spread from the US, the collapse of the mirage of wealth and power is swift [excuse the pun] and with no resources for a further bailout rescue the empire will most surely fail.
If there is a catastrophe either economic or natural it is not the most advanced societies which will survive it will be those who have or developed survival strategies. Alternatives to the globalist Neo-Liberal status quo. Russia is doing quite well on this front.
Overreach and belief in ones exceptionalism is a myopic malady.
They misunderstand quite deliberately because they want to carve up Russia (7 countries).
The origin of the animosity is Western/British investors wanting to call the shots in Russia. Under the Tsar that couldn’t happen because the nobility had it all sewn up amongst themselves and the Tsar also owned all the land – it was only on lease, so investors did not build. Society did not like their own non-nobility entrepreneurs like Mamontov.
Then under the Soviet Union the West could not get their hands on Soviet resources, either. Now it is sanctions from the West but also the Russians seem to dislike investors from the 5eyes countries, e.g. one time Australian PM Turnbull/gold mine near Irkutsk.
Democracy is no panacea. If democracy was all someone needed my late brother would not have died a violent death in Berlin in 2008. Or Americans wouldn’t be so discontent.
Sanctions have brought China and Russia closer together. The stronger that axis, the less successful America’s destructive plans will be. Originally, the US wanted to drive a wedge between Russia and neighbour China but they managed once again to achieve the opposite of what they thought they’d do.
TTIC
Indeed, Russia, in my estimation is uniquely placed to survive GFC 2.0. But why, as Michael Hudson and PCR asked – are they making themselves vulnerable by courting Western capital – as FDI – making themselves vulnerable to the neoliberal credit and debt imperialism trans-national ‘Game of Thrones’. There is a flush of wealth when the nearly ‘free’ money comes in – but economic catastrophic risk when it is suddenly withdrawn – as capital flight. And Russia has been haemorghing its lifeblood – as much as $25bn pa in debt service and capital flight – since 1990. And they are doing this for ideological reasons. Instead of taking on more dollarised investment, and sticking it in the bank – they could just create the ruble currency – debt free if they wanted.
FDI is used as a weapon of control and leverage – so why enter what is essentially a mugs game? Why would anyone get in – voluntarily it seems, Russia has no need of someone else’s surplus fictitious capital, except to satisfy its own neoliberal ideology (the master lie that internal credit creation is inflationary …well dollarised debt is deflationary) – to get on – and keep running – the dollarised death train?
https://southfront.org/paul-craig-roberts-americas-fifth-column-will-destroy-russia/
And China is not immune – despite the rampant obscurantist Sinophilia I have encountered herein. As I pointed out, Steve Keen – who has no dog in the West/East imaginary political football game – has identified China as the likely epicentre of GFC 2.0. Which puts Russia in the contagion fallout zone. So there are contradictory signs, as the Saker’s analysis shows – between the desire to follow its own ‘Slavic’ Eurasian Sovereigntist cultural model – in an antithetical, and probably existential, antagonistic dialectic with the neoliberal Atlantic Integrationist model – with NATOs Fifth Column serving the latter. Russia could be immune, but its contradictory internal politics are making it vulnerable – needlessly so.
And the irony is that the club that the Russian liberal elite wish to join – i.e., ‘the west’ – is in an internal and what looks to be unstoppable decline. This is an example perhaps of rats jumping ONTO a sinking ship. It would appear that the trendy St.Petersburg set is still living in the 1980s. How many indicators do you need. Brexit, Yellow Vests, the rise of populism in Hungary, Poland, Italy, Austria, Germany for starters. Moreover, since the neoliberal elites don’t have any answers to the problems which they have created other than ‘let them eat cake’ the situation is only going to worsen. In Lenin’s description of imperialism a ‘Colossus with feet of clay’ is about right. The Ukrainian disintegration as it threshes about in the trap of its own making, should stand as a stark warning as to what happens to those ex-soviet states who swallow the blandishments of the west and its ideological high priests.
It’s a good question BB. One which is not easy to answer as it hinges on several variables. But the contradictions are clear.
The oligarchic rivalry which developed during the 90’s primitive accumulation boom was a free for all. Putin appeared as if from nowhere as the silent sheriff character who set about putting an end to the gun slinging days of the Yeltsin Mob rule days. Unfortunately the ideology which remained in much of the elite factions of Russia were firmly opportunistic and capitalist. Straight out of the Chicago economic school book, which Prof Hudson rightly decries. I think you are right in the greed and corruption which is one part of the capitalist inherent grave digging tool kit which is alive and kicking in Russia as well as China aka your Steve Keen ref. Also what Prof Hudson reported on last year.
Эльвира Набиуллинаб, Elvira Nabiullina was trained in/at the Chicago School, so at the heart of the Russian financial system – head of the Russian bourse – is an atlanticist acolyte and financial Neo Liberal. There are others and of course the whole kit and caboodle of who backs who in the battle of the oligarchs in Russia.
It’s a pretty well kept secret, one which the 17 varieties of security sauce in the US of A must seriously envy. Hence the Putin ate my hamster strategy adopted by the sycophants of psyops down on Langley farm. A strategy which has become so deranged that only the British Jonny English School of spookery has managed to surpass. [aka Duckgate]
As for the dollar situation in Russia it has an historic context, even going back to the ideas of freedom from within the USSR. For me it’s a cultural meme whereby Russian’s wrongly perceive the Dollar as the future for them. The other aspect of the debt trap you allude to is the property owning market in Russia this is straight out of the Thatcher and Regan home/asset ownership ideas of entrapment for the population in the last century to be held in debt to creditors. Which led to the birth of the term “Banking Industry”?
There has been an increasing monopoly of the banking sector through closures and takeovers, with mortgage loans being the central tenant of this business. Sound familiar? As in the UK and US the only use of capital is this and a totally unproductive one.
As for NATO, well as a fifth column it’s more a market for US arms [Warmart?]. These countries are not given control of the real toys, but sold a load of tackle anyway. But it does act as a way for the US to legitimise what is basically a brigand’s charter i.e. US foreign policy initiatives to act as they see fit. A robber’s charter for the global cowboys cabal…
Francis; TTIC:
Interesting replies. The contradictions within Russia are such, I don’t think anyone can work them out …least of all VVP. He has his work cut out just maintaining a functioning state: balancing everyone’s needs. Unfortunately, the neoliberal constitution and power structures favour the oligarchs and Fifth Columnists in the end. By an accident of a friend’s marriage, I happen to know a few people in St Petersberg. One of them put me on to Alexander Buzgarin – a Russian Marxist from Moscow State University. He made a good point: the common perception is the Americans plundered the FSU during the Yeltsin era. They did not: the Russians plundered their own country before they could get in on the act. Now some Americans did not do half bad – obviously I am referring to my good friend Bill Browder. I do not want to speculate too much, but I think it is safe to say he is an intelligence asset. Buzgarin called it Jurassic Capitalism – oligarchs fighting like Tyrannosaurs over the carcass of the FSU …people be damned.
[His interviews are on the Real News Network. There are quite a few, and I can’t remember specifically which one.]
So much of the current tension stems from VVP’s accommodation of the remaining oligarchs. Someone has been bumping off the ones who went abroad. I’m sure we could tie dead ‘Duckgate’ in there, without too much trouble. There appears to be a hidden ‘Clash of the Titans’ over RF’s mineral resources. We mortals get to see the occasional flash of lightning, the odd dead duck, and the occasional clap of thunder. Other than that, we are in the dark about what is really going on. Maybe it will all come out one day?
I was in Tatarstan last weekend, in Kazan, with my Russian wife and the youngest of our 3 children. That’s the Republic of Tatarstan, to be exact, a “subject” republic of the Russian Federation.
Lovely place:spotlessly clean city.
There have occasionally been rumours that an independence movement was underway in Tatarstan — independence from those awful Russian oppressors, that is. Nothing has come of these rumoured dissatisfactions, which were voiced quite spontaneously, of course (sarc).
The Russians, or those subjects of the Prince of Muscovy, Ivan IV, who was the first to call himself Tsar of All the Russias, besieged Kazan in 1552 and successfully stormed the city. Up to then, Kazan had been the capital of the Golden Horde, the last remnant of the the Tatar overlordship that had held the East Slav principalities under its yoke for about 300 years. The fall of Kazan ended the “Tatar Yoke” once and for all.
When the city was taken, the majority of the population was massacred by Ivan IV’s troops together with its garrison and all mosques were destroyed.
A guerilla war continued with further massacres, but the hostilities ended after about 3 years or so.
Almost 500 years later, both ethnic Russians and Tatars live in harmony in Tatarstan. In the Kazan Kremlin, they built 20 years ago what some say is the largest Mosque in Europe outside of istanbul. Next to this Kazan Kremlin mosque is a Russian Orthodox cathedral that was built after Kazan had been taken by the Slavs.
I never witnessed any signs of animosity between Tatars and Russians in Kazan.
My dacha neighbours in the countryside some 60 miles outside of Moscow are Tatars: lovely people; great neighbours!
In other words, the West wants to attack Russia, overthrow its government, and take over the country/region?
That’s what they try all the time – ‘full spectrum dominance’.
Let’s see how they go with Afghanistan. Taliban wants each and every uniform out, but America insists that they must have occupation forces in all countries.
“the west” has been trying to overthrow Afghanistan for ever. one of my ancestors was taken captive in the first anglo-afghan war of 1839-42 and wrote a book about it, still used at Sandhurst as a “training aid”.
we’ve clearly learned nothing since. we will fail every time.
Well, they want to repeat the USSR scenario. But what worked with USSR didn’t with Russia. It would with previous president, though, hence Putin is their enemy #1.
Bring it American fatties.
https://youtu.be/u6oOaXUztco
Myth. An entire chunk of the US population has been growing thinner, as the country maintains its overall economic downhill slide (upward wealth redistribution), and its agenda that virtually criminalizes those who are left jobless.
http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/vast-majority-american-adults-are-overweight-or-obese-and-weight-growing-problem-among
More than 160 million Americans are considered obese.
They plan to conquer Russia with killer drones. Obesity no obstacle, electronic endeavours,yes.