Brandon Martinez / Non-Aligned Media
One of the big pro-Putin myths floating around the alt-media blogosphere is that because the ex-KGB chief jailed and/or exiled a number of corrupt oligarchs during his rise to power, then that must mean Putin is against oligarchy itself. Wrong. Merriam-Webster’s definition of oligarchy is:
oligarchy: a country, business, etc., that is controlled by a small group of people
the people that control a country, business, etc.
government or control by a small group of people
Russia under Putin’s reign fits precisely that description: the entire country is run like a giant corporation rigidly controlled by Putin and his hand-selected cabinet of sycophantic yes-men. In 2008, Putin modified Russian law to allow a six year presidential term instead of four, keeping himself on as prime minister while his hand picked puppet Dmitry Medvedev assumed the presidency. Having been “re-elected” as president again in 2012, Putin is projected to remain in control until 2024: that would be 24 consecutive years of Putin domination in Russia.
Shortly after his rise to power, Putin used his grip over the Russian legislature to create an oil and gas monopoly under Gazprom, Putin’s state-controlled gas company that has exclusive rights to export natural gas from Russia. All competition was quickly squeezed out through state-sponsored financial chicanery. Putin was discovered to nepotistically hand off state contracts to family members.
Russian broadcast and print media is equally tightly controlled by the Kremlin. The last remaining independent broadcaster not under state control was NTV, which was taken over by Gazprom Media, a subsidiary of the state-controlled gas company, in 2002. Russian media critic Nataliya Rostova noted the Kremlin’s use of the media as a communist-style propaganda bureau:
After Putin came into power in 2000, he established control over the three main TV stations. In 2001 and 2002, he took control of the two biggest TV channels, ORT (now First Channel) and NTV. The state broadcaster, RTR (now Rossiya 1), was already under his control.
During his subsequent year in power, Putin moved more and more outlets under his influence until he controlled most of the major mainstream media. He appoints editors and general directors, either officially or unofficially. The director of VGTRK, the biggest [state] media holding, which owns Rossiya 1, Rossiya 2 etc., is appointed by presidential decree, for example. When it comes to so-called independent media, which are smaller and not owned by the state, there’s often an agreement between the Kremlin, the owner and the editor-in-chief. Even Aleksey Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Echo Moskvy, which is sometimes called the last remaining independent radio station in Russia but in reality isn’t independent, says publicly that Putin is the only person who can fire him.
The editors and directors have so-called weekly meetings with the presidential administration to talk about the upcoming events, what will be significant in the next week, what the administration wants to cover.
Additionally, media outlets are dependent on state funding and the TV advertising market is almost monopolized as well.
In 2005, the Kremlin established the state-funded 24 hour international news channel Russia Today, aimed in large part to export Putin’s Cult of Personality to Western audiences. No political commentator critical of Russia’s foreign or domestic policy is allowed on the network, except sometimes on the “debate” show CrossTalk in which the obnoxious host Peter Lavelle quickly shuts down or shouts over any negative utterances about the Kremlin. The only RT host to openly criticize Russia’s foreign policy – albeit only once in a tiny segment – was Abby Martin, who condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea on her show “Breaking the Set”. She was not immediately fired but she did not last much longer on the network, and no longer works there.
Despite a crackdown on a few Jewish oligarchs for personal political reasons – oligarchs who were at one time allies of Putin and facilitated his rapid ascent to power – Putin has surrounded himself with other oligarchs, some of whom are Jews. For instance, Jewish construction tycoons Boris and Arkady Rotenberg are close friends and allies of Putin to this day. Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, Putin’s right-hand man in the early years of his reign, remains close to the Kremlin and is said to have personally purchased a $35 million yacht for Putin. Wikipedia gives us this on Abramovich’s close links to Putin:
Abramovich was the first person to originally recommend to Yeltsin that Vladimir Putin be his successor as the Russian president. When Putin formed his first cabinet as Prime Minister in 1999, Abramovich interviewed each of the candidates for cabinet positions before they were approved. Subsequently Abramovich would remain one of Putin’s closest confidants. In 2007 Putin consulted in meetings with Abramovich on the question of who should be his successor as president – Medvedev was personally recommended by Abramovich.
Chris Hutchins, a biographer of Putin, describes the relationship between the Russian president and Abramovich as like that between a father and a favorite son. Abramovich himself says that when he addresses Putin he uses the Russian language’s formal “Вы” (like Spanish “usted”, German “Sie” or French “vous”), as opposed to the informal “ты” (Spanish “tú”, German “du” or French “tu”). Abramovich says that the reason is because ‘he is more senior than me’. Within the Kremlin, Abramovich is referred to as “Mr A”.
Wiki also noted that Abramovich was at one time the head of the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities and financially supported the Chabad Lubavitch movement.
A 2014 article in Ynet News, an Israeli outlet, highlighted the findings of a report on the ethno-religious background of Russia’s 200 richest people. It revealed that 25% of the wealthiest Russians as of 2014 were Jews. In response, Putin’s aide allegedly rebuked the “Nazi” report. The article states that of the 22 different ethnic groups that appear on the list, Jews are “the most economically successful” in Russia. The article says:
Close to one quarter of the 200 richest people in Russia are Jewish, according to a report by Russian banking website lanta.ru, which gives the 48 Jews on the list a combined net worth of $132.9 billion.
The report also analyzed the nationality of each of the 200 billionaires, finding that just 89 – less than half – were ethnic Russians, even though they make up 81% percent of the population in Russia.
Twenty-two different ethnicities comprised the list, with the Jewish representation being especially prominent. Compared to their general population size, the Jews are the most economically successful group.
The Jews on the list were classified into two groups: Ashkenazis, who originate from central and eastern Europe, and Kavkazis, descendants of Persian Jews from Iran.
Among the 48 Jews who made the list, 42 are Ashkenazi and together have a net worth of $122.3 billion; the average net worth of each Ashkenazi billionaire stands at $2.9 billion.
The wealthiest Ashkenazi is Mikhail Fridman, who has a net worth is $17.6 billion and is Russa’s second richest man. The least wealthy Ashkenazi billionaire on the list was not named, and his net worth stands at $0.4 billion.
Jewish Ashkenazis represent 21% of all the billionaires in Russia, even though they comprise only 0.11% of the population. The Ashkenazi billionaires include Viktor Vekselberg (net worth of $17.2 billion), Leonid Michelson (net worth of $15.6 billion), German Khan (net worth of $11.3 billion), Mikhail Prokhorov (net worth of $10.9 billion), and Roman Abramovich (net worth of $9.1 billion).
Six Kavkazi Jews appear on the list, with a combined net worth of $10.6 billion, and an average individual net worth of $1.8 billion. The richest Kavkazi Jew has a net worth of $3.6 billion, and the least wealthy $0.5 billion.
According to the Russian Bureau of Statistics, there are 762 Russian citizens classified as Kavkazi Jews and they represent 0.00035% percent of the population. Compared to the overall population, the Kavkazi Jews of Russia are the wealthiest ethnic group in the entire country.
A 2012 article in the Jerusalem Post with the headline “At Putin’s side, an army of Jewish billionaires” mentioned three Russian-Jewish billionaire oligarchs in particular that remain in Putin’s good graces: Mikhail Fridman, Moshe Kantor and Lev Leviev. Fridman is noted as the seventh richest man in Russia.
Moshe Kantor is a rabid Zionist who serves as the president of the European Jewish Congress, a lobbying arm of the World Jewish Congress within the European Union. A 2007 Haaretz article with the headline “Putin Ally Is Frontrunner to Head European Jewish Congress” quotes Kantor who characterized his own “close links to the Kremlin” as akin to “Joseph’s relationship to Pharaoh and that of King Ahasuerus to Queen Esther.” The article notes that Kantor had a falling out with jailed and later exiled Russian-Jewish oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which shows that not all elite Jews are on the same page. Notably, Boris Berezovsky took Roman Abramovich to court over a business dispute. Berezovsky also tried to make amends with Putin and regain his favour shortly before he died in 2013.
It was also a Jew, Mikhail Lesin, who served as Putin’s media czar for some time, spearheading the conception and creation of Russia Today, thus helping to propel the Putin Cult of Personality worldwide alongside Putin’s “political technologist” Vladislov Surkov. In 2006 Putin awarded Lesin the “For Merit to the Fatherland” honour “because of his ability to get virtually all Russian media outlets under The Kremlin’s control.” In 2014 Lesin had a falling out with the Putin clique which may have resulted in his murder.
Putin, much like Josef Stalin, favours and rewards individuals who loyally serve his power clique, while persecuting those that don’t, regardless of ethnic or religious affiliations. There are no doubt some individual Jews who have personal grudges against Putin for various reasons. And there probably are some paranoid Jews who don’t like him simply for the reason that he is (at least officially) an authoritarian Gentile and ostensibly a Christian who can’t totally be trusted to do what they want at all times. We see a similar phenomenon with the Israeli boot-licker Donald Trump. But that hardly makes Putin a “good guy” nor any more of a moral actor than the genocidal butcher Stalin who also had some political infighting and discord with elite Jews in the communist party, like Leon Trotsky. Those Jews that don’t like Putin are the ones who are never satisfied with any leader that isn’t sufficiently compliant with every last bullet point of their global agenda. Such control-freak zealots equally despise someone like US President Barack Obama, the “secret Muslim Israel-hater.” There are certainly just as many Jews who do like Putin and are satisfied with him.
Putin is markedly the most pro-Israel Russian leader in its history who dubbed the Israeli state “special” to Russia because of the large number of Russian Jews who are citizens of Israel, many of whom hold dual-citizenship.
In a 2014 meeting with chief rabbis from Israel, Europe and Russia, including Putin’s “personal rabbi” Berel Lazar, Putin said he “supports the struggle of Israel,” was noted as a “true friend” and ally of Benjamin Netanyahu, and pledged to combat anti-Semitism and “Holocaust denial” in Russia. During the meeting the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yitzhak Yosef, said of Putin’s rule in Russia: “according to the Jewish tradition, your leadership is decided by the kingdom of G-d, King of the world, and therefore we bless you: Blessed is the One who gave of His glory to flesh and blood.” According to the researcher behind the Redefining God website, the rabbi’s remark to Putin is a traditional Jewish blessing given to a Jewish king, which differs from the wording of a blessing delivered to a Gentile king. The researcher speculates that some religious Jews may indeed believe Putin to be the Jewish Messiah.
This may explain why Israelis voted Putin their “person of the year” of 2015.
In 2013 a pro-Israel caucus was formed in Russia and in 2016 the two countries struck an inter-parliamentary cooperation deal to strengthen ties. Russia has substantive economic and security agreements with Israel. Israel’s current President Reuven Rivlin described relations between Moscow and Tel Aviv as “unbreakable.” Putin recently passed both a Holocaust denial law and a law forbidding “anti-Semitic” interpretations of the Bible.
Israel and Russia share the same perspective of the Second World War and their views closely align on the issue of Islam and terrorism. Israeli hardliners like Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak hailed Putin’s ruthless militaristic crackdown on the separatist Muslim Chechens, which was modelled on Israel’s terrorist tactics against Palestinians.
Putin is credibly linked to assassinations of political opponents and critical journalists, as well as personally overseeing the execution and cover-up of the 1999 FSB-sponsored false flag terror episode in which nearly 300 Russians were blown up in apartments. He personally ordered and oversaw the destruction and carpet bombing of Chechnya, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths. He initially collaborated with the United States in the “war on terror” and went along with neocon lies about 9/11 and Iraq. He to this day denounces 9/11 truth, jails Holocaust revisionists and imprisons nationalists for “hate speech”. He has hypocritically outlawed separatist initiatives within Russia, jailing anyone who even suggests it peacefully and assassinating those suspected of being “militants”; all the while supporting and fuelling the pro-Russian separatist insurgency in East Ukraine and citing ‘self-determination’ for the Crimea when he moved to annex the peninsula in 2014. He’s also cooperative and complicit with many aspects of globalism.
These facts do not seem to matter to the diehard Putin worshippers that infest the alt-media. Instead, the Putin apologists explain all of this inexcusable criminality away as a “necessary evil” or rationalize it as clever “chess moves” of a grand master plan to save the world, which sounds like something out of a cheesy comic book. I’ve been criticized for labeling Putin supporters “worshippers,” but is that an unfair term to use?
Take Mark Glenn of “The Ugly Truth,” an incorrigible manic nut job who ferociously attacks anyone who questions the sincerity and morality of Putin, who has a framed picture of the man on his mantel next to a crucifix.
Considering Glenn’s psychotic hatred of and attacks upon anyone who merely questions the delusional, irrational belief that Putin is faultless and is a saintly messiah sent by God to cleanse the world of evil – which the lunatic Glenn literally believes, as demonstrated by his Putin-adorning mantelpiece – it is not unreasonable to infer that Glenn may be acting as a paid foot soldier of Russia’s “troll army.”
Another propagandist who has been forwarding the Putin-Messiah narrative for some time is Brother Nathanael Kapner, a Jewish convert to Christianity and nutty “street preacher” who boasts of his membership in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), which, like the parent church in Russia itself, is probably a front for the KGB.
A third prominent spokesman of the Putin-Messiah death cult is Paul Craig Roberts, the former Reagan official and senile alt-media pundit who routinely hails the ex-KGB spy as the “moral leader of the free world” who will “save” us all from Washington’s planned nuclear Armageddon.
One thing is for sure: Vladimir Putin is not our saviour, and those promoting him as one are mentally challenged hero seekers who live in a comic book fantasy world.
More of Putin’s oligarchic connections are explored in the video below:
