That the Russians conduct foreign policy in a radically way from Western governments, and in way their Western “partners” find baffling, has once again been illustrated by the latest comments made today by Russian President Putin.
Most international attention has rightly focused on President Putin’s comment that more ‘false flag chemical attacks’ in Syria are on the way.
That Friday’s missile strike on Sharyat air base was an impulsive and ill-judged move ordered by an inexperienced and emotional President after seeing television pictures of dead children gained further support on Sunday when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the President’s National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster both gave television interviews which bore all the hallmarks of a damage limitation exercise.
Shortly after the alleged chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Syria the Russian Defence Ministry claimed that the release of chemical agents following the air strike happened because the Syrian air force struck a warehouse where the Jihadis were producing and storing stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Yesterday, within hours of the US missile attack on Syria’s Sharyat air base, President Putin met with Russia’s Security Council to discuss the US attack.
Russia’s Security Council, for those who don’t know, is the highest decision making body of the Russian government. It meets regularly every week under Putin’s chairmanship, and its remit covers every aspect of Russian policy. This includes domestic and economic policy as well as foreign and defence policy.
Within a few hours of the US attack on Syria’s Sharyat air base the UK based Syrian Observatory on Human Rights is reported as saying that the Syrian authorities have “done the impossible” and brought the base back into operation, so that Syrian aircraft are once again using the base for operations against Jihadi groups.
Whilst I do not know who carried out the Syrian chemical attack in Idlib province, I must agree with my colleague Adam Garrie that it is unlikely it was carried out by the Syrian government, and I think it is barely conceivable it was authorised by President Assad.
Ukraine’s President Poroshenko claimed on Monday 3rd April 2017 that the IMF Board of Directors had cleared a $1 billion tranche for payment to Ukraine.
The IMF has not yet confirmed this report but the Russian agency TASS is reporting that its own sources close to the IMF have also confirmed it.
The IMF’s decision comes a week after London’s High Court granted Russia summary Judgment in the case Russia is bringing against Ukraine for payment of its $3 billion loan.
The allegations of corruption made against Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev by the opposition activist and blogger Alexey Navalny have been given short shrift in – of all places – an article in the Washington Post.
In an unusual flurry of objective reporting, the Washington Post also admits that the turnout at follow on opposition rallies in Moscow on 2nd April 2017 was derisory and that Navalny – the individual the Western media regularly touts as the leader of Russia’s opposition – is widely disliked and has little support.
Though information from St. Petersburg is still sparse, it is increasingly likely that what happened there was a terror attack on its metro system, which has left at least 9 people dead and many more injured.
If this is a terror attack then the high probability is that the person or persons responsible self-identify as Jihadis even if he or they are not actually members of some Jihadi network.
Confirmation that the EU Commission has dropped its opposition to Nord Stream 2 – the giant gas pipeline Russia is building through the Baltic to supply natural gas directly to Germany – effectively ends whatever doubts previously existed about the project.
More importantly, it also means Russia has won the energy war, which has been raging around the issue of Russian gas supplies to Europe over the last decade and a half.
