Tuesday, October 24th., 2017
Translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard
Putin speaks, the people listen, Fake News Inc flees
From
all the speeches of Vladimir Putin that I had the opportunity to hear
and see, I would call his speech at the Valdai forum, including the
answers to questions, the most anti-American, or even anti-Western, one.
Describing the history of Russia's relations with America in the
1990's, the Russian President shared a story - striking in its detail -
about how, in the framework of two agreements on nuclear arms control,
experts from the United States were allowed into the most secret Russian
facilities and into the offices in which they established themselves:
the tables were decorated with little American table flags.
How did the Americans respond to our country's unprecedented level of openness? Vladimir Putin repeated several times that they considered it as a weakness. Russia started to burn weapons-grade plutonium in accordance with reached agreements, and the US, without letting us know, changed the obligations they undertook and refused to complete the construction of the plant for processing plutonium. It became known that they made a decision about its burial, which in general has no meaning, because it is always possible to dig up non-utilised plutonium from the burial ground and it will be again completely ready for use.
Last year Russia unilaterally destroyed all stockpiles of chemical weapons, which, according to Putin, was enough to send all the world's population to its forefathers several times over, but Americans postponed making a decision on this issue until 2023. At the end of the forum a woman from Berlin said that in relations between States, like relations between people, only one side committing errors simply doesn't happen, and supposed that Russia is also to blame in some things, asking Putin to name a Russian miscalculation over the past 15 years. Probably the President of Russia could at this moment soften the tone and give something neutrally-conciliatory, but he responded discouraging harshly, saying that the only mistake Russia made was putting immense trust in the West.
https://youtu.be/zdZsuuJ-6Lc
Putin speaks, the people listen, Fake News Inc flees
How did the Americans respond to our country's unprecedented level of openness? Vladimir Putin repeated several times that they considered it as a weakness. Russia started to burn weapons-grade plutonium in accordance with reached agreements, and the US, without letting us know, changed the obligations they undertook and refused to complete the construction of the plant for processing plutonium. It became known that they made a decision about its burial, which in general has no meaning, because it is always possible to dig up non-utilised plutonium from the burial ground and it will be again completely ready for use.
Last year Russia unilaterally destroyed all stockpiles of chemical weapons, which, according to Putin, was enough to send all the world's population to its forefathers several times over, but Americans postponed making a decision on this issue until 2023. At the end of the forum a woman from Berlin said that in relations between States, like relations between people, only one side committing errors simply doesn't happen, and supposed that Russia is also to blame in some things, asking Putin to name a Russian miscalculation over the past 15 years. Probably the President of Russia could at this moment soften the tone and give something neutrally-conciliatory, but he responded discouraging harshly, saying that the only mistake Russia made was putting immense trust in the West.
https://youtu.be/zdZsuuJ-6Lc
FULL Putin's Speech on Double Standards in Case of Catalonia, EU, Kosovo, US, UN
I specifically attracted attention to these details in order for it to become clear how, in my opinion, unprecedentedly harsh the President sounded at this time, while maintaining the correctness of his expressions. Regarding the content, the conversation was about everything: about the difficult situation in Catalonia - a result of the ill-conceived policy of Western support for "correct" separatists in the 1990's.
"There was a need to think about it before" - this theme was the leitmotif of most of Putin's answers:
- About Syria, where it was succeeded to break the mechanism of American interference in the affairs of foreign States;
- About the sovereignty of individual States, respect for which should be the cornerstone of the international security system;
- About Ukraine, where if Kiev receives control over the border with Russia they will stage a massacre in Donbass, like the Serbian Srebrenica. "We can't allow it and we won't allow it," said Putin very simply;
- About the Russian information resources "Russia Today" and "Sputnik", which are today being persecuted in the United States. Putin promised that the response will be immediate and mirrored;
- About NATO's deployment of new weapons in Eastern Europe. Here, the President said that, of course, there is the temptation to flex muscles and threaten retaliation, but no, we are not concerned about this, everything is under control;
- About Trump, who the head of Russia once publicly even had sympathy for - saying that, allegedly, he isn't allowed to work - although the experts obviously wanted to hear something sarcastic about him.
Valdai is a platform where Putin traditionally jokes. Not always harmlessly. Someone remembered how the Minister of Foreign Affairs under Yeltsin - Andrey Kozyrev - told Richard Nixon that Russia has no private interests, there are only universal ones. "This is because Kozyrev has no head," explained the President, "there is a cranium, but no head".
Here is what else seemed important to me: the definitions used by the Russian leader to describe US policy, depicting not a State, but a person that is stupid, suffering from teenage complexes, sloppy, yet extremely self-important. Here are some of these definitions: "selfishness", "boorishness", "intemperance", "a claim to exclusivity", "carelessness". During the cold war, according to the Russian leader, the Americans did not allow themselves to show such shocking disrespect for Russia like they do now. It is impossible to imagine that back then the State flags of the Soviet embassies in the United States could be pulled off.
It would seem that the result of such a concentration of pretensions should've been the breaking down of America into mystification and absolutization as the world's evil. But it didn't happen. I am sure that it will never happen. Putin kept saying that we need to work together, to agree - in Syria this is turning out not so bad. Russia is open for dialogue, and the realization by the West of its mistakes will obligatorily happen. This was said concerning the reluctance of European countries to influence Kiev, which refuses to implement the Minsk Agreements.
But we are open not only for dialogue but also for all processes that are rapidly changing the planet and its way of life - primarily for a scientific-technological revolution, which was mentioned a lot. Outlining the prospects for the development of the country in 2018-2024 - the next presidential term - Putin said, in my opinion, an extremely important thing. According to him, Russia should develop, as should the rest of the world. I.e. no falling away, pupation, or stagnation. Let's hope that things happen exactly in this way.
Comment: The general topic of the Valdai Club this year was Creative Destruction: Will a New World Order Emerge from the Current Conflicts, which tells you right away that 'alternative conferences' like these, which Putin got up and running after he was effectively blacklisted for that 2007 Munich conference speech, have their finger on the pulse of what is actually happening in our world: it is transforming, significantly.
This year the Valdai conference brought together over 130 participants from 33 countries, including from the US and Europe, but you wouldn't know that listening to Western media.