Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 27 – Last September,
Vladimir Putin hosted a conference of separatist leaders from around the world.
Now, he will be hosting a second such meeting next month that will involve,
among others, pro-separatist activists from the US states of California and
Texas and the American Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Russian commentator Leonid
Radzikhovsky says that these meetings should not be taken seriously. They
simply attract to Moscow marginal figures who are prepared to travel if someone
pays their airfare and hotel accommodations. But they do show that the Kremlin
is prepared to troll among even these (apostrophe.com.ua/article/world/2016-07-27/moskovskiy-syezd-separatistov-edinstvennaya-ih-ideologiya--otklonenie-ot-normyi/6433).
According to the organizers of this
year’s meeting, it will cost only 20,000 US dollars, a figure that suggests how
relatively unimportant such gatherings are, the commentator says. Moscow will
in this case at least get what it is paying for and not much more besides
demonstrating once again its approach to the world.
He says that he “doesn’t think that
someone is counting on seizing Texas for two million rubles.” But what holding such meetings may do is
create “a Komintern of the psychologically ill,” a group Russia can make use of
for propaganda purposes. But no one should confuse this was the huge financial
support Moscow provides to groups like Marie Le Pen’s National Front.
According to Radzikhovsky, all of
those who have been invited are “official marginal. They can be neo-Nazis,
Trotskyites, anarchists, or cannibals.” They have only one thing in common: all
of them are mentally handicapped and have delusions of grandeur.
“I too could proclaim an independent
republic of the size of my apartment,” Radzikhovsky says. But that wouldn’t have an impact on anyone
else, and neither will these people, especially given that they are sponsored
by someone who doesn’t tolerate even the talk of separatism regarding Russia.
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