Putin’s Chekist Regime hasn’t Gone Mad but Want West to Think It has, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 31 – A series of apocalyptic articles about possible Russian nuclear strikes on the West appears to suggest that the Putin regime has gone insane, Igor Eidman says. But that isn’t the case, he continues. Instead, it is a ruse intended to cause Western governments to draw that false conclusion and thus be more ready to make concessions to the Kremlin.

             Over the last several months, the Russian commentator says, the Voyenno-Promyshlenny kuryer has run a series of article about “how we will destroy the US,” with one advocating a nuclear strike on the Gulf Stream and another against the Yellowstone super-volcano (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2182631968466437&id=100001589654713).

                On the surface, these appear to be the work of madmen, Eidman continues; but a closer examination suggests a different conclusion. The chief sponsor of the online military industry journal is Igor Ashurbeyli, a successful businessman who has been accused of all kinds of murders and even as a man in the employ of foreign intelligence services.

            Anyone with that kind of record would be in jail, if he did not have serious protection from the highest levels. And in Russia, that kind of protection can be provided “only by the Chekist” regime.  And so instead of being in legal jeopardy, Ashurbeyli is “flourishing” and his  handiwork attention.

            Is Ashurbeyli threatening the US because he is a convinced “Stalinist hurrah patriot”? No, Eidman says. “Yes, he is a patriot but not of Russia. He has his own country. It is called Asgardiya and it is located in outer space.” That “state” was set up in October 2016 by Ashurbeyli who serves as its “king” and enrolls “citizens” from around the world.

            Is this an indication that he has “gone mad”? Not at all. Rather “he like the authors of his journal are only pretending to be” because “this Asgardia is an ideal cover for the world of Russia’s special services who very much want not to be taken seriously and to be considered silly madmen.”

            “Under the cover of Asgardia,” Eidman continues, they can “openly establish contacts, collect information, launch satellites, and recruit agents under the guise of recruiting new citizens into a virtual space state.”  And it is from this perspective that one must understand the articles he and his journal publish.

            They are clearly designed, the Russian sociologist and commentator says, “to frighten the Western world with nuclear catastrophe and to force its leaders to make concessions to ‘the mad Russians,’ who are ready to bury the whole world in the flames of a nuclear conflagration.”

            In another post Eidman explains why Moscow has to make use of this kind of threat: it doesn’t have the forces to back it up in a serious way.  The current trend in Moscow is not “guns instead of butter” but rather about television reports “about mythical undefeatable rockets instead of butter” (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2183510031711964&id=100001589654713).

                All of the successes in Putin’s world are fake,” he continues.  “Not oonly concerning well-being but even the sabre rattling is fake. What’s on television has completely replaced reality. And post-modernist militarism makes its move that way.”