Putin Actively Using Cold War Stasi Network in Germany, Reitshuster Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 1 – Boris Reitschuster, author of Putin’s Secret War, says that the Kremlin is “actively using the old agent network” that the East German intelligence service set up in the West during the Cold War not only to achieve specific foreign policy goals like North Stream but also to set the tone in German discussions about Russia.

            Despite the received opinion, he tells US-based Russian journalist Kseniya Kirillova that the Stasi network “was not unmasked after the end of the Cold War. Yes, the archives were opened, but their informant concerned mostly the Stasi agent network in East Germany” (ru.krymr.com/a/nemeckiy-zhurnalist-o-rossiyskoy-propagande-v-germanii/29461027.html).

            “As far as the agents from among the citizens of West Germany is concerned, Reitschuster says, “information about them was taken back to Russia, something Putin has openly acknowledged. One is speaking about several thousand people including politicians and generals. According to some, up to 20,000 residents of Western Germany were Stasi informers.”

            Unmasking these people is more difficult in Germany than elsewhere, he continues. On the one hand, there isn’t a special program to do so as there is in many east European states like Lithuania. And on the other, anyone found to have cooperated with the Stasi can be charged with treason, something that makes it easier for Moscow to put pressure on them to this day.

            As a result of this, Reitschuster says, Russia has an agent network in Germany far larger and more influential than in any other country.  It continues to penetrate the political parties and the economy, with Russian firms increasingly owning large shares of formerly purely German ones and pushing for projects like North Stream.

            The Stasi-origin agents mostly operate on the left, but Moscow has also elaborated an agent network among the far right of the political spectrum. Its operatives have close ties with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and often host that party’s leaders in the Russian Federation. Not surprisingly, that party opposes sanctions against Moscow.

            According to the journalist and researcher, “Russia’s agents of influence are strong not only in the economy and political system but also in the information space of Germany.” That has been made easier, Raitschuster suggests, by the disappointment many Germans feel in the US under the presidency of Donald Trump.

                Moreover, he says, “over the last 70 years, [Germans] have not been responsible for their own foreign security and this has led to a definite infantilism among out politicians. Not long ago, for example, left radicals from among the so-called ‘anti-fascists’ … wrote on a wall in Hamburg an appeal calling for ‘saving the residents of the Donbass from the Ukrainian army.”

            In general, Reitschuster says, the notion that “’Ukraine attacked Eastern Ukraine’ is quite popular” in Germany. “Many believe that Putin although ‘not entirely a democrat’ is nonetheless ideally suited for the Russian people.” And despite history, they accept Russia’s seizure of Crimea as legitimate because it supposedly has belonged to Moscow from time immemorial.

Putin’s Falling Ratings Even More Likely to Lead Him to War and Dictatorship than They Were Before 2014, Larionov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 1 – Over the last three months, the ratings of Vladimir Putin and the Russian authorities have fallen by almost 20 percent, down to a level not seen since the protest era of 2011-2012. His ratings then led him to invade Ukraine, Viktor Larionov says; now, they are likely to lead him to launch a far larger and bloodier conflict.

            The reason for that is this, the commentator says. “If in 2011-2014, … the threat to the regime, if it existed, was only in the heads of Putin and his entourage [but] today, it is really visible to the unaided eye” and has been “established by the efforts of Putin himself” (rusmonitor.com/rejjting-putina-rukhnul-na-pochti-na-20-a-veroyatnost-bolshojj-vojjny-vozrosla-na-100.html).

            And that is something that Putin and his people in the Kremlin not only understand very well but see only one way out: the unleashing of war, but this time “not in the form of ‘a small but victorious’ one but rather in a large and bloody one, but hopefully without the application of nuclear weapons.”

            “The goal of this war is not the recovery of ratings as was the case in the era of ‘Crimea is ours’ but rather the introduction of martial law which will allow the regime to deal with dissatisfaction and establish a pure and unconcealed dictatorship. The variants, besides ‘a liberation campaign on Kyiv,’ are not that many,” Larionov says.

            “In this connection,” he continues, “the murder of ‘DNR’ head Aleksandr Zakharchenko after which the pro-Kremlin ‘media’ began to write that Ukraine supposedly has moved its forces up to the borders of ‘the republic’ must be viewed as very serious indeed.”

           

Putin Regime Building ‘Bright Future’ Not for All but Only for Itself, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 1 – In a cruel parody of Nikita Khrushchev’s utopian promises to build communism, Vladimir Putin’s regime is also promising to build “’a bright future’” but “not for all, only for itself,” something that is increasingly obvious and thus increasingly offensive to the Russian people, Sergey Shelin says.

            Between 1958 and his ouster six years later, Khrushchev promoted the notion of a communist utopia for all, a society in which everyone would live better and in which the shortcomings of Soviet life would be overcome, the Rosbalt commentator says.  His words inspired, but his program could not be achieved (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2018/08/31/1728882.html).

                Khrushchev’s utopia began to fail even while he was still in office, Shelin continues; “and the post-Khrushchev generation of leaders put it forward as an example of an adventure that should not be repeated.” But they failed to recognize that despite its failures, Khrushchev’s program did raise the standard of living and left the USSR “much less archaic” than it had been.

            But what followed Khrushchev’s failure and ouster contained within itself even more fateful developments, the commentator suggests. The failure of his drive produced not only massive disappointment but also to a degradation of the aspirations of people from something larger than themselves to a narrowly defined improvement in their individual situations.

                “All this,” Shelin says, “made the so-called Brezhnev stagnation inevitable, whether it was headed by Brezhnev or anyone else.”

            It is thus important to compare Khrushchev’s “seven-year” plan with “our current six-year” one which has been offered also as “a project if not for the universal improvement but at least of the country as a whole.” Whatever one says, at first, both the leaders and the people took the first seriously. “They believed in it,” Shelin argues. 

            “Does Putin himself believe in a confident growth of the economy of Russia as written down in the May 2018 decrees?”  It seems unlikely. “The bosses now do not expect a great economic leap forward.” At the very least, they do not expect this to lift up the population as a whole. And they aren’t generating any enthusiasm among the people as a result.”

            But there is one way in which the events of 60 years ago and those now are similar: both were predicated not only the initiative of the population but on faith in the power of the state to solve problems through the redirection of investments.  Indeed, as a result of the past disappointments, this faith, at least at the top, is if anything “stronger” than it was.

            That is obscured by another and more important difference. Khrushchev, whatever else, thought that he was taking from the population only what was necessary to improve the lot of the population. “He believed that thanks to his efforts, the people in a very short time would begin to live much better. At a minimum, he strove for that.”

            But the Putin regime isn’t. “Its utopia is not simpler more pale and boring than the earlier one,” Shelin says.   Unlike Khrushchev’s, “it isn’t for everyone; it is only for [the regime] itself.”  And the population is coming to see that quite clearly indeed.