Thread by @MarkGaleotti

Nikolai Patrushev, hawk’s hawk and a man I described as ‘the most dangerous man in Russia’ (buzzsprout.com/1026985/4169738) has given an interview to govt newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta. A lengthy thread 1/
rg.ru/2022/04/26/pat…

On one level, it’s the kind of talking points we’ve heard before, just with some added vitriol and hyperbole, but some lines are worth considering for their implications
(And besides, I read this bilious tract so you don't have to)
2/

Why is this a war not with Ukraine but the West? Because of US ambitions of global hegemony, which means it seeks “to force Russia to give up its sovereignty, self-consciousness, culture, independent foreign and domestic policy.” In this context this is a proxy war… 3/

Because “the Americans, using their proteges in Kyiv, decided to create an antipode for our country… trying to divide an essentially single people.” Fits both Putin’s notions about Ukrainians and Lavrov’s recent proxy war rhetoric 4/

So what? If the Kremlin decides it needs to escalate a ‘special military operation’ into a war, unlocking mobilisation etc, it needs to present the conflict as already having been escalated *by the West* to avoid admitting this is a response to failure 5/

But NP seeks to reassure the readers that Western unity will not last: “Europe is facing a deep economic and political crisis. Rising inflation and declining living standards are already affecting the wallets and moods of Europeans.” (ahem, unlike Russians?) Besides... 6/

“Large-scale migration adds new challenges to old security threats like drug trafficking + transnational crime” especially as, NP asserts, “most” of 5+M Ukrainian refugees “believe Europeans should support and provide for them + when they are forced to work, they rebel.” 7/

Besides, they are “remind[ing] Europe of long-forgotten diseases. After all, only a tenth of the refugees from Ukraine have been vaccinated against coronavirus infection, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, rubella and measles.” (!) 8/

They are also gangsters: “Representatives of the criminal community fleeing from Ukraine will try to occupy niches profitable for them, to put local criminal groups under control, which will undoubtedly be accompanied by a complication of the criminogenic situation in Europe.” 9/

This is obvious and toxic propaganda, but I do wonder if this also may foreshadow some of the non-kinetic attacks Europe may face, as – esp now so many of its spies have been expelled – Moscow looks again to mobilise gangsters to break sanctions and stir up trouble 10/

On that, btw, I would mention my @ecfr paper of 2017 that could well be depressingly relevant now: ecfr.eu/publication/cr…

There is lots of stuff about the West’s supposed willingness to work with a turn a blind eye to fascism, esp around the inter-war and immediate post-war era. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, needless to say gets no mention. This is lengthy, ahistorical and predictable stuff 11/

Even for NP, though, the venom he reserves for the USA is unusual. It is “a country whose elite is not capable of appreciating other people's lives. Americans are used to walking on scorched earth.” 12/

“They flooded the Vietnamese jungle with poison, bombed the Serbs with radioactive munitions, burned the Iraqis alive with white phosphorus, and helped the terrorists poison the Syrians with chlorine.” 13/

After all, “America has long divided the whole world into vassals and enemies. In the US, from childhood, people are hammered into their heads that America is a shining city on a hill, + the rest of humanity is just a testing ground for experiments and a resource appendage.” 14/

There is a lot more of this, but I suspect you get the idea. The USA is an imperialist would-be hegemon, and the Europeans are their morally debauched lackies, whose “neo-liberalism” means “Europe and European civilisation have no future.” 15/

So what? By doubling down on the civilisational and existential dimension of the conflict, NP is adding his voice to those who advocate escalation, not just on the battlefield, but also at home. Consider, for example, the economic response 16/

The siloviki originally advocated essentially nationalising and militarising the economy. The technocrats managed to push back, and at present they are still largely calling the shots on the economy; even a statist like 1stDep PM Belousov agrees 17/

NP, though, is advocating the “sovereignization” of the national financial system, and measures which “do not run counter to the conclusions of economic science, just counter to the conclusions of Western economics textbooks.” 18/

By criticising the “entrepreneurs’ fascination… with market mechanisms alone, without taking into account the specifics of our country,” he seems to believe Russia can ignore/rewrite economics. As the Soviets did, and we know how that went 19/

Instead, he wants more autarky + economics driven by the needs of the state and believes that “it is necessary to significantly tighten the discipline of implementation” of new econ policies. In other words, any failure to perform the impossible must be punished 20/

I’ve elsewhere argued that the logical end result of Putin’s policies is something like 1970s USSR, and NP seems actively to be driving this retrograde and self-destructive process. National mobilisation is, after all, the only way Russia can fight against… 21/

The West’s “empire of lies, involving the humiliation + destruction of Russia... They spit in our eyes, but claim that it is God's dew… Washington and Brussels make no secret of the fact that their sanctions are aimed at Russians' material + spiritual impoverishment.” 22/

This is the silovik manifesto: a cultural-political war to the knife with the West, with Ukraine as just a proxy battlefield, demanding repressive mobilisation and statist economics at home. A terrifying prospect for Russia and us all. But, one closing gleam of hope: 23/

That Patrushev is having to argue his case in RG, and given that the technocrats are still in charge of econ policy, it means that he and the other advocates of a paranoid fortress thugocracy have not (yet?) won the political argument. 24/end