Vladimir Putin’s Campaign to Seduce, Subvert and Screw Over Western Democracies—Including Ours
Vladimir Putin’s Campaign to Seduce, Subvert and Screw Over Western Democracies—Including Ours
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/30/vladimir-putin-s-campaign-to-seduce-subvert-and-screw-over-western-democracies-including-ours.html
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As The Economist pointed out last week, inside Russia,“The two main pillars of the Soviet state, propaganda and the threat of repression, have been restored.” The infamous KGB, which was humiliated and broken up 25 years ago “has been rebuilt as the main vehicle for political and economic power.” Meanwhile, “reactionary restoration at home has led to aggression abroad,” with hybrid warfare against Georgia and Ukraine, and intimidation of the little Baltic states. All this even as Moscow has “attempted to undermine Euro-Atlantic institutions, backed right-wing parties in Europe" and, as the The Economist, too, avers, “tried to meddle in America’s presidential elections.
If Putin’s aggressive stratagems are a fairly recent revelation to Americans (or, at least, those Americans willing to pay attention), the basic tactics are old news in France and much of the rest of Europe, where Moscow has been active for a long time helping to underwrite with money and propaganda the wave of populism sweeping the Continent.
For nearly a decade, Russia has established ties with far right parties in eastern Europe, including Hungary’s Jobbik, Bulgaria’s anti-EU Attack movement, and Slovakia’s far-right People’s party.
The Eastern European far-right parties have returned the love, whether by supporting the 2008 Russian war against Georgia, or by vocalizing support for Putin, as the Bulgarian Attack party has. In 2012, Attack's leader, Volen Siderov, even popped over to Moscow to ring in Putin’s 60th birthday. Siderov also threatened to withdraw his party’s support from the coalition government if it supported further sanctions against Russia, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
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