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Non-linear War: Putin and the man behind his mission -- Vladislav Surkov
Last edited Tue Jan 17, 2017, 10:58 PM - Edit history (1)
Written October 16, 2016
Kremlin puppet master's leaked emails are price of return to political frontline
Vladislav Surkov sits next to Vladimir Putin, and two down from Angela Merkel, at talks to discuss the situation in Ukraine. Photograph: Mikhail Palinchak/TASS
Vladislav Surkov was the mysterious Kremlin puppet master who wrote rock lyrics and loved Tupac Shakur yet was simultaneously the chief architect of Vladimir Putin’s system of “managed democracy”.
Now, after some time on the sidelines, Surkov is well and truly back in the thick of Kremlin intrigue after a cache of emails purporting to show his office coordinating affairs in separatist east Ukraine was leaked online.
Sanctioned and thus banned from travel to the EU for his role in the Kremlin’s Ukraine policy, the 52-year-old Surkov nevertheless popped up at recent four-way negotiations in Berlin over Ukraine, sitting at the round table next to Putin, and just one seat across from Angela Merkel. It was a very visible signal of Surkov’s importance to the Kremlin’s controversial Ukraine policy.
<snip>
Surkov is widely believed to be the real author behind the pen name Natan Dubovitsky, who has written a postmodern novel and a number of short stories. In March 2014, a short story attributed to Dubovitsky called Without Sky was published, set in an imaginary future where the planet was engulfed in “world war five; the first non-linear war”.
One passage read: “The simple-hearted commanders of the past strove for victory; now, they were not so stupid. Of course, some of them acted like before and tried to retrieve the old worn-out slogans, like ‘Victory will be ours’. Sometimes it worked. But mostly, they understood war as a process; part of a process, its most acute phase, but maybe not its most important phase.”
Less than a week after the story was published, the annexation of Crimea was completed. - The Guardian
Vladislav Surkov sits next to Vladimir Putin, and two down from Angela Merkel, at talks to discuss the situation in Ukraine. Photograph: Mikhail Palinchak/TASS
Vladislav Surkov was the mysterious Kremlin puppet master who wrote rock lyrics and loved Tupac Shakur yet was simultaneously the chief architect of Vladimir Putin’s system of “managed democracy”.
Now, after some time on the sidelines, Surkov is well and truly back in the thick of Kremlin intrigue after a cache of emails purporting to show his office coordinating affairs in separatist east Ukraine was leaked online.
Sanctioned and thus banned from travel to the EU for his role in the Kremlin’s Ukraine policy, the 52-year-old Surkov nevertheless popped up at recent four-way negotiations in Berlin over Ukraine, sitting at the round table next to Putin, and just one seat across from Angela Merkel. It was a very visible signal of Surkov’s importance to the Kremlin’s controversial Ukraine policy.
<snip>
Surkov is widely believed to be the real author behind the pen name Natan Dubovitsky, who has written a postmodern novel and a number of short stories. In March 2014, a short story attributed to Dubovitsky called Without Sky was published, set in an imaginary future where the planet was engulfed in “world war five; the first non-linear war”.
One passage read: “The simple-hearted commanders of the past strove for victory; now, they were not so stupid. Of course, some of them acted like before and tried to retrieve the old worn-out slogans, like ‘Victory will be ours’. Sometimes it worked. But mostly, they understood war as a process; part of a process, its most acute phase, but maybe not its most important phase.”
Less than a week after the story was published, the annexation of Crimea was completed. - The Guardian
"It is possible that going after Surkov is the first salvo in what the CIA promised would be “unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia” in the wake of alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic party’s computer networks."
Vladislav Surkov
