Russian President Vladimir Putin Reportedly Planning Reforms to Effectively Resurrect KGB
Source: ABC News
President Vladimir Putin is planning a major restructuring of the countrys security services that would effectively mean a rebirth of the KGB, according to a report in the Russian media.
Respected business paper Kommersant quoted anonymous officials as saying that a new body called the Ministry for State Security would be established before Russias 2018 presidential elections that, in its powers and roles, appears to closely resemble the Soviet-era KGB.
The new body would be known by the acronym MGB.
The reforms would restore most of the KGBs functions to its successor service, the FSB, while also returning the foreign intelligence gathering to the same body, according to the newspaper.
The result would be a single powerful security structure, sitting at the heart of the state's enforcement machinery, much as the KGB once did in the Soviet Union.
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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/International/russian-president-vladimir-putin-reportedly-planning-reforms-effectively/story?id=42190514
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)bring Ukraine into NATO and the EU. We must arm Ukraine to stop Russia from attacking Europe and place more military into the Baltic states.
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)Wilms
(26,795 posts)It's really not cool. Not cool at all.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)In the 1950s or 1960s (I forgot), a lowly professor of electric engineering of West Germany went to East Germany and negotiated for a standardization of television broadcast encoding. A simple, non-political issue of defining technological standards. But with far-reaching geopolitical consequences.
That's why East Germany was able to receive and view western TV. And that's how the citizens of East Germany were able to see what life outside of their "socialist worker's paradise" was actually like. This ultimately led to the mass-protests in the late 1980s, which ultimately led to the collapse of the GDR in 1989.
Same thing with Ukraine. They are able to compare life in Europe and life in Russia.
Yanukovych wanted to play both sides and make deals with both sides, while secretly favoring Russia. Except that the EU said "us or them". Forced to make a hard choice between Europe and Russia, Ukraine broke apart along cultural fault-lines, with one half picking Europe and one half picking Russia.
And the same thing will happen with Cuba and North Korea.
The tourists will give Cuba a taste of freedom and the communist regime cannot hold them back forever.
The North Koreans know that they are being lied to and being oppressed, they just don't know what the rest of the world is like.
Information and an open clashes of ideas. Words! That's how Putin's Russia will be defeated. That's why North Korea is keeping its citizens uninformed and that's why russian trolls are busy planting fake stories all over the internet.
Response to DetlefK (Reply #6)
Post removed
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)What's your take on how East Germany collapsed?
What's your take on how Ukraine collapsed?
What's your take on North Korea's stability?
What's your take on the russian internet-trolls that have been confirmed by russian journalists, on how critics of Putin keep dying under suspicious circumstances, how russian soldiers are "going on vacation" in Eastern Ukraine, how Russia is occupying Crimea and parts of Georgia, how (according to the russian polling-institute Lewada) 51% of Russians don't trust the result of the latest election (where United Russia happened to make massive gains amid dropping voter-participation and widespread reports of election-fraud), on Russia passing extremely restrictive protest-laws, on Chechnya (ruled my murdering strongman Kadyrov) giving 99% of the vote to Putin?
What's your take on russian hackers trying to influence US-elections?
What do you make of russian propaganda?
Here's a challenge for you:
Go to the homepage of Russia Today and find ONE story that paints the US in a positive light. Just one.
Go to the homepage of Russia Today and find ONE story that paints Hillary Clinton in a positive light. Just one.
Go to the homepage of Russia Today and find ONE story that paints Donald Trump in a bad light. Just one.
Add it up.
Putin is a Cold War-relic who wants to re-establish the status of Russia as an empire, just as it was during the later years of the Soviet Union. And he believes that Russia is geopolitically under attack. (The Baltic States moving closer to Scandinavia and EU/NATO, NATO building missile-defence in Poland and Romania, Ukraine leaving Russia, Syria in trouble, the price of oil down, anti-russian hysteria in the West...)
The only way to solve this is increased communication, increased sharing of information and talking it out.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)EX500rider
(10,829 posts)....MGB's aren't very big...
madokie
(51,076 posts)putin on the other hand can go fuck himself
tclambert
(11,085 posts)Hekate
(90,616 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)LuvNewcastle
(16,843 posts)when we have the CIA, DHS, NSA, and god knows who else not only spying on foreigners, but people right here in the U.S. Is anybody on this thread experiencing any cognitive dissonance here?
Joe Chi Minh
(15,229 posts)George the Retiree
(50 posts)JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,336 posts)I always liked the MGB.