Plot "Silver drachma" - A sick plan to get Greece out of the euro following the downfall of Karamanlis - MUST READ

The evidence that was presented by Supreme Court investigator against Corruption Dimitri Foukas can only be described as shocking and something that can only be found in spy movies. Foukas, who has been investigating the wire tapping case that occurred during Costas Karamanlis' rule as well as the assassination attempt against the former prime minister, in a clear and documented way, shows us how the US government worked to overthrow the Karamanlis government, as well as the dark and sinister role that close associates of George Papandreou played to materialize this plot (otherwise known as  "Pythia 1").

Aside from the major plot "Pythia1" which aimed to destabilise Greece politically, socially and especially financially, and just before wrapping up his investigation, the Supreme Court investigator suddenly stumbled upon yet another plot. According to what is presented in his inquiry, he apparently discovered that there was an organized effort from a group of unnamed people to remove Greece from the eurozone!

Before presenting the evidence, HellasFrappe wants to note that Foukas has been investigating the wiretapping case as well as the "Pythia1" plot, that concern preparatory acts of treason during Karamanlis' rule. Both cases, were merged into a grand investigation in 2013, and now that they have reached their completion will be submitted to the Supreme Council's Appeals Court where the judiciary will decide what further course of action to take. The investigation is featured in a multi-page document that shockingly also reveals a plan for a new national currency, or "silver drachma", in 2012, and which once again stars Alex Rondos, one of George Papandreou's closest associates. The case also links powerful personalities, secret service agents in Greece and in the US, (agents who suddenly disappeared), confidential reports and Wikileaks cables.

(If you wish to find out more about Alex Rondos then we propose that you click on one of the links below.)

Back to our story, the plot to remove Greece from the Eurozone was surprisingly discovered when Foukas was monitoring the telephone calls that were made by Alex Rondos -a man who had reportedly known about the plan to destabilise Greece as noted in previous reports on HellasFrappe-. During this period, the name of a Mexican businessman (silver mine owner) suddenly surfaced. According to what was noted, the name of Julio Salinas Price surfaced, a man who had once also acted as an economics advisor to the Mexican government.

Foukas' report claims that Rondos came into contact with Salinas Price in 2012 when Papadimos was in power, (just a little after George Papandreou resigned as premier). The purpose, according to the evidence, was to promote Greece's exit from the eurozone and then introduce a new national currency (that the military news site defencenet -which revealed the story- calls "silver drachma"). The plot, according to Foukas, foresaw the introduction of a new currency with an estimated value that would have been twice the annual GDP, capped at 20% of silver value, and which would have been supplied by Price.

With all this new information in hand, Foukas then began to investigate Price's visit (s) to Greece as well as the contacts the the Mexican businessman made in Athens. He even seized incriminating evidence on these visits after conducting a search at a private home from an unnamed source. The military news site defencenet claims that it knows the name of this individual but reserves the right to keep his/her identity confidential -for the time being- because the investigation is still ongoing. Nonetheless, it is reported that 70 billion Euros would have been issued towards the issuance of this new currency, to which consultancy fees and brokers' fees would have also been added.

The Supreme Court Investigator has already began criminal proceedings against all the unidentified individuals involved in this new sinister plot, and the possible actions that followed or proceeded this act and that aimed at lobbying and forcing the Greek government at the time to alter policies that concern Greek international affairs.

It should be clarified, that these actions also include the assassination attempt (s) against Costas Karamanlis as well. Those who have followed this story on HellasFrappe in previous posts know that Foukas' investigation discovered that the perpetrators behind this grand plan worked feverishly to end Greece's political and economic rapprochement with Russia in the areas of energy, and the supply of military equipment and procurement.

(Karamanlis who had made the first opening to Russia with the aim of making Greece and international energy hub, was not well-liked by the West because of these political choices. HellasFrappe has presented a plethora of articles that prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that George Papandreou's rise to power was well planned by the West so that all the agreements that were signed during Karamanlis' rule could be dissolved. If one examines Foukas' report they will discover that there is even a paragraph dedicated to the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline as well as the controversial South stream pipeline, These two references alone prove the motive behind the unjust downfall of Karamanlis.)

Foukas also featured Wikileaks cables and the testimony of key witnesses in his report proving that when Karamanlis and Vladimir Putin decided to move ahead with the pipeline projects, the US government made a decision to dissolve these agreements as soon as possible (and obviously get rid of the Karamanlis government).

The above information is corroborated by fact sheets from the Greek secret services (EYP) and testimony from an agent with the  codename "ΘΣ 13".

According to the judicial report -which we once again repeat was featured on the military web site defencenet on Friday- the US began to reveal its support for the TAP pipeline after 2009. This was confirmed in Victor Resti's testimony, who after meeting with the US president in May 2012, began to promote the US' position -which was in favor of the TAP pipeline- to the Greek leadership. The result was a gradual abandonment of the Russian pipeline projects that were signed by Karamanlis, and a commitment from the Greek side -or the then Papandreou government- to favor the TAP pipeline instead. At the same time, the purchase and supply of military equipment from Russia was also abandoned.

According to Foukas, on 26.03.2014 a former agent from EYP contacted his office requesting an extraordinary meeting. At the meeting, which took place the very same day, the Greek agent conveyed a message to Foukas that was passed on to him by a member of the US intelligence service demanding that the mega investigation -into Karamanlis' assassination and Greece's destabilisation- be stopped right away, because Greek-US relations were once again on track and the case was preventing their further development.

Foukas of course did not stop the investigation and continued on feverishly and as such also discovered this new plot.

In his inquiry he talks about the wire-tapping scandal revealing that specialized phones were used to monitor dozens of politicians, members of the government and dozens of others, including Costas Karamanlis. According to what he discovered, the wire-tapping occurred from August 2004 until March 2005 by an American agent with the code name William B. The phones that were used in this operation were apparently purchased in the area of Piraeus by William B's wife with the name Petros Markou. When one of the four phone lines were being investigated by Foukas, it was discovered that the telephone connection was activated by another device with subscriber information linked to the American Embassy. When the case was brought to light, William B suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from Greece.

The inquiry -supported by Wikileaks cables- also reveals that during Karamanlis' rule there were officials at the National Intelligence service that were leaking information -breaching state secrets- because they were not in favor -or political fans- of the leadership. As it turned out in 2005 some of these intelligence officers -who had access to top secret information-, removed confidential state documents without any authorization and passed them on to the then MEP for the PASOK party Michalis Karchimakis -another very close associate of George Papandreou-. Reference - defencenet

What is the Pythia1 Plan - according to previous posts from HF:

The Pythia1 plan had four main points: The assassination plot against Karamanlis had as its objective to postpone and/or cancel his government’s decision to move ahead with an energy policy that would make Greece a fair player in the global energy market, while it was part of a larger plan that was set to totally destabilize the country’s economic and political system.

First Phase:  Political instability. During Karamanlis' run as Prime Minister, the political climate in Greece began to crumble and the mainstream media (which some hint was bought out to do so) suddenly began broadcasting stories suggesting that the government of Karamanlis was accepting kickbacks or was involved in money laundering in the Monastery of Vatopedi case. The news began to tarnish the image of Karamanlis’ Cabinet, while the aim was to strike at the core… Karamanlis himself so that he could lose his credibility with the people. It worked. After months and months of propaganda, the people turned their back on Karamanlis, his political career was totally tarnished, and he lost the elections to George Papandreou in October 2009.

Second Phase: Economic unrest: This was achieved with various methods that even included the various kidnappings of several prominent businessmen, throwing the business community in a panic.

Third Phase: Social instability. This was implemented with various forms of social unrest, including terrorist acts.

Fourth Phase: Weaken Foreign Policy. Karamanlis’ foreign policy began to suddenly show signs of weakening and Greece began to suddenly lose ground with its allies.

For more please read...

OPINION - Does The Papandreou +Rondos +Lazzard +Sorros Alliance = The Rothchilds? You Bet It Does!
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.gr/2013/11/opinion-does-papandreou-rondos-lazzard.html

Arrest Warrent Against Head of KYP... In Assassination Attempt Against Karamanlis
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.gr/2015/02/arrest-warrent-against-head-of-kyp-in.html

PASOK MP Implicated In Karamanlis Wire-Tapping Case - Breached State Secrets
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.gr/2013/11/pasok-mp-implicated-in-karamanlis-wire.html

RealNews Report Says Greek-Americans & NSA Behind Spy Network Against Costas Karamanlis
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.gr/2013/11/realnews-report-says-greek-americans.html

SPECIAL REPORT - Supreme Court To Merge Cases Of Wire-Tapping, Pythia Plan,Assassination Plot Against Karamanlis Into ONE
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.gr/2013/02/special-report-supreme-court-to-merge.html

Case on Suspicious Death of Vodafone Employee Associated to Greek Wire-tapping Scandal Re-opens
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.gr/2012/04/case-on-suspicious-death-of-vodafone.html

PART l - Plot to assassinate Costas Karamanlis revealed (VIDEO)
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/06/plot-to-assassinate-kostas-karamanlis.html

PART II – Plot to assassinate Costas Karamanlis revealed (VIDEO)
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/06/part-ii-plot-to-assassinate-kostas.html

PART III - Authorities launch formal investigation into assassination plot against Karamanlis
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/08/authorities-launch-formal-investigation.html

SPECIAL REPORT - Prosecution Wraps Up Investigation Into Assassination Attempt Of Karamanlis
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2012/03/special-report-prosecution-wraps-up.html

SPECIAL REPORT - Either You Leave, Or We Kill You - (Karamanlis) A Hostage For 242 Days
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/12/special-report-either-you-leave-or-we.html

Makeleio Show Explores Papandreou and SYRIZA Role In Downfall of Karamanlis (VIDEO)
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2012/12/makeleio-show-explores-papandreou-and.html

Was Mossad, MI6 & CIA Behind Assassination Plot Of Karamanlis?
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2012/03/was-mossad-mi6-cia-behind-assassination.html

Ambassador Threatens Greek MP Over Energy Policy - Connected To Karamanlis Assassination Plot
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2013/01/ambassador-threatens-greek-mp-over.html

Does Papandreou agree with Rondos’ views about sharing the Aegean with Turkey?
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/10/does-papandreou-agree-with-rondos-views.html

Epikaira article confirms that Papandreou was in secret talks with US + Israel over natural gas + oil
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/08/epikaira-article-confirms-that.html

SPECIAL REPORT - Classified documents reveal US energy coup & Papandreou's retreat on FYROM
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/10/special-report-classified-documents.html

SPECIAL REPORT - Does Papandreou work on behalf of Greek or US interests? (VIDEOS)
http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.com/2011/10/special-report-does-papandreou-work-on.html
References: HellasFrappe, AMNA, enikos, www.kontranews.gr

BREAKING - Russia States That It Is Willing to Consider Loans To Greece

Ahead of talks between Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich was quoted in an interview on RT television as saying that Moscow is willing to consider giving financial aid to Greece.

     "We will support any decision (on the Greek debt crisis) that is proposed by Greece and our European partners," Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said. "The most important things for us are investment projects and trade with Greece. If financial support is needed, we will consider this question," he said.
      "A stable Europe and a stable Greece is a priority for us. We will support the resolution of Greece’s financial crisis by all possible means," the deputy prime minister stressed.

Many countries in Europe want sanctions against Russia to be lifted as soon as possible, and Greece is one of those countries, he noted.

     "Those countries think about their economy, and not about politics. We believe that this is a constructive approach," Dvorkovich added.
     "We definitely hold more consultations now with countries like this than with leading European countries that do not want to continue economic dialogue," he stressed.

Check VIDEO at 2.25

Sources - Itar-Tass, RT, YouTube

Russia & Greece Sign Memorandum On Extension of Turkish Stream Pipeline

Russian and Greek Energy Ministers, Alexander Novak and Panagiotis Lafazanis respectively, signed a memorandum on construction of the extension of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline across Greek territory at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum.

     "Our meeting today is a historical meeting… The memorandum expresses the readiness of both sides to bring the south direction of the pipeline to implementation," Lafazanis said.

According to Lafazanis, the project will unite all the people of Europe who will be involved in it.

     "The pipeline will connect not only Greece and Russia, but also the peoples of Europe. Our message that it is a message of stability and friendship… The pipeline we are beginning today is not against anyone in Europe or anyone else, it is a pipeline for peace, stability in the whole region," the minister said.

According to the Greek minister, energy could play a uniting role to counter the Cold War. Moscow and Athens are opening a new productive path towards Europe, Lafazanis said, adding that he hoped the countries would complete the project.

     "We go to the next step — to the second step. We hope that we will win the second battle, as we won the first one," Lafazanis said, referring to the process of reaching the pipeline deal

Sources:  RT, Sputnik ,

Greek State News Agency to sign with Russia's Rossiya Segodnya (Part of RT)

ANA-MPA on Thursday announced that it is ready to sign a cooperation agreement with the Russian news organisation Rossiya Segodnya. The announcement came from St. Petersburg on the sidelines of the International Economic Forum, where Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is also to participate. It should be reminded that Rossiya Segodnya is the largest news group in Russia and includes the broadcaster Russia Today, the news agency RIA Novosti and the international radio station Voice of Russia.

According to the announcement, the agreement provides for the development of bilateral cooperation in the news sector with the view to upgrading the relations between Russia and Greece. For this reason ANA-MPA and Rossiya Segodnya are set to jointly implement programs that are going to cover the news on political, financial, cultural, tourism and sports sectors.

Additionally, the agreement includes the creation of a service that aims to focus on the cooperation between Greece and Russia in the sectors of energy, commerce, investments, tourism and culture.

The contract will be signed by ANA-MPA president and general director Mihalis Psilos and the general director of Rossiya Segodnya, Dmitry Kiselyov.

ANA-MPA

Lafazanis Tells US: Choice to support Russian natural gas pipeline is beneficial for Greece

Greece is not a plot and cannot be blackmailed, nor does it believe that with its choices in the energy sector can become "part of a problem", stated Productive Reconstruction, Environment and Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis in response to statements from US Department of State coordinator for International Energy Affairs Amos Hoschstein in regards to Greece's stance on a proposed Russian natural gas pipeline.

During the 31st convention of the International Coordinating Committee "Justice for Cyprus" (PSEKA), Hochstein demanded that the construction of the gas pipeline from Turkey to Greece be stopped. He claimed that the pipeline would undermine alternative plans to supply energy resources to Europe and increase reliance on Russia.

     "We are dealing with the energy crisis in Europe. If Greece continues to promote a pipeline for supplying Russian natural gas to Europe, it will be part of the problem, not a solution," Hochstein said.

According to him, Central and Eastern European countries buy gas from only one supplier, but now it is possible to diversify shipments and "Greece would play a major role" in the diversification.

Lafazanis was quick to reply:

     "On the contrary, our choice to support a pipeline carrying Russian gas on Greek territory is nationally and economically beneficial (for Greece) and gives positive solutions for cooperation, sufficiency in energy and the safety of the region and Europe. Greece is following a new independent and multidimensional energy policy with the ambition to make the country a multilateral energy hub within which will be allocated and distributed the routes and the natural gas origin sources without exclusions and neo Cold War prejudice. The new emerging independent Greece is a source of stability, safety and trust for all peoples. A force that shows a different way for peace, progress, justice and relations of equality among all countries." 

Earlier in May, on a visit to Athens, Hochstein had apparently voiced his opposition to the construction of the new gas pipeline. At the time Lafazanis had once against said that the project would serve Greece’s national interests.

Note on PSEKA conference: Greek-American and Cypriot-American leaders from across the United States representing major national and local organizations of the community gathered in Washington, DC for the 31st Annual Cyprus and Hellenic Leadership Conference June 3-5. The Government of Cyprus was represented by the Presidential Commissioner for Humanitarian Issues and Overseas Cypriots Photis Photiou. The conference was held to show the importance Cyprus can play as a strategic partner of the United States, in a volatile area and influence high-level administration officials who formulate U.S. policy toward Cyprus, Greece and Turkey.

Editor's Note: We are not fans of SYRIZA, and especially Mr. Lafazanis but we applaud him for his stance and courage. Greece has every right to make its own decisions that are beneficial to the country's national interests. Because of our geo-strategic position, many foreign interests have never allowed Greece to accelerate and develop its energy industry. This was about to change in 2007 with former conservative leader Costas Karamanlis when he foresaw the tsunami that was coming and decided to steer Greece towards the East. As such, China made a huge investment in Greece and today the Piraeus port can challenge other major ports in Europe. He also listened to his long-time advisor and veteran diplomat Petros Molyviatis and strengthened relations with Moscow with the aim of making Greece an international energy hub. Unfortunately we all know what happened to him. His government was toppled from the inside from various conservative hawks (D.B) and from American puppet George Papandreou, he was discredited and made to look incompetent and there was even an attempt to assassinate him. It takes courage to say NO to the West. Until now only Costas Karamanlis was able to say NO on the issue of FYROM, Cyprus and the Grey Zones in the Aegean. Let us hope that Lafazanis will follow suit. If you want to find out more about the manner in which the US has been pressuring Greece over the past few years to abandon its energy ambitions with Russia because of its own interests, and what happened when Karamanlis decided to say NO to the West then please click HERE.

Lafazanis: Financing agreed to extend Russian pipeline to Greece - Deal to be signed in St.Petersburg

The financing of the extension of a pipeline carrying Russian gas from Turkey to Greece has been secured and a deal could be signed this month, said a report from France24 quoting Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis. The report, quoting Lafazanis' statements in an interview with Russian public television, notes that he had had a series of very productive meetings in Russia, which is ready to participate in the financing. Lafazanis said there is "enormous interest" among Greek companies for an extension of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline.

Moscow axed its South Stream gas pipeline to southeastern Europe in 2014, even though construction had already begun, as relations with the EU hit a nadir over Russia's role in the Ukraine conflict. Instead Moscow announced a pipeline to Turkey, which should be ready in December 2016, and told European nations they would need to build links to get the gas.

Ever since the radical-left SYRIZA party swept the elections in January, Moscow has been courting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, a former communist who has made no secret of his desire for closer ties with Russia and criticised the EU sanctions imposed over Ukraine. Tsipras is struggling to unblock EU and IMF rescue funds and Russia has dangled the possibility it will help finance the project, which it has alluded will generate revenue that Athens could use to help pay off its mountain of debt.

     "We already know that it will be a Greek public company which would be in charge and furthermore, the question of financing is already resolved: the infrastructure costs are estimated at around two billion dollars," said Lafazanis.

The minister said a deal could be reached by the three-day Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum that begins on June 18. Russian media have said that other countries interested in linking up the pipeline in Greece are hesitant for fear of angering the European Union.

Source: France24

Mistakes and Shame

Mistakes and Shame

On May 9th, we commemorated the 70th anniversary of the victory against Nazi Germany. History will remember this date as one on which what we call “the West” and which in reality is only the circle of European allies of the United States, has committed a major political mistake. In this mistake, the responsibility of President François Hollande is significant, and could have profound consequences. It’s not only a mistake, it’s a shame, and a damning one! The following article was given to HellasFrappe to publish. It was written by by Jacques Sapir (and translated by Anne-Marie de Grazia) and first featured at russeurope.hypotheses.org

Putin isolated ?

Under the pressure of the United States, a majority of European countries renounced sending a President or a Prime Minister to Moscow to attend the great parade commemorating Victory. But, and this is extremely important, China, India and numerous countries of Latin America made the trip as well as some European leaders like the Czech President or the Greek one. If we measure the demographic weight of these representatives, they make up over 50% of the World population. If one measures their economic weight, it is high, too, around 40%. To speak under these conditions of an “isolation” of Vladimir Putin is an absurdity.

But the political symbolism is even more important. The chiefs of State or chiefs of governments of the « BRICS » countries and of the countries of the Organisation of Security and Cooperation went to Moscow. The presence of the Chinese and of the Indians acquires an even greater, more particular significance. The population of China paid an extremely heavy tribute to a conflict which, for China, started not in 1939, but in 1937. In fact, it is – behind the USSR – the country which has suffered the most. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army were abominable. Indian troops fought against Germany and Italy as well as against Japan. The participation of contingents of the Chinese and Indian armies to the parade in Moscow reaches, from all evidence, beyond mere commemoration.

It was clear therefore that this 9th of May would assume particular importance. Because of the attitude of the United States, but also because of the cowardice, not to use a more injurious term, of the European leaders, this 9th of May 2015 has confirmed that the world is split in two. It has symbolized the opposition of an “old world” of the Atlantic Basin to this new world emerging around Asia which is constantly attracting new countries. One can only, in this regard, take due notice of the Chinese or Sino-Russian initiatives [1], of the Asiatic Bank of Investment in Infrastructures [2] (BAII/AIIB), all the way to the project of a Eurasian Union, which are constantly taking on importance. These initiatives could have been conceived in a frame of openness to the “old world.” It is the responsibility of the United States, but also of those who out of a herd instinct or out of fear have followed in their footsteps, to have provoked the symbolic rupture between these two worlds, which has been verified with the parade of May 9th.

The responsibility of François Hollande.

Traditionally, it is France who seeks to re-establish dialog and which strives, because it has a universalist conception of certain principles, to bring down prejudices and to reduce hostilities between blocks. General de Gaulle pronounced many speeches against the « blocks-politics, » of which the one at Phnom Penh, in 1967, remains the most famous. By deciding, in the last minute, to send Laurent Fabius, our Minister of Foreign Affairs, not only did François Hollande commit a heavy mistake, but he discredited himself durably on the international scene. Sending the Minister of Foreign Affairs clearly sends an undignified message of “neither-nor.” If one wanted to be present in Moscow, the President should have made the trip, or his Prime Minister (Manuel Valls) who, we must remember, according to the Constitution, « leads the politics of the country. » But François Hollande preferred to take in the sun in the Caribbean and Manuel Valls to engage in disgraceful polemics against Emmanuel Todd. History will remember this desertion, both physical and moral, of the two most important authorities in our country and the disgrace they inflicted not just to Russia but to France too.

But most serious is the fact that if, in the future, France should be – justifiably – troubled by this resurgence of “blocks-politics,” it will no longer have any legitimacy to speak up against it. François Mitterrand, who had a sense of History and of formula, used the expression «the little telegraph boy » to denounce the visit of Valery Giscard d’Estaing to Moscow at the beginning (1979) of the war against Afghanistan. But today, at a moment when it would have been important to be in Moscow, be it only to bear witness through his presence of the unity of the world and to enter into conversation with these leaders of the “new world,” the French President preferred to play the absentee subscriber. His absence is an abdication and a damning shame.

The consequences.

This abdication will doubtlessly have profound and durable consequences at least as long as the current political personnel will be in power. One forgets, or feigns to ignore that, within the government and the political class in Russia, Vladimir Putin is one of the most pro-Western [3]. In one sense, he took due notice of the principles of international politics which were the basis of international relations since the 1980s, at the moment when they were being increasingly abandoned by the United States and their allies.

The question of the principles and rules, which must command over international relations is at the heart of the problematic defended by Vladimir Putin since the speech he pronounced in Munich in 2007[4]. He came back to this theme several times, particularly in 2012[5]. This latter declaration is particularly important because it predates the Ukrainian crisis. One of the points broached by Putin is the following: « The recent series of armed conflicts started under the pretext of humanitarian aims is undermining the time-honoured principle of state sovereignty, creating a moral and legal void in the practice of international relations. It is often said that human rights override state sovereignty. This is undoubtedly true – crimes against humanity must be punished by the International Court. However, when state sovereignty is too easily violated in the name of this provision, when human rights are protected from abroad and on a selective basis, and when the same rights of a population are trampled underfoot in the process of such “protection,” including the most basic and sacred right – the right to one’s life – these actions cannot be considered a noble mission but rather outright demagogy. » [6] .

This question was already in the air in 2007, when Vladimir Putin had called for a clarification of the rules of International Law. Since 2003, from the American intervention in Iraq, it became obvious that a tendency to interpret rules to their sole profit was driving the policies of the United-States[7]. We know that this drift of American policy towards ever more « interventionism » has only reinforced itself.

Similarly, in 2012, he expressed the following reflections as to the will of the United States to build themselves up into an invulnerable bastion: « By definition, absolute invulnerability for one country would in theory require absolute vulnerability for all others. This is something that cannot be accepted. » [8]. We see here the responsibility of the American policies in the progressive stiffening of the Russian position. The incapacity of the United States to admit that the XXI century will not be the American century is pregnant with conflict.

Multipolarity or unipolarity of the world.

The attitude of the United States, and of the countries which follow them or which they constrain into following them is in the process of welding together an alliance of the new world against the old one. This was not the initial project of Vladimir Putin who, in his 2007 speech, was talking about a multipolar world. The reconstruction of Russia did not imply a direct confrontation with the United States [9]. Russia, for all that it sought to free international institutions from the American grasp, did not want to monopolize them for itself. [10]. At the conference of Munich in 2007, we find this declaration of Vladimir Putin : “I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s – and precisely in today’s – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation.”

Not enough attention has been given to what Vladimir Putin said. Yet, he drove home the message again shortly after in the same speech: “We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations.” [12].

He was not alone among Russian leaders to hold such a discourse. In an article published both in the Russian press and the Financial Times the then Minister of Finances, Alexis Kudrin, declared:  « It is not difficult to understand that if one of these structures [Kudrin is referring here to the IMF as well as to the World Bank] is perceived by a significant part of the world as insuring the domination of one country or of one group of countries, it will lose its legitimacy. It will cease to be an efficient instrument »[13].

This passage shows the Russian position articulating two elements which were distinct but linked. The first is a doubt about the capacities of one country (here he clearly means the United States) to assemble all the means required in order to exert its hegemony in an efficient way. It is an argument of realism. Even the most powerful and the richest country in the world cannot insure alone the stability of the world. The American project exceeds American strength. This is an observation against which little can be said. But there is a second argument which is no less important and which is situated at the level of the principles of Law. There exist no norms on which to found unipolarity.

In his book of 2002, Evguenni Primakov, who was Prime Minister of Russia in 1998 and 1999, and who remains one of the great connoisseurs of international politics, said just that[14]. Not that the various countries are not able to define common interests, or even that there exist common values. Putin’s speech is by no means “relativistic.” He only assesses that these values (the “moral and ethical basis”) cannot be the foundation of unipolarity, because the exercise of power, political or economic, cannot be defined in terms of values but must also be defined according to interests. This is tantamount to refuting the thesis of a de-politisation of international relations which, in the mind of those who promote it, is to become reduced to Human Rights and to the “laws” of economy. If international relations are not technical (the mere operating of common norms) but political (the management of different and potentially conflicting interests) including in economic relations, then any aspiration to hegemony becomes immoral.

In praise of Gaullian politics. 

One understands then that it is important to break this new dynamic of “blocks-policy” in order to revert to the dynamics of a multipolar world, and this is what the Russian government was expecting from France. But we are forced to take act of the fact that the French government and its Prime Minister have failed on this point, as on many another. Beyond the shame and anger inspired to us by the attitude of François Hollande and of Manuel Valls, beyond the disgust we feel at the insult not only to the Russian people but to those of China and India, and to all those who have come to Moscow on May 9th, we must observe coldly that either by calculation or out of cowardice, the French leaders, by abdicating their natural role, contribute to precipitate the world into a future made of wars and conflicts. Their responsibility in having given up Gaullian politics at the moment when they were required, shows their congenital incapacity and will remain in History. It’s a mistake and – as we have known since Talleyrand – mistakes in politics are worse than crimes.

We should remember the poem The Scythians, written by Alexander Blok in 1918. His words still resound today with an eery force. Did he not write then: « Comrades! We shall be brothers!/ But if you refuse, – we have nothing to lose./ And we can be perfidious, too.  For centuries you will be cursed/By generations of sick children! /Everywhere we shall withdraw/ into the thickness of our forests. And to seductive Europe,/We shall show our Asiatic grin. »

The Scythians

You are millions. We are hordes and hordes and hordes.
Try and take us on!
Yes, Scythians – we! Yes, Asians – we!
With slanted, greedy eyes!

To you – the centuries, to us – but an hour.
We, like obedient slaves,
Held up a shield between two enemy races –
The Mongols and Europe!

For centuries and centuries your old furnace raged
And drowned out the roar of avalanches,
And Lisbon and Messina’s fall
To you was but a monstrous tale!

For hundreds of years you gazed at the East,
Storing up and melting down our jewels,
And, jeering, you merely counted the days
Until you could point at us your guns!

The time is come. Trouble beats its wings –
And every day our grudges grow,
And the day will come when every trace
Of your Paestums may vanish!

O, old world! While you still survive,
While you still suffer your sweet torture,
Come to a halt, sage as Oedipus,
Before the ancient riddle of the Sphinx!

Russia is the Sphinx. Rejoicing, grieving,
And drenched in black blood,
It gazes, gazes, gazes at you,
With hatred and with love!

It has been centuries since you’ve loved
As our blood still loves!
You have forgotten that the world holds love
To burn and to destroy!

We love everything – the fire of cold maths,
The inspiration of divine vision,
We understand everything – sharp Gallic thinking
And gloomy Teutonic genius…

We remember everything – the hell of Parisian streets,
And Venetian chills,
The distant aroma of lemon groves
And the smoke towers of Cologne…

We love the flesh – its flavor and its color,
The stifling, mortal scent of flesh…
Will you blame us, if your bones crack
Under our strong and tender paws?
 …
Come to us! Out of the horrors of war,
Come into our peaceful arms!
While there is still time – sheathe the old sword,
Comrades! We shall be brothers!

But if you will not – we have nothing to lose,
And we can be perfidious, too!
For centuries and centuries you will be cursed
By generations of sick children!

Everywhere into our woods and thickets
We shall withdraw! And to seductive Europe
We shall show our Asiatic grins…

Translators: Tatiana Tulchinsky, Andrew Wachtel, and Gwenan Wilbur

Notes

• [1] Garibov K., « La Russie a adhéré officiellement au pool de réserves monétaires des BRICS », text posted on SPUTNIK 27 April 2015, http://fr.sputniknews.com/opinion/20150427/1015850582.html
• [2] http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2015/04/17/20002-20150417ARTFIG00363-cette-banque-chinoise-qui-veut-concurrencer-la-banque-mondiale.php
• [3] See discussion between Fyodor Lyukanov and Max Fisher published on http://valdaiclub.com/usa/77200.html
• [4] A complete and faithful translation of this speech can be found in the review La lettre Sentinel, n° 43-44, January-February 2007, pp. 24-29
• [5] Vladimir Putin on foreign policy: Russia and the changing world, declaration published in http://valdaiclub.com/politics/39300.html
• [6] Idem, page 2. [7] J. Sapir, “Endiguer l’isolationnisme interventionniste providentialiste américain” in La Revue Internationale et Stratégique, n°51, autumn 2003, pp. 37-44
• [8] Vladimir Putin on foreign policy: Russia and the changing world, declaration published in http://valdaiclub.com/politics/39300.html, p.2, « By definition, absolute invulnerability for one country would in theory require absolute vulnerability for all others. This is something that cannot be accepted. »
• [9] Sapir J., “ Russie : retour gagnant ” in La Revue pour l’intelligence du monde, n°7, March-April 2007, pp. 28-38.
• [10] A. Kudrin, « Bretton Woods Redux », in Moscow Times, 2 October 2007 (tribune also published in The Financial Times).
• [11] See the review La lettre Sentinel, n° 43-44, January-February 2007, pp. 25.
• [12] La lettre Sentinel, n° 43-44, p. 25 and ssq.
• [13] A. Kudrin, op.cit..
• [14] E. Primakov, Le monde après le 11 septembre et la guerre en Irak, Presses de la renaissance, Paris, 2003, Mir Posle 11 sentjabrja, Mysl,., pp. 138-151.

GEOPOLITICS: Russia Turkey and the New Greek Sirtaki

According to geopolitical analyst F. William Engdahl, the European Union has an uncanny knack for shooting itself in the foot. He claims that under strong pressure from a Russo-phobic Washington administration and various Russo-phobic EU governments, Brussels decided to take steps in 2014 to block the bilateral agreements between Russia’s state Gazprom and EU countries such as Greece and Bulgaria to buy gas from a new Russian pipeline that was to have been called South Stream, the southern counterpart to the Gazprom-Germany North Stream line.

F. William Engdahl (NEO) - For the neoconservatives in the Obama State Department and Pentagon, that would have forged far too strong EU-Russia economic ties that would significantly weaken America’s ability to blackmail the EU. The EU Commission is brazenly violating all legal precepts by trying to enforce, retroactively, new laws that they claim Gazprom has violated. Further they forced the weak government of Bulgaria last year to back out of their Gazprom contract.

Washington’s Russo-phobes were gloating as they fantasized about getting a nuclear deal with Russia’s ally Iran that could woo Teheran to double-cross Moscow and sell Iranian gas from South Pars, the world’s largest gas field, via another pipeline through to Iran’s city of Bazargan at the border with Turkey where it would transit Turkey on to Greece and Italy.

Unlike the failed US Nabucco gas project which lacked gas, the Persian Pipeline, were Iran to be foolish enough to let Washington control it, would have gas, lots of it to weaken Russia’s hold on EU gas markets that were previously supplied via Gazprom via older Ukraine pipelines.

Putin calls EU bluff

As we noted at the time last December, Russian President Vladimir Putin caught the EU by surprise when he announced cancellation of the South Stream Gazprom EU project during a visit in Turkey with President Erdogan. There Putin proposed instead an alternative that would pipe Russia’s gas through Turkey to the door of EU member Greece. There different EU states could “take it or leave it.” The advantage for Gazprom and Russia is that they would not be responsible for construction of the needed EU pipelines.

When he announced the decision, he stated bluntly, “If Europe doesn’t want to realize this, then it means it won’t be realized. We will redirect the flow of our energy resources to other regions of the world. We couldn’t get necessary permissions from Bulgaria, so we cannot continue with the project. We can’t make all the investment just to be stopped at the Bulgarian border. Of course, this is the choice of our friends in Europe.” South Stream would have provided secure delivery to southern EU countries including Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Croatia and also Serbia. It would avoid the current transit pipelines running through Ukraine.

Now less than six months later Russia and Turkey have completed the landmark deal to begin deliveries of Gazprom Russian gas via a new “Turkish Stream” pipeline into and across Turkey through a pipeline now in construction. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced on May 7 that, “An agreement has been made on the beginning of exploitation and deliveries of [Russian] gas along the Turkish Stream in December 2016.” The statement came following Miller’s meeting earlier in the day with Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yıldız. The new pipeline will travel through Turkey to a gas hub on the Turkish-Greek border for further distribution to European customers.

A geopolitical cherry on top

And only minutes after the successful Russia-Turkish agreement, Putin, reported to be a master chess player, made a master geopolitical chess move into the European Union disaster that is called the Eurozone.

Greek news outlet, Capital.gr, reported that the very same day Miller’s Turkey Gazprom deal was finalized, Putin had an apparently very cordial phone chat with Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras. After the talk, Putin’s office released a statement that Putin had told Tsipras that Russia would be willing to extend money to Greece in return for Greek participation in the Turkish Stream project into the EU. The Kremlin statement said, “In that context, the Russian side confirmed its willingness to consider the issue of extending financing to state and private companies that will cooperate in the project.”

    In Tsipras’ April 8 meeting with Putin Russia denied it had made a deal on energy; that all changed on May 7 after Turkey finalized Turkish Stream

After Tsipras’ talks with Putin in Moscow on April 8, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, issued a denial of Der Spiegel reports that the two had come to an agreement in which Moscow would advance the cash-desperate Greek government with an immediate €5 billion cash advance from Russia based on expected future profits linked to the pipeline. The Greek energy minister said at the time that Athens would repay Moscow after 2019, when the pipeline is expected to start operating.

That was on April 8. Flash forward to May 7 and the finalization of the Russia-Turkish Stream deal, and it seems now that there is also a Russia-Greece deal to advance Athens the sizeable cash sum, just before Athens must come up with large sums to repay IMF and EU loans in order to get more senseless EU and ECB “support.” The difference was clearly the finalization of the Turkish Stream. Now EU bureaucrats in Brussels have new gas pains as Putin puts a Greek cherry atop Moscow’s Turkish geopolitical deal on gas.

If the Russia cash advance to Tsipras comes to pass, not only will Athens be able to dance a Sirtaki. This time it will be a dance in which the role of Zorba is played by a Russian, Vladimir Putin, not the Mexican, Anthony Quinn.

Wolfgang Schaüble, Angela Merkel, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker all will have three options. They can decide to stand on the sidelines and clap to the sensuous rhythms of the new Sirtaki. They can join in the dance by refusing Washington blackmail on renewing EU economic sanctions against Russia. Or they can go on to boycott the dance and sink deeper into a new crisis of the Euro.

The ongoing panic selloff in German bond markets over recent days suggests it might be wise for the Berlin government to consider an entire new choreography for its European Grand Strategy. The old Atlantic NATO dance is rapidly becoming a Danse Macabre for Germany and for Europe. Putin’s Sirtaki would be far more fun for Europe and the world.

The author, F. William Engdahl, is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

ENERGY - US urges Greece to abandon Russian pipeline project

The US is urging Greece to drop the idea of hosting a controversial Russian pipeline project, arguing the Turkish Stream pipeline running across the Black Sea to Greece would end up harming Greek and European interests — but Greece is resisting. Amos Hochstein, the State Department’s special energy envoy, said Athens should instead promote the Southern Gas Corridor project aimed at bringing Caspian gas to Europe via Turkey and the planned Trans-Adriatic pipeline (TAP), rather than deepening Greece’s dependency on Russian energy.

The US said it was concerned that Athens’ consideration of an extension of the Moscow-backed Turkish Stream pipeline will not increase energy diversification, may be of concern to EU competition authorities, and is not a long-term solution to Greece’s energy needs.

Instead, the EU-backed Southern Gas Corridor project would bring much-needed cash and jobs. According to the embassy statement, “TAP will result in €1.5 billion in foreign investment in Greece, generate 10,000 jobs during construction, and provide many millions of euros in revenue annually over 25 years.” But after the recent meeting with the US official, Greek Energy Minister Panayiotis Lafazanis said his government would continue to back Turkish Stream, “because we think it will be useful for our country.”

Cash-strapped Greece, backed against the wall by its international creditors and on the look-out for revenue, has intensified relations with Russia in the past months, a move that has been watched by Brussels and Washington with growing concern.

Alexei Miller, chief of Russian energy giant Gazprom, recently announced that his company would start building Turkish Stream and that gas would flow to Turkey by December 2016.

Brussels has been skeptical of the pipeline’s commercial viability. Many experts share this view.

According to Laszlo Varro of the International Energy Agency, Gazprom is in no position to undertake large new investment projects in 2015.

While 2013 saw record profits for the company, in 2015 the “idea that Gazprom will be able to finance large new infrastructure investments in South Eastern Europe has zero credibility in our view,” he said at a Brussels conference.

References: OCC247, Politico.eu

Lavrov: Chaos in FYROM Linked to Turkish Stream, Refusal of Sanctions Against Russia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Moscow sees the worsening situation in FYROM as tied to the country’s refusal to join economic sanctions against Russia and its support towards the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline.

     “I cannot judge with a final definition, but objectively it turns out that these events in FYROM are developing on the backdrop of the FYROManian authorities’ refusal to join in the sanction policy against Russia, as well as on the backdrop of its active support that Skopje showed in regard to the planned construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, which many in Brussels and those overseas are against,” Lavrov said during a joint press conference with Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic in Belgrade.

(Sputnik)

CHAOS IN FYROM - The Gears of War Grind for Greater Albania

The massive terrorist attack in Kumanovo is the latest provocation in the quest to create a Greater Albania and simultaneously sabotage Russia’s Balkan Stream project. 

(sputniknews) - FYROM was rocked by a large-scale terrorist attack last Saturday when over 40 armed individuals fought with police for control of the city of Kumanovo close to the country’s capital. The attackers were from the so-called “Kosovo Liberation Army” (KLA), a former terrorist group that was thought to have been disbanded after NATO occupied the Serbian province, and Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said that some of them had received their militant training in the Mideast.

The combined carnage wounded 37 police officers and killed 8 of them, while ultimately eliminating 14 terrorists and leading to the capture of 30 others.

The fighting has raised serious concern that the flailing Color Revolution attempt ongoing since January may desperately coordinate with the ethnically shaded Unconventional War, as both destabilizations are directed from abroad and have the shared objective of regime change.

If they succeed in overthrowing the government, then the forces behind them can sabotage Russia’s Balkan Stream project and formalize the creation of Greater Albania.

Complex Contexts

The chaotic events in FYROM are occurring in a complex environment, but the contexts associated with them can roughly be divided into the domestic and international categories:

Domestic: Democratically elected Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his government have been fending off a Color Revolution attempt since the beginning of the year, and thus far, they’ve been relatively successful in avoiding the “opposition’s” provocations to escalate the crisis.

Zoran Zaev, the Color Revolutionary figurehead, was charged at the end of January with conspiring with an unnamed foreign government to stage a coup d’état, yet this hasn’t stopped him from continuing to call for regime change. His campaign has sought to cultivate and exploit youth grievances in order to acquire the illusion of critical mass needed to attract overt international (Western) support for his plot. Importantly, however, the two main Albanian opposition parties have refused to go along with Zaev’s conspiratorial actions and have continued to support democracy and the legitimately elected government.

Their loyalty is exceptionally important because ethnic Albanians constitute over a fifth of the country’s population and largely inhabit the border regions with Albania and the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo, thus meaning that their defection to the regime change movement would be catastrophic not just for the government, but also for the country’s very existence.

The main reason they support the authorities is because the government endows them with the best minority rights afforded anywhere in the world as a result of the 2001 Ohrid Agreement. They largely understand that their forced incorporation into Greater Albania would do away with these generous privileges and subordinate them to second-rate citizens in the irredentist state, thereby doing away with their former role as first-rate ones in multiethnic FYROM.

In fact, they may not even feel like citizens at all in a Greater Albania, since if Albanians in “Kosovo” are any indication, then hundreds of thousands of them may flee from their failed “state” and completely abandon it to the terrorist and criminal gangs that made it “independent” in the first place.

International: This brings about the necessity in discussing the project for a Greater Albania, which Tirana threatened to bring about as recently as last month. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama warned that his country would “unite” with the Serbian province of Kosovo whether the EU supports such a move or not, calling the forthcoming annexation “inevitable and unquestionable”.

(HF readers may recall that Edi Rama was -and still is- very good friends with Mr. Socialist George Papandreou. And we all know that good old George never worked for Greece's interests but rather for others.)

In what Albania would like the world to believe was just a completely random occurrence, the dormant KLA terrorist group was suddenly revived and carried out what now appears in hindsight to have been a test-run terrorist attack late last month near Gosince.

It should be clear at this point that the two pervious provocations are intimately interconnected with the catastrophe in Kumanovo, and that all three of them combine to form the war cry for a Greater Albania. But there’s an even larger international component at play here, and that’s the US’ obsession with derailing Russian-European energy cooperation via the Balkan Stream pipeline, the de-facto successor of South Stream.  Envisioned as an expansion of Turkish Stream, it’s projected to carry Russian gas from Greece to South Stream’s former Serbian hub, critically passing through FYROM en route.

Accordingly, if FYROM is thrown into chaos and/or its government is illegally removed, then Balkan Stream becomes a pipedream (pun intended) and would never get built, hence why the combined Color Revolution and Unconventional War have been unleashed on the geostrategic country. The destabilization in FYROM is thus essentially a Western proxy war against Russia in the context of the New Cold War.

Not Civil War, But External War

Many in the foreign media are saying that the terrorist attacks could herald in a possible civil war between Albanian and Slavic FYROManians, but such an assessment is misleading, and in the case of Western reporting, purposely so.

To channel Syrian President Bashar Assad as regards his own country’s conflict, what is happening in FYROM “is an external war carried out by internal elements.”

Most of the attackers were FYROManian citizens (the others being Albanian and “Kosovan”), but many of them received their highly specialized training in the Mideast, a euphemism meant to signify ISIL.

Their adept and lethal handling of sniper rifles, explosives, and automatic weapons proves that they weren’t run-of-the-mill drug-trafficking thugs and lends convincing credence to this claim.

Furthermore, these terrorists were professionals and were planning to carry out coordinated large-scale attacks against soft targets such as sporting events and shopping malls prior to their interception by the authorities, and they had already stockpiled loads of arms (many of which were consequently used against the police) in anticipation of this.

The revival of the KLA and its latest terrorist violence are meant to provoke Albanian FYROManians into abandoning the government and siding with the militant irredentists.

The concept of Greater Albania is an emotionally charged tool designed to increase the country’s destabilization and consequently facilitate regime change in conjunction with the simultaneous Color Revolution attempt. It endeavors to craft the illusion of consensual acceptance by all Albanians, even though this clearly isn’t the case at all.

In fact, it can be said that the resort to ethnically affiliated terrorism indicates desperation on the side of the external anti-FYROManian actors, since they recognize that this is the last option they have in trying to get the Albanians to turn against the government and instigate a racial and religious division of society.

The conspirators wouldn’t utilize such extreme methods if they felt they could achieve their objectives in a simpler manner, such as through intelligence-front NGOs or by ‘legitimately’ winning them over to the side of the Color Revolutionaries.

The violent, last-ditch effort to christen Greater Albania through a sea of killings testifies to the fortitude of Albanian FYROManians in heretofore resisting this tempting Fascist-era ideology, hence the need to export Wahhabist ISIL terrorists to this latest New Cold War theater in order to mangle FYROM and break Russia’s Balkan Stream plans.

Russia invites Greece to join the BRICS-sponsored growth bank

Russia’s Deputy Minister of Finances Sergei Storchak has apparently invited Greece to join the new growth bank, comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (or otherwise known as the “BRICS”).

Storchak, who spoke to the Athens-Macedonia News Agency earlier this week, argued that the goal of the BRICS-sponsored growth bank is to secure their credit autonomy and at the same time compete with the IMF and World Bank.

It should be noted that the bank currently has 50 billion dollars in capital, with a further 100 billion-euro foreign exchange reserve.

The Russian claims that by joining the venture, Greece will be able to fund a series of development projects. He also said that the country’s ties with Russia could be strengthened if the ruble be used for payment of goods and services.

Will Greece seriously consider the idea? No one knows, but Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has arranged to visit St. Petersburg in Russia between June 18th-20th, and from what is being reported he will be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lafazanis: Russian pipeline does not compete with IGB-VGC

The Russian pipeline carrying natural gas via Turkey and Greece does not in any way compete with the Vertical Gas Corridor (VGC) which is planned by Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, Productive Reconstruction, Environment and Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis assured his counterparts in Sofia, Bulgaria on Wednesday.

Speaking one day after his meeting in Athens with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller about the Russian pipeline project - which is to traverse Greece and supply gas to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Serbia, Hungary and the rest of central Europe - Lafazanis pointed out that the two pipelines would cross and supply different countries on their path. Lafazanis was in the Bulgarian capital for the first meeting of the high-level group on the VGC, attended by his counterparts from Bulgaria and Romania.

The minister presented a detailed report on the government's plans on energy connections, noting that Greece was in talks for its potential participation in the construction of the Russian pipeline "in accordance with European law and the third energy package." The project is intended to replace the existing Russian natgas route via Ukraine to central Europe, which will cease operating in 2019.

He noted that the VGC linking the natgas systems of Greece, Bulgaria and Romania was not only potential solution in the case of an energy crisis but promoted the interlinking of the region with "Europe's energy arteries, putting an end fo the isolation of our countries" and promoting a convergence in gas prices.

Referring to the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB), he said this would provide southeast Europe's most efficient access to new sources of natural gas, from various areas and not just the Caspian Sea. He also noted the possibility of supplying the Balkans through the Liquified Natural Gas station at Revythousa in Greece.

ANA - MPA

Russians begin inspections of Greek farming product suppliers - Exports to Russia to rise

The Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Rosselxoznadzor began its checks to future suppliers of farming products from Greece, Hungary and India.

     "Approximately twenty Greek companies will be inspected in Greece and another twenty in Hungary while only four to five companies in India. Cyprus has asked for a short extension and the inspection in Cyprus will start on April 27 in 6-8 companies," the representative of the Rosselxoznadzor Alexei Alekseenko told the Russian press agency RIA-Novosti on Monday.

He added that the inspections are expected to wrap up by April 30th.
In Athens, diplomatic sources told the state news agency ANA-MPA that the Greek companies that will be checked within the next two weeks are involved in the production of dairy, poultry, cured meat products and fish from fish farming. According to the report, the Russian side will import products only from units that have certification from Rosselxoznadzor and will not consider the EU certifications sufficient.

Sources: RIA-Novosti, ANA-MPA

Athens & Moscow work on pipeline construction agreement

Greece and Russia are working on a memorandum for the construction of a "Greek pipeline" of natural gas that may be signed in Athens as early as next week, according to RIA-Novosti Russian news agency citing a Greek source, who said he was quoting Greek Productive Reconstruction, Environment and Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis.

The new pipeline is slated to begin operations in December 2016, and the Greek section will connect to a pipeline delivering Russian gas to Turkey and southern Europe, according to the agency, which also said that signing on the Russian side would be Energy Minister Alexander Novak.

According to the calculations, the Greek section is estimated to cost as much as 2 billion euros and run from the Greek-Turkish borders to the borders with FYROM. From here it will extend to Serbia and Hungary, ending up in Austria, according to Russian-based Gazprom.

The agency quoted Greek sources as saying that construction would be carried out by the private sector and agree fully with EU legislation.

No further details were available.

ANA-MPA

Who Insists on Going to the Moscow Parade Despite Western Criticism?

Filip Kovacevic (BoilingFrogsPost) - Recently, the president of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman made news around the world when he publicly confronted the US ambassador to the Czech Republic Andrew Schapiro about the ambassador's statement that Zeman's attendance of the Victory Day parade in Moscow would be "awkward". "I can’t imagine the Czech ambassador in Washington would give advice to the American president where to travel,” Zeman said. “I won’t let any ambassador have a say about my foreign travels.” And, then, in order to make concrete his displeasure at the attempted interference, he added that Schapiro "has the door to the castle [Zeman's presidential residence] closed".[1]

This made Zeman an instant celebrity among those in Europe who believe that the US-NATO military build-up, coupled with the strengthening of the anti-Russian geopolitical discourse, might have serious repercussions for the European political and economic stability and peace. This, however, is nothing new for Zeman as he has voiced similar opinions in the past as well. For instance, he was one of the first EU high-level politicians to take a stand against the imposition of the sanctions against Russia.[2] For this reason, he became a target of the smear campaign by several pro-US political parties and organizations and was even pelted with eggs and symbolically shown the red card by the protesters during the public commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in November 2014.[3]

It appears, however, that the pressure this time around was so overwhelming that Zeman was forced to change his plans. It could easily be that he was blackmailed in some way as one could see the collective glee of pro-NATO political forces after Zeman backed down from his earlier decision.[4] Obviously, the US-NATO Empire could not tolerate such an open defiance against its imperial interests and was willing to use all the means at its disposal to have its isolation of Russia stick. And, so, the latest news is that Zeman will be in Moscow on the day of the parade, but will not be actually attending it.[5]

In contrast to Zeman, many of his Balkan colleagues did not even put up the fight to defend their countries' sovereign foreign policy decision making. There are only a very few exceptions. In my opinion, the examination of who is and who is not going to the Victory Day parade in Moscow provides a good litmus test of the extent to which the US-NATO Empire exercises a firm control over the ruling political elites in the Balkans. In this analysis, I will look at the political dynamic with regards to this issue in each country of the region.

Greece

The prime minister of Greece Alexis Tsipras visited Moscow last week (April 8 and 9) and, notwithstanding the vocal opposition from the Obama administration and several US-controlled EU politicians, has signed important agreements to deepen and expand economic cooperation between Greece and Russia.[6] Needless to say, the issue of Tsipras's coming to Moscow again for the Victory Day parade created a lot of controversy. There were even some reports in the US mainstream media that he would not go. However, Tsipras dispelled all these rumors during the meeting with the Russian president Vladimir Putin and made clear that he would be in Moscow on May 9.[7]

Serbia

In addition to Tsipras, there is only one more Balkan leader that has explicitly said that he would attend the Victory Day parade in Moscow. That is the president of Serbia Tomislav Nikolić. Just like Zeman, Nikolić was publicly lectured by various EU politicians to reverse his decision. During a visit to Belgrade in March 2015, the head of the European Parliament delegation Eduard Kukan for instance said that Nikolić "should not attend the milary parade in Moscow on May 9".[8] Nikolić replied that it was "rude to offer the advice to somebody who did not ask for any" and stated that it was "in vain" to try to put pressure on him to go against the interests and opinions of the vast majority of the Serbian people.[9]

At this point, it appears that not only will Nikolić attend the parade, but also a Serbian military unit will march together with the Russian troops in what is called "the parade of victors".[10] This will no doubt expose Serbia to even bigger pressures and threats from the US-NATO Empire.

The recent statement of the Albanian prime minister Edi Rama (Albania is a member of NATO and probably the most US-controlled state in the Balkans) should be seen from this perspective. In an interview for a Kosovo TV station, Rama said that if the EU did not enable the union of Albania and Kosovo within its framework, they will unite in another way.[11] There is some controversy about the exact translation of Rama's statement,[12] but the implicit meaning is unmistakable: Albanians in Albania and Albanians in Kosovo should be politically united in the near future. This geopolitical narrative may lead to a serious destabilization of the Balkans in the coming years.

It is indicative of the geopolitical stakes that Rama's statement was condemned by both the EU[13] and Russia,[14] though the Serbian foreign minister Ivica Dačić complained that the reaction of Brussels was "lukewarm".[15] It is interesting that the European Parliament member Kukan, who earlier criticized Nikolić's decision to attend the Moscow parade, stated that he did not like Rama's statement and that it made him "nervous".[16] In my opinion, by saying this, he was in fact trying to cover up his own deep involvement in the US-NATO strategy to punish Serbia for disobedience. But, in order to make sure that he is not misinterpreted by his "Euro-Atlantic" mentors, Kukan in the same interview explicitly condemned the Serbian policy of military neutrality.

Montenegro

With regards to the Victory Day parade in Moscow, the position of the ruling coalition in Montenegro has been especially tragicomic, even burlesque. It is no secret of course that this coalition of corrupt politicians is publicly supported by the imperial foreign policy establishment in Washington and covertly by the CIA, whose officials have allegedly interfered in the Montenegrin election process.[17] Still, the rationale offered for the cancellation of the trip to Moscow represents a shameless attempt at the infantilization of the Montenegrin public.

Namely, in March 2015, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov included the president of Montenegro Filip Vujanović (the figure of compromised political legitimacy elected in the rigged presidential elections in April 2013)[18] in the list of those heads of states who confirmed their presence in Moscow on May 9.[19] The same was later repeated by the Russian ambassador to Montenegro Andrey Nesterenko who expressed his astonishment at the reversal, considering that the Russian embassy received an official acceptance letter from the president's cabinet at an earlier time.[20]

However, in the first week of April 2015, Vujanović announced that he was not going to Moscow after all as "it would not be natural for the president to ignore the commemoration in his own country because of his attendence of the parade in Moscow".[21] He hid behind an alleged request of the Montenegrin WWII Veterans' organization to organize the commemoration in Montenegro as well. That this is a made-up excuse is shown by the fact that Yugoslavia, one of the victors in WWII, celebrated the Victory Day not on May 9, but on May 15 when the fascist troops and their collaborators finally surrendered. This means that if the WWII veterans wanted to organize an authentic commemoration, this should have been done on May 15, not on May 9 and therefore Vujanović's presence in both places would be made possible. However, as is clear, this anti-Russian move (in addition to being a serious diplomatic faux pas) was yet another episode of the Montenegrin political puppet theater directed by the forces of the US-NATO Empire.

Bosnia-Herzegovina

The high-level officials of Bosnia-Herzegovina were also on Lavrov's March list of the attendees. He specifically mentioned not only "the president of the Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) within the B-H", but also referred to other officials, including those from the other entity making up the country (the Muslim-Croat Federation).[22] However, at this point of time, there is no confirmation that anybody else, except the president of the Serb Republic Milorad Dodik, will come to Moscow.[23] This fits with the geopolitical narrative that divides Bosnia into the two spheres of influence, which is imposed by the US-NATO Empire and which in the long-run threatens to destabilize the functioning of the country's institutions.

FYROM

Even though the presence of Georgi Ivanov, the president of FYROM, was also announced by Lavrov, I seriously doubt that he will attend in the end. So far, there are no official announcements, but I expect that some excuse will soon be found, perhaps one along the lines used by the Montenegrin officials and equally unconvincing. The ruling political elites of both Montenegro and FYROM have been willing puppets of the US-NATO agenda in the Balkans and certain policy decisions have been closely coordinated, such as for instance the momentous decision to recognize Kosovo as an independent state on October 9, 2008.[24] The blurring between the two countries in the minds of some high-level US officials sometimes reaches comic proportions. For instance, during the speech on his visit to Montenegro in May 2011 (on which the Montenegrin government spent $200,000 of taxpayers' money), former US president Bill Clinton  spoke of the "breathtaking beauty" of FYROM.[25]

Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania

The heads of state and government of these countries, firmly integrated into the US-NATO Empire, have all stated that they would not attend the Victory Day parade in Moscow.[26] This is not to say that in these countries, there are no political forces which oppose NATO and demand the dissolution of that geopolitically expansionist military alliance. As I have written in my previous BFP analyses, the presidential candidate in Croatia, Ivan Vilibor Sinčić, advocated a clear anti-NATO political agenda during the presidential elections in December 2014 and received more than 16% of the total vote.[27] At this time, Sinčić and his political organization "Živi zid" are preparing for the parliamentary elections to be held sometime during this year.[28]  The political movements, sharing the similar anti-war perspective, are also active in Slovenia and Bulgaria. I expect that within the next year or two (unless there is a wide-scale European war) the number of their supporters will double and the US-NATO Empire in the Balkans will not be as hegemonic as it is at this time.

The author Filip Kovacevic, is a Boiling Frogs Post contributing analyst, a geopolitical author, university professor and the chairman of the Movement for Neutrality of Montenegro. He received his BA and PhD in political science in the US and was a visiting professor at St. Petersburg State University in Russia for two years. He is the author of seven books, dozens of academic articles. He has been invited to lecture throughout the EU, Balkans, ex-USSR and the US. He currently resides in San Francisco, and can be contacted at fk1917@yahoo.com

NOTES

• [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/05/czech-president-bans-us-ambassador-prague-castle
• [2] http://praguepost.com/eu-news/42701-zeman-appears-on-russian-tv-to-blast-sanctions
• [3] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30086495
• [4] http://www.voanews.com/content/czech-pm-sobotka-says-president-zeman-overreacted-to-us-envoy-schapiro-comments/2710293.html
• [5] http://news.yahoo.com/czech-leader-skip-military-parade-during-moscow-trip-184404657.html
• [6] http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/04/08/tsipras-putin-sign-new-trade-deal-and-renew-greece-russia-relations/
• [7] http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20150409/1020681869.html
• [8] http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics.php?yyyy=2015&mm=03&dd=20&nav_id=93555
• [9] http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics.php?yyyy=2015&mm=03&dd=20&nav_id=93557
• [10] http://www.telegraf.rs/vesti/politika/1510902-nikolic-odlucio-vojska-srbije-ucestvuje-na-vojnoj-paradi-u-moskvi
• [11] http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/archive/news/latest/500/500.html?id=26942719
• [12] http://www.slobodnaevropa.org/content/sta-je-stvarno-rama-rekao/26943085.html
• [13] http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Politika/549611/EU-o-Rami-Provokacije-su-neprihvatljive
• [14] http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/politika/aktuelno.289.html % 3A543690-Moskva-osudila-izjave-Rame-o-ujedinjenju-Albanije-i-Kosova
• [15] http://www.palo.rs/svet-jugoistocna-evropa/mlaka-reakcija-brisela-na-provokaciju-iz-tirane/1016612/
• [16] http://www.tanjug.rs/novosti/173745/kukan--ne-dopadaju-mi-se-ramine-izjave.htm
• [17] http://www.vijesti.me/vijesti/ambasada-sad-popov-nije-agent-cia-vec-sekretar-105835
• [18] http://www.telegraf.rs/vesti/638813-lekic-izbori-u-cg-su-pokradeni-dokazacemo; http://www.cdm.me/politika/lekic-vujanovic-je-formalni-i-lazni-predsjednik
• [19] http://tass.ru/en/russia/783263
• [20] http://www.vijesti.me/vijesti/nesterenko-vujanovic-je-prvo-rekao-da-ce-doci-u-moskvu-828080
• [21] http://www.tanjug.rs/novosti/173327/nesterenko--vujanovic-prvo-potvrdio-dolazak--iznenadjen-sam.htm
• [22] http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/planeta.299.html:538966-Lavrov-Nikolic-i-Dodik-na-Paradi-pobede-u-Moskvi
• [23] http://www.rtvbn.com/337436/Dodik-i-Nikolic-na-Paradi-pobjede-9-maja-u-Moskvi
• [24]http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/11/Region/21052/I+Makedonija+ priznala+nezavisnost+Kosova.html
• [25] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI0HgPSdolo
• [26] http://report.az/en/other-countries/bulgarian-president-will-not-participate-in-victory-parade-in-moscow/; http://www.balkaneu.com/croatian-president-attend-military-parade-moscow/
• [27] http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2015/01/29/bfp-exclusive-the-balkans-elections-update-croatia-greece/
• [28] http://www.24sata.hr/politika/lesar-parlamentarni-izbori-su-moguci-vec-17-svibnja-2015-406988