Demagogues and Democrats
I didn't watch the BBC Panorama programme 'live' on Monday evening although I did manage to catch up later online and via this Beeb web site article which provides an excellent summary.
Strange times we live in when an American President seems completely uninterested in Russia's human rights record, at home and abroad, bur only in the 'deals' he can do with Vladimir Putin.
The Russian nationalist (Alexander Dugin) mentioned has been around for some time and met a while back with the Foreign Minister of the far-left Syriza-led Government in Greece - see the 'Trojan Horse' post below dated 2 February 2015.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38639327
Who are the figures pushing Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin together?
By John Sweeney - BBC Panorama
BBC Europe
BBC Europe
Image copyright - AP
The question of whether Russia's leader Vladimir Putin has got material with which he could blackmail Donald Trump is for now unknowable and misses the point by a country mile: the two men think alike.
Mr Trump's belief in American traditionalism and dislike of scrutiny echo the Kremlin's tune: nation, power and aversion to criticism are the new (and very Russian) world order.
You could call this mindset Trumputinism.
The echo between the Kremlin and Trump Tower is strong, getting louder and very, very good news for Mr Putin.
As Trump signalled to Michael Gove on Monday, a new nuclear arms reduction deal seems to be in the offing linked to a review of sanctions against Russia.
The dog that did not bark in the night is Mr Trump's peculiar absence of criticism of Mr Putin, for example, on the Russian hacking of American democracy, his land-grab of Crimea and his role in the continuing war in Eastern Ukraine.
What is odd is that Mr Trump, in his tweets, favours the Russia line over, say, the CIA and the rest of the American intelligence community.
But why on earth criticise the world leader with whom you most agree?
Three men have egged along Trumputinism: Nigel Farage, who is clear that the European Union is a far bigger danger to world peace than Russia; his friend, Steve Bannon, who is now Mr Trump's chief strategist; and a Russian "penseur", Alexander Dugin.
With his long hair and iconic Slavic looks, Mr Dugin is variously described as "Putin's Brain" or "Putin's Rasputin".
Image caption - Alexander Dugin is described as "Putin's Brain"
He has his own pro-Kremlin TV show which pumps out Russian Orthodox supremacy in a curious mixture of Goebbels-style rhetoric and Songs of Praise.
Mr Dugin is widely believed to have the ear of the Kremlin.
He is also under Western sanctions for the ferocity of his statements in favour of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has cost 10,000 lives to date.
Messrs Farage, Bannon and Dugin are all united that the greatest danger for Western civilisation lies in Islamist extremism.
Mr Bannon aired his views in a right-wing mindfest on the fringes of the Vatican in 2014.
He claimed that so-called Islamic State has a Twitter account "about turning the United States into a 'river of blood'".
"Trust me, that is going to come to Europe," he added. "On top of that we're now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism."
He has his own pro-Kremlin TV show which pumps out Russian Orthodox supremacy in a curious mixture of Goebbels-style rhetoric and Songs of Praise.
Mr Dugin is widely believed to have the ear of the Kremlin.
He is also under Western sanctions for the ferocity of his statements in favour of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has cost 10,000 lives to date.
Messrs Farage, Bannon and Dugin are all united that the greatest danger for Western civilisation lies in Islamist extremism.
Mr Bannon aired his views in a right-wing mindfest on the fringes of the Vatican in 2014.
He claimed that so-called Islamic State has a Twitter account "about turning the United States into a 'river of blood'".
"Trust me, that is going to come to Europe," he added. "On top of that we're now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism."
Democratic values at risk?
The danger is that in allying yourself with the Kremlin in the way they fight "Islamist fascism" in say, Aleppo, you end up siding with what some have called "Russian fascism" or, at least, abandoning democratic values and the rules of war and, in so doing, become a recruiting sergeant for ISIS.
It is a risk on which Mr Dugin does not seem willing to reflect. My interview with him in Moscow did not end well.
Image copyright - ALEXANDER DUGIN - Image caption - Dugin posted a critical blog entry after walking out of his interview with John Sweeney
First, he dismissed the chances that the Russians hacked American democracy as "strictly zero".
I asked him about the depth of Mr Putin's commitment to democracy.
"Please be careful," he responded. "You could not teach us democracy because you try to impose to every people, every state, every society, their Western, American or so-called American system of values without asking…and it is absolutely racist; you are racist."
Too many of Mr Putin's critics end up dead - around 20 since he took power in 2000.
I have met and admired three: Anna Politkovskaya, Natasha Estemirova and Boris Nemtsov.
First, he dismissed the chances that the Russians hacked American democracy as "strictly zero".
I asked him about the depth of Mr Putin's commitment to democracy.
"Please be careful," he responded. "You could not teach us democracy because you try to impose to every people, every state, every society, their Western, American or so-called American system of values without asking…and it is absolutely racist; you are racist."
Too many of Mr Putin's critics end up dead - around 20 since he took power in 2000.
I have met and admired three: Anna Politkovskaya, Natasha Estemirova and Boris Nemtsov.
Image copyright - AFP Image caption - Boris Nemtsov was murdered close to the Kremlin in 2015
Mr Nemtsov was shot just outside the Kremlin's walls.
I asked Mr Dugin what his death told us about Russian democracy.
"If you are engaged in Wikileaks you can be murdered," he countered.
I then invited Mr Dugin to list the American journalists who have died under Barack Obama.
Mr Dugin did not oblige but told me that ours was a "completely stupid kind of conversation" and walked out of the interview.
Later, he posted a blog to his 20,000 followers, illustrated with my photograph and accusing me of manufacturing "fake news" and calling me "an utter cretin... a globalist swine".
Such is the language of the new world order.
A few days later I watched the press conference when Mr Trump closed down a question from a CNN reporter by accusing him of manufacturing "fake news".
Under Trumputinism, the echo between Russia and America is getting louder by the day.
Panorama: The Kremlin Candidate? BBC One, 8.30pm, Monday, January 16. If you miss it, you can catch up later online.
The Sunday Times had a great story at the weekend exposing the lengths to which the Russian Government goes to spread propaganda and disinformation about its role in Ukraine.
It’s her again: Kremlin’s war-zone fake
The Sunday Times carried an article at the weekend which also looked at the curious political links between Syriza and Russia including meetings between the new Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsiparis, and key supporters of President Putin.
By their friends ye shall know them, as the saying goes.
Greece: Putin’s Trojan Horse
Europe worried that the victory of the far-left Syriza party in Greece would spell trouble for the euro, but its ties to the Kremlin pose a more insidious threat to stability across the continent, writes
From a hillside near Athens, Adonis Giatris looked out over the Aegean Sea. For tourists heading to the islands by ferry, the picturesque bay is a gateway to paradise. For Giatris the view is from the damp and squalid hovel that he inhabits with his wife, his brother and three children.
Clinging to the hillside are other makeshift homes of corrugated iron and wood where other despairing victims of the Greek economic disaster scrape by as best they can.
“My unemployment benefits ran out years ago,” says Giatris, 53, a former lorry driver. “It’s really hard for us. We’ve been abandoned by the state. We’re stuck here.”
Maria, 7, his youngest child, often goes to school hungry, he says: “The lunch ladies are kind and take pity on her. They know we don’t have money for food.” He and Koula, his wife, eat once a day in a soup kitchen run by priests. They get medicine from a French charity usually associated with war zones.
This is a world away from western Europe — and from the golden decades when Greeks lived on western Europe’s largesse. No wonder Giatris and his neighbours were full of hope last week after Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza party, became prime minister.
“He’s a clever young man, that Tsipras,” says Giatris’s brother, Thomas, another lorry driver without a lorry to drive. “If anyone can do something for us, he can.”
He believes — as Tsipras has suggested — that instead of Greece paying back its debt, Germany should pay “war reparations” for the devastation the Nazi occupiers inflicted during the Second World War. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is “worse than Hitler”, Thomas says.
So what was the “clever young man” Tsipras, a former communist youth organiser, doing on the morning after his general election victory last Sunday?
In his cramped party headquarters in a run-down district of Athens, Tsipras welcomed Andrey Maslov, the Russian ambassador, who was bearing a letter of congratulations from the Kremlin. It was Tsipras’s first meeting with a foreign envoy after taking office.
European capitals rapidly woke up to the fact that Syriza’s election victory is not just about Greek debt but also about the geopolitics of an increasingly unstable continent.
Greeks remember, if the rest of Europe does not, that the end of the Second World War triggered a four-year civil war here in which left and right committed atrocities while the Soviet Union played an ambiguous role. Syriza’s victory is the first time that members of the Greek hard left have had a role in government since their military defeat in 1949.
Moscow may no longer be run by the Soviet Communist party, but Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, has every reason to be thrilled by developments in the birthplace of democracy. His strategy of cultivating populists on the European fringe has paid off in this desperately troubled member of Nato and the European Union.
Geopolitics and cultural ties — Greece and Russia both embrace the eastern Orthodox church and have similar non-Roman alphabets — transcend ideology, as does Putin’s strongman muscle-flexing, which appeals to Syriza’s strange bedfellows in the new government, the right-wing populist Independent Greeks party.
The benefits to Russia of Syriza’s victory became clear when Tsipras complained on Tuesday about a European statement blaming Moscow for an attack in eastern Ukraine that had killed 30 civilians.
His intervention shocked Brussels. Until then European diplomats had been anxiously mulling over the possibility of a Greek default on its enormous debt rather than Tsipras dividing the EU over sanctions on Russia.
The EU managed to maintain a fragile unity in Brussels at an emergency meeting of foreign ministers on Thursday when Greece agreed to sanctions on a wider circle of Russians connected to Putin. But now the Kremlin’s strategy seems clear: it sees in Greece a Trojan horse for attacking the EU from within.
The realisation has put western diplomats in a panic. It has also given the euro crisis a menacing aspect that will make for even more toxic relations between Berlin and Athens, complicating negotiations over the debt.
THE human toll of austerity measures imposed in exchange for the €240bn (£180bn) Greek bailout is visible everywhere, from the old women picking up food scraps on the road after the weekly market to the queues at soup kitchens.
Mr Nemtsov was shot just outside the Kremlin's walls.
I asked Mr Dugin what his death told us about Russian democracy.
"If you are engaged in Wikileaks you can be murdered," he countered.
I then invited Mr Dugin to list the American journalists who have died under Barack Obama.
Mr Dugin did not oblige but told me that ours was a "completely stupid kind of conversation" and walked out of the interview.
Later, he posted a blog to his 20,000 followers, illustrated with my photograph and accusing me of manufacturing "fake news" and calling me "an utter cretin... a globalist swine".
Such is the language of the new world order.
A few days later I watched the press conference when Mr Trump closed down a question from a CNN reporter by accusing him of manufacturing "fake news".
Under Trumputinism, the echo between Russia and America is getting louder by the day.
Panorama: The Kremlin Candidate? BBC One, 8.30pm, Monday, January 16. If you miss it, you can catch up later online.
Russian Propaganda (21/03/15)
The Sunday Times had a great story at the weekend exposing the lengths to which the Russian Government goes to spread propaganda and disinformation about its role in Ukraine.
Joseph Goebbels, the infamous Nazi propagandist, would have been proud.
It’s her again: Kremlin’s war-zone fake
By Bojan Pancevski - The Sunday Times
Maria Tsypko has been appearing on Russian TV in a series of pro-Russian propaganda roles
WEARING an expensive-looking black fur coat and designer sunglasses, the woman appeared oddly out of place as she handed out loaves to the starving residents of the war-torn Ukrainian town of Debaltsevo.
But to millions of television viewers in the Russian- speaking world, hers was a familiar face: Maria Tsypko has become an unlikely media star — and object of ridicule — after regularly popping up in a variety of guises in pro-Kremlin news coverage of the war in eastern Ukraine.
Tsypko’s emergence as a “humanitarian worker” in Debaltsevo, shortly after the town was taken by separatist militias last month, was only the latest in a series of her appearances on mainstream media.
In recent months, Tsypko, who appears to be in her late thirties, has featured on major Russian channels in broadcasts from a dozen cities from Moscow to Odessa on the Black Sea, each time playing a different role and often using a different name.
WEARING an expensive-looking black fur coat and designer sunglasses, the woman appeared oddly out of place as she handed out loaves to the starving residents of the war-torn Ukrainian town of Debaltsevo.
But to millions of television viewers in the Russian- speaking world, hers was a familiar face: Maria Tsypko has become an unlikely media star — and object of ridicule — after regularly popping up in a variety of guises in pro-Kremlin news coverage of the war in eastern Ukraine.
Tsypko’s emergence as a “humanitarian worker” in Debaltsevo, shortly after the town was taken by separatist militias last month, was only the latest in a series of her appearances on mainstream media.
In recent months, Tsypko, who appears to be in her late thirties, has featured on major Russian channels in broadcasts from a dozen cities from Moscow to Odessa on the Black Sea, each time playing a different role and often using a different name.
Wrapped in a Russian flag, Tsypko claimed to be an ordinary person from Kharkiv, Ukraine
Once she posed as a pro-Kremlin protester in the eastern city of Kharkov; another time as a mother of soldiers sent by the Ukrainian army to the front; and yet another time as a lawyer co-ordinating an unauthorised referendum on independence in the separatist stronghold of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
For some of the reports she appeared to have dyed her hair red, although she retained her trademark thick golden necklace and pair of heavy golden earrings.
Whatever identity Tsypko assumed, the underlying message was the same: as a local affected by the Ukrainian conflict, she was expressing her grievances against the Kiev government.
Once she posed as a pro-Kremlin protester in the eastern city of Kharkov; another time as a mother of soldiers sent by the Ukrainian army to the front; and yet another time as a lawyer co-ordinating an unauthorised referendum on independence in the separatist stronghold of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
For some of the reports she appeared to have dyed her hair red, although she retained her trademark thick golden necklace and pair of heavy golden earrings.
Whatever identity Tsypko assumed, the underlying message was the same: as a local affected by the Ukrainian conflict, she was expressing her grievances against the Kiev government.
Here, Tsypko is handing out bread to residents in war-torn Debaltseve
Tsypko appears part of a sophisticated information war being waged by the Kremlin’s propaganda machinery — which seems ready to stoop to outright fabrication to get its message across. In most reports, including a notable one from Crimea recorded after the peninsula was snatched from Ukraine by Russia in February last year, Tsypko is an emotional witness. She often breaks down into tears, sobbing as she details the ordeals that she and those close to her have suffered at the hands of the authorities in Kiev.
In one interview, in which she claims to be a refugee from Odessa, she urges President Vladimir Putin to allow all Russian-speakers in Ukraine to flee to Russia “like Jews fleeing to Israel” because of the persecution they allegedly face at home.
Tsypko appears part of a sophisticated information war being waged by the Kremlin’s propaganda machinery — which seems ready to stoop to outright fabrication to get its message across. In most reports, including a notable one from Crimea recorded after the peninsula was snatched from Ukraine by Russia in February last year, Tsypko is an emotional witness. She often breaks down into tears, sobbing as she details the ordeals that she and those close to her have suffered at the hands of the authorities in Kiev.
In one interview, in which she claims to be a refugee from Odessa, she urges President Vladimir Putin to allow all Russian-speakers in Ukraine to flee to Russia “like Jews fleeing to Israel” because of the persecution they allegedly face at home.
Tsypko, this time claiming to be from Odessa, spoke of horrors in Crimea
“She is the star of Russian propaganda about Ukraine, but she is also one of many similar people, mostly women, that resurface in various media reports,” said Yevhen Fedchenko, co-founder of stopfake.org, a website dedicated to exposing Russian propaganda.
“It is unclear who is co-ordinating the news coverage to have her in it all the time, and who pays her travel expenses.
“One would think it’s odd for whoever is doing that to be using the same person so many times, but then Russian audiences are not used to challenging propaganda — they have switched off critical thinking.”
The Sunday Times tracked Tsypko down in Moscow, where she has been giving interviews as a refugee fleeing Kiev’s persecution and participated at events featuring Aleksandr Dugin, the far-right ideologue who has been described as “Putin’s brain”.
The mother of two, who originally comes from Odessa, denied that she appeared in different media reports and claimed only to work for an Orthodox Christian charity called the New Martyrs and Confessors of Christ Fund.
“The Ukrainians think all blondes are me, but, obviously, I resemble none of the women they show in their videos,” she insisted.
“I am only working for a Christian charity. I was in Debaltsevo to help to ease the suffering of people after they were liberated from the fascist occupation” — employing the term used in Kremlin propaganda for Ukrainian government forces.
Tsypko’s charity, according to its website, is linked to extremist groups including the Russian Orthodox Army and Phantom Brigade, two armed militias fighting against Kiev’s forces in east Ukraine. Videos on the website feature Tsypko clutching an iPad while explaining an Orthodox icon to a band of haggard militants on the front line.
In Ukraine, she is wanted for fraud after allegedly employing various scams to extract money from people in Odessa.
The pro-Moscow separatists have used a variety of methods in an attempt to get their message across, including the capture of local television and radio transmitters and replacing Ukrainian broadcasts with Russian ones.
Russian media have also made a series of unsubstantiated claims, the most outrageous of which was to accuse Ukrainian soldiers of crucifying a three-year-old boy in the town of Sloviansk by nailing him to a noticeboard. No proof was provided.
“She is the star of Russian propaganda about Ukraine, but she is also one of many similar people, mostly women, that resurface in various media reports,” said Yevhen Fedchenko, co-founder of stopfake.org, a website dedicated to exposing Russian propaganda.
“It is unclear who is co-ordinating the news coverage to have her in it all the time, and who pays her travel expenses.
“One would think it’s odd for whoever is doing that to be using the same person so many times, but then Russian audiences are not used to challenging propaganda — they have switched off critical thinking.”
The Sunday Times tracked Tsypko down in Moscow, where she has been giving interviews as a refugee fleeing Kiev’s persecution and participated at events featuring Aleksandr Dugin, the far-right ideologue who has been described as “Putin’s brain”.
The mother of two, who originally comes from Odessa, denied that she appeared in different media reports and claimed only to work for an Orthodox Christian charity called the New Martyrs and Confessors of Christ Fund.
“The Ukrainians think all blondes are me, but, obviously, I resemble none of the women they show in their videos,” she insisted.
“I am only working for a Christian charity. I was in Debaltsevo to help to ease the suffering of people after they were liberated from the fascist occupation” — employing the term used in Kremlin propaganda for Ukrainian government forces.
Tsypko’s charity, according to its website, is linked to extremist groups including the Russian Orthodox Army and Phantom Brigade, two armed militias fighting against Kiev’s forces in east Ukraine. Videos on the website feature Tsypko clutching an iPad while explaining an Orthodox icon to a band of haggard militants on the front line.
In Ukraine, she is wanted for fraud after allegedly employing various scams to extract money from people in Odessa.
The pro-Moscow separatists have used a variety of methods in an attempt to get their message across, including the capture of local television and radio transmitters and replacing Ukrainian broadcasts with Russian ones.
Russian media have also made a series of unsubstantiated claims, the most outrageous of which was to accuse Ukrainian soldiers of crucifying a three-year-old boy in the town of Sloviansk by nailing him to a noticeboard. No proof was provided.
Trojan Horse (02/02/15)
The Sunday Times carried an article at the weekend which also looked at the curious political links between Syriza and Russia including meetings between the new Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsiparis, and key supporters of President Putin.
By their friends ye shall know them, as the saying goes.
Greece: Putin’s Trojan Horse
Europe worried that the victory of the far-left Syriza party in Greece would spell trouble for the euro, but its ties to the Kremlin pose a more insidious threat to stability across the continent, writes
By Matthew Campbell - The Sunday Times
From a hillside near Athens, Adonis Giatris looked out over the Aegean Sea. For tourists heading to the islands by ferry, the picturesque bay is a gateway to paradise. For Giatris the view is from the damp and squalid hovel that he inhabits with his wife, his brother and three children.
Clinging to the hillside are other makeshift homes of corrugated iron and wood where other despairing victims of the Greek economic disaster scrape by as best they can.
“My unemployment benefits ran out years ago,” says Giatris, 53, a former lorry driver. “It’s really hard for us. We’ve been abandoned by the state. We’re stuck here.”
Maria, 7, his youngest child, often goes to school hungry, he says: “The lunch ladies are kind and take pity on her. They know we don’t have money for food.” He and Koula, his wife, eat once a day in a soup kitchen run by priests. They get medicine from a French charity usually associated with war zones.
This is a world away from western Europe — and from the golden decades when Greeks lived on western Europe’s largesse. No wonder Giatris and his neighbours were full of hope last week after Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza party, became prime minister.
“He’s a clever young man, that Tsipras,” says Giatris’s brother, Thomas, another lorry driver without a lorry to drive. “If anyone can do something for us, he can.”
He believes — as Tsipras has suggested — that instead of Greece paying back its debt, Germany should pay “war reparations” for the devastation the Nazi occupiers inflicted during the Second World War. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is “worse than Hitler”, Thomas says.
So what was the “clever young man” Tsipras, a former communist youth organiser, doing on the morning after his general election victory last Sunday?
In his cramped party headquarters in a run-down district of Athens, Tsipras welcomed Andrey Maslov, the Russian ambassador, who was bearing a letter of congratulations from the Kremlin. It was Tsipras’s first meeting with a foreign envoy after taking office.
European capitals rapidly woke up to the fact that Syriza’s election victory is not just about Greek debt but also about the geopolitics of an increasingly unstable continent.
Greeks remember, if the rest of Europe does not, that the end of the Second World War triggered a four-year civil war here in which left and right committed atrocities while the Soviet Union played an ambiguous role. Syriza’s victory is the first time that members of the Greek hard left have had a role in government since their military defeat in 1949.
Moscow may no longer be run by the Soviet Communist party, but Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, has every reason to be thrilled by developments in the birthplace of democracy. His strategy of cultivating populists on the European fringe has paid off in this desperately troubled member of Nato and the European Union.
Geopolitics and cultural ties — Greece and Russia both embrace the eastern Orthodox church and have similar non-Roman alphabets — transcend ideology, as does Putin’s strongman muscle-flexing, which appeals to Syriza’s strange bedfellows in the new government, the right-wing populist Independent Greeks party.
The benefits to Russia of Syriza’s victory became clear when Tsipras complained on Tuesday about a European statement blaming Moscow for an attack in eastern Ukraine that had killed 30 civilians.
His intervention shocked Brussels. Until then European diplomats had been anxiously mulling over the possibility of a Greek default on its enormous debt rather than Tsipras dividing the EU over sanctions on Russia.
The EU managed to maintain a fragile unity in Brussels at an emergency meeting of foreign ministers on Thursday when Greece agreed to sanctions on a wider circle of Russians connected to Putin. But now the Kremlin’s strategy seems clear: it sees in Greece a Trojan horse for attacking the EU from within.
The realisation has put western diplomats in a panic. It has also given the euro crisis a menacing aspect that will make for even more toxic relations between Berlin and Athens, complicating negotiations over the debt.
THE human toll of austerity measures imposed in exchange for the €240bn (£180bn) Greek bailout is visible everywhere, from the old women picking up food scraps on the road after the weekly market to the queues at soup kitchens.
Supporters of Alexis Tsipras, leader of Syriza left-wing party, cheer during a rally outside Athens University Headquarters
Can Tsipras bring an end to all the misery by persuading the EU and its overlords in Berlin to forgive the debt or to impose even softer conditions? Some commentators imagine Tsipras playing a clever poker hand over the debt: holding up the threat of a Greek veto of sanctions against Russia at an EU summit on February 12 in an effort to persuade European leaders to satisfy his demands on writing down debt.
Whatever the dynamics of the negotiations, the chemistry between Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who heads the eurozone finance group, and Yanis Varoufakis, the outspoken new Greek finance minister, did not seem promising after their first round of talks on Friday.
For all that the dashing Tsipras is the star of the new show in Athens , Varoufakis is the man who has achieved instant rock star status in his maroon T-shirt, jeans, black felt jacket with turned-up collar, shaven head and motorbike boots. He favours a big Yamaha, while Tsipras, for all his German-bashing, prefers a BMW.
Varoufakis describes himself as an “accidental economist” and “erratic Marxist”. As a veteran of Essex University and other centres of Anglophone academia, he knows how to coin a pungent quote — Greece, he says, has suffered “fiscal waterboarding”.
He is going to be a familiar face for many months to come in European capitals as he argues Syriza’s case for massive debt relief.
He and his Dutch counterpart looked like a couple going through an acrimonious divorce as they sat, side by side, at a press conference after their talks on Friday.
“Taking unilateral steps and ignoring previous arrangements is not the way forward,” said a prickly Dijsselbloem, referring to announcements that Greece would cancel some of its privatisation projects, double the minimum wage and rehire hundreds of cleaning ladies who had been sacked by the finance ministry as a cost-saving measure.
“It is of the utmost importance that Greece remains on the path of recovery,” Dijsselbloem said. But “there are no conclusions yet as to whether the programme will be further extended”, he added, in a reference to the bailout agreement so vital to Greece’s return to fiscal sanity.
Varoufakis, for his part, reiterated a promise by Tsipras not to let the “troika” of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund impose further austerity measures on Greece as demanded under the agreement.
He has made clear, however, that Greece does not plan to leave the EU, comparing it in an interview to the Eagles’ song Hotel California: “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.”
Can Tsipras bring an end to all the misery by persuading the EU and its overlords in Berlin to forgive the debt or to impose even softer conditions? Some commentators imagine Tsipras playing a clever poker hand over the debt: holding up the threat of a Greek veto of sanctions against Russia at an EU summit on February 12 in an effort to persuade European leaders to satisfy his demands on writing down debt.
Whatever the dynamics of the negotiations, the chemistry between Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who heads the eurozone finance group, and Yanis Varoufakis, the outspoken new Greek finance minister, did not seem promising after their first round of talks on Friday.
For all that the dashing Tsipras is the star of the new show in Athens , Varoufakis is the man who has achieved instant rock star status in his maroon T-shirt, jeans, black felt jacket with turned-up collar, shaven head and motorbike boots. He favours a big Yamaha, while Tsipras, for all his German-bashing, prefers a BMW.
Varoufakis describes himself as an “accidental economist” and “erratic Marxist”. As a veteran of Essex University and other centres of Anglophone academia, he knows how to coin a pungent quote — Greece, he says, has suffered “fiscal waterboarding”.
He is going to be a familiar face for many months to come in European capitals as he argues Syriza’s case for massive debt relief.
He and his Dutch counterpart looked like a couple going through an acrimonious divorce as they sat, side by side, at a press conference after their talks on Friday.
“Taking unilateral steps and ignoring previous arrangements is not the way forward,” said a prickly Dijsselbloem, referring to announcements that Greece would cancel some of its privatisation projects, double the minimum wage and rehire hundreds of cleaning ladies who had been sacked by the finance ministry as a cost-saving measure.
“It is of the utmost importance that Greece remains on the path of recovery,” Dijsselbloem said. But “there are no conclusions yet as to whether the programme will be further extended”, he added, in a reference to the bailout agreement so vital to Greece’s return to fiscal sanity.
Varoufakis, for his part, reiterated a promise by Tsipras not to let the “troika” of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund impose further austerity measures on Greece as demanded under the agreement.
He has made clear, however, that Greece does not plan to leave the EU, comparing it in an interview to the Eagles’ song Hotel California: “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.”
Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis arrives for the first meeting of the new cabinet in the parliament building in Athens
EU finance ministers have never known anything like it. But from Spain to Sweden, populists of the left and right cheered these new-look Greek politicians last week as pioneers of a “Red Spring” that would sweep away stalled establishment parties all over Europe.
The political strategists in the Kremlin have plenty to cheer about too. While becoming increasingly estranged from Europe’s political mainstream because of Putin’s irredentism, Russia has been quietly cosying up to Europe’s populist movements, rightly calculating that public anger and frustration over economic hardship will propel them from the fringes to the heart of political debate.
Several of Putin’s new friends, from the National Front in France to Hungary’s Jobbik, have been elected to the European parliament. But Tsipras is the first to win national power. And never before has Greece had a cabinet so stuffed with fans of the Kremlin.
Tsipras himself is one of the cheerleaders, having visited Moscow in May last year after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He met key Putin allies, including Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of the federation council of the Russian Federation, and Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
Both are on the American sanctions list. Matviyenko also figures on the sanctions list of the EU. They no doubt appreciated the way Tsipras parroted the Kremlin’s hostile rhetoric towards the “fascists” running the revolutionary government in Kiev.
However, nothing better exemplifies the depth of pro-Russia feeling in the ranks of the Syriza party than the antics of Nikos Kotzias, the new foreign minister. A former communist, he wrote a book decades ago attacking Poland’s Solidarity movement. More recently he has defended Russian actions in Crimea and Ukraine as the understandable behaviour of a superpower “encircled” by America and destabilised by Germany.
Even more alarmingly, he was photographed in 2013 on the steps of Piraeus University next to Alexander Dugin, a bearded Russian nationalist who has expressed admiration for the Nazis and wants to extend the Kremlin’s sway into western Europe.
Kotzias, a former professor at the university, introduced a lecture by Dugin, one of the most fervent advocates of a Russian military invasion of Ukraine. In it Dugin argued that Greece should participate “in the recreation of the architecture of Europe” to form an “eastern pole of European identity” with Serbia and other supporters of Russia.
Detailed evidence of Syriza’s ties to Dugin surfaced last December when a Russian hacker group released several emails between a close friend of Dugin who had lived for several years in Greece and an official in Dugin’s “Eurasia” movement. Some of the emails related to efforts by Dugin and Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch who supports him, to create a network of European politicians and intellectuals sympathetic to Russia.
A Greek intellectual and Syriza supporter who is a partner in a Russian security firm featured in one of the leaked emails. “I know very well how the enemy works,” he wrote to Dugin. “And under your patronage I can strike back, effectively and hard.”
EU finance ministers have never known anything like it. But from Spain to Sweden, populists of the left and right cheered these new-look Greek politicians last week as pioneers of a “Red Spring” that would sweep away stalled establishment parties all over Europe.
The political strategists in the Kremlin have plenty to cheer about too. While becoming increasingly estranged from Europe’s political mainstream because of Putin’s irredentism, Russia has been quietly cosying up to Europe’s populist movements, rightly calculating that public anger and frustration over economic hardship will propel them from the fringes to the heart of political debate.
Several of Putin’s new friends, from the National Front in France to Hungary’s Jobbik, have been elected to the European parliament. But Tsipras is the first to win national power. And never before has Greece had a cabinet so stuffed with fans of the Kremlin.
Tsipras himself is one of the cheerleaders, having visited Moscow in May last year after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He met key Putin allies, including Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of the federation council of the Russian Federation, and Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
Both are on the American sanctions list. Matviyenko also figures on the sanctions list of the EU. They no doubt appreciated the way Tsipras parroted the Kremlin’s hostile rhetoric towards the “fascists” running the revolutionary government in Kiev.
However, nothing better exemplifies the depth of pro-Russia feeling in the ranks of the Syriza party than the antics of Nikos Kotzias, the new foreign minister. A former communist, he wrote a book decades ago attacking Poland’s Solidarity movement. More recently he has defended Russian actions in Crimea and Ukraine as the understandable behaviour of a superpower “encircled” by America and destabilised by Germany.
Even more alarmingly, he was photographed in 2013 on the steps of Piraeus University next to Alexander Dugin, a bearded Russian nationalist who has expressed admiration for the Nazis and wants to extend the Kremlin’s sway into western Europe.
Kotzias, a former professor at the university, introduced a lecture by Dugin, one of the most fervent advocates of a Russian military invasion of Ukraine. In it Dugin argued that Greece should participate “in the recreation of the architecture of Europe” to form an “eastern pole of European identity” with Serbia and other supporters of Russia.
Detailed evidence of Syriza’s ties to Dugin surfaced last December when a Russian hacker group released several emails between a close friend of Dugin who had lived for several years in Greece and an official in Dugin’s “Eurasia” movement. Some of the emails related to efforts by Dugin and Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch who supports him, to create a network of European politicians and intellectuals sympathetic to Russia.
A Greek intellectual and Syriza supporter who is a partner in a Russian security firm featured in one of the leaked emails. “I know very well how the enemy works,” he wrote to Dugin. “And under your patronage I can strike back, effectively and hard.”
New Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias (first on the left) and Russian fascist Aleksandr Dugin (centre)
According to Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian academic and expert on the far right, “Dugin’s role was to approach people in Europe, establish connections with them and pass those connections to higher-up people in the Kremlin.
“Russia will now be trying to capitalise on the fact that the new Greek government is a government of pro-Russian parties,” he added, referring to Syriza and the Independent Greeks under Panos Kammenos, the new defence minister.
In a clear sign of his priorities, Kammenos visited Moscow recently in the run-up to the election that brought Tsipras to power. He is the founder of the Athens-based Institute of Geopolitical Studies. According to one of the leaked emails, this organisation signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the influential Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI) at the end of last year.
The RISI was linked to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, until it was brought under the office of the Russian presidency in 2009. Leonid Reshetnikov, its director, is a retired SVR lieutenant-general. Kammenos’s deputy at the defence ministry, Kostas Isichos, is another ardent fan of Putin. Last year he described EU sanctions on Russia as “neo-colonial bulimia” and saluted the “impressive counterattacks” of Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine.
Echoing Russian propaganda, he accused the Kiev government of tolerating “neo-Nazi abominations”. He has also denigrated Nato as “not a peace-loving institution”. But leaving Nato was “not among Greece’s first priorities”.
His position reflects the Greek right’s view of Russia as the country’s traditional ally because of their shared Orthodox Christian faith. This was what led Greek conservative governments of the 1990s to support the Serbs during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
How far will Tsipras push the new alignment with Moscow? Theodore Couloumbis, a professor of international relations at Athens University, has witnessed several Greek upheavals including, as a boy, the occupation of the country by the Nazis. He claims to be optimistic.
“Communism comes and goes,” he said last week. “Fascism comes and goes. But populism is a timeless ideology, not only in Greece. We’re used to it.”
According to Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian academic and expert on the far right, “Dugin’s role was to approach people in Europe, establish connections with them and pass those connections to higher-up people in the Kremlin.
“Russia will now be trying to capitalise on the fact that the new Greek government is a government of pro-Russian parties,” he added, referring to Syriza and the Independent Greeks under Panos Kammenos, the new defence minister.
In a clear sign of his priorities, Kammenos visited Moscow recently in the run-up to the election that brought Tsipras to power. He is the founder of the Athens-based Institute of Geopolitical Studies. According to one of the leaked emails, this organisation signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the influential Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI) at the end of last year.
The RISI was linked to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, until it was brought under the office of the Russian presidency in 2009. Leonid Reshetnikov, its director, is a retired SVR lieutenant-general. Kammenos’s deputy at the defence ministry, Kostas Isichos, is another ardent fan of Putin. Last year he described EU sanctions on Russia as “neo-colonial bulimia” and saluted the “impressive counterattacks” of Russian-backed militias in eastern Ukraine.
Echoing Russian propaganda, he accused the Kiev government of tolerating “neo-Nazi abominations”. He has also denigrated Nato as “not a peace-loving institution”. But leaving Nato was “not among Greece’s first priorities”.
His position reflects the Greek right’s view of Russia as the country’s traditional ally because of their shared Orthodox Christian faith. This was what led Greek conservative governments of the 1990s to support the Serbs during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
How far will Tsipras push the new alignment with Moscow? Theodore Couloumbis, a professor of international relations at Athens University, has witnessed several Greek upheavals including, as a boy, the occupation of the country by the Nazis. He claims to be optimistic.
“Communism comes and goes,” he said last week. “Fascism comes and goes. But populism is a timeless ideology, not only in Greece. We’re used to it.”
Russian nationalist Aleksandr Dugin
His theory is that Tsipras, a quick learner, is trying to copy Andreas Papandreou, the former Socialist prime minister, who at first played to nationalist sentiment, promising to take Greece out of Nato and the European Common Market, only to pull off a dramatic volte-face when he came to power. He claimed in a catchy phrase — it sounds better in Greek — that “the cost of exiting is higher than the cost of remaining a member”.
“Papandreou even got to lecture Margaret Thatcher a few years later about her not being adequately pro-European,” Couloumbis said.
According to Couloumbis, Tsipras has shown a deft hand in appointing Kammenos to the defence ministry in a country whose armed forces have a record of intervention against politicians who are not to their liking.
“There were fears that some in the army might react [to the election of Tsipras],” said Couloumbis. “There was no better way of relaxing them than putting a right-wing nationalist in charge.”
Whatever the worries about Russia, Couloumbis believes that, in the end, Syriza may turn out to be nothing more dangerous than “the mouse that roared”.
Others believe it is too soon to judge. “Each day we find out new things about them,” said Stefanos Manos, a former finance minister. “The problem is that unless something is done very soon, Greece is going to run out of money.”
Could Russia come up with a lifeline if Athens breaks from Brussels and is spurned by the money markets when it seeks new sources of finance? Unlikely, said Manos, as Russia has its own dire financial problems.
And, he pointed out, it had not helped Cyprus — where many private Russian fortunes are reportedly invested — when it suffered a debt crisis two years ago. “And Cyprus was even closer to Russia than Greece is.”
Manos paused, before adding: “Perhaps there will be a surprise.”
His theory is that Tsipras, a quick learner, is trying to copy Andreas Papandreou, the former Socialist prime minister, who at first played to nationalist sentiment, promising to take Greece out of Nato and the European Common Market, only to pull off a dramatic volte-face when he came to power. He claimed in a catchy phrase — it sounds better in Greek — that “the cost of exiting is higher than the cost of remaining a member”.
“Papandreou even got to lecture Margaret Thatcher a few years later about her not being adequately pro-European,” Couloumbis said.
According to Couloumbis, Tsipras has shown a deft hand in appointing Kammenos to the defence ministry in a country whose armed forces have a record of intervention against politicians who are not to their liking.
“There were fears that some in the army might react [to the election of Tsipras],” said Couloumbis. “There was no better way of relaxing them than putting a right-wing nationalist in charge.”
Whatever the worries about Russia, Couloumbis believes that, in the end, Syriza may turn out to be nothing more dangerous than “the mouse that roared”.
Others believe it is too soon to judge. “Each day we find out new things about them,” said Stefanos Manos, a former finance minister. “The problem is that unless something is done very soon, Greece is going to run out of money.”
Could Russia come up with a lifeline if Athens breaks from Brussels and is spurned by the money markets when it seeks new sources of finance? Unlikely, said Manos, as Russia has its own dire financial problems.
And, he pointed out, it had not helped Cyprus — where many private Russian fortunes are reportedly invested — when it suffered a debt crisis two years ago. “And Cyprus was even closer to Russia than Greece is.”
Manos paused, before adding: “Perhaps there will be a surprise.”
