The Trump administration is endlessly accused of having had contacts with Russian officials during the election campaign, as if that was a Very Bad Thing.
In reality is it not only standard diplomatic practice, but it is something that the US has always done itself – and usually from the other wise of the fence.
Perhaps the most richly illustrative case is from January 2012 at the height of the anti-Putin protests, when the US Embassy invited leading members of Russia’s pro-Western opposition to its Moscow Embassy – though given the marginal electoral ratings of Nemtsov, Chirikova, Ponomarev, Mitrokhin, etc., this is not even so much like the Kremlin talking to Republican candidate Trump as to various assorted marginals like Evan McMullin, Michael Moore, Bill Kristol, the guy who played knockout on Richard Spencer, and whoever the current chairman of the CPUSA is).
NTV journalists had gotten the scoop on this visit, and showed up to ask what their goals of their visit to the US Embassy was. Since those people are politicians who claim to be the consciousness of the Russian nation, warriors of light against the Dark Lord Puter, these were entirely reasonable questions. But none of them had an intelligible response – on going in, at any rate. But evidently the folks at the US Embassy have a bit more creativity, and on going out, they all started chanting “You are Surkov propaganda” to the journalists, dismissing them as pawns of the guy who was then widely rumored to be the gray cardinal of the Kremlin.
In what way is Trump worse than the Russian pro-Western opposition?
Take a cue from them. Refuse to answer their questions. Proclaim “You are Soros propaganda” to their faces. Maybe even physically assault them just like WSJ op-ed writer Kasparov and Bozhena Rynska did at their Vilnius Conference, where they were discussing what territories Russia has to give away to make up with the West.
But seriously, contacts between opposition forces and foreign governments is neither illegal nor even unusual. This is standard practice in democracies. But Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers evidently disagree on whether the US should remain a democracy now that the wrong people have been voted in.
Some of them, like Bill Kristol, are even quite open about it (“Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state“).
“During the first fair eleсtions they (i.e. Russians) would elect fascists which would hang us (i.e. the “liberals” of “the good genes”)” (attributed to the actual pawn of the Kremlin propaganda Simonyan, though I couldn’t find the original).
Soros pawns or Kremlin pawns, they are all the same.
No, they are not.
Kremlin pawns are misguided and can be uncucked. Soros pawns should be put up against the wall.
I understand that the instinct of self-preservation speaks for you (you do not want to be put against the wall), but how are those evil Kremlin propagandists misguided? Do you seriously think Voronenkov and his ugly wife can be uncucked? Or that idiot Prilepin who is in love with Kadyrov? I just named few.
(1) Voronenkov is a traitor.
(2) Kadyrovophilia is not an illegal perversion.
The only two political forces that would conceivably put me up against the wall are Soros pawns and their Neo-Nazi friends.
Strelkov spells it out:
1) Voronenkov was a Kremlin propagandist. He ended up where every Kremlin propagandist belongs to from the beginning – traitors.
2) Prilepin is a Kremlin propagandist. The love to Kadyrov is just the most prominent example of his uncurable idiocies. I’m not going to bring in the entire compendium of his propaganda.
3) Agent “Strelkov” is not a nationalist. Surely made-in-Kremlin “liberals” may cause him trouble, but they’ll never come to power, they were not created for that.
Very unlikely you will ever come to that point. Agent “Nathan” can always buy a ticket and fly away. Unlike us.
How, exactly, am I a Kremlin propagandist?
If Strelkov is a Kremlin agent by your standards, the man who did more than anyone else to catalyze the Russian Spring, then I am perfectly happy to be one as well.
The first rule of a spy/agent: Never say you are a spy/agent.
I’m just suggesting. Of course, we will never know for sure. But you have been always too overpositive about Putin and very energetic at defending the achievements (false or real) of his regime. Which raises suspicions.
So you think a “former” FSB officer just suddenly showed up first in the Crimea, then in the Donbas and raised up a rebellion? Even if I think positive about the rebellion, I must admit it have had to be a Kremlin plot originally. Failed though. Surely they didn’t expect it would have ended up in shameful ORDILO.
I have always stuck to facts and statistics on Russia.
Yes, I have been considerably less antagonistic towards Putin and the “regime” than the Western media; that is hardly a high bar.
If writing too few anti-Putler jeremiads in English makes me “overpositive,” then I do not really care – least of all coming as it does from somone who throws around accusations of being on a Kremlin payroll (just like your typical liberast or neocon), who engages in cheap anti-Semitic slurs instead of arguments (including after I proved I am not even Jewish), and who pejoratively calls Strelkov a Kremlin agent while unironically using the svidomite term ORDILO.