Russia looms significant across 2012

Purpleline

The big question is whether Britain & Germany's who have had opposite reactions to Putin's Russia change dramatically as Germany grows stronger in the EU and Russia cools their relationship.

Germany has for mercantile reasons and for Gas & Oil supplies basically supported the corrupt non legal contract-law with Russia for commercial gain.

They have a pact with Russia and no doubt this will blow up as politics change for the worse. Russian memories will come to the fore as powerhouse Germany becomes a threat.

Britain although a great friend of the Russian people and a strong if somewhat suspicious political relationship with Russia will believe that the soft approach and investment into Russia will give them political advantage to tame the beast.

I expect UK trade with Russia to increase by 25% over the next two-years Raw politics will play second fiddle to Trade.

So in effect the dynamics to watch will be Russian relations with Germany and the UK with a switch as German politicians who worked closely with Putin are no longer useful idiots to the bears game plan

Nicholas

On the subject of Huhne why have we allowed a politicised CPS to control "investigations" between the police and the judiciary? In the old days if the police thought they had enough evidence to charge they would do so and take the accused before a court at the earliest opportunity. The question of whether there was sufficient evidence to convict was a matter for the judge and jury, not some left-leaning, faceless lawyer in the CPS.

Now the CPS, run by New Labour placeman Keir Starmer QC, acts as an unaccountable judge and jury in deciding whether to prosecute or not, and many of these decisions appear to be based on the needs of cultural marxism (now defined as the "public interest") rather than justice.

David Cockerham

If by 'we' you mean the UK, we would surely be deluding ourselves if we thought we had much chance of influencing Russian behaviour? Blood and treasure would be needed to achieve that, and we have exhausted our supplies of both. So maybe our top priority should be to compete with German realpolitik as far as Russia is concerned. It might make us feel good to abstain from that and run off at the mouth against Russia instead, but it won't do Russians any good at all; it will just stuff an even bigger share of the feast in the German belly.

Heartless Curmugdeon

Ah, - but we have the H2B, and, when Danny boy has oiled him back in place, the EUSSR in the form of the Baroness and her myriad jobsworths to protect us!

Russia! - hah!

'Viva la Baroness' or whatever.

Hugo Chav

Peter,

Jim Rickards the author of Currency Wars covers, in his book, Russia and its role in the global monetary system and how it is using its natural resources as a weapon.

Currency Wars is the must read book on the current stage of the Global Financial Crisis.

Rickards has been on fire in 2011 and his book cements his brilliant analysis this year.

Paper Money Collapse by Detlev Schlicther is another book that hits the zeitgeist.

If you thought the period 2007 to 2011 was scary it looks like it was just the appetizer.

Augustus

Change they can believe in perhaps? Clean elections they can believe in perhaps?

Billi

Arrrh, the Russians. Coming of age and standing up to the EU and China. Well done.
"EU. We will meet you at the same river crossing. This time, let's not fall out over the spoils ?

jennywren

The New Yorker article is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the current situation in Russia. Take half an hour out this Christmas to absorb it.

If one juxtaposes its message (particularly the earlier pages which graphically expose the squalid nature of the current regime and its vindictiveness towards its perceived enemies) with the extraordinarily heart warming and humane scenes coming from the demonstration in Moscow on 24th December one's blood runs cold.

Putin has broken his silence today about the protests, and I fear that the outcome will finally be tragic.

Great Britain's official relationship with the current regime is a cool one, and so it should remain.

daniel maris

Well I am hoping we will see the big breakthrough in cold fusion technology this year that will put an end to Putin's power as his natural gas loses its political clout.

Herbert Thornton

Compared with Britain, Russia is - from the long-term point of view - in a far better condition.

There is, in Britain too much paranoia about Russia. A great deal of it comes from British leftists - and even from their sympathisers on the supposed right - who have never forgiven the Russians for abandoning Marxism.

The anti-Russian hysteria in Britain is very much misplaced. British people should be paying more attention to the pervasion of rottenness in British life, both political and in government and society generally.

The opportunities for trade with Russia are immense - and it is trade moreover that would be free from the choking idiocies of regulations concocted by power-hungry, anti-British bureaucrats in Europe.

porkbelly

Putin may be a crude, thuggish autocrat in the best Russian tradition, but his ability to expand Russia's power beyond its borders will be limited by his own government's sloth, corruption and short-sightedness. The bureaucracy will kowtow to his face but will sabotage and obstruct change at every turn, since the only thing that motivates a Russian bureaucrat is the opportunity to steal from the State, swindle someone out of their property, or swagger about like some petty tsar. Putin's chest-thumping serves only to conceal his essential weakness and inability to truly govern.

David Lindsay

Never let it be said that the anti-Putin demonstrators are only telling us what they are against. No one watching them can have been left in any doubt as to what they were for. No one, that is, apart from the BBC.

Rounding off a year of breathlessly reporting Arabs shouting "Allahu Akbar" when not flurrying the banners of some Marxist outfit or of the Syrian Social National Party, the BBC is today treating us to the same uncritical coverage of Russians waving either the flag of the Soviet Union or the black, yellow and white of Russian ultranationalism.

Neither the Caucasian Islamists nor the National Bolsheviks are in evidence, but the latter's flag - that of Nazi Germany, but with a black hammer and sickle in place of the swastika - has never prevented Auntie from paying them absolute deference.

Richard of Moscow

Two points conspicuous by their absence in the western media coverage:

1. It is the largest demonstration against government chicanery in Russia since the break-up of the USSR, but only because the nearest competitor - the demonstrations against Yeltsin's constitutional violations in 1993 - were broken up be the pro-western regime shooting dead nearly 200 demonstrators, including young, unarmed women.

2. The main opposition to Putin and United Russia, and the majority od these demonstrators, are communists. The western media's "liberals" are even more of a despised minority than, say, the Greens or the BNP in the UK.

When discussing western attitudes to Putin's regime, we not only have to compare it with governments in the west (Russia's is obviously superior, or less inferior, to anyone except the most fanatical BBC / Guardian / Indy loving cretin) but also to the alternative - the communists.

My family and I be more or less unaffected whichever of the two is in charge, and we expect to spend most of our lives in Russia, but I would be interested to hear what fellow Speccie readers (and writers) think about 'free and fair' elections returning the Communist Party to power.

Richard of Moscow

David Lindsay, the black, yellow and white flag is merely the flag of the old Russian Empire, and calling it a flag of "Russian ultranationalism" is like calling the EDL "far right" or the Cross of St George "waycist"

Alex

The western media omitted more facts.
See my blog http://out-of-thematrix.blogspot.com

Noa

Richard of Moscow December 28th, 2011 12:30am

Thank you for the perspective your post provides. It really is difficult to find informed and objective analysis of the political situation in modern Russia in the UK, even the multifarious sources of information on the internet provide little real illumination.
In this regard your posts serve an important role in providing a direct view and observations on to a traditional trading partner and oft-time former ally and counterweight to central european and Islamic expansionism.

You've advocated it for other posters, including, most flatteringly, myself, but Fraser Nelson really should consider giving you a column to post on this most enigmatic, confusing and influential of countries.

Richard of Moscow

Reply to Noa, part one:

Thanks you for the kind words, Noa. In fact, I've suggested to several people in Russia - westerners and Russians trying to run small-to-medium sized businesses - that they should consider putting down their thoughts and experiences in a blog or a regular column.

I work as a translator, so I do not have to negotiate the godawful roads or the endemic low-level corruption in order to earn a crust. The latter seems to be Russia's equivalent of the EU and western governments' fetish for regulation and box-ticking.

As with our own country, those whose opinions should be heard the most, because they are the ones trying to create the wealth and employment, are far too busy to regularly share their opinions.

Richard of Moscow

Reply, part two:

The western media seem to have made the same mistake as with the EU or man-made global warming. In a desperate search of a simple narrative for their simple consumers, they went for one which is demonstrably codswallop.

EU = good; far right wing = bad; so: EU-sceptic = far right wing.

AGW caused by Big Oil; AGW ‘drowns’ polar bears; so: AGW sceptics = polar-bear murderers in pay of Big Oil.

Putin = Russian + bad; Stalin = Russian + bad; so: Putin is the new Stalin.
Fine, for a while, but now that the communists’ hatred for the ruling elite is visible to the world, the media haven't the faintest idea how to cover it. So they’ve decided in true Stalin-style to try to airbrush the Communist Party from the story.

Noa.

Thanks - and HNY Richard.
your post was more insightful than the entire UK coverage of the matter that I've seen. One struggle to relate to real events and understand them.
To be fair the historians are still trying to do that with the entire revolution -and
truth is always at a premium and always subject to being re-written to suit the purposes of the present...