Illusion of blackmail: why Putin's power is a simulation of the FSB

The revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot but desire the defeat of its government. This is an axiom.

To refuse defeat means to turn one's revolutionary spirit into an empty phrase or one hypocrisy.

If there were no war and defeat in it, Russia could live for years and even decades without a revolution.

V.Lenin

***

On September 10, 2021, the world became alert due to the large-scale military exercises of the Russian Federation that began on that day on the borders of Ukraine.

However, the vast majority of politicians around the world, as well as military and civilian analysts (and the authors were also initially among them) perceived them only as a means of intimidation, as blackmail.

After all, frank military pressure from Russia was surprisingly effective:

• the Helsinki-2 project was seriously discussed, in which the role of Russia was significantly strengthened;
• the concept of a "tripolar world" was firmly established in the global political space;
• only a few days remained before receiving a certificate for the operation of SP-2 from the federal state of Mecklenburg.

However, at a time when the leaders of the Russian Federation were almost guaranteed to receive what they allegedly wanted from Europe and the world, they suddenly “turned the table” by invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Thus, Russia not only completely nullified the results of its blackmail (triumphant without exaggeration), but also turned all the achievements of the past decades of the development of the Russian Federation into their complete opposite.

The blackmail implied the encouragement of the Europeans to certify NS-2 as soon as possible, that is, to fix the even wider integration of the Russian Federation into the international community.

Therefore, in fact, the purpose of the concentration of strike groups of the Russian Federation on the borders of Ukraine (which ended with the Invasion) was not blackmail, but, on the contrary, preparation for a radical disruption of this project: the termination and rollback of international integration; economic and political “puppetry” of the system.

The authors devoted their previous numerous publications and speeches to the proof of this theory, and this point of view is gradually gaining more and more supporters both in Ukraine and abroad.

However, an important question remained unanswered.

If the catastrophic results of drawing the Russian Federation into a large-scale war in the center of Europe were predictable in advance, then how did the interested forces in the Russian Federation manage to do this right in front of the whole world and the most influential Russian elites?

***

The only effective strategy for drawing the Russian Federation into the war, bypassing possible obstacles, was to create the illusion of blackmail!!!

This strategy meant that:

• domestic Russian elites had to be absolutely convinced that large-scale military exercises near the Ukrainian borders were nothing but successful blackmail;
• the world community also had to think so (and believed, based on the opinion of its intelligence and analytical structures).

That is, in a practical sense, the task was how to deceive everyone - to pass off months-long preparations for war in front of “ours” and “strangers” (and, above all, “ours”) as blackmail. And the task was successfully solved.

Practice has shown that deceiving an external audience is not a difficult task, provided that the internal one is effectively deceived.

Not a single intelligence service in the world and not a single global analytical institution could fully believe in the idea of ​​the Invasion, since it threatened with tragic consequences, primarily for Russia itself.

The Euro-Atlantic community (and, above all, the European one) understood that an invasion would be suicidal, but still allowed for the theoretical possibility of a military development of events.

And it was decided to eliminate this insignificant probability by satisfying Russian ambitions.

But this conciliatory position of the Europeans in no way suited those who in the Russian Federation were preparing destabilization for their country through a “bloody military trap”.

Here it should be noted that the US administration, judging by their statements and a number of practical actions (in particular, in the form of deliveries of defensive weapons to Ukraine), significantly more highly assessed the chances of converting blackmail into a real war.

Much more difficult was the situation with the internal "target audience" due to its exceptional proximity to the decision-making center. But they also coped with this task.

***

For centers of power within the country that were competitive with the Russian special services, a real war brought inevitable risks and disasters (lost profits of hundreds of billions of dollars, sanctions, exposure of monstrous abuses and theft, human losses and economic decline).

That is, in case of realizing the fact that the “exercises” are not blackmail, but real preparation for a real war, it would cause extremely strong resistance from the above-mentioned centers of power in the Russian Federation by activating hardware games within the power elite with an unpredictable result for the initiators of a real war.

And the fact that key members of the Russian military, bureaucratic, economic, regional and religious elite have publicly stated that they did not know about the impending real war can hardly be considered an attempt to reduce their future responsibility.

Considering that from a legal point of view, the responsibility of someone who did not initially know about the impending crime, but actively participated in the process of committing it, is not much lower than that of someone who was aware of the criminal intention from the very beginning. So they probably didn't really know.

The presence of such a massive deception of the Russian elites can be spoken not only on the basis of their own statements as being vitally interested in hiding the opposite fact, but also on the basis of their actions, or rather their absence.

It is an absolutely indisputable fact that they did not take any action aimed at preserving their huge capitals and property from the risks associated with the outbreak of an aggressive war.

The British Royal Joint Institute for Defense and Security Studies on its resource came to the conclusion that the direct planning and implementation of the Invasion at the initial stage was carried out by the FSB, which, according to the Institute, began preparing a plan for the Invasion of Ukraine back in July 2021.

At the same time, the Financial Times claims that the General Staff and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation were against the transfer of blackmail into reality. That is, those against whom this plan concerned in the first place and to the greatest extent were against.

According to The Times, Putin was “convinced” to start a war by the head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Patrushev, and the head of the FSB, Bortnikov.

According to the Financial Times again, Putin even earlier (the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic) spent at his residence in Valdai in the company of his old friend Kovalchuk, who is closely associated with the Russian special services. The latter allegedly "inspired the President to reflect on his historical mission," which led him to the idea of ​​invading Ukraine.

That is, the idea and initiative of the Invasion did not belong to the Russian General Staff (and even more so, not to representatives of the oligarchic business), for whom it was critically dangerous, but to the special services and their agents of influence in the highest echelons of power in the Russian Federation, for whom it was critically important.

Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFall spoke about this in an interview with Vox of America: “Russian generals: is this good for them? Absolutely not. It became a disaster for them. And I think that there will be a big game and a lot of tension between them and the people from the FSB who dragged them into this war with bad intelligence.”

Objectively, only one elite group in the Russian Federation needed the war, and this group, through the President, ensured the act of Invasion. In addition, within the framework of the necessary parameters that are destructive for the country, the implementation of the SVO is also carried out through the President, who is in a tightly controlled information environment.

There is a very important clarification to be made here.

Russian key elite groups, although they fell victim to a deception that dragged them into a criminal military adventure that was suicidal for the country and extremely unprofitable for them personally, did not turn into innocent victims.

Based on the new reality, they accepted the rules of conduct proposed by them and fully participate in criminal and terrorist activities, which makes them full-fledged participants in a crime of an international scale.

***

How the army was deceived

The deception of the army was a key subtask to address the issue with the domestic audience.

The army of the Russian Federation is a powerful competitor for the special services in their struggle for power, since, in alliance with the military-industrial complex, they have a huge legitimate power and financial resource.

You can remove such an opponent only by completely weakening and discrediting him. And not individual officials, but as a whole institution. And to discredit the army and its leadership is possible only by showing their failure in the main direction of activity, that is, in the process of a real war.

The question arises: how to force the army to carry out a deliberately unjust and objectively unmotivated invasion of a neighboring sovereign state?

After all, war is a strict and uncompromising auditor. And why such a tough audit of the generals, headed by the billionaire Shoigu, who knew firsthand about the state of the Russian Army, because he himself robbed it all the fertile time of "rising Russia from its knees."

An army that does not want to fight can only be drawn into the war by deceiving it.

And here the "illusion of blackmail" showed its effectiveness.

The task of drawing the army into the war had objective difficulties, consisting in the fact that at the time of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military-political leadership had comprehensive objective information about:

• the real, and far from ideal, state of the Russian army and the Russian military-industrial complex;
• satisfactory condition of the Ukrainian army and serious mobilization potential;
• resolute anti-Russian sentiments of Ukrainian society;
• very dubious results of the subversive activities of agents of the influence of the Kremlin in Ukraine and the plundering of funds allocated for this.

All this information was not in favor of the Intervention. And that is why the decision to invade was made by the initiators.

The technology of preparation for the Invasion had two, to some extent, mutually exclusive aspects: preparation for the real Invasion and the creation of the Illusion of blackmail.

In the course of the implementation of these two aspects, from September 10, 2021 and until the Invasion itself, military exercises near the Ukrainian borders took place almost continuously.

As part of real preparations, mobile hospitals, stocks of medicines and blood were also prepared, and even 45,000 bags for corpses were purchased.

At the same time, in the context of disinformation, it was necessary to provide the illusion of blackmail on a purely material level.

Therefore, a number of important preparatory measures had to be abandoned, which, if carried out, would have fully revealed the intentions for a real invasion.

The intelligence services of the world are accustomed to relying on the "mathematics of war" - on the analysis of resources and specific practical actions, and not on external demonstrative actions and propaganda.

Due to these circumstances, the Russian Federation entered the war, having unfulfilled a huge number of tasks that are mandatory in a real war:

• informing the command of the army and its personnel about the purpose of military operations;
• exact setting of a combat mission for units and formations with reference to time and place;
• providing up-to-date maps of the area;
• providing tactical reconnaissance to advancing units;
• providing them with air cover;
• providing reliable encrypted communication;
• establishing contacts and activating the underground and sabotage groups;
• providing the advancing troops with reliable information about the availability of forces and means of the Ukrainian army, its moral and strong-willed characteristics, the mood of the population in the planned theater of military operations, etc. etc. etc.

In addition, the military-industrial complex was not transferred to the mode of appropriate readiness.

There are several typical examples of the level of training of the Invasion army.

For example, the commanders of the Russian motorized rifle battalion of the 138th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade used topographic maps from 1969. They do not yet have the Saltovsky housing estate of Kharkov, the Travyansky and Murom reservoirs, and the state border between Ukraine and Russia was drawn with a ballpoint pen.

In the Dnepropetrovsk region, a group of invaders found German topographic maps of 1930. And it was a mass phenomenon.

And here is what the Russians themselves write about the invasion: “According to the information of several commanders of military units, the troops received a command to advance with the letters Z, V and O. But the unit commanders doubted whether they were doing everything right, since there were no stocks of ammunition (for all guns were allocated no more than one ammunition load, and on average 0.2, that is, this is for several hours of combat, sometimes less). To this, a common phrase sounded from the higher authorities: "You are tormented by flowers from the armor to throw off, everyone is waiting for us there."

But such a situation suited the organizers of the Invasion completely and completely: to get involved in a bloody, obviously hopeless and demonstratively terrorist war.

An important element of the “blackmail illusion” was the Invasion map “leaked” into the public space, which later turned out to be reliable (the British Ministry of Defense created a visualization based on “received” intelligence).

It caused reasonable skepticism in foreign headquarters, since such a plan violated all known principles of offensive operations (including Soviet and Russian ones).

The foreign headquarters concluded that with such a plan it was impossible to achieve success with the available forces, and that the Invasion was a sham (especially when all other factors are taken into account).

As a result, the preparations carried out by the Russian Federation for the outside world appeared to be taking place in the absence of a meaningful goal, an obvious insanity of design and the absence of a huge number of critically necessary accompanying elements of preparation.

Naturally, the leadership of the Russian army knew about the inconsistency of preparation for the fulfillment of a real task, but they completely ignored this glaring fact for any strategist, for the sole reason - they were not going to fight !!!!

What was the army going to do?

From September 2021 to the end of February 2022, the Russian army was doing what everyone thought was creating a show as close to reality as possible.

The Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation received just such a task. And she did not cause him internal dissonance, as a recognized master of creating spectacular military show programs for the President, such as the assault on the plywood Reichstag and the annual All-Russian tank biathlon.

Did Shoigu know about the real invasion plans? Many facts indicate that he did not know.

This task was brought to him just a few days before the Invasion by the “great and terrible” dictator Putin, “to whom everyone is afraid to object at least in something.”

The Financial Times also wrote that the Federal Security Service supported the invasion plan, while the General Staff was against it.

If we are talking about an invasion plan that the General Staff invented as a legend for military exercises and which was leaked to the network purely to intimidate the West, then it is quite natural that the General Staff itself could not support it.

But they had no other plan, and when Putin ordered the invasion, the Russian General Staff had no time to change anything.

***

How the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was deceived

In any state, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is one of the key links in the system of preparation for an aggressive war. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among other things, performs the most important function - the diplomatic isolation of the future enemy in the international arena.

Back in the 5th century BC. Sun Tzu said: “First of all, you need to think about leaving the enemy without allies, and only further in importance is the task of defeating his troops, and worst of all, a long siege or assault on fortresses” (it was the latter that the Russian army was engaged in during this period so-called SVO).

Instead, the Russian Foreign Ministry, on the eve of the war, is doing everything "exactly the opposite" - creating anti-Russian alliances and expanding the list of unfriendly countries.

As recently as April 2023, Putin's spokesman Peskov complained in an interview that "we did not expect the US and NATO to take such an active part on the side of Ukraine."

This statement is all the more surprising because the Russian Federation, before invading Ukraine, made a number of demarches through its Foreign Ministry, which, under certain circumstances, can be regarded as the announcement of military ultimatums from the United States and NATO.

Thus, on December 15, 2021, the Russian Foreign Ministry handed over to the American side the drafts of the agreement between Russia and the United States "On security guarantees and agreements on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and the NATO member states." The document, in particular, states that the United States must eliminate its nuclear infrastructure abroad (in Europe and Turkey) and return all deployed nuclear weapons to its territory.

On January 9, 2022, before a meeting on "security guarantees" with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Geneva, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation S. Ryabkov said that NATO "needs to collect the bag" and return to the 1997 borders.

It is believed that the presentation of a military ultimatum with unrealistic demands in advance, expressed in a rather rude form and against the backdrop of active military preparations, is not a threshold or preparation for war - THIS IS an act of war !

In the context of preparations for a real war, this is a completely insane step, and within the framework of a blackmail company, it is a completely acceptable action.

And it is quite possible to agree with the information of authoritative world publications, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Lavrov did not know about the preparation of a real Invasion.

According to The Times, the foreign minister was tasked with trying to get more concessions from the West in order to avoid war. Lavrov himself, as the author writes, wanted to achieve precisely a peaceful outcome of the confrontation and was convinced that Putin also wanted this.

According to The Financial Times, Lavrov learned about the beginning of the war on the night of February 24, a few hours before the start of the entry of Russian troops, and therefore could not take measures to save his property in the United States.

Lower-ranking Russian diplomats were also convinced that they were engaged in high-quality, plausible, what is called "on the verge of a foul", but blackmail.

***

How the oligarchy was deceived

For many years, President Putin has been surrounded by oligarchs close to him, managing hundreds of billions of dollars in financial flows. For them, a radical change in the role of the Russian Federation in the international arena from a partner to the role of an international terrorist was guaranteed to threaten with disasters and ruin.

It is characteristic that not one of them, even, it would seem, the closest, on the eve of the war, made even an attempt to hedge their capital in case of a negative international reaction to a real war.

They were fully convinced of the impossibility of turning blackmail into an invasion, and naturally objected to the possibility of war, which they stated in their numerous interviews before it began.

Naturally, it was possible to deceive not only the oligarchy, but also state officials, and quite a high rank at that (supposedly, even the head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation did not know about the invasion plans). And even more so the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, who was already rubbing his hands in anticipation of launching gas through the Nord Stream 2 pipes.

According to The Times: “Even now, most of the Putin administration and the economic bloc of the government, in private conversations with friends, oppose the war, but feel powerless. Some liberal officials even unsuccessfully tried to persuade the President to stop the Invasion that had already begun.

***

So, in the words of the classic of the revolution revered in the FSB, the task of drawing the Russian Federation into an "imperialist war, which alone can lead to revolution" was successfully solved by the special services.

But to ensure the desired (for the "Corporation" in the first place) result, the war must meet certain parameters.

These parameters can be divided into internal and external.

Internal (the general task is to cause maximum destabilization in the Russian Federation)

Therefore, the war must:

• conducted without any real meaningful goal (or in the face of many constantly changing goals);
• be as bloody as possible for the population of the Russian Federation;
• have a significant impact on the economic and moral-psychological state of their own people;
• be conducted in the most inefficient way (both in the human dimension and in the military-technical one);
• be carried out for a sufficiently long time to overcome the inertia of thinking and influence the mood of their own people;
• lead to the discrediting of the key (competitive for the special services) centers of legitimate power in the Russian Federation (the army, the oligarchy, the existing bureaucratic vertical);
• lead to the destruction of the legal system of the country, legal nihilism, the desacralization of its Constitution and the erosion of the state borders of the Russian Federation defined by international norms.

External (the general task is to maximize internal destabilization in the Russian Federation through the reaction of the outside world)

war must:

• violate any norms of international law as grossly and defiantly as possible (that is, be conducted as an endless series of war crimes);
• for the outside world to have a clear, meaningful and voiced at the highest level aggressive goal - the seizure of the territory of a sovereign state;
• be accompanied by all kinds of international military and economic blackmail, as well as gross insults to the leaders of other states;
• be accompanied by demonstrative deviant behavior of official representatives of the Russian authorities and their statements, which make it possible to doubt their mental health.

As we can see - the so-called. CBO fully meets all of the above parameters.

***

The role of Putin in the management of the Russian Federation and the creation of the Illusion of blackmail

On May 9, 2023, The New York Times published an article with the eloquent title "Putin is the most dangerous fool in the world."

The author, Thomas Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and regular foreign policy columnist, provides what he sees as compelling evidence for this thesis.

At the same time, the very thesis that Putin is an idiot is based on three postulates, namely:

• that supposedly Putin is subjective;
• that Putin allegedly proceeds purely from the interests of maintaining personal power;
• that the Russian people are subjective, on whose opinion Putin allegedly looks back.

In our past works , these three postulates were questioned, which brings down the whole semantic construction about Putin's madness.

In fact, Putin's power is a simulation specially created by the FSB, and by fairly simple means. It is designed for him, the Russian elites, the Russian people and the rest of the world to ensure the precise execution of the tasks set and to exclude any unpredictability.

As part of the project of a controlled revolution, Putin is called upon to ensure the conduct of the war precisely within the specified parameters, which are the most destructive for the Russian Federation itself and must inevitably lead to revolutionary upheavals. And he delivers!

At the same time, the fate of Putin himself is not of interest to the initiators of these processes. And if Putin were subjective, and proceeded from the interests of maintaining personal power, then the instinct of self-preservation in some form should have worked for him. But on the contrary, he further increases the risks, both for his power and for his own life.

***

Conclusions:

1. The version of the "sudden madness" of the Russian top military-political leadership has many logical contradictions and leads to an incorrect assessment of the motives of the top leadership of the Russian Federation and, accordingly, to incorrect forecasts regarding future events.

2. Neither the "theory of madness" nor the "theories of degradation" imply the possibility of making any meaningful forecasts of the development of the situation due to the lack of a single rational core a priori in their basis.

3. The approach proposed by the authors, due to its rationality, just implies the possibility of forming a forecast (which was done in previous publications), the execution of which can be compared with reality.

4. The organization of the Invasion took place on the basis of the intention of the Russian special services to artificially create the strongest and most massive upheavals of a revolutionary nature.

In total, during the dramatic events we observed, the Russian special services planned the passage of the Russian Federation through four stages:

1. drawing the Russian Federation into an aggressive war - (done)!
2. waging war in a strictly defined way, according to the specified most destructive parameters - (performed)!
3. organization of Troubles to destroy the existing system of power in the country - (enters an active phase)!
4. transformation of the Russian state and society into super-totalitarian ones with the dominance of special services (a large number of elements are already being implemented).

5. Operation Illusion of Blackmail is one of the most successful (unfortunately for us) operations of the special services, provided with massive disinformation, and carried out in the conditions of modern total openness, the availability of satellites, smartphones, the Internet, etc.

Read the full text of the study here .

Authors:

Vladimir Shevchenko , political scientist, Doctor of Philosophy

Andrey Savarts , analyst, lawyer, author of the telegram channel " Special Opinion "