The Wolf and the Kremlin

Chapter 4: The Wolf and the KGB

The old hydra in the mean time was trying to snake back into control. First it tried to shoot the president, when that didn't work it tried poison, and then bribes. Finally the FSB's control of Russia's Internet allowed them to plant financial transactions in the Presidents name. Being both the investigating agency and the criminal has its advantages. The KGB-controlled FSB then merrily leaked the “President's” theft of public funds and ... ended up with a huge disappointment. The vast majority of Russians did in fact openly proclaim their president as one of the most corrupt men in history, thus providing pretty definitive evidence for freedom of speech. Unfortunately for the FSB, every public official known to Russia accepts bribes beginning with the poor little traffic cops and their valiant efforts in the service of the Czar (and their back pockets). A general consensus had long since been reached that rooting out corruption in Russia would lead to the removal of the entire Russian government. The Russians obtained a near universal accord in favor of doing what they are always in favor of doing when it it comes to governing themselves: absolutely nothing. The “the totally corrupt” President was overwhelmingly voted back into office. The oligarchs of course also originally had to have their go at it, no doubt interested in some very juicy oil contracts out east. The advantage of giving a bribe is not only is the guilty official tempted by the bribe but the acceptance of the bribe deposited on the official automatically proves he is guilty of ... secretly conspiring to publicly give the offending oligarch a very expensive gold watch. (The oligarchs must have loved this guy. ) Patrushev's indifference to gold watches probably made him responsible for one of the greatest atrocities ever perpetuated against the roof of a concert hall . Whatever else the President may have done in his wicked youth he didn't spend enough time cleaning windows. Guess he had to do something with the 15 million or so donation he found in his bank account. Should have just spent it on a pile of dynamite and blown up a mountain or something constructive but he had it in for janitors.

The other half of the KGB's difficulties, not directly related to the general species of Russian traffic cop, was legitimately caused by the CIA. The CIA was trying to replicate possibly their only successful operation in history: the Italian job. The principle was basically simple, get the CIA's man into the presidents chair and then play Santa Claus. Hand out enough money through back channels and other suspicious organizations, like mostly the Catholic Church, that the economy soared, the President soared, and every body forgot about the Bolsheviks. The first part of Putin's presidency went extremely well, Russia enjoyed not only an brave new era of freedom, while Putin pursued what would most accurately be described as white Russian nationalism, the economy shot up at an unprecedented rate. Putin appeared to be well on his way to becoming the next Peter the first, when something went really wrong.

Chapter 5: Betrayal

The CIA cut support for the operation. If the United States was indeed the ideological state it so boldly proclaims itself there would have been no conflict between the brave new Russia and the old republic. Unfortunately the US is decaying rapidly. The 21st century has marked the supplantation of the idealistic, if impractical, old guard by a rising generation of hypocrites dedicated to the practical pursuit of their own empowerment. Welfare demand in the US has exploded driven by populations unable to support themselves, due to a disinclination for labor, nonetheless being financed to produce mega families. These needy families become a voter base for the empowerment of the politicians that finance their growth which in turn leads to more funds and an accelerated growth rate of the needy masses. However these are not the only ones who the political elites entitle, entitlements have been derived from anything from self-proclaimed disability to special ethnic background. The only real requirement to take from the system is to get in with the correct political crowd, the working class is screwed. The majority of Americans do not have the capacity to support themselves in the standard of entitlement which they demand, or probably to support themselves at all, without a massive influx of completely exploited impoverished foreign labor. The US can only trade for this labor by two means: The first is dominance in the administration, research and development of the technological, industrial and financial sector and the second is through the threat of military force. Military dominance however essentially equates to dominance in the tech/industrial sector. Practically all of American tax revenue that is paying for the entitlement state comes from a relatively small number of individuals working in the corporate headquarters of businesses like Intel, Microsoft and the big financial firms. The supposedly huge GDP's of New York and California do not come from the Americans living there, The GDP comes from taxes from multinationals headquartered in these states (and miss-valuing of American currency).

The problem that Russia created was that Russia does not have anywhere near the level of overhead expense from the entitlement state. This means that these multinationals could relocate to Vladivostok and enjoy a massive increase in tax free revenue, and their employees could enjoy a massive decrease in the probability of being viciously assaulted by druggies; if Russia could just be converted into a reasonably safe democracy. Although the CIA's white-Russian fraction with Putin at their head was doubtless heedlessly charging along constructing their brave new little-America, the full implication of Russia converting into little-America would not have been lost on may in Washington D.C.: Putin's Russia was turning into a tech eating monster with an explosively growing appetite for the American GDP. Putin needed to be stopped.

And if a few additional crimes were needed, Russia for some reason was having extreme difficulties censoring her Internet properly in fact she was playing the throwback CIA to mega-corporate Khrushchev (but with the shoe on the other foot), and many an American political dissident group was getting unwarranted encouragement. Putin's idea to shove a Siberian pipeline down the American leviathan's oil guzzling throat to keep it out of the Middle East, Europe and trouble with NATO in general also went over real well. He ran straight into Middle-Eastern oil mafia backed by the Washington oil mafia, backed by the corporate arms mafia. None of the above wanted to have to renegotiate all their corruption schemes with Russia as the new dance partner. For all the oligarchs reputed corruption Russia's real problem was that Washington didn't believe they were corrupt enough. And Putin's true sin for which he became public-enemy number one was that the had the audacity to try to stop the President's war in Iraq which demanded millitary bases in Europe and the relentless vilification of Russian to justify these deployments.

The final factor was the changes within the CIA. As the cold war “ended” and the “war on terror” begin the focus of the CIA shifted from Russia to the Middle East. And as the CIA had brought in the Russian's and Eastern European's before, now the CIA started recruiting from the Middle East, foreigners, first generation immigrants, “refugees”, second generation immigrants etc. These people don't even care for the the US much less Russia. With the old guard also reaching the age for retirement the CIA flipped over. The new CIA had no interest in so much as funding the White-Russian project and for that matter it is doubtful if they really had any interest in preventing war between two nations that people of their religion have always hated.

Chapter 6: The KGB Strikes Back

Sometime during the Bush administration the CIA project in Russia got its funding cut off and the KGB started to return. The KGB had two objectives one was the neutralization of Vladimir Putin and the other was insofar as possible the strategic separation of the United States and Russia. Putin had been using body doubles for some time. As it is next to impossible to prevent a successful assassination from close range, by Putin's second term as president, the “Putin” that the Russians shook hands with or even saw at a press conference was probably already a body double. The President's media broadcast were of course routed through FSB-controlled networks. Even supposing the FSB allowed the President to get in front of a large crowd, and didn't insist on inserting a body double, the President always spoke through electronic amplification. The electronic mikes are notorious for randomly preferring high-pitched whistles to the transmission of the user's voice even without deliberately triggered malfunctions. Even supposing Putin pulled off the mike, ignored his written speech, and accused the rest of the government of subversion; it would have been very difficult to accomplish much beyond apparent lunacy before the FSB invented an assassination attempt and used his own security to remove him. The President's only remaining contacts were the oligarchs and foreign heads of state. Even the semi-patriotic oligarchs were mostly playboys little interested in a dangerous confrontation with the KGB-run FSB and the few that proved more bold would later also prove to have a propensity to commit suicide. This leaves the foreigners and this is what the Georgian operation addressed.

The Georgian war never did make sense if it was instigated by Putin; however Putin was not the instigator he was the target. With the CIA operation failing, the KGB made their move to finish it off. They likely sent a few instigators over the Georgian boarder to stir up a violently-inclined but tiny group of separatists. With the violence started so too did the danger of UN intervention right along Russia's boarders. Putin, likely under heavy pressure from the Russian military, agreed to a peacekeeping force to forestall a western deployment. He probably authorized the army to go in and separate the two factions until the belligerents agreed to a settling their differences with something other than bullets. If this is what had actually been implemented, even the UN could have found little to excuse sanctions. But this is not what happened. The KGB abetted by some members of the Russian army saw to it that only the Georgians were disarmed. The violent tribal nativist faction then ran rampant murdering Georgians and driving them out of about a 5th of their country. Although the CCP backed KGB came a little short of the objective of starting a war between Russia and NATO, the operation was still a massive success. The Russian economy collapsed under sanctions, American financing for the white-Russians was finished and so was Putin's contact with the western world.

The president is now effectively isolated and nearly at the end of his term in office. In normal course of affairs Putin would have been released from office; he would then doubtless joined the rest of the delinquent Russian oligarchs, left Russia to perch in London or some other worse environs and started singing. However Putin was not like the rest of them, when he started complaining about the KGB infestation in the Kremlin and the subversion of the democratic process his popularity in Russia was such that he might actually be believed. In times past the solution to the KGB's dilemma would be a bullet or at worst a small expenditure in arsenic. Unfortunate when the President died and the outraged Russians demanded an investigation into the death of their pet Czar the KGB couldn't be quite sure that the oligarchs and the military wouldn't take this as an opportunity. If any of the factions killed Putin the other factions might take it as a chance to eliminate that part of the competition for control of Russia's rich natural resources. Technically they could have publicly denounced their President as a CIA spy and removed him that way. The problem is by that time the CIA had made such an insane mess of their own operation that anyone who attempted to explain it would be liable to end up locked up an asylum long before they got the President locked up as a spy. End result was these poor guys had the biggest old Lobo of them all sitting right in the middle of their President's chair and all they could do is stare at him staring at them. The immediate solution was to keep him as prime-minister and safely behind the security barriers, out of contact with the press. A long term solution to remove him however needed to be found preferably before their comrades accidentally reelected the CIA for president. The man who came up with the solution to this little paradox might have been the wolf himself.