News Commentary by: Alex Pearlman
Even though Russian Prime Minister Putin made headlines earlier this year for riding bare-chested through the Siberian wilderness, looking foxy as ever, the muscles don’t distract from the real problem brewing in the East: Russia is once again becoming a pain in everyone else’s ass.
From refusing to cooperate with US sanctions against Iran for building secret nuclear facilities, to refusing to deal with the situation in Chechnya, to refusing to provide a refuge for journalists being threatened with kidnapping or death, to even refusing to provide its neighbors in the former Soviet bloc states with oil, it seems as though Putin’s muscle-flexing will never end.
The New York Times reported yesterday that a new pipeline to Western Europe would most likely allow Russia to play politics with its closer neighbors like Poland, Ukraine, and Romania so that they can have heat this winter.
“‘The ability to shut off one pipeline or the other ‘depending on whim’ makes shutoffs to Eastern Europe more likely,’ said Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter administration, to the New York Times. “He called the pipelines a grand Russian initiative to ‘separate Central Europe from Western Europe insofar as dependence on Russian energy is concerned.’”
This premonition regarding Russia’s use of oil embargoes comes just a few years after oil to Ukraine was shut off for three weeks after a dispute over tariffs. Thousands of people went without heat and factories were shut down.
If oil wasn’t a big enough problem in our over-dependent world, Iran’s nuclear facilities are also making headlines. Secretary of State Clinton traveled to Geneva to speak with the Security Council countries to discuss sanctions against Tehran. Russia, surprisingly, didn’t agree to the sanctions, saying they would be “counterproductive,” according to al-Jazeera.
Israel, however, is not as easy to push aside as Hillary Clinton, as reports have surfaced that Prime Minister Netanyahu has made secret trips to Moscow to complain about the Russian scientists who are allegedly helping Iran build the nukes in question.
So, if even the outside world isn’t safe from Russia, imagine what it’s like inside. Chechnya is a mess, with abductions, murders and corruption leaking into the papers and Internet daily. Journalists have gone underground all over the country to avoid being thrown in jail after pointing out the insanity of a recent wave of Stalinism that has swept the Russia, including a newly remodeled Moscow subway station that is Stalin-themed.
It’s too early to know exactly what will come of Russia’s recent power grabs, but the outlook certainly isn’t positive. Look out for that Big Red Menace – you never know what they’ll be getting up to.
