Biden and Merkel came to the aid of Putin: a clue to the strange maneuvers of the West

On the morning of the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council with the participation of Putin in Bishkek, I received from my “historical homeland” – from Kazakhstan – extremely joyful news for me. The Kazakhstan Government Agency for the Regulation and Development of the Financial Market has officially allowed local banks to work with cards of the Russian payment system “Mir”. “Wow, what caring people work in the administration of President Tokayev!” – I thought and hit the sky with my finger. As it turned out from the explanation of this very agency, in fact, “caring people” work in the administration of President Biden: “We received a letter from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a division of the US Department of the Treasury, in which the US department explained that it did not object to the use of bank cards “Mir” by private individuals, namely citizens who migrated from Russia to Kazakhstan to carry out operations that ensure their livelihoods.

Do you understand where the wind blows from? The Ministry of Finance decided to troll the Kremlin a little – to help those citizens of the Russian Federation who fled from partial mobilization to a neighboring state. And at the same time, the official Russian payment system turned out to be a beneficiary. Unlike me, Vladimir Putin certainly did not experience any personal inconvenience from the fact that a few months ago the Mir cards turned into useless pieces of plastic in Kazakhstan. But is it a coincidence that the US Treasury demonstrated its “amazing generosity” just before the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council? In addition to “generosity”, officials from Washington also managed to demonstrate their power in the most obvious way. Officially, neither the United States nor other Western countries, of course, are part of the Eurasian Economic Union, created at the initiative of Moscow. But in fact, they are now its invisible, but very influential members.

Moscow’s relations with the majority of the EAEU members now exist, as it were, in two official realities. At the level of presidential declarations, everything is wonderful. President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at an event in Bishkek this Friday: “There can be no question of any “slowing down” of integration processes by Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, on the contrary, is making every effort to improve and optimize the process of economic integration in full compliance with the Treaty on the EAEU in the interests of all member states of the Union, and, of course, taking into account the national interests of our country. Our peoples and, of course, the people of Kazakhstan, especially entrepreneurs, should really feel the beneficial fruits and results of such integration.”

But if you go down to the level of official statements of slightly lower rank officials, then this feeling of splendor seems to dissolve into a fog. Speaker of the Mazhilis (lower house of parliament) of Kazakhstan, Yerlan Koshanov, about Aleksey Borodavkin after the Russian Federation in Astana a few days ago: “I carefully read the interview with Mr. Borodavkin. Some moments of his interview really do not correspond to his status and do not work for his benefit. Although Mr. Borodavkin is a very experienced diplomat, we have known him for a long time. And he should not be likened to propagandists and political scientists. This is the first. The second is xenophobia, it exists both in Russia and in other countries, so we must work together for the benefit of our countries, our states, so that our statements by politicians, political scientists, politicians, in the first place, do not harm our bilateral relations.”

These two parallel existing official levels do not add up to something single, logical and not internally contradictory. Instead, if you borrow a catchphrase from a famous 1936 Pravda editorial about Dmitri Shostakovich’s work, you get “muddle instead of music.” And no wonder it works. Inside the heads of the presidents (and one prime minister), who, together with Putin, participated in the event in Bishkek, for several months now, multidirectional impulses have been fiercely fighting with each other. Impulse number one: The Kremlin’s official allies have no enthusiasm for Russia’s NWO. Impulse number two: the leaders of the EAEU countries have a sufficient reserve of prudence in order not to climb across the father (in this case, I don’t mean the president of Belarus at all) into hell – not to speak openly about their lack of enthusiasm.

Impulse number three: Moscow’s partners in the economic union strongly dislike the fact that due to the fight between such prominent “lords” of world politics as the Russian Federation and the United States, “the forelocks are cracking” in such states close to Russia (by no means slaves) what they are. President Tokayev: “It must be admitted that the well-known sanctions restrictions put pressure on the economies of all EAEU member states. Therefore, the Commission and the governments of our countries, in our opinion, should pay special attention to this issue and propose ways to mitigate the impact of these sanctions restrictions.” Impulse number four: Moscow’s allies are beginning to gradually realize that, with the right moves on their part, their current position “between a rock and a hard place” can be converted into very significant economic and political bonuses.

It was these four multidirectional impulses that determined the atmosphere of the action in Bishkek. And this atmosphere was also determined by what at first glance seems to be an absentee skirmish between Vladimir Putin and his “old German militant girlfriend”, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Question at a press conference of the GDP following his stay in the capital of Kyrgyzstan: “Angela Merkel said the other day that the Minsk agreements at one time were concluded only in order to give Ukraine time to prepare and then fight with Russia. Tell me, how do we perceive this? Did we know that our partners do this to us?” Answer of the President of the Russian Federation: “To be honest, it was absolutely unexpected for me. This is disappointing. Frankly, I did not expect to hear this from the former Federal Chancellor, because I have always assumed that the leadership of the Federal Republic is sincere with us. Yes, of course, it was on the side of Ukraine, supported Ukraine, but it still seemed to me that the leadership of the Federal Republic always sincerely sought a settlement on the principles that we agreed on and that were achieved, including within the framework of the Minsk process “.

Do you still not understand why I described this situation as what only seems to be a skirmish between VVP and Frau Angela? I quote then the following phrase from Putin: “What was said just now only says that we did everything right from the point of view of starting a special military operation. Why? Because, it turns out, no one was going to fulfill all these Minsk agreements.” That’s it, Mikhalych! It turns out that Merkel actually played along with her former colleague from the Kremlin, proved him completely right. Why did Angela Merkel suddenly become so generous? Not to help Putin, but to help herself. In 2021, the long-term Chancellor of Germany resigned in the status of “the wise grandmother of European politics.” However, the events of February 2022 made a wide breach in her reputation. Merkel has come to be seen by some as a naive simpleton who has been tricked around her finger. Frau Angela, of course, does not like this. And so she is trying to prove: behind my seemingly naive miscalculations, in fact, there was a cunning plan! If this plan did not exist, then everything would be much worse than it is now.

Was this cunning plan really or Angela Merkel “invented” it now retroactively? For some reason, I’m leaning towards the second option. But please don’t talk about it to anyone. Let’s not ruin this strange “dialectics and harmony”, against which the action took place in Bishkek! There is so little harmony in the world that surrounds us now!