The so -called "partners"

Before the Crimea, everyone "collaborated with the Russians." Until mid -2016, there was confusion with this past. The sanctions almost did not change the “Cooperation Region”.

But starting from the elections in the United States, very important changes take place, which are even difficult to accurately describe and name. Outwardly, this is expressed in the fact that people who are imputed by communication with the Russians lose their posts. And all this is accompanied by public scandals. This is not about the fact that people collaborated maliciously, and now just about what is called in the Russian gangster “Zashkvar”.

No one doubted Flynn’s loyalty, but he left due to “contacts”. The other day, the vice speaker of the Seim of Lithuania resigned . He left because the Lithuanian special services refused him to admit secret data, and the list of those Russians with whom he was friends in different years does not contain anything special - representatives of Russian state corporations in Lithuania, muddy Russian local businessmen, etc. Recently, they opened the mailbox of an adventurer who worked for the Kremlin in four countries - Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and even in the Balkans. It turned out that the Russian businessman Malofeev discussed or conducted some kind of election in Bosnia, in the elections in Poland.

Malofeev is a kind of extreme example of frankly subversive actions in other countries. But, looking at this correspondence and knowing the atmosphere of Russian affairs in Europe, you understand: after all, the strategy and tactics of Malofeev are no different from the actions of dozens and hundreds of similar actors outside the Russian Federation. Before the Crimea, all this looked like a benign “support of interests” for all those who have entered into cooperation with such people. And now "retrospociation" begins. What were those who participated in the “St. Petersburg dialogue”, in the Valdai club, in the “Dialogue of Civilizations” and dozens and hundreds of programs where the Russians either paid, or created preferences, or simply provided some single service? I was told by people from organizations of compatriots (which quite early refused to cooperate within the programs of the “Russian world”) that at first they were deceived by all these early cultural projects of Nikita Mikhalkov outside the Russian Federation. They sincerely supported his appeal to the descendants of the old emigration. But already around 2008, they felt that they began to build them up in some kind of ideological system of support for the Kremlin. Many even continued to go to Moscow for congresses of compatriots, but internally - already observers. They even then decided that this was a “new Comintern” and it was impossible to take grants there. And others joyfully continued to take - and sailed with the Kremlin in the direction of Crimea.

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But all these political, humanitarian and media contacts are far inferior to the scale of business interaction. Millions of people around the world were drawn into “Russian money” for more than a decade. After all, the so -called conclusion of the capital abroad, which took place on a huge scale, and then partially reinvested back to the country through offshore, and partially went to the acquisition of various infrastructure outside the Russian Federation (firms, shares in business, real estate, yachts, etc.) - all this gigantic machine for pumping money of the Putin corporate state - it was serviced by millions of people as murks of people counterparties: these were lawyers, businessmen of various scale, politicians, deputies, cinema and culture figures, translators, etc.

As a result - at the time of Crimea - there was a huge spontaneous lobby. This does not mean that people were literally “bathed” (if you describe this process in the anti -corruption language). People simply “cooperated” and received all kinds of bonuses from this cooperation. This is not about “recruiting”, but about the psychological phenomenon. Any of us who once received money from a rich friend of youth, then - even critically referring to him - still retains public loyalty. Who wants to shout loudly about the atrocities of the person, thanks to which you, for example, earned a new house? You just keep silent ...

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In other words, about ten years - from about 2004, after leaving Yukos and further - the Russian economy “warmed up” the foreign layers that are difficult to assess in scale. It was not about any corruption in the narrow sense. Of course, from the other side it was taken into account that this is an economic interaction with a special type of “eastern” economy, where everything is accompanied by “thanks”, “kickbacks”, the exchange of various bonuses and preferences, baths, hunting for archars from helicopters, etc. etc. But this was not crime, but simply laid from the other side as “specifics”. Russia is not the only economy with such a way. This was in the primary sense by partnership. The largest world companies opened offices and production in Russia. Until recently, it was a privileged economy included in the BRICS contour.

And now the whole result of a ten -year “warming up” Crimea turned into a problem. Obviously, Putin with this “Crimea” made a simultaneous mobilization among those who participated in this partnership. He put all these "partners" to the need to self -determine. Putin's word “partners”, pronounced by him with irony, is often attributed to the diplomatic dictionary. But in reality, Putin has in mind other partners - millions of people who have received large bonuses from a ten -year sitting on Russian contracts, Russian money and various interactions with the Russians.

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Now these "partners" have big problems. And we must sorrow that the problems are not because of the Crimea (as such), not because of the regime of sanctions and counter-sanctions, not because of the ambiguity of participation in toxic projects with Russians in the past. The problem is that Putin does not want to stop.

All this huge environment would have sighed with relief, having learned that Putin “rewrote the asset to himself” (Crimea) and stopped on this.

But the entire period of 2014-2017, the extreme ambiguity has been preserved and even increased: the Boeing was not shot down by Putin, but some people mobilized by businessman Malofeev, Nemtsov was not killed by Putin, but some Chechen security officials attacked the servers of the Democratic, too, not Putin, but some kind of volunteer, possibly Russians, but possibly not (but not from Russian Servers), the rebellion in Montenegro was not organized by Putin, but some unknown persons, the project of the collapse of Ukraine as a state and the creation of Novorossiya was organized not by Putin, but, for example, Glazyev, pro-Russian demonstrations in European countries were organized by some Usovsky (collecting money for this from patriotic Russian businessmen), rather than Putin. And so on.

The list is now growing every day. Moreover, after all, the Kremlin really does not distinguish from anything with the energy that would understand its so -called “partners”. Around any of these events, the Kremlin does not conduct an investigation, but an ambiguous game, clearly read as “covering” of all these “their people”.

And thus, the ten -year “economic warming” in the eyes is transformed into “involvement in complicity”. Now everyone looks back and ask themselves: with whom did we "partner"? Maybe it was Russian intelligence? Or from the very beginning it was only a bait to include us in an unscrupulous lobby contour?

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There is a huge frightening novelty here. Everything that happens before our eyes around the State Department, around the pro -Russian politicians in Europe, exposes a difficult problem: there is an erosion of the boundaries of lobbyism, partnership, espionage, propaganda influence, corruption.

A situation is created in which it is impossible to distinguish a benign partnership from complicity in politics, blurring the “boundaries of the permissible”. Yesterday you were a “Christian democrat” who built a partnership with the Russian Federation. And today you are just a silent accomplice of the erosion of the norms of European political culture themselves. You are not just bashfully silent, refusing to evaluate the actions of the Kremlin. And even vice versa. So to speak, “storing fidelity” of the results of the past partnership with the Kremlin, you even rise a skeptical voice: what is the criminal Putin’s politics here? Well, others do this: "The sanctions are ineffective, Crimea, frankly, has always been Russian."

And if you can somehow look at all the so-called Kremlin propaganda abroad as a combination of the activities of Moscow agencies and European inactive sites of left-wing and right critics of American hegemony, who sympathize with Putin on this basis, then it is completely impossible to look around the giant “root system” of the Kremlin in Western economic practices. It is not amenable to any assessment. And this transformation, or rather, the corruption of not only its own population, but also large circles in the West, which produced the Kremlin in ten years, can not be assessed.

It seemed to me three years ago that Putin was creating some right Comintern, I wrote about it. Now it is often called the "Black Comintern." But I think that the situation is much more complicated and worse. The Putin Comintern is a rather insignificant and well -visible head of a much larger process that occurs on other floors of European life, where people who are not drawn into a ultra -right or ultra -policy policy remain silent regarding the actions of the Kremlin. Drinking it, nevertheless remain loyal. They are kindly waiting for Putin to "return to the European norm of partnership." These people cannot and do not want to see that the ambiguity supported by the Kremlin in the issue of responsibility for murders, for paramilitary detachments, for mercenaries, for destabilization in small states, is not some kind of temporary phenomenon. This is "so conceived." And so it will be further.

Read the previous issues of Morozov's Diary:

Diary about the soil going from under the legs. Berlin.
Records on March 4-7

Diary about the soil going from under the legs.
Records on February 20-26