Russia From Gorbachev to Putin: A Great Game Involving Nationalist, Zionist and Globalist Elites; Mafia, and Foreign Governments
Contents
[Quick draft: distilled from the old intro article and expanded here, but still lots of work needs to be done.]
Russia's establishments
A 50,000 word article on Russia accidentally was lost forever by this author, so a much shorter, occasionally-expanded summary will have to do. Readers who have paid attention to ISGP's Superclass Index will notice that there's a separate index for Russia. While the West has a liberal-globalist, conservative and Zionist superclass, with the conservative one being controlled opposition and also some questions to be asked in this regard about the Zionist one, Russia has 4 basic establishments it appears:
- The traditional think tank elite, which has largely been ignored since Putin took power. They involve men as Yevgeny Primakov, Sergei Karaganov, Georgy and Alexei Arbatov, Andrei Kokoshin and Sergei Rogov, who historically have been involved in various Russian national security think tanks, as well as dealt with western elites through such NGOs as Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and other weapons of mass destruction-related groups, Ted Turner's Better World Society various Carnegie Corporation commissions, the Dartmouth Conferences, the Russian United Nations Association, or as consultants to the Trilateral Commission.
In all fairness though, they likely have no power of their own. It just came from the Gorbachev and Yeltsin governments, and the influence of various western-minded oligarchs, as well as the long-term elite western ties that eventually were forged. Putin retained them as well, despite not exactly making full use of them it appears. - The oligarchs, with a surprisingly dominant Zionist element during the Yeltsin years. Key Jewish and Zionist oligarchs - and generally rather controversial - have included Boris Berezovsky, Berezovsky's old protege, Roman Abramovich; Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Leonid Nevzlin, Mikhail Fridman, Pyotr Aven, Anatoly Chubais, Michael Cherney and Bruce Rappaport.
Other controversial, influencial oligarchs have included Badri Patarkatsishvili and the Uzbek Alisher Usmanov. Yet more have been Vagit Alekperov, Viktor Vekselberg and Rem Vyakhirev. - Putin's more nationalist "Petersburgers", who worked for him in the 1990s in the office of Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of Saint Petersburg from 1991 to 1996. Names include Dmitry Medvedev, Alexey Miller, Igor Sechin, Andrey Kostin and Sergei Ivanov.
- An ultra-right/left-wing and nationalist military "Siloviki" aspect. During the first Yeltsin term these were represented by such men as defense minister Pavel Grachev and security head General Alexander Korzhakov. Putin purged these top-level Siloviki elements, but even five years into his presidency, he still was busy removing his bureacracy of mid level Siloviki-thought. 2 In the process he was holding the middle ground between this group and the globalist-minded oligarchs.
"[Grachev:] Seventeen-year-old boys are dying with happy smiles on their faces ... [Stepashin:] And now our air force is carrying out the whole program, paying no mind to the peacemakers in Moscow, isn't that right, Pavel Sergeyevich [Grachev]?"" 1
In this sense, ISGP, despite expanding the model to "unmentionable" globalist and Zionist elites operating across borders, would have to agree with Stratfor's analysis of the situation in Russia in the early 2000s:
"For a few years now, STRATFOR has seen two types of power players at the core of Russian national politics: the business and more reform-minded oligarchs, and the nationalist, more conservative siloviki. [They are] from either St. Petersburg, where Russian President Vladimir Putin hails from, or anywhere else. Since coming to power, Putin has sought to balance the competing interests of the oligarchs and siloviki while gradually installing an increasing number of known and trusted St. Petersburgers into key positions of influence." 3
In the end, Putin and his security services suppressed all other establishments, including the Zionist-oriented Solntsevskaya mafia that has apparently been quite close with many oligarchs and some think tank elitists. The boards of the Russian Geographical Society, founded in 1845; and the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) quite quickly show who the oligarchs and other persons are who have sworn loyalty to Putin.
The takeover of Putin and his "St. Petersburgers"
From May 7, 2000, when Putin was instated as president of Russia, he and his "St. Petersburg clique" quickly put their people into oil and gas companies Gazprom and Rosneft, if only to make sure that profits would go to the state instead of being siphoned off by the oligarch elite. Gazprom was headed from 2000 on by "St. Petersburger" Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's alter-ego for years to come; and "St. Petersburger" Alexey Miller. "St. Peterburger" Andrey Kostin joined the board of Rosneft no later than 2002. "St. Petersburger" Igor Sechin became supervisory chair of Rosneft in 2004, and executive chair in 2012. In 2003 Putin took away Yukos from Mikhail Khodokovsky, a pro-globalist political opponent of Putin who joined the board of George Soros' International Crisis Group in 2002, and founded the Open Russia Foundation in 2002 with Lord Jacob Rothschild and Henry Kissinger. Famously, Khodokovsky's shares in Yukos transferred to Lord Rothschild upon his arrest by Putin.
Putin and his "St. Petersburgers" also found it necessary to immediately - in mid 2000 - to take control of Boris Berezovsky's Russian Public Television (ORT) and Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV, as these (Jewish) oligarchs (too) emerged as Putin critics. Not only did ORT amd NTV attack Putin over the Kursk incident 4 or the War in Chechnya 5, on March 24, 2000, two days before the elections, NTV even aired an investigation into the Ryazan apartment bombing of the fall 1999 in its talk show Independent Investigation, suggesting that Putin and the FSB/KGB were responsible for the bombing. 6 Berezovsky would start making the same claim 7, as would George Soros. 8
A third industry that Putin and his "St. Petersburgers" took over, and the most overlooked one it appears, is Russia's defense industry:
- One key firm is the United Aircraft Corporation, which, since 2006, controls famous military aircraft builders Sukhoi, MiG and Tupolev: "St. Petersburger" Sergei Ivanov was put in as chairman.
- Another key firm is Almaz-Antey, producer of the long-feared anti-aircraft SAM missile sites: the S-300, S-400 and S-500: "St. Petersburger" Viktor Ivanov was appointed chairman in 2002.
- In 2002 Putin also ordered the restructuring of Mashinostroyenia, developer of the hypersonic Oniks/Yakhont, BrahMos and BrahMos II cruise missiles that form an extreme threat to American war ships, most notably to aircraft carriers. Oniks reaches speeds of Mach 2.5, the improved BrahMos flies at Mach 3 and the stealthy BrahMos II is expected to reach a speed of Mach 8. The Oniks alone forms such a threat to U.S. warships that in July 2013 Israel attacked a Syrian warehouse where newly-arrived Russian missiles were alleged to be stored.
Putin's economic reforms
As is well known, a key part of Putin's economic "reform" was the reigning in of the oligarchs during a key July 28, 2000 meeting. 9 Oligarchs who promised to pay their (low) taxes and wouldn't undermine Putin's rule, would be allowed to do business. All the others would have their businesses confiscated, be send to prison, or, as it appears, end up dead. As for a more complete list iof economic reforms Putin initiated:
- Only removed oligarchs who opposed him through media ownership or through political activism.
- Introduced a flat tax of 13% for everyone, where it used to be a progressive tax between 12 and 30%. This led to the rich actually paying their taxe, but taxes still increased for the poor by 1%. (meanwhile, it’s 15% tax for above 5 million p. 30% tax for foreigners on Russia-sourced income).
- promoted a drop in the business tax from 35 percent to 24% to avoid tax evasion.
- Pushed for a law that allowed Russians to buy and sell land. Was blocked from being purchased by foreigners.
- Tried to increase commercial bank lending to small business.
- Vastly decrease government regulations to.
- Reduced the number of laws and tried to reduce the mammoth Soviet bureacracy.
Putin the quiet globalist?
Over the years questions have been raised by this author if Putin actually is operating fully independently from the seemingly-all-powerful globalist movement. We can look at serious peculiarities surrounding western conservative "populists", Eastern European "populists" as Viktor Orban and Janez Jansa; or Zionist leaders of Israel as Benjamin Netanyahu. Putin is a bit different and needs to be deeper investigated still, but he has definitely helped bury western conspiracies for years and has mixed himself into immigration and LGBTQ debates in ways that for the time being lack considerable substance - especially the immigration aspect - and follow a traditional, dogmatic "conservative" standpoint. 10 In that regard, one could also wonder what message it sends to let the black Quincy Promes continue to play at Spartak Moscow, despite being charged in his home country, the Netherlands, for attempted murder and the trafficking of more than a ton of cocaine. War or no war? Extradition treaties or not? Any political leader even remotely sensical, moral, or anti-immigration would unlikely allow such a thing.
We can also look at the typically western "alt right"-propaganda and conspiracy disinformation pushed by Russia's "state media" Russia Today (RT). Since 2013, 9/11-no-planer Abby Martin has brought on nothing but heavy-duty western conspiracy disinformers and "liberal CIA" propagandists on her RTV show 'Breaking The Set'. 11 A decade later, in 2022, while fully banned by western internet providers during the Russia-Ukraine War, RTV's frontpage was adorned with "conservative CIA"-type propaganda on Canada's trucker protests. We could discuss Sputnik News too, but it's not particularly impressive as a new agency either. It can be important for balance to the dominant western liberal media, similar to Google-banned conservative outlets as Newsmax and World Net Daily, but that's about it.
Let's also not forget in this regard that China's dominant Baidu search engine has banned ISGP much more severely (it literally does not exist in any way, shape, or form) than anti-China-type conspiracy disinformers Alex Jones and Jeff Rense - yet another peculiarity. On the other hand, no search engine is friendlier to ISGP at the moment than Russia's Yandex - and Sputnik did at one point link to ISGP. So there's that.
Another interesting observation this author made in May 2021 is that Luiza Rozova (also known as Elizaveta Krivonogikh), in 2020 exposed as a secret daughter of Putin by American elite- and "liberal CIA"-affiliated 12 Russian media outlet Proekt, is strongly drawn towards western trends. On her Instagram, on which she always kept her (extremely-Putin-like) face hidden, she followed, amongst others, actress Megan Fox and Fai Khadra, the long-time model bestie of Kendall Jenner in particular, but also the Kardashian sisters. She displayed some of the same likes and fashion trends: from astrology to snakeskin to Cupids (Megan Fox, Gigi Hadid, Kylie Jenner, Madison Beer, etc. displayed them or variations from Boys Lie in that period) to YSL to Alexander Wang. It's quite clear she wants to walk the runways of major New York fashion shows. Alexander Wang may have given porn star Lana Rhoades a shot at the prompting of Fox, the Jenners and their secret friends as Rihanna, but it is doubtful he would be able to legally do that with Putin's daughter. Especially after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Speaking of which, Rozova stopped posting on her Instagram on October 1, 2021, suspected due to posts that helped reveal she was situated in Monaco. 13 On March 7, 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine and a hail of heavy political trolling 14, the account was deleted 15 and Rozova disappeared from public sight.
Of course, his daughters' likes don't exactly immediately reflect on Putin. If anything, it shows he didn't try to control her too much. It does make one wonder and worry though if the children of powerful foreign leaders are purposely targeted by the globalist movement surrounding the likes of George Soros for "conversion" away from "anti-globalist thought". As a teen girl living in Monaco apparently worth $100 million, it's not too odd seeing Rozova gravitate towards expensive fashion, but all the fashion brands that she has been promoting are heavily tied into western elites. Also, Beyonce and her husband Jay Z, who discovered Rihanna and are close to the others just mentioned, are known to have partied with George Soros. 16 And it would be right up his alley to recruit someone as Rozova with a few quiet fashion deals and connections.
This chapter will be expanded in the future.
Timeline: 1980s
These timelines still are very incomplete, both with entries and sources. It won't be productive to write a summarizing article until all the different establishments, other players, and important events have been mapped. The transition of Russia from the Soviet Union to the Putin era is an extraordinarily complex historical period.
| March 11, 1985 | Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the leader of the Soviet Union, elected by the Politburo. He is a very moderate leader, forbidding the display of pictures of himself in public and speaks to people in the streets. His wife is his closest advisor. Through various promotions, including of Boris Yeltsin, within a year Gorbachev is able to establish a dominant position within the Politburo. Hence, by 1986, he starts speaking more and more of "perestroika", a set of reforms of society and the economy to combat the Soviet Union's low productivity, poor work ethic, and inferior quality goods. |
| June 1985 | Ted Turner establishes the Better World Society, or in any case reveals its existence to the world. Maurice Strong is founding president. 17 United Nations under-secretary general Yasushi Akashi is a founding board member. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and Soviet Central Committee member Dr. Georgy Arbatov join the board within a number of months. Arbatov becomes the first to introduce Ted Turner to Mikhail Gorbachev. They meet in Moscow to discuss a way to end the Cold War, some time before the July 1986 Goodwill Games. 18 |
| Mid 1985 | Ted Turner visits the Soviet Union, including Soviet Georgia and goes climbing and hunting in the Caucasus, bagging a mountain goat. 19 It is likely that during this trip or surrounding it, he was first introduced to Mikhail Gorbachev. It is actually not clear to this author when exactly in 1985 Turner visited, but looking at how cold Russia is in winter, we can guesstimate. |
| Early 1986 | Yeltsin begins attacking Gorbackev at Politburo meetings, complaining that his reforms aren't quick- and far-reaching enough. Gorbachev mainly considers Yeltsin a self-promoter. At the same time, on the right, communist hardliners are becoming increasingly wary of Gorbachev. |
| July 5-20, 1986 | Mikhail Gorbachev gives the opening speech at Ted Turner's Goodwill Games in Moscow, calling for peace and warning against nuclear war. Future top oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky creates a cultural program for the games and acts as a stage director. 20 As the US and USSR have been boycotting the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, this event marks the first time in ten years that athletes from Soviet Union and United States compete against each other. The Russians bans U.S.-allies Israel and South Korea, however. Financially the event is not successful and Turner loses over $10 million on it. |
| Sep. 1986 | Gorbachev makes a speech in which he embraces limited market economy. |
| 1987 | Gorbachev adds "glasnost" ("openness") to his policy, which includes the release of all political dissidents, stimulating political debate in the media, opening archives to past state secrets, and a softer approach to the West. |
| 1987 | Future top oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky sets up INFEKS in partnership with U.S. PR firm APCO, owned by law firm Arnold & Porter. INFEKS is aimed at consulting foreign companies looking to invest in Russia. A year later, Gusinsky sets up his Most Bank/Group, again in partnership with APCO. |
| 1987 | George Soros sets up an Open Society Institute branch in the Soviet Union. The name is unknown to this author at the moment. |
| 1988 | Emerging privatization czar and future oligarch builder Anatoly Chubais meets with (radical, pro-big business monopolist) Western neoliberal economists at the 1988 conference of the Centre for Research into Communist Economies (CRCE), a project of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London that promotes the work of Friedrich von Hayek, Thomas Friedman and Sir Anthony Fisher in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Within a year, these men also get in touch wioth Yegor Gaidar and "practically all the [emerging] reformers in the Soviet Union." |
| 1988 | With Gorbachev and perestroika on its way, George Soros proposes to set up an international task force to try and set up a limited market sector in the Soviet economy, which over time would then be gradually expanded. Prime minister Vladimir Ryzhkov ordered the heads of Gosplan, Gosnab and other major institutions to particpate. Romano Prodi was part of the European side of the commission. Eventually it becomes clear to Soros that the Soviet system is "too diseased" to nurture any kind of free market embryo. |
| 1989 | Vladimir Yakovlev sets up Russia's first private newspaper, Kommersant, heading it until 1999. He ends up a director of Sistema and getting involved with a variety of oligarchs. |
Timeline: 1990s
These timelines still are very incomplete, both with entries and sources. It won't be productive to write a summarizing article until all the different establishments, other players, and important events have been mapped. The transition of Russia from the Soviet Union to the Putin era is an extraordinarily complex historical period.
| Aug. 1990 | Publication of the Soros-backed Shatalin Plan. It calls for a radical, quick transition to a market economy for the Soviet Union within 500 days, market prices, mass privatization, integration with the world economic system, and a release of the Soviet Union's East European vassal states. The plan is proposed by the Soros-supported Grigory Yavlinsky - later a trustee and advisor of Soros' International Crisis Group - and further developed by Stanislav Shatalin, an economic advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev. To promote the plan, Soros has Yavlinsky and Shatalin fly over to the 1990 IMF/World Bank meeting. Yeltsin is fully supportive, but Gorbachev and the Supreme Soviet eventually opting for a more gradual approach. |
| 1990 | Formation of Trans Commodities by Kislin and the Chernoy brother. It serves as an early vehicle to take over the aluminium an early vehicle for the takeover of the metals industry as it was being privatized. |
| Sep. 1991 | The WEF organizes a conference in St. Petersburg, chaired by mayor Anatoly Sobchak, Putin's mentor at the time. This is 10 days after the failed coup. |
| Oct. 1991 | Chubais becomes chair of the newly-formed State Committee on the Management of State Property (GKI). Price liberalization and control of the government's budget are the top two priorities. Privatization is still an issue of debate, as many think it's best to first fix macroeconomic problems, and maybe legal frameworks. |
| Nov. 1992 | Chubais sets up the Moscow-based Russian Privatization Center (RPC). Soros-backed Bilderberg and Davos economist Anders Aslund and Harvard's Andrei Shleifer become a directors. USAID, the European Union, European governments and the Japanese government provided this institute with millions. It effectively served as a governmental economic policy unit, set up by Yeltsin's presidential decree, over which the Russian Duma had no say. Harvard's HIID under Jeffrey Sachs is its American branch. |
| Jan.? 1993 | Anatoly Chubais and Mikhail Khodorkovsky are visiting their first World Economic Forum in Davos meeting. At this point George Soros is not part of the meetings yet. |
| Feb. 23, 1993 | Vladimir Gusinsky sets up Segodnya, the second private newspaper in Russia after Kommersant. |
| Sep. 1993 | Over 20% of Russian industrial workers are employed by privatized firms. Service firms are even more widely privatized. Over 60% of Russia's population support privatization. |
| Oct. 1993 | Vladimir Gusinsky sets up the NTV television channel. The channel is critical of the amount of violence used by the Russians in the First Chechen War. It heavily favored the reelection of Yeltsin in 1996. By 1999 NTV had an audience of 102 million, covering about 70% of Russia's territory, and was available in various former Soviet republics. It opposed the Putin campaign in 2000. In fact, on March 24, 2000, two days before the elections, NTV aired an investigation of the Ryazan apartment bombing of the fall 1999 in its talk show Independent Investigation, suggesting Putin and the FSB/KGB were responsible for the bombing. |
| Jan.? 1994 | Anatoly Chubais is at his second Davos meeting in Switserland. |
| Apr. 5, 1994 | Assassination of Georgian crime boss Otari Kvantrishvili by a sniper, later found to belong to the Orekhovskaya gang, at the time the junior partner in an alliance with Solntsevskaya since 1989. At the time of his death, Kvantrishvili was working to undermine the giant aluminum export company Trans-World Group, belonging to Jewish oligarchs Michael Cherney (a.k.a. Mikhail Chernoy) and his brother Lev. Anton Malevsky, head of the Izmailovskaya gang, is a partner of the Cherneys. Future top oligarch Oleg Deripaska is a protege of the Cherneys in the aluminum business and also a partner with Malevsky. The Cherneys reportedly receive Mossad protection. The Cherneys and Anton Malevsky will flee to Israel in 1994 after an investigation is opened against them in Russia. Cherney is allowed to remain an Israeli citizen, but Malevsky will be deprived of citizenship in 1998. Sam Kislin is a U.S.-based money launderer for the Cherneys in this period. According to Russian authorities, the Cherneys in the early 1990s defrauded the Russian Central Bank of more than $100 million through an elaborate scam involving dozens of fictitious companies. The brothers then used the funds as seed money as they and a London-based holding company, Trans World Group, through a maze of offshore companies and alliances, rapidly gained control of Russia's aluminum industry and acquired a large stake in the processing and distribution of other metals and petroleum products. "The Aluminum Wars" by the Russian press, as many businessmen, most of whom opposed the Cherneys takeover, were killed. Kislin said that the brothers obtained licenses "to buy the aluminum for $10 and sell it for $1,500" by bribing top Russian officials. "The corruption is unbelievable," he said. And, he said, he severed his business relation with Mikhail Cherney. Lev Cherney has used three Arik Kislin residences as addresses on at least three different occasions from June 1993 to April 1997. Michael Cherney also used those same residences as addresses at least four times from April 1993 to March 1997. 21 |
| July 23 - Aug. 7, 1994 | Ted Turner stages his Goodwill Games in Saint Petersburg. It is the first time that he meets Putin 22, who serves as a key aide to Saint Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak. |
| Jan.? 1995 | Boris Berezovsky is at his first World Economic Forum in Davos meeting. Anatoly Chubais has been visiting annually since 1993. |
| Feb. 12, 1995 | The Washington Post reports that "liberal CIA"-funded outfit Internews Network is reaching out to local news stations across Russia, setting up "seminars in journalism, business planning, advertising and technical issues" and flying "selected managers to the United States for additional training." The article specifically mentions Soros and USAID as "primary" financiers of Internews. |
| March 1, 1995 | The new director of Russian Public Television (ORT), revolutionary Perestroika-era TV host Vladislav Listyev, is gunned down, immediately after he makes work of cutting out all "middlemen" from ORT's ad publication. |
| 1995 | 40,000 people are murdered in Russia this year, with another 70,000 having disappeared. This a murder rate over three times higher than New York City. 23 |
| 1995 | Rothschild, ING Barings consulted by yeltsin gov to sell Sviazinvest. Withdrawn due to criticism foreigners would take over. |
| Aug. 5, 1995 | Businessman Ivan Kivelidi, the 1993 founder and head of the Russian Business Round Table, dies after having been poisoned with Novichok a few days before. This hyper-potent, top-secret chemical warfare nerve agent is later found to have been illegally sold to mafia elements by top chemical warfare researcher Leonid Rink. According to RBRT ethics panel head and former Gorbachev economics minister, Vladimir Sherbakov, the RBRT blocked 10 companies from joining their group just a month earlier, because "are connected to the criminal world." Over 1994-1995 in total nine members of the RBRT were killed, all suspected to have been the result of the association's anti-mafia stance. 24 |
| Aug. 8, 1995 | MP and well-known television journalist Aleksandr Lyubimov, who is present at Kivelidi's funeral, says to the media, "The state does nothing to defend people who are a little bit better off than others. The police only come around to collect taxes. I can't rely on them. I have to pay for my own personal security." |
| Nov. 3, 1995 | Surgutneftegaz, Russia's 5th largest oil company, is auctioned in the remote Siberian town of Surgut to the company's own pension fund. Only two bidders are present, after a third applicant was disqualified over paper work and the town's airport mysteriously shut down that day. |
| Dec. 1995 | Group Menatep of Mikhail Khodorkovsky snatches up the Yukos oil company for $310 million in a two-stage rigged auction in which Bank Menatep also is one of the managers. Yukos, in reality, is worth about $5 billion. Previously, Khodorkovsky, apart from his business enterprises, was chairman of the Investment Fund for Assistance to the Fuel and Oil Industry (in 1992) and deputy minister of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy (briefly in 1993). |
| Dec. 1995 | Boris Berezovsky's Finance Oil Corp. (FNK) is able to gain control of the freshly created oil company Sibneft for $100 million. At the time, the real value of the company is estimated around $600 million. Roman Abramovich is Berezovsky's partner in buying Sibneft. In May 1997 FNK is able to fend off a take over of Vladimir Potanin's Oneximbank, after which ownership becomes more official. |
| Early Feb. 1996 | Russian oligarchs Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Fridman, Vladimir Potanin and Anatoly Chubais all are part of the World Economic Meeting in Davos. George Soros, who supports reformist candidate Grigory Yavlinsky, tells Berezovsky that he and the oligarchs might actually be killed if Victor Cherm is elected instead of Yeltsin. In part because of these statements, as Berezovsky later recalls, he and the other oligarchs present form the "Davos Pact" in which they start to heavily finance Yeltsin's campaign. 25 Others support the latter notion, but give more credit to Berezovsky as the main organizer in January, which makes sense looking at how the entire oligarch clique came to Davos in the first place. 26 |
| Apr. 27, 1996 | Publication of the "Letter of Thirteen" in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, an event which even anno Dec. 2021 doesn't have an English Wikipedia... The letter is addressed to presidential candidate Boris Yeltsin, asks for a degree of political compromise with the left, and contains 8 points aimed at overcoming the country's crises. Furthermore, it calls for "freedom, citizenship, justice, law and truth" and is signed by:
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| Jul. 3, 1996 | Yeltsin wins the re-elections due to the enormous help of the oligarchs. |
| Oct. 29, 1996 | Berezovsky says in an interview with the Financial Times: "We hired Anatoly Chubais. We invested huge amounts of money in the election campaign. We secured Yeltsin's election victory. Now we have the right to assume posts in the government and enjoy the fruits of our victory." He named bankers who controlled half of the Russian economy: Khodorkovsky, Potanin, Alexandr Smolensky, Vladimir Gussinsky, Vladmir Vinogradov, Mikhail Friedman, and himself." |
| Nov. 1996 | Boris Berezovsky is host to a party celebrating the opening of a Red Square boutique of Estée Lauder cosmetics. Ronald Lauder, a globalist billionaire Zionist; top superclass member Thomas Pickering, and President Boris Yeltsin's wife attend the party. |
| April 1997 | Boris Nemtsov calls together the "big 7" oligarchs and tells them that there will be no more rigging of auctions. |
| July 1997: | Boris Nemtsov auctions Sviazinvest, but insists on relatively high price, because the Yeltsin government needs to pay 4.4 billion in wages, especially those of an increasingly disgruntled military. The two top bidders, Vladimir Gusinsky and Vladimir Potanin, went to meet Chubais to work out a lower price. Worried that Potanin was becoming a threat to his own business empire, Berezovsky was present as well, although officially as Deputy Secretary of the Security Council, there to "guard" against criminal or foreign influences on the auction. Chubais, generally considred more compromising, refused to intervene though and the auction continues with the original price set by Nemtsov. Eventually the goes to Potanin's Oneximbank and his partners Morgan Stanley, Morgan Grenfell in Germany, and George Soros' Quantum Fund. Gusinsky, allied with Alfa Bank, Credit Suisse First Boston, and Telefonica de Espana S.A. lose. The immediate result is a media war in which Gusinsky, aided by the ORT news station-owning Berezovsky, uses his Segodnya newspaper and NTV news station to attack Potanin, Nemtsov, Chubais, and Chubais' protege in privatization, Alfred Koch. Potanin retaliates through his Komsomolskaia Pravda with articles as 'Enough of Bandit Capitalism', somewhat hypocritically explaining how the schemes of Gusinsky and Berezovsky were pushing the Russian masses back towards radical, Soviet-type, anti-capitalist forces. 27 |
| Aug. 5, 1997 | Vladimir Potanin's Oneximbank wins the government auction of Norilsk Nickel. Considerable international criticism erupts, because a subsidiary of Oneximbank managed the bids, with foreign corporations excluded, and "only one competitor, a little-known Russian industrial consortium." 28 The reason that the domestic criticism was so much less compared to the auction of Sviazinvest the month before, is due to the fact that neither Berezovsky nor Gusinsky were interested in the "problem-ridden mining and smelting giant" 29, and therefore saw no reason to use their media empires to attack the sale. |
| Nov. 5, 1997 | Boris Berezovsky is dismissed from his Security Council. |
| Aug. 1998 | A major stock market crash takes place. The media and other holdings of Berezovsky and Gusinsky soon are worth only a fraction of what it was before the crash. Potanin's Oneximbank is forced to close shop. Soros sees his $1 billion investment in Sviazinvest crash to just $100 million, soon referring to it as "the worst investment he had ever made." Chubais was able to be appointed as CEO of UES, Russia’s electrical monopoly, became an oligarch of his own as a result, and was about the only one better off after the crash. 30 |
| Feb. 1999 | Oct. 2000 issue, Vanity Fair: "Last February, while Putin was acting president, three Family-friendly oligarchs—Roman Abramovich, a principal owner of Sibneft Oil, media mogul Boris Berezovsky, acting through his company Logovaz, and a Siberian magnate—ended up with more than 60 percent of Russia’s multibillion-dollar aluminum reserve in a questionable takeover that was found not to violate the country’s anti-monopoly laws." |
| Dec. 1999 | Participants of a meeting at the Herots Hotel in Eilat Israel include: Solntsevskaya mafia ally Semion Mogilevich; aluminum kingpin oligarch Michael Cherney and his protege in the aluminum business Oleg Deripaska, who essentially have been leaders for years of the Izmailovskaya mafia; Mogilevich lieutenant Vadim Rabinovich, a leading Zionist activist from Ukraine; Oleg Taranov, head of the Ukrainia National Agency for the Management of State Property; and Andrey Derkach, son of the head of the security service of Ukraine, Leonid Derkach [under Kuchma]. 31 |
Timeline: 2000s
These timelines still are very incomplete, both with entries and sources. It won't be productive to write a summarizing article until all the different establishments, other players, and important events have been mapped. The transition of Russia from the Soviet Union to the Putin era is an extraordinarily complex historical period.
| March 26, 2000 | Putin, as the official protege of Yeltsin, is elected the new president of Russia with 55.5% of the votes. The Soros-supported Grigory Yavlinsky - almost immediately after a trustee and advisor of Soros' International Crisis Group - only receives 6% of the votes. |
| May 7, 2000 | Putin officialy becomes president of Russia. |
| May 2000 | Ted Turner and Putin both attended the opening of the Mikhail Gorbachev's presidential library in Moscow. 32 |
| Late May, 2000 | Boris Berezovsky resigns from the Duma, complaining about Putin's rapid centralization of power, saying he does "not want to be involved in the country's ruin and the restoration of an authoritarian regime." In reality Berezovsky is worried more about Putin's criticism and eventual crackdown on the oligarch system of the 1990s. 33 |
| Jun. 13, 2000 | Vladimir Gusinsky is arrested in Russia. Putin is on vacation and claims to have no knowledge of the arrest. Gorbachev claims to the media that it must be an act op people looking to discredit Putin. Meanwhile, in a letter to Russia's prosecutor-general 17 businessmen call for the immediate release of Gusinsky:
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| July 28, 2000 | Putin's notorious summit with the oligarchs in which he told them to pay their taxes and stay out of politics. According to key organizer Boris Nemtsov, the meeting marks "the end of the oligarchy." 34 Those present included Gazprom chief Rem Vyakhirev, Yukos head Mikhail Khororkhovsky, Siberian-Ural Aluminum Co. owner Viktor Vekselberg, and Lukoil's Vagit Alekperov. Berezovsky and Gusinsky were taken off the original list of invitees; so was Roman Abramovich. 35 |
| Aug. 2000 | Berezovsky's ORT news station criticizes Putin over his handling of the Kursk submarine sinking. Putin tells Boris Berezovsky to sell his ORT or prepare to go to prison. |
| Jan. 2001 | Berezovsky sells his 49% ownership of ORT to his former protege, Roman Abramovich, who has remained loyal to Putin. |
| Apr. 2001 | Take-over of Vladimir Gusinky's NTV. |
| 2001 | Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Lord Jacob Rothschild and Henry Kissinger are three of five founding trustees of the Open Russia Foundation. Leonid Nevzlin considers himself a co-foun der as well. |
| Mid 2002 | Zbigniew Brzezinki and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of Group Menatep and the Yukos oil concern, both join the board of trustees of George Soros' International Crisis Group. Khodorkovsky would disappear here after his 2003 arrest by Putin. |
| 2003 | After Putin has Mikhail Khodorkovsky arrested, Khodorkovsky's Yukos shares are automatically passed on to Lord Jacob Rothschild. Boith men, including Henry Kissinger, set up the Open Russia Foundation in 2001. |
| 2011 | Leonid Nevzlin, the former deputy of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Yukos and a co-founder with Henry Kissinger and Lord Jacob Rothschild in the Open Russia Foundation back in 2001, buys a 20% stake in Haaretz, the most "lefty", pro-Palestine newspaper in Israel. |
Notes
- May 20, 1999, Moscow Times, 'Season of Discontent: Stepashin Is A Hard-Liner For All Seasons': "Chubais, who has emerged from the shadows and been extraordinarily active lately, characterized Stepashin this way: "A doctor of science, a professor, a trained lawyer, a genuine Petersburg intellectual." Chubais possesses an amazing capacity to lie convincingly and with inspiration for whatever strikes him as politically expedient at a given moment. As for Stepashin, I remember this "Petersburg intellectual," absurdly dressed in loose overalls, at the memorable "drunken" news conference in Grozny in January 1995, during which Defense Minister Pavel Grachev uttered the monstrous phrase: "Seventeen-year-old boys are dying with happy smiles on their faces." And Stepashin, obsequiously addressing Grachev, stated: "And now our air force is carrying out the whole program, paying no mind to the peacemakers in Moscow, isn't that right, Pavel Sergeyevich?" The air force carried out Stepashin's whole program and Russia lost tens of thousands of citizens. For how much of this can Yeltsin alone be asked to answer?"
- May 21, 2005, Stratfor, 'Russia: A Merger Fails, A Power Struggle Is Revealed -- Part 2': " Though Putin has managed to get like-minded siloviki into positions of power inside the Kremlin, sources in the administration say he has yet to do the same at mid-level government positions. The middle ranks are full of siloviki opposed to Putin's Westernizing approach and his political concessions to the West."
- Ibid.
- In 1996 Yeltsin was forced to fire Korzhakov, Grachev and other allies in order to get support from the oligarchs controlling the main TV channels and the economy at that point.
- April 16, 2000, George Soros for The Guardian, 'The means to an end'.
- July 7, 2000, Radio Free Europe, 'Why Putin's Pet Oligarch Is Stirring the Pot'; July 29, 2000, Los Angeles Times, 'Putin Reaches Out to Oligarchs'.
- Oct. 22, 2021, Washington Post, 'Putin slams ‘cancel culture’ and trans rights, calling teaching gender fluidity ‘crime against humanity’'.
- imdb.com/title/tt3098562/ (accessed: Sep. 11, 2023).
- tcij.org/person/roman-badanin/ (accessed: Sep. 13, 2023): "Roman Badanin is the founder and editor-in-chief of Proekt, a non-profit investigative media organisation based in Russia. Previously, he worked [for] the Russian edition of Forbes magazine as editor-in-chief. ... Roman has been affiliated with the Gorbachev Foundation... and was a Stanford John S. Knight international fellow [of the Knight Foundation]..." Funding sources of Proekt aren't known atm.
- Dec. 22, 2021, Daily Mail, 'Has Putin gagged his 'lovechild' after she bragged about her mother's Monaco penthouse?'.
- March 1, 2022, Daily Mail, 'Putin's 'love child', 18, is trolled online over Ukraine war, as followers ask her: 'Are you sitting in the bunker like a rat?'.
- March 7, 2022, Daily Mail, 'Putin's 'love child', 18, closes her social media after a wave of extreme trolling over Russia's invasion of Ukraine'.
- Jan. 1, 2009, New York Post, 'Party Guy Soros is Afloat': "He partied the night away with two young brunettes aboard fellow billionaire Paul Allen's yacht, Octopus, in St. Barts. ... The shindig aboard the yacht had a hip-hop flavor, as rap mogul Russell Simmons, Run-DMC's Rev. Run Simmons, Jay-Z and Beyonce were among the revelers. Also... Eddie Murphy, Jon Bon Jovi..."
- June 24, 2001, Time, 'Less Than Goodwill Games'.
- Oct. 5, 1998, Baltimore Sun, 'Russia's oligarchy tumbles downward': "Vladimir Gusinsky, a one-time theater director, produced a cultural program for the 1986 Goodwill Games and in 1989 put his experience to use setting up Most Bank."
- Dec. 14, 1999, Knut Royce for the Center for Public Integrity, 'FBI Tracked Alleged Russian Mob Ties of Giuliani Campaign Supporter'; publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=323 (accessed: March 13, 2006).
- March 5, 2001, Fortune, 'Turner's New Game: Russian Roulette': "... the two have met twice before, once when Turner staged the Goodwill Games in St. Petersburg (Putin was then a key aide to the city's governor) and again last May, when Turner attended the opening of Mikhail Gorbachev's presidential library."
- Dec. 30, 1996, Forbes, 'Godfather of the Kremlin?'.
- Aug. 9, 1995, New York Times, 'Moscow Journal; To the Business Risks in Russia, Add Poisoning'; 2005, Richard Wright and Mitchell Miller , 'Encyclopedia of Criminology: Volume I', p. 1454; April 10, 2018, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project / occrp.org, 'Novichok Has Already Killed'.
- April 16, 2000, George Soros for The Guardian, 'The means to an end'.
- March 17, 1999, Scotland Herald, 'Rise and fall of the last Russian oligarch': "It was Berezovsky who, in January 1996, summoned the six other most powerful oligarchs - Vladimir Potanin, Vladimir Vinogradov, Mikhail Friedman, Aleksandr Smolensky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Vladimir Gusinsky - to a "support Yeltsin" meeting at Davos, Switzerland, during the World Economic Forum ... to prevent Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov [from being elected]."
- Aug. 6, 1997, New York Times, 'Russian Bank With Sway Wins Auction'; 2003, Marshall I. Goldman, 'The Piratization of Russia: Russian Reform Goes Awry'.
- Aug. 6, 1997, New York Times, 'Russian Bank With Sway Wins Auction'.
- Ibid.
- 2003, Marshall I. Goldman, 'The Piratization of Russia: Russian Reform Goes Awry'.
- April 6, 2004, Compromat.ru (original from Stringer-agency.ru), ('The last fight?').
- March 5, 2001, Fortune, 'Turner's New Game: Russian Roulette'.
- July 18, 2000, Time magazine, 'Why Putin's Pet Oligarch Is Stirring the Pot'.
- July 29, 2000, Los Angeles Times, 'Putin Reaches Out to Oligarchs'.
- Ibid. July 7, 2000, Radio Free Europe, 'Why Putin's Pet Oligarch Is Stirring the Pot'.