Skip to main content

Putin tries a judo throw

Since Vladimir Putin "resurfaced" on Monday, the most feverish speculation has died down. He has not been actually overthrown. However there is little doubt that his regime is facing serious problems.

In a sense we can know this by the renewed blizzard of propaganda and misinformation being put out by the Kremlin lie machine: reporting and exaggerating splits between EU and NATO partners about the current Russian sanctions regime, for example. Then there is the report that Putin was prepared to use nuclear weapons over Crimea. Meanwhile the entire Russian northern fleet has gone on alert. The message is clear "I am dangerous, don't mess with me".

Yet as some sources report that the Russian death toll in Ukraine now significantly exceeds the initial estimates, the fact that it is the Northern fleet is significant- threatening to the NATO exercise in the Baltic, but not a further threat to Ukraine. More to the point it is a distraction for a force which is rumoured to be more disaffected with the current regime.

The split between the Chechens and the FSB is clearly real, and some forces that might be persuaded to take sides- including the armed forces- are being given jobs to do while the struggle continues.

Sooner or later Putin will have to take sides, and when he does, his regime will be in serious peril.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch