Witold Juras, author of best-selling “Demons of Russia” and Hironi Grala in their book, will paint the image of Putin and the Russian elite of power: those who, with Vladimir Putin, co-ordinate Russia today, thereby liable for the attack on Ukraine (description of the publisher).
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Chapter II
Kremlin
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The Moral Life of the Kremlin
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Witold Jurash: Was there not a single minute erstwhile a female could scope for power?
Jerome Gral: At any point, in order to warm up the image and stir, cover up the tracks, Putin's surroundings have spread rumors that his successor will be a woman. It was convinced that she would run for president of the Russian Federation, Matvijenko. Valentina was overjoyed, believed she had the chance, and unfortunately believed a fewer weeks without leaving the alcohol line. erstwhile she yet woke up, it turned out that the candidate anointed was Medvedev. And the deputy politician came to tell her about it: “Valentino Ivanovna, no host decided, Dmitri Anatolyevich will be our candidate.” Matwijenko first got a hysterical laughter due to the fact that she thought she was joking with her, and then she started screaming, “That small guy?” It happened at the open door. As she realized it was true, she said she threw a carafe at the wall. It spread and then it was absolutely clear that they were not allowed to be held in a single order of power. The government on Medvedev could not be taken. So giving her the position of head of the advanced home of Parliament was the apparent spite of Putin towards Medvedev.
WJ: It is interesting how the Russians treat women present in Western politics. I can tell a joke, which, as colleagues from the EU Delegation in Moscow told me, was told by Catherine Ashton, the advanced typical of the European Union for abroad Affairs and safety Policy. The level of Russian contempt for her was remarkable. Lavrov asked Mrs Ashton if she knew what relations between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine looked like, and then said that imagine an orgy, during which Vladimir Vladimirovich sits on the throne, Julia Tymoshenko satisfies him orally, and at the back is Aleksandr Lukashenko. And Alexander Lukashenko, half an hr wet, says, “I am very tired, Vladimir Vladimirovich, possibly we should control places”, to which Putin answers, “Turn around.” Do you even imagine telling a female specified a gag at this level?! It was a regular trick. Telling the sexiest, racist, contemptible jokes.
HG: I'm not entirely amazed by that.
Continuing the women's theme, I think there is only 1 in all Russian politics that is treated so to the end for real and with respect, that is, the head of the central bank of Elvir Nabiullin.
Unquestionably 1 of the most capable chiefs and central bank heads in general worldwide. Many credit her with the fact that, despite sanctions, Russia is in fact able to go through a time of war without any peculiar economical shock.
WJ: I know one, many talking, anecdote about it. This is an anecdote from erstwhile she was a associate of the government and negotiated to buy an energy company in 1 of the countries of confederate Europe. There was a lunch break during the negotiations. After a break, Nabiullin asks her interlocutor if he enjoyed lunch, and erstwhile he hears the same question, he replies that she did not have time to eat herself, due to the fact that her husband came to her and took care of love. This caused the another side to be incapable to focus on the negotiations for another hour, and the minister had a button in her blouse unbuttoned on purpose. And this unbuttoned button is simply a typically Russian play, that's something that most likely won't be understood by Western European and American feminists, namely, that it's not seen in Russia as evidence of subjugation of a female to a man, but as evidence of a woman's strength.
HG: delight note that apart from presidents, it seems that no 1 in Russia has a wife. Wives just don't appear in public reception. Wives only appear erstwhile another taxation return is placed on the table and abruptly it turns out that there are wives who have any solid package. There are children in public more than wives. We look at the children, due to the fact that either children are men and are made by any fathers to win in politics. Patrushev erstwhile suggested creating a fresh noble. We've been in power so long, we've created specified facilities for you that Russia can afford to have nobility. Our children will be the fresh noble. erstwhile Patrushev began preaching, even Putin grabbed his head. On the another hand, daughters and granddaughters are viewed primarily by the prism of property, estates and estates abroad. There was a minute erstwhile it was with large amazement that children of a large part of the establishment were educated outside Russia, so the question of why we should be amazed that the level of Russian education is so low that in the Shanghai ranking it stands so low if we ourselves give children to various Oxfords, Cambridge and so on. Besides, I think that there is no elite of power, there is not a single government in the planet whose members would have specified a number of openly and hidden double citizenships. Putin's closest economical associate, German Gref, now has German citizenship. A large proportion of the oligarchs and those in the vicinity of power have Israeli citizenship. There are people with Cypriot citizenship.
WJ: present that sounds suspicious.
HG: Yes, it is beginning to hurt them, due to the fact that it means that they are either preparing for evacuation or are not loyal to the state.
Therefore, as the first, second, 3rd packages of sanctions went, and the impact on individual individuals, it was in so far as the sanctions which hit the state were, of course, as bad as possible for society, while the attack on the elite did not offend the Russians. The rich, as the Russians believe, is simply a thief or a thief's son.
Few people in the elite managed to break the ringing of resentment to themselves. Abramovich, for example, succeeded in investing his own money erstwhile he was the politician of Czukotka, and that provided him with respect for the citizens, for here are honest thieves like the 1 who gave us some.
WJ: We talk about the Kremlin all the time, so let's remember what the Kremlin looks like.
HG: Kremlins are decorations. Most of the politics take place not in the Kremlin, the genius loci most likely causes individual heads of state to be afraid of being constantly in the Kremlin. A large part of the policy takes place on the docks. On state cottages, where members of the political office or the heads of individual ministries are called upon as necessary, etc. Meetings there are held in narrow and exclusively male company. The Kremlin, apart from everything else, is like 1 large pan, and the Russian political tradition assumes a large amount of confiscational conversations, meetings, baths, and so on. And truly not only to have a drink. We're gonna go hunting due to the fact that the woodpecker is without headphones and tape recorders.
WJ: Putin works in the Kremlin?
HG: Putin is known for being alternatively lazy and working little. He's not a Stalin-type workman who's been moving papers from morning to night. Putin, even before the pandemic, worked very frequently at home in Nowo-Ogariów, which is his residence.
WJ: As we know, Lenin has already said that cinema is the most crucial of the plays. During Putin's time, power objectively was a patron of culture, with culture being treated completely utilitarianly. As a method of money laundering, a low culture as a method of fooling people, and a advanced culture, which was sold to the West, as a method of gaining all the naïve ointments of Germans and Frenchmen, that Russia is ballet, Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, not Kadyrov, Żyrinowski and Szojgu.
HG: Indeed, they were trying to make the impression of specified an enlightened court, a patronage over culture, and support for various projects. Putin was at any point very involved. For example, to show how curious he is in culture, he gave commands to oligarchs and oligarchs to buy paintings that then went to the Ermitage.
WJ: athletics was besides a tool?
HG: Putin, at least as long as he was physically full functional, introduced any schnitzel – it was in good speech that crucial figures from you were head of individual sports federations. fewer government and the elite in the planet have invested so heavy in sports as a business card, hence this immense doping disaster. erstwhile a government made up of the services themselves engages in supporting a athletics that should be everywhere and always win, it must end badly. Putin, after his experience in GDR-owski, where the full athletics of GDR-owski stood on pharmacology, most likely had specified a imagination of sport. In short, home sports have been planted on needles. They were sprayed there terriblely. This athletics became in the moments erstwhile contact with the planet was inflamed by an additional field of confrontation. This is simply a celebrated sentence: “Russia arises from its knees”, this is the first conviction given on the occasion of a sporting event. Putin said this after winning the match against Holland at the 2008 European football championship. He did not foretell that there would be a semi-final match with Spain immediately afterwards, where Russia would fall to its knees (0:3).
WJ: The Moscow we both know is simply a city of countless receptions, banquets, rauts. At the same time, however, I have this impression, although of course it is more awesome than experience, the strictest elite of power functioned outside the party-weekend-ruut circuit. They utilized to show up sometimes, but rarely. I was following this social life rather intensely, due to the fact that it seemed to me that as a diplomat for absolutely apparent reasons I should. They sometimes appeared in the Bolshoi Theatre.
HG:
If Putin showed up, it was always known that he would show up due to the fact that the phones stopped abruptly operating.
WJ: As the column with Vladimir Vladimirovich rode, it was besides known that he was driving, due to the fact that in front of him there were terrain cars with specified a circumstantial orurbation on top – in fact they were very strong transmitters, which are jamming devices preventing distant firing of the bomb.
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