From Russia with Love

The founding congress of the International Movement of Russophiles was recently held at the Pushkin state museum in Moscow, attracting an interesting range of guests that included conspiracy theorists, Steven Seagal and an Italian princess who claims to be a cousin of the Romanovs.  It wasn't a very big gathering but the Kremlin reported that more than 40 countries were represented.  Sergei Lavrov gave the keynote address, lending the event the official imprimatur of the president.

I think Lavrov had to be disappointed that some of the bigger names didn't show up.  At one time, Putin was hobnobbing with the Hollywood elite, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Pamela Anderson, in an effort to save Russian wildlife from extinction.  However, the Hollywood stars kept their distance not wanting to be associated with the war in Ukraine.

Of course, Lavrov used the opportunity to lash out at the neo-Nazi West, which brought a bunch of "here here's" from the assembly, among them Charles de Gaulle's grandson Pierre who said the West had "unfortunately let Zelenskiy, his oligarchs and neo-Nazi military groups lock themselves into a spiral of war," seeming to ignore that it was his dear Russia that chose to invade Ukraine.  Pierre's family was quick to establish its distance from the rogue member.  His older brother Yves said that Pierre speaks for no one other than himself.

It seems Vlad needs all the help he can get in the ongoing propaganda war against the West.  It was surprising that Tucker Carlson didn't report on the event, as he has cast himself as a Friend of Putin on Fox News, often questioning US involvement and why we would hold Zelenskiy in such high regard.

Zelenskiy's international celebrity has been the biggest thorn in Putin's side.  The Ukrainian president is invited everywhere with world leaders literally fighting with each other for a photo opportunity with him.  Italian PM Giorgia Meloni was upset Zelenskiy didn't call on Rome when he visited European capitals last month.  Putin thought he had the Italian government in his back pocket but it turns out Meloni is a big supporter of Ukraine, visiting Kyiv later in February to give reassurances to Zelenskiy after Berlusconi's off the cuff comments.  That had to hurt the Kremlin.

No matter, Vlad is bolstering his relations with Asian countries, notably China, with new agreements between the two countries and a visit from Chairman Pooh later this month to reassure Vlad that Beijing will support him in the wake of the latest imperialist sanctions by the US and EU.   At the same time, China is trying to project itself as a peacemaker with all sorts of plans to ease troubled regions including a 12-point position paper on Ukraine.  

NATO countries had hoped to keep China out of the war but a Chinese-made drone was recently shot down in Eastern Ukraine.  It could have been bought on the black market but it seems that China is already lending clandestine military support.  Meanwhile, Vlad fires his Kinzhal hypersonic missiles on civilian targets, hoping to drive a "dagger" through the Ukrainian soul.  Although it seems to be having the opposite effect of further infuriating Ukrainians. 

Another guy not at the founding congress the International Movement of Russophiles was Roger Waters.  He had taken up the Kremlin's request to address the UN in February, but the former Pink Floyd bandmate chose to distance himself from Putin in condemning the invasion.  Roger believes the West is just as much to blame for the war and that both sides should lay down their arms.  It shows you can be a Russophile and not support the war, something that appears lost on someone like Steven Seagal.

The cinematic strong man has long associated himself with Putin over their shared love for the martial arts.  Putin personally awarded Seagal a freedom medal for his "humanitarian work" and granted the actor Russian citizenship.  However, Seagal continues to churn out his tough guy movies in the United States.  Maybe he uses the proceeds for his "humanitarian efforts?"

A lot of conservatives in the US were perfectly fine with Putin until he invaded Ukraine.  Some still are but find ways to hedge their sentiments as they don't want to be seen as supporting his war effort.  The Kremlin was very successful in infiltrating the conservative movement thanks to their shared support of traditional values.  For many conservatives, Russia was a role model for how they would like to see the United States.  Heavy penalties for abortions, no support of gay rights, only heterosexual marriages allowed, no environmental consciousness whatsoever despite the rather shallow attempts of Putin to pitch himself as an outdoor man who is concerned about the wildlife in the Taiga.  Putin was their man until he had the gall to invade another country and then they shunned him like the plague.

As Oliver Stone once said, Putin justified the West's worst impressions of him by invading Ukraine.  Stone went to great lengths to defend Putin in the past, but simply can't wrap his head around the fact that the "rational man" he knew before could do something so stupid, and now cast the entire country in a bad light.

Many Russian intelligentsia have similarly created distance from Putin, living in self-imposed exile like Mikhail Shishkin, who has written a new book on Russia after the invasion.  He has long been a critic of Putin and the nationalist craze that led to his rise in the early 2000's.  In Shishkin's mind, the language of Pushkin and Tolstoy has become the language of war criminals and murderers, and hopes to "de-Putinise" his country through a better understanding of its place in world history.

Not the Russophiles gathered in Moscow though.  They view Russia as the victim, pitching the latest narrative to come out of the Kremlin.  After suffering so many losses to NATO weapons in Ukraine, Russia feels it is defiantly holding its ground against Western imperialism, as it did against Napoleon's France and Hitler's Germany. In this way, the Kremlin feels it can justify the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The ICC doesn't think so.  The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin's arrest over the many war crime allegations from the past year, and also for the commissioner of children's rights in Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova, who has allowed child trafficking on an enormous scale during the war.  She has promoted an "adoption policy" very similar to the one we saw in the US when Trump's Homeland Security trafficked unaccompanied refugee children to adoption centers throughout the country, rather than reunite the children with their parents.

The Kremlin remains unfazed.  In the minds of Putin and his henchpersons they are the ones abiding by international law and it is the US and NATO that should be brought to heel.  However, support for Putin's strong arm tactics has dwindled to the point only 80 or so persons serve as his personal emissaries through the International Movement of Russophiles to spread his word globally.  He still has his useful idiots like Tucker Carlson and Roger Waters, and even a handful of stooges in Congress like Matt Gaetz, who didn't know that Global Times is a Chinese propaganda news source.  

It's funny to see these guys be so sympathetic to Russia but so appalled by China without realizing that the two countries are working together to create a new world order.  I take it Gaetz never heard of BRICS.

Let the so-called Russophiles have their assembly, although it would be better to call themselves Putinistas, as it isn't Russian culture they support but rather a demented autocrat who runs Russia like a banana republic.  In Shishkin's mind, that's the way it has always been in Russia, raised in the shadow of Genghis Khan.  Literature, art and music thrived in spite of the Tsarist and Soviet regimes not because of them.  

All one has to do is look back at the feud that Nabokov described between Bunin and Gorky.  Bunin chose to leave Russia behind and move to Paris, whereas Gorky remained in the Soviet Union and became Stalin's tool.  Gorky became a hero in the country, nominated five times for a Nobel Prize in literature, but it was Bunin who eventually won the award in 1933 by retaining his Russian soul.  A far greater writer, Nabokov said, than Gorky could ever imagine to be.  

Careful who you associate yourself with.