Nalavny Will Now be Discarded by Western Intelligence Agencies

An exhausted hostility is on display in Neil MacFarquhar's two post-election pieces, "Putin Wins Russia Election, and Broad Mandate for 4th Term" and "Russia Credits the West for Putin’s Big Victory"

The goal of The New York Times/USG was to inflate the boycott candidacy of Alexei Navalny and keep turnout in the presidential election below the Kremlin target of 70%.

MacFarquhar had to eat crow. From the first four paragraphs of the first story:

MOSCOW — Russian voters gave President Vladimir V. Putin resounding approval for a fourth term on Sunday, with nearly complete figures from the Central Election Commission showing him winning more than three-quarters of the vote with a turnout of more than 67 percent.

The Kremlin had initially projected that Mr. Putin would get at least 70 percent of the vote with a 70 percent turnout, and the results with 99.84 percent of the ballots counted were in line with that assessment.

Mr. Putin won 76.6 percent of the vote, and the turnout of 67.47 percent was higher than the 65 percent participation rate in the last presidential election, in 2012. More than 56 million of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters backed Mr. Putin.

A poor showing by the already fractious opposition prompted a bitter public dispute between the two most high-profile liberal politicians, with one denouncing the other as a Kremlin stooge even before the polls closed.

As I read the story I found myself wishing that polling sites in the U.S. could be as festive on election day as they were in Russia:

Local governments tried various efforts to get out the vote, not least trying to turn the entire event into a carnival. There was music, discounted food for sale and games for the children. At one Moscow polling station a woman dressed as a clown shouted out historical questions and rewarded right answers with a chocolate bar.

The region of Omsk offered free iPhones for voters who turned up in the best costumes, prompting a parade of voters who came as Santa Claus or a Roman legionnaire. One family was a hockey team.

The most satisfying aspect of MacFarquhar's report is the admission, in so many words, of the fraudulence of the Navalny phenomenon:

For some who supported Mr. Navalny, the outcome was a stark disillusion.

Ilya Amutov, a 26-year-old software engineer and longtime Navalny supporter, served as an election observer for the Sobchak campaign. He was taken aback watching elderly voters at his polling station off Leninsky Prospekt kissing Mr. Putin’s pictures on the official poster listing all eight candidate and crossing themselves, he said. That is how the Russian Orthodox faithful treat religious icons.

“They cherish and love Putin,” he said. “This is a big cultural shock. Of course the election was like a circus, but it was not rigged by our authorities. It was rigged by our people. This is extremely depressing.”

Mr. Navalny tried to put the best face on it, telling reporters at his headquarters that at least the boycott seemed to keep turnout below 2012 levels. [Which was not the case.]

There were scattered reports of the usual election irregularities, with a few observers harassed or beaten and video cameras catching some ballot-box stuffing. There was also a discrepancy in some places between the turnout numbers tallied by Mr. Navalany’s organization, which fielded more than 30,000 observers, and the official numbers.

There was no real need for extensive rigging, however, because of Mr. Putin’s genuine popularity.

The result set off immediate, bitter infighting within the already divided liberal opposition.

Ms. Sobchak, who just organized a new political party, came sweeping into Mr. Navalny’s headquarters proclaiming that they should unite. “We have common goals,” she said. “They are more important than our differences, regardless of how unjust the government has been to you.”

What came next was like a scene from “House 2,” the reality television show based on “Big Brother” that Ms. Sobchak hosted before she became a political journalist.

Mr. Navalny verbally bashed Ms. Sobchak, calling her a tool of the Kremlin and releasing the anger evidently pent up since she stepped forward to claim the liberal banner in the election.

“It was a grandiose fraud and you were part of it,” he shouted, accusing her of undermining the boycott. “You are part of this lie, this falsification.”

Navalny, after this performance, will be discarded by the Western intelligence agencies that are his primary support.

What Putin Really Said Today

Several times this morning I've seen references to a Reuters story ("Putin says Russian, U.S. intelligence agencies should restore ties") about Putin's address today to the Federal Security Service (FSB) board. But this is all the story says so far (Reuters usually updates its dispatches throughout the day):

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday it was in the interests of both Russia and the United States to restore communications between their respective intelligence agencies.

"It's in everyone's interest to resume dialogue between the intelligence agencies of the United States and other members of NATO," Putin said, addressing Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB).

"It's absolutely clear that in the area of counter-terrorism all relevant governments and international groups should work together."

(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

There is a fuller account on the President of Russia website. You'll notice that what Putin said about restoring ties between the U.S. deep state ("intelligence agencies") and NATO was preceded by a largely unassailable account of NATO expansionism and a reminder that at last year's summit in Warsaw Russian containment was spelled out as the raison d'être of the alliance for the first time since 1989:

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon.

These annual FSB Board meetings give us a chance to meet and not only thoroughly analyse and review the results of the agency’s work over the period, but also to discuss at length all important national security issues in general and outline the priorities for the immediate future and the longer-term.

The FSB plays a key part in protecting our constitutional order and our country’s sovereignty, and in protecting our people from threats at home and abroad.

Let me say from the start that last year’s results were positive and show good development. This concerns your work to counter terrorism and extremism, a series of successful counterintelligence operations, your efforts to combat economic crime, and other areas.

You ensured a high standard of security for major public events, including the State Duma election and regional and local elections.

I would like to thank both the executives and staff for their conscientious attitude towards their work and their timely and efficient performance of their duties.

At the same time, demands on the quality and results of your work grow constantly. The global situation has not become any more stable or better over the past year. On the contrary, many existing threats and challenges have only become more acute.

Military-political and economic rivalry between global and regional policy makers and between individual countries has increased. We see bloody conflicts continue in a number of countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. International terrorist groups, essentially terrorist armies, receiving tacit and sometimes even open support from some countries, take active part in these conflicts.

At the NATO summit last July in Warsaw, Russia was declared the main threat to the alliance for the first time since 1989, and NATO officially proclaimed containing Russia its new mission. It is with this aim that NATO continues its expansion. This expansion was already underway earlier, but now they believe they have more serious reasons for doing so. They have stepped up the deployment of strategic and conventional arms beyond the national borders of the principal NATO member states.

They are provoking us constantly and are trying to draw us into confrontation. We see continued attempts to interfere in our internal affairs in a bid to destabilise the social and political situation in Russia itself.

We also see the recent serious flare-up in southeast Ukraine. This escalation pursues the clear aim of preventing the Minsk Agreements from going ahead. The current Ukrainian authorities are obviously not seeking a peaceful solution to this very complex problem and have decided to opt for the use of force instead. What is more, they speak openly about organising sabotage and terrorism, particularly in Russia. Obviously, this is a matter of great concern.

The events and circumstances I have mentioned require our security and intelligence services, especially the Federal Security Service, to concentrate their utmost attention and effort on the paramount task of fighting terrorism.

We have already seen that our intelligence services dealt some serious blows to terrorists and their accomplices. Last year’s results confirm this: the number of terrorism related crimes has decreased.

Preventive work has also brought results. The FSB and other security agencies, with the National Antiterrorist Committee acting as coordinator, prevented 45 terrorism related crimes, including 16 planned terrorist attacks. You deserve special gratitude for this.

You need to continue your active efforts to identify and block terrorist groups’ activity, eliminate their financial base, prevent the activities of their emissaries from abroad and their dangerous activity on the internet, and take into account in this work Russian and international experience in this area.

The murder of our ambassador to Turkey was a terrible crime that particularly highlighted the need to protect our citizens and missions abroad. I ask you to work together with the Foreign Ministry and the Foreign Intelligence Service to take additional measures to ensure their safety.

You must also work to take our counterterrorism cooperation with partners abroad to a new level, despite the difficulties that we see in various areas of international life. It is a priority, of course, to intensify work with our partners in organisations such as the UN, the CSTO, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

It is in our common interests to restore dialogue with the US intelligence services and with other NATO member countries. It is not our fault that these ties were broken off and are not developing. It is very clear that all responsible countries and international groups should work together on counterterrorism, because even simply exchanging information on terrorists’ financing channels and sources and on people involved in or suspected of links with terrorism can substantially improve the results of our common efforts.

Our priorities include firmly suppressing extremism. Security methods must go hand-in-hand with constant prevention work. It is essential to prevent extremism from drawing young people into its criminal networks, and to form an overall firm rejection of nationalism, xenophobia, and aggressive radicalism. In this context, of great importance is open dialogue with civil society institutions and representatives of Russia’s traditional religions.

It looks like we're at the beginning of a period of deep state turbulence the likes of which we haven't seen since Watergate.

The West "Doubles Down": British Foreign Secretary Praises the Downing of Russian Charter Jet

We are in the "double down" phase in Syria as far as the Great Powers are concerned. "Double down," a gambling reference which means to double one's bet and hence one's risk, seems to be the quote du jour for the last few days. First, today, in an interesting story by David Sanger and Helene Cooper, "Obama Turns to Diplomacy and Military in Syria, and Is Met With Doubts":

At White House meetings, administration officials say, Mr. Kerry has argued that without applying both military and diplomatic pressure, the Russian intervention that began in late September would shore up Mr. Assad “and actually wind up destroying Syria.” [Rich, isn't it?]

But the question is whether the military element of the strategy — which reversed Mr. Obama’s previous determination to keep American combat troops out of the country — will be enough to make a difference.

“What he is doing will not work,” Fareed Zakaria, a journalist whom Mr. Obama frequently speaks with, wrote in a column in The Washington Post last week. “In a few months,” he predicted, the United States “will face the challenge again — back down or double down. So far, President Obama has responded each time with increased intervention.” 

Reflecting a willingness to do more, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Sunday that additional troops could be sent to Syria if the United States could find more local forces to work with.

The White House is hoping that the Syrian, Arab and Kurdish coalition, aided by American pilots and special operators on the ground, can seize and hold territory. The United States also plans to step up airstrikes. Mr. Obama deployed 12 A-10 warplanes and is sending additional F-15 fighter jets to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

The theory is that over time the combination will increase the pressure on Mr. Assad to step down. The immediate focus is not on Mr. Assad’s strongholds, though; it is on territory seized by the Islamic State, including its capital, Raqqa.

But there is a far more immediate problem: identifying friends and enemies on the ground in Syria. Several rebel groups aided by the United States have been bombed by the Russians in recent weeks. American officials say they believe that Russia is trying to wipe out Mr. Assad’s opponents while claiming that it is going after the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Eventually, American and Russian officials will have to share lists about the groups that they support and that could be credible interlocutors for a cease-fire and political solution. But the United States has declined to do so, for fear that the Russians or Mr. Assad would immediately target the groups for attacks.

Then would come the practical problem of engineering a cease-fire and a referendum to replace Mr. Assad.

It is this supplying of a list of "credible interlocutors" that is going to be a huge problem for the Obama administration; it was the subject of yesterday's report by Somini Sengupta, "Invitation List Looms as Test for Syria Talks." It is in Sengupta's story that we encounter the use of "double down" again, this time from the lips of British foreign secretary Philip Hammond. Hammond amazingly lays claim to Islamic State Sinai Province's destruction of the Russian charter jet as an effective tactic to bring Russia closer to the West's negotiating position:

The diplomatic standoff over who is a terrorist and who counts as a legitimate opposition group comes on top of the significant differences that remain on the future of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Russia and Iran want to leave open the possibility that Mr. Assad can stand for election once more. The United States, Britain and their Persian Gulf allies resolutely oppose that idea. 

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, during a visit to Armenia on Monday, said that the talks should concern themselves with who should represent the Syrian opposition and who should be considered extremists, instead of whether to replace Mr. Assad, The Associated Press reported. As for which opposition group is legitimate, Mr. Assad has dismissed all his armed rivals as terrorists, and Russia, his most powerful backer, has largely supported his assertion. Indeed, over the last five weeks, Russian airstrikes have repeatedly attacked positions of several Western-backed groups. 

Mr. Hammond also said that his government suspected that the Islamic State or operatives “inspired” by the organization were behind the destruction of a Russian airliner in Egypt on Oct. 31. He added that he hoped that would persuade President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to take a more flexible posture in the Syria talks.

“We’ll see whether the Russians now double down or whether they decide that they never wanted to be too deeply engaged anyway in Syria and that this is a warning shot to them and we’ll sense a greater willingness to engage in the talks in Vienna this coming Saturday,” he said. [!]

While Mr. Hammond declined to offer any details on which groups could eventually take part in political negotiations, his comments suggested that the West might be prepared to back Sunni Islamist groups with close ties to allies, including Saudi Arabia. “What we mean by a secular constitution, and what people in the Muslim world will understand by secular will be two different things,” Mr. Hammond said.

Sort of takes one's breath away, doesn't it? Here you have the West basically coming right out and acknowledging an overlap -- if not explicit collaboration -- between it and the terrorist jihadists it is purportedly locked in a death match with.

Another mainstream illumination of this manifest interlocking between the West -- in this instance, NATO-member Turkey -- and Islamic State is Roger Cohen's "Turkey’s Troubling ISIS Game," which appeared in the Sunday NYT. Read it and you come away with an understanding how Islamic State is used to further objectives of the Turkish government. The advantage to the United States, Turkey, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), UK, et al., is that Islamic State can be disavowed. Better yet, the exact opposite can be claimed, that U.S., KSA, Turkey, UK are "at war" with ISIS.

The problem for the U.S. is that while it "doubles down" its "double game" is increasingly exposed and ultimately untenable as a strategy. If the U.S. provides a list of "credible interlocutors," that list will either include the groups of Jaish al-Fateh ("Army of Conquest"), members of which are Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra as well as Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, or fictitious, U.S.-created ghost armies. There are also indications that the Army of Conquest is beginning to fray.

So the U.S. is in a pickle. If it wants to double its bet yet again by placing more troops in northern Syria, eventually Congress will demand to vote on authorizing the move, a vote I don't think the administration can win.

Russian Aid Convoy a MacGuffin

Yesterday, Thursday, August 14, might be looked back on as the day Novorossiya died. Putin was in Yalta giving a speech to the State Duma; he said, “We will do all we can to end the conflict as soon as possible, to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine.” This was widely interpreted as Putin's capitulation. For instance, as quoted by Andrew Roth and Andrew Higgins in "Russian Convoy Draws Stern Warning From Ukraine and Stops Short of Border," Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs, says “It was indirect confirmation that Russia will not intervene.”

But then you have the reports of Russian armored personnel carriers entering Ukraine near where the Russian aid convoy now sits at a military base outside the town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky. The junta says that Ukrainian border guards are inspecting the trucks; others within the junta deny this. This is from a recently filed story by Higgins and Roth, "Border Inspection of Russian Convoy Begins, Ukrainian Military Says":

The Ukrainian military announced Friday that border guards had begun checking the contents of a convoy of more than 250 Russian trucks said to be carrying humanitarian supplies, but other officials said the trucks had not moved from a Russian military base where they were parked and inspections had not yet begun. 

In a statement posted on the military’s Facebook page, officials said that 59 customs officers would inspect the trucks on the Russian side of the border before the convoy would be allowed to proceed to the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, currently controlled by pro-Russian separatists and suffering from shortages of food, water and electricity.

The statement said the inspectors included 41 representatives of Ukraine’s border control service and another 18 from customs.

But other Ukrainian officials said that the trucks had not moved from the Russian Army post to the border town where inspections were set to take place. The officials said that Ukraine was waiting for documents from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was in turn awaiting documents from Moscow.

I have been of the opinion that the fate of this aid convoy will tell us a lot about the future of Novorossiya. If the junta allows it across the border and it rumbles on into Luhansk without an incident, offloads its cargo of cereal and sleeping bags with a temporary lull in the shelling and then returns to Moscow, Kiev will have won and Putin will have clearly telegraphed that the rebellion is over.

If, however, the junta, which is anarchic and prone to enormous gaffes, fucks up and escalates its conflict with Russia, as it did in a bellicose response to Putin's pacific Crimea speech, by perhaps shelling the convoy, mistakenly or not, or seizing it, then, well, it is hard to say.

But more and more the Russia's humanitarian aid caravan seems to be a classic MacGuffin, a plot device going nowhere meant only to distract.

Which brings us back to yesterday. The big news was Igor Strelkov, military mastermind of the Novorossiyan forces, was reported to be seriously wounded, and then he was reported to have been replaced. The Gray Lady reported the latter:

The Ukrainian military has made steady progress in recent weeks, with Mr. Lysenko, the military spokesman, asserting on Thursday that territory controlled by the rebels had shrunk to a fifth the size of what it was earlier this year. He also said the rebel leadership faced growing disarray in its ranks, a claim that was bolstered Thursday by the resignation of Igor Strelkov, one of the top separatist leaders, as “defense minister” of a rebel enclave in Donetsk.

This was followed by a report by Colonel Cassad where he offered the opinion that Strelkov's absence was only temporary and that he would return within a week. Several commentators took this information as proof that reports of Strelkov's near-death injury and sacking were junta fabrications meant to sow discord in the rebel ranks.

Niqnaq, who has been so good on keeping everyone abreast on all aspects of the war for Novorossiya, posted a translation of Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin's interpretation of events. Dugin thinks Novorossiya has been sold out by the Kremlin. The battle now is between a crushing defeat delivered by the junta personified by "Kolomoisky with the Right Sector" backed up by neocons in the Obama administration versus an Akhmetov-led truce followed by folding the Donbass back under Kiev's wing: "The position of Akhmetov is: a truce in exchange for a United Ukraine. The position Kolomoisky is: take it all, and immediately. And tomorrow Crimea."

In any event, the situation in Luhansk is dire. A ceasefire must come shortly or there will be a great deal of death. Andrew Kramer reports from the besieged city:

Luhansk is indeed a grim place, besieged and partly abandoned, with no electricity or running water, where hospitals are packed and the streets are patrolled by twitchy gunmen looking for spies. 

But the shelling remains the greatest danger and the most trying aspect of daily life. The separatist government reported Thursday that 40 people had been killed in the shelling in the previous 24 hours. 

On the main boulevard, rebels tear about in trucks mounted with Grad rocket launchers, moving from one site to another inside the city, to avoid the inevitable return fire. 

The Ukrainian forces are in the countryside all about, dug into positions in the open steppe. In their trenches and armored vehicles, they are all but impervious to even the most intensive rebel shelling.

Russia Has Already Won

The city of Slovyansk fell yesterday to the Kiev junta. The blue-and-yellow Ukrainian national flag flies from the city council building as Ukrainian soldiers patrol the streets. The junta could not resist crowing, as reported by David Herszenhorn in "Pro-Russian Fighters Routed From Stronghold, Ukraine Says":

Government officials were jubilant. “Run!” the Ukrainian interior minister, Arsen Avakov, wrote in a Facebook post on the retaking of Slovyansk. “The terrorists are bearing losses, surrendering.” 

Ukrainian officials said that those fleeing included the well-known commander Igor Girkin, who the authorities here say worked for the Russian military’s foreign intelligence directorate. In east Ukraine, he identified himself as Col. Igor Strelkov, which means shooter or gunman. 

Mr. Strelkov had posted a video on YouTube on Friday, pleading with Mr. Putin for broad-scale military support and predicting that Slovyansk would fall if help did not arrive soon. 

“The enemy has so much ammunition — I did not see so much in Chechnya,” he said, apparently referring to his time fighting in the Russian Army against Islamic separatists there.

The city of Kramatorsk is also under junta control.

Putin is being impugned as a "nothing man" for saying that he would defend the ethnic Russians of Novorossiya:

With the separatists losing ground, there were signs of growing frustration in the east with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for not making good on his promises to defend Russian people in a land with historic ties that he has referred to as New Russia. 

“What to say,” a rebel leader, Denis Pushilin, wrote on Twitter. “We were given hope. Given hope and abandoned. Nice were words of Putin about protecting the Russian, protecting New Russia. But only words.”

A sample of "the sky is falling" thinking is a post by Mark Sleboda, "What the Kremlin's inaction over the Ukraine means for Russia's geopolitics, international relations, and the Eurasian Union,"
which appeared on The Saker's blog yesterday:

If Putin's inaction in the face of what is happening in the Ukraine continue much longer it will not only mean the loss of Ukraine to the West, but in the long-term the suicide of Putin's own plans for a re-consolidation of even the core of the post-Soviet space particularly in the form of the Eurasian Union, as well as the end of dreams of a wider Eurasian civilization or "Russian world". The US will have achieved its primary goal in all of this, Russia's geopolitical horizons will shrink further to its own borders (or not even that), and it will in truth fade and diminish itself to the role and form of just another "normal nation-state" as fifth columnists like Dmitri Trenin at Carnegie speak of so longingly. "The end of Eurasia" as he once put it, in truth...

I don't think so. I think time is on Russia's side. Yes, Putin is coldly sacrificing the citizens of Novorossiya. But this is what heads of state do. The big picture is economic growth and trade with Europe. Let's remember that the Kiev coup was all about a trade agreement. Yanukovych was not allowed to bargain with both Russia and the EU. He was made by Europe to choose sides, one or the other. When he saw the onerous terms of the IMF bailout, he went with Putin's more generous offer.

While the Europeans were motivated by securing superior commercial arrangements, the United States was interested in two things: 1) keeping the EU yoked to a North Atlantic Alliance under the full sway of U.S. dominance, and 2) breaking off the prize chunk of former Soviet space real estate, the Lebensraum Eurasia land bridge of Ukraine.

I would argue that Russia has already won. Europe has abandoned any further U.S.-led sanctions and is talking with Moscow about the terms of Ukraine's association agreement, something it had refused to do earlier. There is no doubt that Germany has been alienated by the actions of Washington's neocons; France, too. Even Cameron has been a lackluster ally to D.C. Merkel knows that future German growth lies to the East.

And what is the actual strategic impact of the Strelkov's retreat from Slovyansk? Very little according to Dmitry Steshin:

Undoubtedly, Slavyansk became the symbol of the “Russian Spring,” moreover – it entered history. Forever. But the purpose of the city was different. Slavyansk attracted to itself all the battle-worthy forces of the Ukrainian army, it enabled the mobilization of the Militia in Lugansk and Donetsk. Slavyansk gave Mozgovoi an opportunity to crack the border on land and in the air. Whereby something real (you do not need to tell me about virtual YouTube armoured columns) actually made it into the region, by dribs and drabs, including “Tunguskas” purchased at the GUM [Note: GUM, or “State Universal Market,” in Moscow]. Slavyansk enabled the rest of the region to set up almost a dozen reinforced centres of resistance. Finally, it was Slavyansk that brought down the majority of Ukrainian fliers. And the “Slavic Sky” came true in every regard. Finally, Slavyansk gave the South-East time to create political centres of power, allowed to legitimize them, and, of course, provided covering fire for the referendum. And, one last thing, – thousands of untried militiamen and volunteers passed through the trenches of Slavyansk, all with minimal losses.

By the middle of June, Slavyansk outlived itself. Having drawn and bound to itself an enormous army grouping, the city, at the same time, required an ever-larger garrison, and, in return, started to tie up the not inexhaustible human and technical resources of the Donbass People’s Army. Besides, being the legal Commander-in-Chief of the Militia, Igor Ivanovich [Strelkov] could not provide fulsome guidance to his army from a besieged city. He had a direct line to the DPR government (I do not know about LPR), but this was, understandably, not enough for adequate control over the Militia units, each of which was beholden to the charisma of its direct commander. In a situation like that you need a “mega-Batka” [Note: Batka – an Old Man], but “mega-Batka” was forced to sit in Slavyansk and wax melancholy. I won’t be afraid of this word – he grew bored with blowing up endless ammunitions store on Karachun and pummeling Ukrainian checkpoints on the near and far outskirts of the city. Igor Ivanovich needed operational freedom, and, this night, he finally found it. Don’t forget – he came to Slavyansk some time ago with a few battered automatic rifles and even smoothbore “Saiga” and “Vepr.” He left with a column of armoured vehicles. No need to even mention the loads of other equipment.

Let Kiev crow. Its victory is cosmetic. It doesn't change the reality that the state it is creating is not a viable one. Inherently unstable, bankrupt, energy dependent on a shrewd behemoth, the chickens are bound to come home to roost. The name of that home? The Saker called it months ago. Banderastan.

Russia-China Gas Deal Stalled Over Price

Today offers a rare example of the Gray Lady publishing a story that completely confirms an article published on a left-of-center, anti-imperialist web site. The story is today's "Ukraine Crisis Pushing Putin Toward China" by Neil MacFarquhar and Davids Herszenhorn; the article it confirmed is Pepe Escobar's "Who's Pivoting Where in Eurasia?" which appeared this past Sunday afternoon on TomDispatch.com.

Russia and China according to RT News are about to conclude a long-term gas deal:

Russia and China are due to sign a long-awaited gas contract on Tuesday, in which Beijing could pay up to $456 billion for Russian gas over the next 30 years. 

While Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Shanghai on May 20-21, Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are due to sign a deal for 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas to power China's growing economy, starting in 2018.

But this morning, Jane Perlez, reporting for the Gray Lady from Beijing, says that there is no deal, "China and Russia Fail to Reach Agreement on Gas Plan." The two countries could not agree on a price.

MacFarquhar and Herszenhorn had reported in their story that price, a barrier to any deal for a long time, was likely to be settled in favor of China since Russia was eager to show the North Atlantic Alliance that it had other avenues of development than the Western financial system. Escobar was convinced that it was a done deal, part of a BRICS-initiated paradigm shift.

I interpret yesterday's DOJ indictments of PLA hackers as a publicity stunt meant as a warning for China not to launch an attack on the status quo.

The deal might still come off.