Massive crowds have flooded the streets of Bucharest, protesting against vaccination passports, curfews for the unvaccinated, and other newly introduced restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus in Romania.

An estimated 15,000 people gathered in University Square and Victory Square outside government offices in Bucharest on Saturday, chanting ‘Freedom without certificates’ and ‘Down with the government.’

The latest round of restrictions came into effect on Sunday, limiting access to entertainment venues, as well as introducing weekend curfews for unvaccinated individuals.

Authorities also issued mask mandates for indoor and outdoor public spaces in areas with more than six coronavirus cases per 1,000 residents, including the capital.

Romania, which is home to some 19 million people, ranks second-lowest for vaccinations across the 27-member state EU bloc, with less than 28% of the population vaccinated with two doses. On Tuesday, Romania began ‘recommending’ a booster jab, and sought to make vaccinations mandatory for doctors and other healthcare staff.

With a total of 1.24 million officially recorded cases and some 37,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, Romania has seen a sharp spike in new infections over the past weeks, as authorities fear hospitals will soon run out of intensive care units.

Meanwhile, in France, some 48,000 people hit the streets for the ninth consecutive weekend of protests. Rallies began in mid-July after President Emmanuel Macron’s government introduced a system that made presenting a vaccination certificate or negative Covid-19 test obligatory for those wishing to visit a restaurant, theater, cinema, or shopping mall, as well as those traveling on long-distance trains.

By Paula Erizanu via Calvert Journal

On paper, the term post-Soviet manifests in the image of a lone concrete bus stop on a windblown steppe or the harsh lines of a decaying brutalist tower block. The phrase itself has been around since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, but culturally, it pinpoints a specific moment in the 2010s: when the likes of Russian fashion designer Gosha Rubchinskiy burst onto the catwalk with streetwear collections dripping in Soviet references. Rubchinskiy’s very first fashion collection, 2008’s Empire of Evil, riffed on US President Ronald Reagan’s infamous Cold War-era speech, which condemned the Soviet Union’s “totalitarian darkness”. The designer was just one of many creatives and brands attempting to capture Eastern Europe as “poor but sexy”: fetishising the Soviet dream — rather than its reality — while capturing its own unique street culture.

Yet although it is a touchstone in the West, the term “post-Soviet” is rarely used in the 15 independent countries that once made up the former USSR. Despite a seven decade-long attempt to create a single “Soviet people”, almost all of the countries that gained their independence in 1990 and 1991 re-embraced their formerly suppressed national identities. Today, they are simply very different countries: from digital-first EU-member state Estonia, to isolated, one-party dictatorship Turkmenistan. New borders put a halt to the cultural exchanges and communication that linked these states during the Soviet era. Although some countries remain closer than others, it is globalisation and the internet that now forge artistic and creative connections in eastern Europe and Central Asia. Today, Moldovans are likely to know more about American culture than about developments in the neighbouring Ukraine — not to mention “far away” places like Kazakhstan.

Thirty years on from the fall of the USSR, it’s contentious whether we should be using the term “post-Soviet” to refer to these countries at all. The phrase might have been appropriate to understand these young states in 1995, when they were navigating the route from the socialist Soviet empire to independent, capitalist nations. But the wild 90s are long over — and all of these countries have transformed into new and very different entities. Does it still provide any key insights, or is it time to drop the term?

For many, perhaps the greatest issue with the term “post-Soviet” is its little-acknowledged imperialist undertones. Despite asserting itself as an internationalist project with equal republics, the Soviet Union continued the imperialist aggression of Tsarist Russia, from its invasion of the socialist democratic Georgia in 1921, to the occupation of the Baltic countries and my own native Moldova (then known as Bessarabia) during the Second World War. These annexations were swiftly followed by forced Russification, state-organised famines, countless deportations, and ethnic engineering, paired with a centralised industrialisation plan. In my own family, my grandfather, living in a northern Moldovan village, lost both his father and three of his siblings to famine in 1946-1947: newly-installed communist party representatives came into their house and cleared crops stored for the winter in order to send them elsewhere. Our story is not unique — there are countless such family stories across Moldova and Ukraine. Amid this pain, slowly yet insidiously, individual national cultures were also steamrollered. Local intelligentsia were executed, while artists were expected to conform to Moscow’s vision.

While Western empires are starting to be held accountable for their colonial past, Russia has barely acknowledged its imperialism as a source of oppression for other people. On the contrary, the Kremlin celebrates the Soviet past as proof of Russia’s role as a great power, whether by promoting a one-sided view of the Second World War as the “Great War for the Defense of the Fatherland”, or reviving the cult of Stalin. The term “post-Soviet” perpetually links countries that were once part of the USSR back to their former oppressor, stopping them from reclaiming their own identities.

“What we call the ‘post-Soviet legacy’ often takes roots in Russian domination before the Soviet time,” Ukrainian journalist, Maksim Eristavi, tells me. Born in Zaporizhzhya, an industrial town in eastern Ukraine, bordering Donbas, the 35-year-old says that researching western empires across the world helped him understand “post-Soviet” conflicts, such as the ongoing fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in Donbas as a “colonial” war. “Russian colonialism has had different stages, but they still share one DNA.”

“I am technically part of the first “post-Soviet” generation. But I would never use that term to self-identify”

Born during the 1992 Russo-Moldovan war in Transnistria — whose bombs my mother could hear from the maternity ward in Chișinău — I am technically part of the first “post-Soviet” generation. But I would never use that term to self-identify, despite my curiosity over Soviet history. I feel Moldovan and Romanian, the latter representing the pre-Soviet heritage of Moldovans, which was suppressed during the USSR. While I feel connected to Eastern European culture more generally, Romanian is my native tongue; it is Romanian culture, as it is expressed in Moldova, which primarily formed me. Western and Russian cultural influences are also widely felt, to different degrees, through music, media, and religion. But, like Eristavi says, it is Russian rather than Soviet influence that had dominated Moldova through the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, since the 1990s.

Ensuring that a country has a strong “post-Soviet” identity has also been a way for Russia to maintain power over its former colonies. One such example is the breakaway republic of Transnistria, which became part of the USSR in 1924 — 20 years before the rest of Moldova. Today, the region clings to a vision of itself which is very much focused on its Soviet past. Monuments dating back to the former regime are omnipresent. Soviet-era language policies also have a very real contemporary impact. During the Soviet era, officials banned Romanian books in Moldova, changed the country’s alphabet from Latin to Cyrillic, and promoted the idea that Moldovans spoke a separate, “Moldovan” language rather than Romanian. Today, despite the fact that Transnistria’s population is a third Ukrainian, a third Russian, and a third Romanian, the lingua franca there is Russian, and Romanian-language schools are constantly harassed by the breakaway government in Tiraspol. Censorship and authoritarianism are still strong, perpetuating close ties with Moscow and animosity towards Chișinău. Russian troops remain in Transnistria to this day, despite the fact that the Kremlin signed international treaties to withdraw them.

Yet for some generations formed during the Soviet era, the term “post-Soviet” still bears relevance and personal meaning: as an important cultural influence, career set up, and as a turning point in their lives. Uzbek novelist and poet Hamid Ismailov was born in 1954 in Tokmok, in Soviet Kyrgyzstan. He believes that all people who lived in the USSR as adults are, by definition, post-Soviet. “Until people like myself, who lived in the Soviet Union, are still alive, we are ‘post-Soviet’, because part of us is Soviet,” he says. “We might hate it but we lived through it and our life will be dictated by our Soviet heritage anyway. When we die, the term will completely disappear.” This lived experience means that Soviet culture and the Soviet system inevitably informs their creative work, whether that is in the shared humour and references from Soviet-era comedies, or the traumas of totalitarianism and censorship.

Indeed, one of the major themes linking and uniting artists from across the former Soviet space is dealing with the baggage that imperialism and oppression left behind. In its bid to create “homo Sovieticus” — a new “Soviet people” — communist officials would often repress “bourgeois” or “national” cultures. Today, scores of artists are working to reclaim this long repressed heritage, whether in fabrics, fashion and photography, like Belarusian Masha Maroz, or in painstakingly-engineered collages, like Kazakhstani artist Saule Suleimenova. In many ways, it is this work that has become a real “post-Soviet” — or rather, “post-colonial” — cultural project, rather than any streetwear show.

Even Ismailov, however, warns that the term “post-Soviet” can be misleading. Within his generation, people will often have a Soviet identity in addition to their Uzbek, Estonian, or Ukrainian one rather than a pan-regional “post-Soviet” heritage. “Compare the Baltic states, for example, to Central Asian countries: there are gradations in how Soviet these places remain today,” he says. “The further we go into the future, the more different these countries will become.”

Of the 15 countries that once made up the USSR, perhaps Russia is the only country still fully embracing its Soviet heritage. To a large extent, identifying as the inheritor of the Soviet Union is serving the Kremlin’s narrative of Russia as a great power. The cultural legacy of the Soviet Union can be felt in the censorship of films and book covers that challenge Soviet-era narratives, the rise of the cult of Stalin, or the show trials of cultural figures. Yet, ironically, the term “post-Soviet” itself does not get embraced by the Kremlin’s cultural — or political — circles. Instead, it gets used by young Russian urbanites who are at odds with the authoritarian climate of their country and use the term “post-Soviet” as a “cooler” way to mean contemporary Russian, explains Russian artist Anna Engelhardt.

Soviet imperialism is also shaping modern Russian culture in other, less obvious ways, and very differently to their unequal partners across Central Asia and eastern Europe. Just like in the West, where families from formerly colonised states came to London or Paris to seek better opportunities, millions of people from former Soviet republics migrated to Russia after the fall of the USSR. “It’s like a divorce in a patriarchal family,” Ismailov says. “Initially you think the divorce is between the husband and wife but there are kids, a house, this and that — it’s much more complicated. If you have used and abused colonies, then these colonies will require payback [of some kind].”

This migration is now leaving a mark on Russia’s cultural scene. Tajik-born singer-songwriter Manizha represented Russia at the 2021 Eurovision performance. Her track, Russian Woman, promoted an inclusive, multi-racial, feminist take on Russian womanhood — and yet she was targeted for xenophobic attacks. Uzbek-Korean designer J.Kim produces blistering collections from her base in Moscow. Zine Agasshin is at the cutting-edge of Russian beauty, and caters exclusively for people of colour. Russia’s non-Slavic minorities, also long maligned by the Soviet authorities are making their presence felt anew. In literature, too, Moscow-born Alisa Ganieva and Kazan-born Guzel Yakhina, reflect on their Dagestani and Tatar heritage to great success on the Russian literary scene.

The question remains as to how much of this trend should be defined as a post-colonial legacy, a post-Soviet legacy, or both. The conversation is complicated by the fact that discussing post-colonialism remains taboo in Russia. “Figures like Manizha and Tatarka tackle issues of cultural representation, which is important,” says Engelhardt, “but they don’t engage with the role of the state in perpetuating this colonialism. As soon as you discuss racism, colonialism, and orientalism while living in Russia and not abroad, it becomes dangerous.” Engelhardt focuses on Russian colonial practices in her art, but works under an alias for safety reasons. She learnt at school that Russian imperialism had stopped in the 19th century, and that the Soviet Union liberated indigenous peoples — leaving her and her friends in shock when conflicts such as those in Chechnya and Donbas broke out.

Her work has led her to avoid the term “post-Soviet” and to urge others instead to be more specific in their language when talking about the problems and identities of individual countries. But she would also like to see a change in how we see and use the word “Soviet” itself. Ideally, she says, the world would not see the Soviet Union first and foremost as an ideological project that “fell apart” due to economic woe, but also as a colonial empire that many peoples fought to topple — indeed, in my native Moldova, the process that led to the country’s secession from the USSR is called “the national liberation movement”.

Of course, any push for specificity will throw into harsh light one of the reasons why the term “post-Soviet” has become so ubiquitous in the cultural sphere: global inertia and ignorance. Eastern Europe and Central Asia is still a part of the world that many reporters, critics, and curators know little about, pushing many to cling to the wide, comforting strokes of all-encompassing terminology. Correcting this lack of knowledge is the main mission behind The Calvert Journal, although we know that the term we use to refer to the region as a whole — the New East — is not without its problems.

Ultimately, while the term “post-Soviet” lingers, we need to acknowledge that many of the people celebrating 30 years of independence from the USSR are also marking an anti-imperialist struggle.

While acknowledging the Soviet past, “post-Soviet” conceals the ongoing struggles of former republics, and their pre-Soviet heritage and history. More importantly, the phrase is a burden which holds nations back while trying to shape their own different presents and future. Thirty years following independence, it’s time to drop the use of this term to a minimum — and see each of these 15 independent countries on their own terms.

by Joaquin Flores

Now we see another dimension to the German push to remove Belarus President Lukashenko!

Armstrong Economics –

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said last month via Belarusian Telegraph Agency, BelTA., that World Bank and IMF offered him a bribe of $940 million USD in the form of “Covid Relief Aid.” In exchange for $940 million USD, the World Bank and IMF demanded that the President of Belarus:

• imposed “extreme lockdown on his people”
• force them to wear face masks
• impose very strict curfews
• impose a police state
• crash the economy

Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko refused the offer and stated that he could not accept such an offer and would put his people above the needs of the IMF and World Bank. This fact can be verified using most search engines.

Now IMF and World Bank are bailing out failing airlines with billions of dollars, and in exchange, they are forcing airline CEOs to implement very strict policies such as forced face mask covers on everyone, including small children, whose health will suffer as a result of these policies.

And if it is true for Belarus, then it is true for the rest of the world. The IMF and World Bank want to crash every major economy with the intent of buying over every nation’s infrastructure at cents on the dollar.

SORIN ROŞCA STĂNESCU
Miscellanea

În prezent, Statele Unite se află în plin Război Rece atât cu China, cât şi cu Uniunea Europeană. Câştigă sau pierd. Dar cert este că luptă pe două fronturi. Aceste două războaie reci sau, dacă vreţi, asimetrice, sunt în esenţa lor economice, dar au o miză mai largă, de natură geopolitică. Iar pretextele pentru declanşarea lor, deşi par diferite prin enunţurile făcute, sunt şi ele tot o expresie a unei confruntări economice la scală globală. Ceilalţi jucători majori, Turcia, Rusia şi China încearcă din răsputeri să rămână şi să culeagă roadele de pe margine.

În timp ce România a trecut pragul psihologic de 1000 de victime ale pandemiei, iar Guvernul se laudă că defilează pe “platou” şi că stă mai bine din acest punct de vedere decât celelalte state europene, ignorând situaţia încă şi mai bună a statelor est-europene, la nivel global au loc schimbări profunde. Care în mod inevitabil ne vor afecta. Economic, politic şi militar.

Pentru a începe cu sfârşitul, voi prezenta două ipoteze. Ce se va întâmpla în curând, când o confruntare majoră între Statele Unite şi China va determina celelalte state să se poziţioneze? Ce va face România? România e de presupus că va rămâne loială parteneriatului strategic cu Statele Unite. Ceea ce o plasează în tabăra anti-China. Un moment dramatic. Un moment în care va trebui să ne facem că uităm un gest istoric al Chinei, în principiu de neuitat. În 1968, atunci când Moscova ameninţa să invadeze România, după modelul invaziei din Cehoslovacia, China a ameninţat Uniunea Sovietică că, într-o asemenea situaţie, va declanşa un război împotriva acestui stat. Şi şi-a masat trupele la frontieră. Ca să nu mai vorbim de anul 1996. An în care România a fost la un milimetru să intre în încetare de plăţi. Iar China din nou ne-a salvat. A garantat pentru România. Suntem parteneri strategici cu Statele Unite, dar în acelaşi timp membri ai Uniunii Europene cu obligaţii, dar nu şi cu drepturi depline. Iar prima şi cea de-a doua preşedinţie a lui Klaus Iohannis ne plasează în postura de vasali loiali ai Germaniei. Ce se întâmplă în momentul în care criza politică, economică şi militară dintre Statele Unite şi Europa escaladează şi se transformă într-un război asimetric? Unde se va plasa România? Iar, în continuare, detalii despre cele două războaie anunţate.

Congresul Statelor Unite îl împuterniceşte pe Donald Trump ca, într-un interval rezonabil de timp – am înţeles 60 de zile – să decidă în funcţie de comportamentul Chinei dacă recurge la sancţiuni economice. Sancţiunile înseamnă nici mai mult nici mai puţin decât blocarea conturilor deţinute de societăţile comerciale chinezeşti în Statele Unite, indisponibilizarea bunurilor imobile, precum şi interzicerea prezenţei pe pământ american a unor demnitari chinezi. Miza este uriaşă. Bunurile mobile şi imobile care ar putea fi sechestate au valoare de câteva mii de miliarde de dolari. Pretextul acestei ameninţări fără precedent lansate împotriva Chinei este pandemia de coronavirus. China este silită să prezinte rapoarte şi informaţii convingătoare, care să demonstreze că nu este implicată nici intenţionat şi nici din neglijenţă în generarea şi răspândirea virusului. Ceea ce nu se va întâmpla niciodată. Niciodată asemenea rapoarte, chiar în ipoteza în care ar fi făcute cu toată bună credinţa, nu vor fi socotite suficient de convingătoare. La fel cum nici anchetele desfăşurate pe teren în Irak şi la capătul cărora nu a fost descoperită nicio probă cum că Saddam Hussein producea arme chimice şi biologice, nu au împiedicat Statele Unite să meargă până la capăt cu ameninţarea, să invadeze Irakul şi să-l execute pe Saddam Hussein. Statele Unite au intenţia să meargă până la capăt în acest război cu China, întrucât dubla criză, generată de pandemie şi de contracţia severă economică, pune Washingtonul în situaţia de a căuta bani acolo unde banii există. Iar China, care de câţiva ani s-a plasat pe primul loc în lume din punctul de vedere al Produsului Intern Brut, devansând Statele Unite şi, în acelaşi timp, înregistrând constant o creştere economică şi având o bună balanţă comercială cu celelalte state, dispune de uriaşe lichidităţi. Statele Unite având o gaură sub forma datoriei publice de aproape 30 de mii de miliarde de dolari. În acelaşi timp, Statele Unite au totuşi cea mai performantă armată de pe glob. După dispariţia Uniunii Sovietice, America nu are practic rivali pe măsură din perspectivă militară. Pretextul pandemiei este numai bun pentru a tranşa o rivalitate Washington-Beijing, care a depăşit punctul critic. Şi ca să mă fac mai bine înţeles, voi mai face precizarea cred extrem de importantă că diplomaţia de la Beijing s-a schimbat radical, devenind treptat în ultimii doi ani extrem de agresivă. China nu-şi mai ascunde puterea. Dimpotrivă, o etalează şi şi-o afirmă. Fapt care nu poate decât să irite la culme Washingtonul.

Ce va face România, în calitate de aliat strategic al Statelor Unite? Va îngheţa la rândul ei bunurile mobile şi imobile deţinute de China în România, bunuri care au o valoare semnificativă? Sau va urma calea trasată de Germania? Dar care este această cale? Oficial, Uniunea Europeană, dominată de Germania, contrazice Washingtonul şi ajunge la concluzia că, în ceea ce priveşte pandemia, China nu a trecut linia roşie. Nu a încălcat regulile jocului. Nu se face vinovată de răspândirea virusului în mod intenţionat sau din neglijenţă. Această poziţie este diametral opusă celei afrmate de Washington. Numai că Berlinul joacă totuşi la două capete. Serviciul secret german, unul dintre cele mai eficiente servicii secrete din lume, ajunge la o concluzie diametral opusă. Şi face scăpat un raport secret, care conţine probe ce incriminează China. Asta înseamnă că, la rândul său, Berlinul se poate suci. Şi când se suceşte Berlinul, se suceşte Europa întreagă. Şi, sub acest aspect, diplomaţia de la Bucureşti, ca şi Guvernul, ca şi preşedinţia sunt luate prin surprindere. Astfel încât orbecăie, fiind incapabile să stabilească o politică fermă în logica şi în interesul României.

Încă şi mai complicat este diferendul de natură militară în care, din nou, România îşi prinde urechile. Vă amintiţi? Donald Trump l-a bătut pe umăr pe Klaus Iohannis şi, la schimb, România a decis pe loc ca mai multe miliarde de dolari să meargă în direcţia industriei de armament din Statele Unite. Chiar la sfârşitul anului trecut, printr-o operaţiune fără precedent în istorie, România a plătit în avans echipamente militare americane, pe care nu le-a primit nici până acum. Parteneriatul militar româno-american merge brici. În toate teatrele de război. Dar şi în ceea ce priveşte războiul invizibil. Ca semnal că aşa stau lucrurile, iată, Mircea Geoană, e drept, un personaj extrem de apropiat – şi nu numai emoţional – de Statele Unite, a devenit numărul doi în NATO. Din poziţia de secretar general adjunct. Dar în ce constă pe acest plan războiul SUA-UE?

Acest război are o miză geostrategică, dar în esenţă este tot de natură financiară. De mai mult timp, Germania promovează o apropiere de Rusia şi, în acelaşi timp, o distanţare politică faţă de Statele Unite. Aceasă distanţare, căreia i s-a raliat şi Franţa, a împins până la urmă Uniunea Europeană la decizia de a nu mai suporta via Statele Unite costurile apărării militare a continentului. Şi astfel UE a intrat în scenariul creării unei armate proprii. Pornind de la un buget iniţial de 13 miliarde de euro. În paranteză fie spus, acest buget pare a fi acum compromis de criza economică. Dificultăţile, dincolo de costurile finale, care vor fi uriaşe, sunt din această perspectivă extrem de mari pentru Uniunea Europeană. Să ne gândim numai la faptul că, în timp ce Statele Unite au numai 30 de sisteme de armament, Uniunea Europeană are 178 şi că toate aceste sisteme ar trebui compatibilizate între ele. Uniunea Eurpeană are 17 tipuri de tancuri de luptă, în timp ce Statele Unite au standardizat un singur tip. Iar bomboana pe coliva noii armate europene este pusă de Brexit. Plecarea Marii Britanii, care este principalul aliat geostrategic al Statelor Unite, poate arunca în aer acest proiect, la care totuşi Germania nu vrea să renunţe. În aceste condiii, asupra Bucureştiului se exercită numeroase presiuni, până la un punct încununate de succes, astfel încât banii pentru achiziţiile de echipamente militare să fie deturnaţi către industria europeană de armament. Din nou Bucureştiul, lipsit de o diplomaţie şi de o viziune coerentă, rămâne în corzi. În bătaia vântului. În definitiv, ce vom face atunci când acest război rece între Uniunea Europeană şi Statele Unite se declanşează pe toate fronturile de luptă? Vom continua să rămânem aliaţi fideli ai Statelor Unite sau vom arunca în aer, de dragul Berlinului, un proiect româno-american, pe care l-am construit cu sacrificii şi trudă în ultimii 30 de ani?

Aşa că întrebarea din titlu rămâne deschisă. SUA este în război pe două fronturi. Va câştiga şi într-o parte şi în cealaltă? Va câştiga doar într-o parte? Sau va pierde ambele războaie, transformându-se în imperiul cel mai scurt din istoria lumii? Şi unde se plasează până la urmă România? În care dintre tabere? O întrebare grea, cu răspunsuri dramatice!

Calin Popescu Tariceanu

Yesterday at 12:00 AM ·

Sunt câțiva ani de când tot atrag atenția public că ceva nu e în ordine cu rapoartele MCV privind România. Par să fie compuse după ureche, ori poate sunt livrate gata scrise de cineva din țară, iar la Bruxelles sunt doar semnate și asumate. De altfel, asta susțin și unele asociații profesionale ale magistraților de la noi, legat de ultimul MCV și nu doar de el, atunci când denunță public faptul că oficialii europeni sunt profund subiectivi.

Rapoartele MCV au excelat, ne amintim, inclusiv în a cere eludarea unor decizii legitime ale Parlamentului, consfințite și de CCR, adică un atac direct la suveranitate.

Circulă deja o ironie amară în media, conform căreia, anul ăsta, Bruxellesul a confundat România cu Bulgaria, țară în care nu a fost condamnat niciun mare corupt, niciun ministru, niciun parlamentar, în timp ce la noi numărul lor e de ordinul zecilor.

Ca să fie tacâmul complet, șeful anticorupției din Bulgaria și-a dat recent demisia pe motiv de corupție. De fapt, vecinii noștri nici nu au catadicsit să-și facă un DNA, având o droaie de organisme mai mici și circulă la ei glume gen „dacă fiecare stat are mafia lui, în Bulgaria mafia are un stat“.

Și atunci cum de Bulgaria e mângâiată duios pe cap, iar România e ținută pe mai departe la zid, sub amenințarea puștii MCV?

Nu știu și nu pot să înțeleg.

Și nici nu vreau să dau crezare teoriei conform căreia ridicarea MCV ar consfinți, de fapt, frângerea definitivă pe genunchi a unei țări din Est, adică exact situația Bulgariei, unde corupția e în floare, dar nu există crâcneli față de puterile ”protectoare”. La loc de cinste Rusia și Germania, care și-au împărțit egal economia țării.

E România pedepsită cu MCV, pe mai departe, pentru că nu s-a predat încă total? Pentru că încă mai are zvâcniri de orgoliu și de demnitate și nu înghite necondiționat tot ce i se livrează din exterior?

Cred că a venit momentul ca povestea să înceteze, iar UE să abandoneze acest mecanism tendențios, incorect și inegal numit Mecanismul de Cooperare și Verificare, în fapt o riglă de bătut la palmă copiii care nu își fac ”lecțiile” strict conform viziunii ”profesorilor” de la Bruxelles.

The Romanian Liberal wing reinvented itself after its historic defeat in December 2016, as pro-migration, globalist and fully in support of the LGBT agenda.

Yet, it seems unlikely that the improbable Saxon conducător of Grand liberal alliance, Klaus Johannis will be able to cause much more than a small procedural delay. Indeed, he was forced on July 9, under pain of suspension, to promulgate the decree of dismissal of his dear Attorney General Laura Codruţa Kovesi, who had, under the guise of “fight against corruption”, so effectively transformed Romanian justice into an instrument of political blackmail in the service of his clique. By signing this decree, Johannis already looked like a chess player having first lost most of his pieces, then his queen, and thinking how to get his opponent to concede to a draw.

Such is the impasse into which the “Johannis camp” seemed, a month ago, to be sinking, apparently with no hope of return. And then suddenly, a flash of genius: a colorful crowd of activists from the Open Society, Hungarian-Transylvanian separatists, and some debris of extreme right-wing groups, the #rezist movement, appeared. For nearly two years, this group has been a major organizer of “anti-corruption” demonstrations, in which Klaus Johannis readily takes the lead. Now, they believe they have finally found the fatal weapon against Liviu Dragnea’s “dictatorship” (a dictatorship based, let it be said, on the largest parliamentary majority in Romania’s democratic history). To respond, after exactly two months, to the White March of the PSD , they called for yet another “mass” event, the mother of all protests, for August 10, putting much hope in the temporary (not unusual in this summer period) presence on Romanian soil of millions of Romanians (around 25% of the active population) working abroad (mainly in the Western EU), and most of whom are absolute fans of the Romanian “Right”.

Above all, while still lacking a political program, and even a clearly identifiable leader (other than the already worn-out Johannis or the former “technocratic” – i.e.: totally unelected – prime minister Dacian Cioloş, dismissed in 2017 at the end of a disastrous mandate), the #rezistants have found themselves a slogan.

Regarded as the official slogan of the great gathering of intra-European migrants convened on August 10 to “save democracy” against the choices of the majority, it has gone viral on social networks. The two words also appear on countless T-shirts, placards, flags and other roadside signs stuck on land belonging to sympathizers of the movement: MUIE PSD: Manipulare-Uzurpare-Indignare-Exasperare. The slogan was endorsed even by the semi-official “philosopher” of the #rezist movement, the very academically respected Gabriel Liiceanu. Under the title “The insult that unites us”, he undertook, on a Romanian neo-conservative blog, to provide this new political philosophy with a beginning of doctrinal basis.

The slogan, first seen on the signs of the proto-rezist movements that had extorted the resignation of Victor Ponta in favour of Cioloş, this foul-mouthed slogan MUIE (mouth in Gypsy jargon) PSD (also seemed to contain indecent allusions to the rumours of homosexuality surrounding Victor Ponta) did not seem destined to become an epochal syntagma of the political life of any EU member state. Yet, against all odds, this is what it has become.

The intra-European Romanian migrant workers (renamed “diaspora”), by virtue of their salaries paid in euros and of their prolonged stays in countries that have legalized gay marriage, are declared culturally superior to their brothers at home, and their sacred right to “save” said country from the darkness of “corruption”. They will not tolerate hindrance to constitutional rules or to universal suffrage any more than the US-based United Fruit Company did in Latin America at the height of the golden age of military coups.

Some, of course, soon started to find this noisy slang a bit exotic. They were called to order. The writer Mircea Cărtărescu, for example, an icon of the #rezist movement and author – among others – of a bestseller entitled Why We Love Women, seems, at first, to have feared that the new slogan might bring a too brutal response to this (probably rhetorical) question, protesting on his blog against this primitive jargon, much too insensitive to the enjoyable consensuality of modern and progressive sex. Subjected, as soon as he published that post, to the avalanche of insults and threats that is now the normal speech of anti-PSD terrorism, he quickly showed all the extent of his civic courage, erasing the incriminated text from his blog – a quite realistic prefiguration of what freedom of speech could become in Romania in the case of an (electorally improbable) victory of this new oral culture.

On Friday 10th, this rhetoric of radicalization “paid off”. As expected, the protest (between a quarter and half a million people in Bucharest), although massive, did not even gather the entire pool of the anti-PSD movement, despite the summer period: among the tertiary employees in gentrified city centres that make up the bulk of indigenous troops of #rezistants, many have probably had trouble identifying with a protest whose slogan sounded more like a title of some underground hit by the turbo-folk singer Romeo Fantastik. On the other hand, those who decided to take to the streets anyway showed a level of violence that, in the highly peaceful country that is Romania, was unprecedented since the Mineriads of the 1990s: insulting the police and throwing various projectiles (including bags of feces) at them, even stealing weapons from them (a method reminiscent of that of the Kiev Maidan), they finally managed to trigger a reaction from the gendarmerie, which tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas canisters. In the fray, an isolated female gendarme was brutally beaten by a small group of “protesters”; currently hospitalized, she suffers spine injuries and might remain paralyzed.

Whether this tragic episode was premeditated or not by more or less professional provocateurs, it is obvious that the organizers of the protest, by assuming a rhetoric of extremism, had from the outset accepted – maybe even wished for – the occurrence of such tragedies, probably deemed to be “good for the cause”. And lo and behold, the pro-Johannis press immediately described the event as … a police blunder! Yet, faced with the evidence of very clear images, and of a no less unequivocal body count, one wonders how many Romanians will be willing to believe this version – not enough to change the game through electoral channels. But in that case, what are the real intentions of the #rezist brain-trust (if there still are any)? Whether the plan turns out to be another putsch attempt, which we see every six months, or more simply to maintain pressure on the rather timid PSD-ALDE government supported by a huge parliamentary majority, the question is the same: do the “services” (i.e., the political police inherited from the Băsescu era) still have the means for such ambitions, or do they only seek to sell their skin dearly?

In favor of the second hypothesis, there are signs that the ongoing divorce in the Euro-Atlantic world has already produced some cracks in the Westernist bloc in Romania. While the SRI (the main outlet of Romania’s “intelligence community”), under the leadership of Soros-boy Eduard Hellvig, seems more aligned than ever with Berlin and Brussels, some of the former champions of “Euro-Atlantic values” are now switching sides. For example: after growing up in the same “civil society” incubator as Hellvig, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, who has long been connected to various transatlantic networks such as Freedom House, has not only been less timorous than poor Cărtărescu in her rejection of #rezist’s libidinal drift, but also much sharper: describing Romanian migrant workers, who have come to Bucharest to “save” a country they have long since abandoned, as a sordid and manipulated Lumpenproletariat (which, moreover, corresponds quite well to their de facto status in various host societies), she seemed to parody the former Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi, who lost his post when he criticized the anti-Băsescu protesters of 2012 in similar terms. Between the unskilled jobs that most of the Romanian migrant workers can expect in Western Europe and the increase in wages in Romania itself, which have tripled since the end of the Băsescu era, the gap is no longer as huge as in the past. By trumpeting that the “diaspora” sends home $5 billion a year, the Westernist press in Romania and Western Europe admits – for any financially literate reader, who knows that this represents 3% of current Romanian GDP (only 10 times more, for example, than what the Raiffeisen bank extracts from the country in net profits), for a migrant population between 3 and 5 million – that the average Romanian migrant sends to his family and/or spends in Romania each year between $1,000 and $2,000, which is, in any case, less than $200 / month – less, for example, than renting a studio apartment in Cluj. This average obviously covers a wide variety of cases, including real and dazzling individual success stories, but also many cases of unemployed Romanians, sinking into mass poverty in Western Europe and occasionally begging for some money and food from … their family back home.

And while many Romanians left, many also came back, with or without savings, but often with a changed vision of the world: a much less idyllic vision of the once mythicized West, which they have discovered to be economically fragile, socially more and more unfair, morally decadent, threatened by mass immigration, ravaged by criminality and paralyzed by political correctness. Culturally, the window of action for those who hope to “manage” the sovereignist insurgency of emerging Romania by means of South American methods may be closing rapidly. Is this what the leaders of the Bucharest “Maidan” also feel, and which leads them to try and play double or nothing?

The near future may tell us: further protests are being organized at the time of this writing… and those stolen guns remain at large.

Via Oriental Review,

Washington’s current foreign-policy practice is a bit reminiscent of the golden era of the Ottoman Sublime Porte, in the sense that any visit by a leader of a vassal state is seen as nothing more than an opportunity for a public demonstration of his willingness to serve the great sultan or, in the modern context, to do the bidding of the master of the White House.

The visitor must also wear a big grin and speak passionately about how happy he is to have been given the opportunity to kiss the Sultan’s slippers. Or, to put it in the language of today, to be impressed with the leadership of the US and personally inspired by the energy of the American president. The Washington establishment can’t wrap its head around any other configuration, and therefore in the present era of America’s ebbing hegemony, the ideal visitors to the White House are the presidents of Ukraine or the Baltic countries. The other heads of states that come to Washington, including EU leaders and even some African presidents, act like insolent upstarts, who — from the standpoint of imperial tradition — do not stand to attention, tend to offer their flattery without fervor or exuberance, and, most importantly, do not race off to fulfill the wishes of the leaders of the empire.

Reception ceremony of the Conte de Saint Priest at the Ottoman Porte by Antoine de Favray 1767

The meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Donald Trump on April 27, 2018 served only to confirm that Washington does not need allies who have their own national interests: all allies must be guided by the concept of the unipolar hegemony of the US. Anyone who is uncomfortable with this is relegated to the circle of those who are seen as unfriendly to the White House. The Washington Post makes it clear that Germany falls into this latter camp: “Angela Merkel is becoming Europe’s weakest link.”

That article points out how serious the differences are between the two countries’ ruling factions. Both Germany’s political elite, and as well as the German population as a whole, are characterized very disparagingly: “German passivity is deeply ingrained. Berlin’s political class lacks strategic thinking, hates risk and has little spunk. It hides behind its ignominious past to justify pacifism when it comes to hard questions about defense and security issues.” The general decrepitude of the Bundeswehr and its equipment are criticized and mocked in the discussion of Germany’s refusal to take part in the missile attack on Syria carried out by the US, Britain, and France. And then the article even alleges that Germany’s Syrian policy has actually abetted the wrong side by granting asylum to almost a million refugees fleeing that country, thus supposedly allowing Bashar al-Assad to continue fighting.

In this context it becomes quite obvious that the specific issues that Merkel brought to the table in Washington were merely secondary concerns to her American partner. Germany’s Madam Chancellor had to traverse a distance of 10,000 kilometers to be granted a 20-minute conversation, from which it was clear that Trump had not altered his negative attitude toward questions so vital to the Germans as customs duties on steel and aluminum (set at 25% and 10%), Nord Stream 2, a loosening of the Russian sanctions for major German manufacturers, or the nuclear deal with Iran.

Angela Merkel had a difficult choice to make. Either Berlin declares war on all of Washington’s opponents, or it is dismissed once and for all as the “weakest link,” with all the ensuing consequences. But the first option would be a blow to Germany’s national interests. It is not just its international trade that would take the hit, but also its energy projects and German public opinion. She was given to understand that otherwise Germany would fail to meet the White House’s criteria for the role of America’s main partner in Europe.

Angela Merkel did not seem overly impressed. She sees the constraints that exist for her. The historical memory of the greatest defeat of the twentieth century still lingers. Hence the high level of wariness when it comes to invitations to join NATO’s military escapades. Nor has anyone there forgotten the 1980s, when Germany lived in intense fear of the USSR’s SS-20 missiles that could have incinerated that country in the blink of an eye. Germans have no desire to meekly toe the line of yet another US president, which could end up taking them back to those days.

Apparently this is why the head of the German government seemed to have armored herself with the mantra of “don’t give anything to Trump” during the negotiations in Washington.

If you look at things pragmatically, Trump needed to get a few concessions from Merkel. First of all, he needed the consent of the German chancellor to at least bring back the sanctions and hopefully to even agree to a war against Iran, because for the current Washington administration, a dissolution of the “Iran deal” and a subsequent war with Tehran is the biggest item on its foreign-policy agenda. Second, Trump had to “squeeze” Merkel on the issue of increasing Germany’s financial contributions NATO’s budget. According to the White House, Germany should be contributing 2% of its annual GDP to the alliance’s budget (or in other words, to the backlog of product orders for the US military-industrial complex). As Trump expressed it so poetically, “NATO is wonderful, but it helps Europe more than it helps us, and why are we paying the vast majority of the costs?” Third, the US needed to ensure that European leaders, and especially Merkel, capitulate in the tariff wars between the US and the EU, and, in a best-case scenario, to also secure the EU’s assistance in the trade war with China that Trump recently kicked off.

Based on the results of the meeting, Washington received a polite refusal on all three points. Five years ago it would have been difficult to imagine this kind of situation, but now this is objectively the real-world state of affairs, and it is something that neither the political analysts in the US nor a significant faction of the European media class (which still views the European Union as a “big Puerto Rico”) can get used to. The significance of Puerto Rico is that it is a place outside the US borders, but that is in effect controlled from Washington, although it has no power to influence American policy. Incidentally, Washington’s official discourse in regard to the European Union has already undergone a radical transformation and, according to Trump himself, it seems that the EU was “formed to take advantage of the United States,” although prior to that the EU was painted in the official Western narrative exclusively in terms of its “ideals of freedom,” “protection of democracy,” and some kind of “pan-European destiny and values.”

The essence of today’s transatlantic relationship can be seen in the contacts between Washington and Paris. Despite the White House’s high hopes for France to prove its loyalty to the alliance, its leaders have been just as firm as Germany’s in standing up for their own interests. This mindset was evident in the stance taken by President Emmanuel Macron, who was quoted by Bloomberg as saying “we won’t talk about anything while there’s a gun pointed at our head.” European leaders insist that any discussions take place with everyone on an equal footing, which Washington cannot indulge as a matter of principle. Even lower-level European officials are using their economic power to threaten the US. French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire claimed, “One thing I learned from my week in the U.S. with President Macron: The Americans will only respect a show of strength.” Needless to say, one does not speak to a real global hegemon in such terms.

No matter what the outcome of all the diplomatic and economic conflicts between the two shores of the Atlantic, it is already safe to say that Europe has broken free of Washington’s grip, and future relations between the US and the EU will become increasingly tense. We shall soon see whether Europe will take advantage of its current opportunity to reclaim the economic and political freedom that it lost at some point.

Authored by Bruno Maçães via The Cairo Review,

Russia aims to position itself as a leader among energy-producing equals in Eurasia. Since 2015, Russia has sought to play a more active role in the Middle East, setting its sights on the region’s energy resources to achieve this strategic goal…

Having abandoned any attempt to join the Western global political order, Russia seems to have quickly found a new self-image: as the center and core of the Eurasian supercontinent, it can reach in all directions and provide a bridge between Europe and China on both ends. In this context, the Middle East has emerged as a central axis of Russia’s strategic concerns, perhaps for the first time in the country’s history.

In his recent book What Is Russia Up To in the Middle East?, Dmitri Trenin shows how the Middle East was always marginal to Russian geopolitical interests. When progressing south, Russian military expansion had its eyes on the Balkans or Istanbul, in some periods extending to British India, Afghanistan or northern Iran, but a serious push beyond those areas was never considered. Against Ottoman Turkey, Russia waged twelve wars. It took the czarist army half a century to prevail over the mountaineers of the North Caucasus. Russia also conquered Central Asia and invaded Afghanistan, a military adventure that left little appetite for a return to the heart of the Muslim world. But neither the Russian Empire nor the Soviet Union had ever fought directly in Arab lands. In 2015, something genuinely new and unexpected took place. Russia stepped into the Syrian conflict.

Any exercise considering what the Kremlin’s intentions and goals might have been has to start by noting how Syria offered a unique opportunity for promoting Russian strategic interests. By 2015 the United States had exhausted all choices there and showed signs of disinterest and disengagement. A Russian military intervention would constitute something of a revolution in global affairs. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, a country other than the United States would be projecting military force far away from its borders without consulting or involving Washington in the decision.

Syria had never been considered important for Russian national interests, but in the new global landscape that would quickly change. After all, Syria was a critical issue for Turkey and Iran. The refugee crisis was affecting the European Union in powerful ways and China saw the Syrian corridor linking West and Central Asia to the Mediterranean as potentially decisive for the “Belt and Road” initiative, its project of trade and infrastructure development across the Eurasian supercontinent.

With every other major actor reluctant to get involved in the Syrian civil war, Russia had an opening—not to solve the political and humanitarian crisis but to become the most important factor in any future solution.

Once these initial elements were considered, more interesting possibilities started to appear. Between 2013 and 2015, the Russian economy had been under extreme pressure, not so much because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine crisis but as a result of the precipitous fall in energy prices. As a major oil and gas producer, Russia had neglected to prioritize energy geopolitics, paying a steep price for that. While China, highly dependent on inward energy flows, had spent decades extending its influence and leverage in Central Asia, Africa, and South America—preparing for all possibilities and diversifying energy supply routes—Russia knew it had more energy resources within its borders than it could ever need and customers were forever assured a more or less mechanical result of a growing and more balanced global economy. But that set of assumptions neglected how other producers can hit your interests by manipulating market prices.

By 2015 the Kremlin was certain that the United States and Saudi Arabia were deliberately lowering oil market prices to squeeze Russia and Iran. With their budgets so highly dependent on oil revenues, Iran and Russia could be effectively pressured into limiting their expansionist agendas. One could even hope that they would become more inclined to abandon their nuclear ambitions, in the case of Iran, and aggressions against Ukraine, in the case of Russia.

At the end of 2015, a 10 percent cut in public spending in Russia was the best evidence of the growing stress from the pincer movement of international sanctions and low energy prices in an economy that depends on crude at $100 a barrel. Faced with a direct challenge, Russia decided that the Middle East was now the arena where its future would be decided.

One Map, Three Regions

In October 2017, Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin took the unusual step of presenting a geopolitical report on the “ideals of Eurasian integration” to an audience in Verona, Italy. One of the maps projected on the screen during the presentation showed the supercontinent—what Russian circles call “Greater Eurasia”—as divided between three main regions. For Sechin, the crucial division is not between Europe and Asia, but between regions of energy consumption and regions of energy production. The former are organized on the western and eastern edges of the supercontinent: Europe, including Turkey, and the Asia Pacific, including India.

Between them we find three regions of energy production: Russia and the Arctic, the Caspian, and the Middle East. Interestingly, the map does not break these three regions apart, preferring to draw a delimitation line around all three. They are contiguous, thus forming a single bloc, at least from a purely geographic perspective.

Sechin’s map has a number of other interesting elements. As noted already, Turkey is left on the European side of the line delimiting the energy production core in the west. The same is true for Ukraine, which although unavoidable in this context is still an unusual inclusion in a map sanctioned by the highest echelons of Russian state power. If one looks at the world through the prism of energy geopolitics, then Ukraine is a European country—a consumer, not a producer.

Some of the most persistent foci of conflict in the contemporary world are located on the delimitation line between regions of energy production and energy consumption: eastern Ukraine, northern Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and North Korea. The fact may not be entirely coincidental. Many of these transition zones have become valuable prizes in the global fight for energy resources, with major powers often supporting rival internal factions in their bids for influence and control.

In other cases, the “foci of conflict” are transit hubs for energy flows, determining who has control over them in case of future conflict. More interestingly, transition zones are often fault lines between different political and economic models. It seems to be the case, for example, that the attempt to create a form of personal rule in Syria in the absence of oil wealth created the need for sectarian politics.

Sectarianism—the persistent promotion of mistrust and conflict between different ethnic or religious groups—functions as an alternative to oil, a form of compensation for the lack of oil resources such as those at the disposal of royal families of the Arab Gulf. It provides the ruling elite with a third method of obtaining consent from the governed, distinct from both oil patronage and the social rights of a developed democracy. Lost between two competing models, Syria has been unable to develop a genuinely stable variety of consensual politics.

The map illustrates an important point about Russia’s new self-image. From the point of view of energy geopolitics, Europe and the Asia Pacific are perfectly equivalent, providing alternative sources of demand for energy resources. Russia has been struggling to abandon its traditional orientation toward Europe, hoping to benefit from the flexibility of being able to look both east and west to promote its interests. It seems that Sechin and Rosneft can place themselves in that position much more effortlessly.

Sechin’s map subtly makes one final—and decisive—point. As you consider the three areas it delimits, it becomes apparent that two of them are already led and organized by a leading actor: Germany in the case of Europe and China for the Asia Pacific. Production chains within these highly industrial regions are increasingly managed by German or Chinese companies, which tend to reserve the higher value segments for themselves. Their spheres of influence extend to all important inputs, with one glaring exception: energy. In order to address this vulnerability, the two regions of energy consumption will be attracted to the core region, where they need to ensure ready and secure access to energy resources. And their efforts may well be made easier by the fact that the core region of energy production lacks a hegemon capable of ensuring its survival as an autonomous unit in the Eurasian system.

One further and decisive factor must be mentioned here. As the United States drastically increased its oil and gas production over the last ten years—a result of the shale gas revolution—its role in global energy geopolitics started to shift. Two trends have become dominant.

First, Washington no longer sees the Middle East as critically important for its safety and prosperity. What was a constant of American foreign policy for almost a century now seems open to revision. If domestic supply can now take the place of imports, the United States is less pressured to invest in peace and stability in the Middle East. It is not difficult to speculate that its response to the Syrian civil war would have been different—much more active and resolute—before the shale gas revolution. This fact naturally opened opportunities for Russia, already discussed above.

Second, the new energy abundance in the United States might justify using energy as a geopolitical tool—steering energy flows and influencing market prices so as to reward friendly states and punish others. As we have seen, the Kremlin grew convinced that the United States was doing just that with regards to Russia and Iran. Attempts to use energy markets to drive geopolitical outcomes reinforced Russia’s conviction that it needed to acquire higher levels of dominance in global energy markets, pushing it to intervene more actively in the Middle East.

It is from this perspective that Russia’s renewed interest in the region must be understood. By consolidating all three energy-producing regions under its leadership, Russia can take the decisive step in shaping the new Eurasian system. Its interests lie more decisively in organizing a common political will for the core region than in recovering the old dreams of integration with Europe.

That the Syria military intervention is now regarded as a success—while the intervention in Ukraine led nowhere—may point to the fact that the former, but not the latter, took into account the facts of geopolitics.

On the one hand, Russia feels at home in the Middle East. The pursuit of shifting goals against a background of persistent chaos or state disorder appeals to Russian strategic culture and its early success in Syria was quickly put to use. Suddenly Russia became an important interlocutor for every country in the region. Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Israel all have significant interests in Syria, so they all need Russia, the new effective overlord above Bashar Al-Assad. On the other hand, Russian leverage in Europe and China depends on the extent to which Moscow is able to increase its control over energy production. Efforts after 2013 to engage China as a growing destination for its energy exports suffered from the obvious difficulty that China had already developed a diversified pool of suppliers and was therefore in a position to dictate purchasing terms that Russia found unattractive.

That a deal was finally reached with Saudi Arabia at the end of 2016 to collectively reduce oil production and give a boost to global oil prices is a direct result of Russia’s ability to influence decisions in the Middle East. Less than a year later, the agreement achieved its objective of raising oil prices to a level of $60 per barrel. King Salman’s visit to Russia in October 2017 was the first ever by a Saudi monarch. With Russia facing a new set of sanctions, Moscow now appears interested in exploring new sources of investment and capital. They may well include Saudi Arabia, following the announcement of more than $3 billion in potential investment deals upon the king’s visit.

Energy Diplomacy

In two other maps, Sechin proceeded to show how energy projects offer the best example of Eurasian integration. Major companies from Europe, Russia, China and elsewhere typically pool capital and expertise, investing in exploration and refining projects from Scotland and Egypt to Vietnam and Indonesia. Eurasian integration implies the participation of energy consumers in energy production through investments in the shareholder capital of producers. Rosneft is a good example, with 50 percent of shares owned by the Russian state and stakes from BP, Qatar Investment Authority, Glencore, and CEFC China Energy.

Moscow’s attempts to spread itself across the Middle East can be understood through a series of deals signed in the last two years. The oil and gas giant LUKOIL, the second largest company in Russia after Gazprom, is in negotiations to start production at the newly discovered Eridu field in Iraq. Gazprom Neft, Gazprom’s oil arm, has taken exploration blocks in Iraqi Kurdistan while also operating the Badra field in southern Iraq. Rosneft has signed cooperation agreements in Kurdistan and Libya and has bought a 30 percent stake in Egypt’s giant Zohr offshore gas field.

The very same day he delivered his speech on Eurasian geopolitics, Sechin announced that Rosneft would take control of Iraqi Kurdistan’s main oil pipeline, boosting its investment in the autonomous region to $3.5 billion, despite Baghdad’s military action sparked by a Kurdish vote for independence. The move helped shield Kurdistan from increasing pressure from Baghdad.

Two weeks later, Sechin went on to sign a preliminary pact with the National Iranian Oil Company, the first step before a binding deal to participate in Iran’s oil and gas projects over the next few years, with investments totaling up to $30 billion and a production plateau of 55 million tons of oil per year.

Four Russian oil companies have even begun negotiating for opportunities in Syria, a venture driven as much by politics as by commercial interest. The aim is not to explore and extract Syria’s modest petroleum reserves, of course. By actively participating in rebuilding and operating Syrian oil and gas infrastructure, Russian energy companies will be in control of a critical transit route for Iranian and Qatari oil and gas heading to Europe, bringing two rival producers closer to its orbit and tightening its stranglehold on the European gas supply. In 2009, Qatar proposed to run a natural gas pipeline through Syria and Turkey to Europe. Instead, Al-Assad forged a pact with Iran to build a pipeline from the Persian Gulf and then through Iraq and Syria and under the Mediterranean. This project had to be postponed because of the war. When it is resumed, Russia will be in control.

It is in the very nature of the Eurasian system described by Sechin that the core energy production region—provided it is sufficiently united and organized—will benefit from its central position, being able to pick and choose between east and west in order to obtain the most favorable terms. Russia and the Middle East are now part of the same geopolitical unit. It took the Russian military intervention in Syria for the world to start to come to terms with this reality.

General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar handed over to President Klaus Iohannis the request for criminal prosecution in the Revolution dossier in connection with crimes against humanity against Ion Iliescu, Petre Roman and Gelu Voican Voiculescu, PÎCCJ reported on Monday.

“The Prosecutor General of the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice addressed to the President of Romania a request for the exercise of the constitutional and legal prerogatives regarding the request for criminal prosecution in connection with the commission of the offense against humanity, according to Article 439 para. ) a, g, i and k Criminal Code with the application of Article 5 of the Criminal Code to: Iliescu Ion, member and president of the Council of the National Salvation Front (dated December 22, 1989), de facto exerted executive power and the Central Legislature, behaving as a Government until the Decree-Law No. 2 of December 27, 1989, when the president of the council was given the role of a head of state, and the legislative powers of the council were separated from those of the executive, requiring authorization between December 22 and 27, 1989. Roman Petre, member of the Council of the National Salvation Front, dated December 22, 1989, officially named Prim Minister of the Government of Romania by Decree no. 1 of 26 December 1989 requiring authorization for the period 22 to 31 December 1989; Gelu Voican Voiculescu, member of the National Salvation Front Council of December 22, 1989, officially appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the Romanian Government by Decree no. 5 of December 28, 1989, which requires authorization for the period 22 – 31 December 1989 “, the communiqué of the General Prosecutor’s Office states.

On December 18, 2017, the Military Prosecutor’s Office announced that following the filing of evidence in the “Revolution” dossier, the investigators’ conclusion was that in December 1989 there was no power vacuum.

Military prosecutor Marian Lazar said at a press conference that there had been a military diversion since the evening of December 22, 1989, which was the main cause of numerous deaths, injuries and destructions.

Additionally, prosecutors have identified, including by testimonial evidence, the source of panic sound (issued on December 21, 1989, during Nicolae Ceausescu’s speech), which contributed alongside other elements to the disorganization of the Palace Square and triggering protests in Bucharest.

At the same time, prosecutors argued that there were pressures exerted on the commanders of UM 01417 Targoviste, the place where the Ceausescu couple was, but also orders from the top of the military hierarchy regarding the physical elimination of the presidential couple.

“It is undoubtedly the fact that the pressure existed, manifested itself on several levels, being the main cause of the numerous deaths, bodily injuries and destructions. The administered evidence highlighted the mechanisms of constant misinformation, with particularly serious consequences, launched through TVR, Radio Broadcasting and the military means of communication, thus being created, at national level, the well-known terrorist psychosis, as well as the way in which a series of diversionary military orders were transmitted, with particularly serious consequences. shows that in 1987 the armed forces of Romania imported two types of military firearms sound imitators, namely imitators for infantry weapons of the sound of fire at the barrel of the gun, and imitators of the parachute whistle, as well as a better understanding of the administered evidence.

At the same time, it was clarified the succession of events at UM 01417 Targoviste, the location where the Ceausescu couple was from the afternoon of December 22, 1989. The evidence revealed a constant pressure exerted on the commanders of this unit as well as the existence of orders from the top of the military hierarchy regarding the physical elimination of the Ceausescu couple, “said then prosecutor Marian Lazar. In addition, until the execution of the two, on December 25, 1989, three attempts were made for their physical liquidation.

The investigators stated that there is a clear understanding of the circumstances surrounding the preparation of the emergency hearing of the former president and his wife, the actual trial, the real motivations behind this action and, subsequently, the execution of the Ceausescu spouses.

Former Prime Minister Petre Roman considers it “revolting” and ”extremely surprising” that the General Prosecutor, Augustin Lazar, has asked for a criminal prosecution to be conducted in his case in the Revolution file, arguing that during the period invoked he was in no position to influence military actions.

“First and foremost I have a feeling of revolt and total surprise, because I have absolutely nothing to do with this matter. If there were military actions in those days, in what capacity could I have influenced such military actions? I was a nobody at that time, I did not have any kind of official function, only on December 27, I became Prime Minister of Romania, this is the first point. Second, there were military actions and I was, for example, on the evening of December 21, one of those who survived certain military actions of repression: 39 comrades in the University Square area were killed, and there were also all those military operations in Timisoara, in which I could have lost my life, as How can I be in one way or another correlated with what is said in this criminal prosecution claim? That’s why I say it is totally and altogether revolting and even absurd, unless there’s a great deal of manipulation going on, because I was in no way qualified to get involved in any way with what the military orders were, those that led to the misery, the tragedy of the dead, especially those before December 22 and December 22 1989. I do not see any reference to any criminal investigation regarding those within the military units who gave the orders that led to the military actions. I personally did not have any position. Who was paying attention, in those days, to whom? One of those who participated in the Revolution? I insist and say that this is a demand that I categorically reject and which I consider extremely surprising, not to say very dubious from the point of view of its motivations,” Petre Roman told AGERPRES.

He pointed out that he had no capacity to give orders at that time.

“Do you know how many members the Council of the National Salvation Front there were (…) There were about 37, and anyway, the Council of the National Salvation Front was not in a position at the time to give orders.” The orders were from the institutions – The Ministry of Defense in the first place or the Ministry of the Interior, or what other institutions I do not know. “What was my connection with these institutions? None. What capacity did I have to influence them? Absolutely none,” he said. Petre Roman recalled that he was twice at the Military Prosecutor’s Office and testified. “I spent long hours there and told them what happened. I thought things were perfectly clear from the point of view of my participation, and now I see this demand, which I think is very surprising at best, but in any case misconduct is inappropriate with what I have experienced, never mind what I did in those days, and I’m talking about the period December 21 to December 26, 1989,” the former PM said.

The former prime minister did not want to comment on the fact that the prosecutor’s request also concerns Ion Iliescu and Gelu Voican Voiculescu.

“I have nothing to say about them, in this matter, because when a matter comes to justice every one … here, we are not talking about history. If you want to know what I think about what happened then you can consult a recently published volume called ‘About Passion in Time of Freedom’ in which I tell what I experienced at that time,” said Petre Roman. AGERPRES / (Autor: