Murder in Berlin. Did the Russian FSB do it? by J.

FSB

In August 2019, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili a former Chechen insurgent commander who had been seeking asylum in Germany, was murdered in Berlin.  The German attorney general's office says the suspect in Khangoshvili's murder, who is identified only as Vadim K. or an alias of Vadim S., is very likely the same man who murdered a Russian businessman in Moscow in 2013.  His suspected accomplice has been identified as a former Russian FSB (Vympel) Officer .

Vadim S. traveling under the guise of a tourist and using a Russian passport, was ID'd by two teens who had seen the individual attempting to dispose of the murder weapon into a river.

Vadim S. ID'd as former Russian FSB (Vympel) named Vadim Krasikov.  Krasikov has a close association with current and former members of the Russian Speznaz, and had spent extended periods of time at a FSB training base outside Moscow.

An investigation team comprised of The Bellincat, with The Insider (Russia) and Der Spiegel (Germany) findings conclude that the assassination of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin was organized by the FSB which used the Vympel group of companies (and the affiliated Regional Association of Former FSB Spetsnaz veterans) for the operation, and as deniable cover. They conclude that the Vympel group of companies is a de facto arm of the FSB earmarked, at least partly, for deniable overseas assassinations. The role of the Vympel group for such targeted assassinations is not dissimilar to the use of Wagner PMC for deniable military operations abroad. FSB’s use of a proxy for overseas illegal operations is different than the modus operandi of the GU.

The Berlin murder trial kicked off this past Wednesday.

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/12/03/identifying-the-berlin-bicycle-assassin-part-1-from-moscow-to-berlin/

https://oc-media.org/khangoshvili-murder-trial-kicks-off-in-berlin/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-trial-idUSKBN26S193

J.

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19 Responses to Murder in Berlin. Did the Russian FSB do it? by J.

  1. rho says:

    This case shows you what is wrong with the German asylum system. A former commander of a salafist terrorist militia like Khangoshvili can submit an asylum application and get all the benefits associated with it instead of getting extradited immediately.
    Fortunately he is dead now, one less problem to deal with.

  2. Rick Merlotti says:

    Anybody who cites Bellingcat as a credible source about Russia, or anything at all, is a fool or a witting operative of Anglo American intelligence

  3. Babak makkinejad says:

    Rho
    France had been hosting the Mudjahedeen Khalq of Iran near Paris for decades.
    That group was responsible for the murder of thousands of people in Iran, including the assassination of Iran’s sitting president, sitting prime minister, head of Supreme Court, 78 sitting members of the Parliament.
    But, then again, French Special Forces protected the Hutu mass-murderes in Rwanda as well.
    Germany, while not an innocent bystander, cannot hold a candle to the record of France.

  4. Babak makkinejad says:

    J
    I think he be a Georgian or of mixed parentage.

  5. English Outsider says:

    Bogus as hell by the looks of it. Seems the pressure to cancel Nord Stream 2 is being ratcheted up.
    An aggressive take on Nord Stream 2 cancellation from “a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Statecraft, London, and Senior Non-Resident, Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council, Washington, D.C.” –
    https://www.theglobalist.com/european-union-energy-security-nord-stream-2-russia-germany-geopolitics/
    And as much more in that line as one cares to google. But it looks as if Gazprom is on the hook for getting on for nine billion Euros already spent and more if the planned connections to the pipelines have been started.
    One poll I came across showed that at least 50% of Germans are still anxious to see Nord Stream 2 go ahead. But one imagines that’s nothing that can’t be changed by a few more Skripals and Navalnys and perhaps another assassination or two.
    Did the Russians not see this coming when they committed to such an expensive project? Difficult to see how they can have put that size of investment at risk unless they had some guarantee they’d get a return on it.

  6. John Credulous says:

    Long excerpt from https://www.amazon.com/One-Soldiers-War-Arkady-Babchenko/dp/0802144039
    To get a flavor of Chechnya:

    We pull out of Grozny, surrender the city, and the Chechens are jubilant; they openly drive through the streets in cars, waving their green flags and carrying weapons. We can do nothing, our orders are explicit: Do not open fire. The rebels are now declared Chechen freedom fighters rather than bandits, and we are to treat them with respect.
    We leave through streets that we took in combat only yesterday and try not to look to the side. The Chechens laugh behind us and make throat-slitting motions.
    The war has hardly touched the village of Achkhoi-Martan and only a few houses have bullet holes in their gates as we wind our way through the streets. Hate-filled eyes watch us from behind the gates, windows and courtyards. No young men are visible, only old ones, women and children who stop and watch us driving past. God forbid that we break down here.
    We sit there, the barrels of our weapons bristling. One movement and we will open fire; a single stone or bottle thrown at us and we’ll tear this village to shreds.
    Chechen kids are playing on the streets. When they see our column they raise a fist and shout ‘ Allahu akbar! ’ The older ones also draw a finger across their throats.
    In Achkhoi-Martan we pass a block post manned by Chechen militia officers who had fought on our side. As usual there is a site hut, but this one has been so riddled with bullets that not a single bit of it is unscathed. It’s impossible to live inside, but that’s their home now.
    Two officers stand in front of the block post, one of them wounded, his arm hanging in a dirty bandage. They watch our column in silence. Their entire arsenal amounts to two rifles.
    We know that they will probably be killed this very night, and they know it too. We have betrayed them.
    ‘Don’t leave us behind,’ one of them says finally.
    We turn away.
    The column drives past and the dust settles on their hair and eyelashes.
    I see them before my eyes for a long time after, these ghosts on the roadside at Achkhoi-Martan.
    Forgive us, lads.
    We stop before the bridge. The Chechens have set up their block post here and don’t let us go any further. One with a green band round his head is unhappy about something and an argument starts between him and Kotenochkin.
    ‘Shoot the bastard, what are you talking to him for?!’ says Osipov indignantly. ‘Are they out of their minds, not letting the column through?’
    I sit up top and watch to the right. Our column stands on the central square. Today is Saturday, market day, and it’s busy. The Chechens have laid out confectionery, tinned food and water by the window of a destroyed department store and a brisk trade is underway.
    A young Chechen is sitting on a foldable chair right in front of me, selling cigarettes. He looks me in the eye, then says something to his neighbour and looks at me again. They laugh.
    ‘What are you looking at?’ He mouths at me, drawing his finger across his throat.
    His wares are arrayed on a big table covered with a plastic sheet; he could easily have a rifle underneath it. All of the men on this square are armed, we know this, and we feel their superiority over us as we sit stuck here in this trap. One move from us and tracers will fly into the column – there are eyes and barrels at every window.
    The Chechen is still looking at me and laughing. He’s laughing as if he’s killed me and I’m his trophy. He doesn’t see me as a living person, all he sees is my severed head. I raise my rifle and aim it at his head. He also feels fear but the smile doesn’t leave his face. Why doesn’t he turn away? Why is he looking at me? I slip off the safety catch and put my finger on the trigger. He doesn’t turn away, and his eyes are full of fear and defiance.
    The column sets off and we pass over the bridge. There is a box of grenades at the feet of one of the Chechens standing on it: the bribe we gave to be let across.
    If we had stood there for a few more seconds, I would have killed that Chechen. Then they would have burnt our column.
    ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ – John 15:13.
    We don’t know what we are fighting for. We have no goal, no morals or internal justification for what we do. We are sent off to kill and to meet our deaths but why we don’t know. We just drew the short straw, happened to be born eighteen years ago and grow up just in time for this war. And there our blame ends.
    The only thing we have is hope, the hope that we will survive and preserve our sense of self, and be able to remain human beings.
    We feel the injustice of it all so acutely with our eighteen years. Each one of us that survives this war will truly believe that such evil should never happen again.
    We weren’t fighting the Chechens; our real enemies were the lies and treachery that created this monstrous conflict. And every shell that was fired at us was fired at all the young men of this world who might so easily meet the same fate.

  7. Babak makkinejad says:

    English Outsider
    I agree, Germany is on suicide path.

  8. David Habakkuk says:

    EO,
    For many years now, the dominant elements in successive British governments have been beavering away, doing their utmost to convince contemporary Russians of the continuing relevance of Alexander Nevsky’s choice: if one has to be a ‘vassal’, then Mongols are infinitely better than Crusaders.
    Only a couple of years back did I realise that Chris Donnelly, who is one of the pivotal figures in the ‘Institute for Statecraft’, as also the ‘Intelligence and Security Committee’ report released in July, has been playing a central role in this, ever since I first became aware of him, back in 1988-9.
    And now, under Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, it looks as though his efforts have finally been crowned with decisive success.

  9. English Outsider says:

    Mr Habakkuk – this is a difficult subject to discuss because there’s no such entity as “The EU” in the sense we talk of “The United States” or “China”.
    As an incomplete project the EU is still more of a loose association than a power centre in its own right. In the field of foreign policy it’s certainly subordinate to the decisions of its more powerful members. Kissinger’s enquiry – if I want to call Europe who do I call? – is therefore probably less easy to answer now than when the question was posed. “Depends what the question is” can be the only answer and in foreign policy it’s safer to regard Brussels, when it’s relevant at all, more as a front than as a power centre in itself.
    Allowing for that there are some puzzles when it comes to examining European foreign policy and those puzzles apply to the UK as well.
    1. In many instances – this example J. gives us is but one of very many – we’re working hand in glove with some EU countries on security/intelligence matters. Possibly also looking to be more integrated with them for defence purposes. Or perhaps that should be for defence procurement purposes.
    At the same time there’s a real show of hostility from both sides when it comes to the current EU/UK negotiations. That’s a puzzle. Is that seeming hostility merely show? Is Westminster agin the Euro-mob or with them?
    2. How to reconcile the spectacle of our troops beavering away defending the EU against the dreaded Russians, while at the same time the UK is ostensibly facing what could amount to the EU running a trade war against us – that’s also a puzzle.
    3. And it’s not possible to maintain that the Steele affair was merely an ex-IO going off the rails. It was part of a deliberate attempt to damage an American President in which HMG was complicit.
    Yet if we accept for the sake of argument that the Russians do represent a real threat to Europe generally, and that includes the UK – then it’s the Americans, as Blair pointed out at that MSC and as just about anyone with any knowledge of such matters agrees, who dispose of the only means of countering that threat. So what are we doing assisting in an attack on an American administration? Another puzzle.
    The only common factor in all those puzzles is a deeply ingrained Russophobia that over-rides the current EU/UK dispute and also is the leading factor in Anglo-American relations.
    Is this merely the result of institutional inertia – reflexes left over from the Cold War – or do you see it as considered and joint EU/UK policy that takes precedence over all other matters?

  10. Vig says:

    Curious case, no doubt and without doubt the British/German/Russian journalist network and their sources or helpers is what pushed this up on level from a simple murder case. With one killer supposedly having two identities vs a victim which may have a multitude.
    Besides, if you read the Bellingcrat research which apparently helped to not only provide a central secret Bellingcrat witness to German prosecutors whose (interior) Russian expertise provided most of the ‘citizen intelligence/open source intelligence’ needed to blow up the case into an international case. Close to 30% of the ‘state aggression’ evidence seem to have been based on this witness and/or Bellingcrat.
    Easy, ain’t it? We are all easy open Curious case, no doubt and without doubt the British/German/Russian journalist network and their sources or helpers is what got this case international attention.
    Besides, if you read the Bellingcrat research which apparently helped to not only provide a central secret Bellingcrat witness whose Russian expertise provided most of the ‘citizen intelligence/open source intelligence’ needed to blow up the case into an international case. Close to 30% of the ‘state aggression’ evidence seem to have been delivered by one witness and/or Bellingcrat.
    Easy, ain’t it?
    On the other hand Russia sent a bungling murderer easily caught close to scene of the crime and took care, or his caretakers took care, his visa travels were easily readable/suggestible.
    Wouldn’t Germans and the larger ‘Western World’ expect that? Look, even Mossad sometimes bungled, and as we all know by now Russia is the place where killers are hired by the services since their state services and organized crime work hand in hand.

  11. Vig says:

    Posted by: English Outsider | 12 October 2020 at 11:41 AM
    Concerning:
    That’s a puzzle. Is that seeming hostility merely show? Is Westminster agin the Euro-mob or with them?
    Look, I am willing to consider you and your co-citizen victims of evil EU maneuvers, but consider that’s what Boris faught for thus setting an example for others to follow.
    Don’t worry, Bellingcrat already opened an office and training center in European ground. Besides two points in your favor: English as language as lingua france and solid relations to the present US president, which will be reelected.

  12. English Outsider says:

    Vig – thanks but my comment wasn’t a “Brexit comment”. It was more a “What the hell is HMG up to with this Russia nonsense” query.
    If you want the lowdown on the Brexit shambles, the problem didn’t lie with Brussels. Brussels merely employed a series of tricks that I expect any negotiating party would employ if it could get away with them.
    The problem lay, as ever, with the bastards in Westminster who fell for those tricks.
    The question is whether they fell for them because they were on Brussels’ side or whether they fell for them because they were clueless. A bit of one and a bit of the other, I’d say.
    Actually it was both. They claim that Mrs May was the worst Prime Minister since North. What do they mean “since”? Lord North merely lost the American colonies. Mrs May damn near lost England.
    Returning to the topic, I’m glad you share my belief that Trump will be re-elected. I think it important that he is. I’d like to think that that means he and HMG will get along just fine. But given that it was an ex-MI6 operative who played a prominent part in ditching Trump at the start of his Presidency that’s more hope than belief. They say your President has a long memory.
    I’m hoping DH will relate that Steele affair to the wider context. That’s why I wrote in. As for Bellingcat, as far as I can see that’s now no more nor less than the up-market side of the FCO. They keep the scruffier bits decently out of sight.

  13. Balint Somkuti, PhD says:

    1. Killing terrorist suspected exiles in third countries is ages long habit.
    2. Germans cannot allow the Nord Stream 2 not to open since they are in a self-inflicted position of having abandoned both nuclear and coal powerplants. Relying on pipelines through Ukraine and Poland for the only source of energy which gives a steady flow of electricity is a difficult form of suicide as my saying goes. Renewables are just not enough flexible and calculable.

  14. vig says:

    The problem lay, as ever, with the bastards in Westminster who fell for those tricks.
    Well yes, those bastards. You are referring to the British to be purged swamp? Or are those bastards, those you elected last time around.
    If the latter, why worry?

  15. David Habakkuk says:

    EO,
    You raise very good questions, but also, if I may say so, fail to confront some critical ones.
    So, you write;
    ‘Yet if we accept for the sake of argument that the Russians do represent a real threat to Europe generally, and that includes the UK – then it’s the Americans, as Blair pointed out at that MSC and as just about anyone with any knowledge of such matters agrees, who dispose of the only means of countering that threat. So what are we doing assisting in an attack on an American administration? Another puzzle.’
    Any rational security policy has to be based upon serious analysis. If one accepts something ‘for the sake of argument’, it should be solely to work out the implications of any hypothesis, not to treat it as valid.
    And I have commonly found it extremely ill-advised to accept anything whatsoever on the basis of the fact that ‘just about anyone’ purporting to have ‘any knowledge of such matters agrees’.
    If you want to cite Blair – who does not really have the best record on foreign policy – on the supposed inability of Europe to avoid succumbing to the domination of Russia, without American assistance, then you owe me a considered explanation of what you think Putin and his associates, or their successors, are liable to do, and why.
    Are you still expecting that, without the threat of American nuclear weapons reducing Russia to an ‘irradiated wasteland’, the tanks will roll remorsely westwards into Lithuania and Poland, and then on to the Channel?
    Recent attempts by people in Britain who are supposed to have ‘knowledge of such matters’ to explain their views of the ‘Russian threat’ do not involve quite such absurd assumptions, but have both been not very convincing, and unexpectedly revealing.
    As regards the ‘Intelligence and Security Committee’ report, belatedly published in July, apart from the laughable quality of the analysis, a fascinating aspect is that it accepts, at face value, the account given in the ‘From Russia With Blood’ pieces published by ‘BuzzFeed’ in June 2017 at face value.
    It is in itself interesting that, for a serious critique of the report, by Paul Robinson, who was a contemporary of Boris Johnson at Eton and Oxford, and then spent five years in Army Intelligence before making a career as a – rather good – scholar of Russian military history and political philosophy, one has to turn to ‘RT.’
    (See https://www.rt.com/russia/495486-russia-report-british-intelligence/ .)
    Valueless as it is as a discussion of Russia, the endorsement by the ISC of the – ludicrous – claims about Putin’s assassinating his way through the community of heroic ‘dissidents’ gathered around the late Boris Berezovsky by ‘BuzzFeed’ is extremely revealing.
    In addition to pointing to the rather crucial factor of the involvement of key elements in both British and American ‘élites’ in not-very-well considered projects for ‘régime change’ in Russia, it can I think be very fairly be taken as ‘prima facie’ evidence of the extent of the involvement of British ‘élites’ in the conspiracy against Trump.
    And then, on 30 September, the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, gave a speech launching something called the ‘Integrated Operating Concept.’
    (See https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chief-of-the-defence-staff-general-sir-nick-carter-launches-the-integrated-operating-concept )
    The venue he chose was ‘Policy Exchange’, whose director is Dean Godson, a key link between American and British ‘neoconservatives.’
    As with so many of these people, if you ‘scratch them’, you find a communist background, although Joseph Godson was ‘Lovestoneite’, that is a follower of Bukharin, rather than the more common pattern of ‘Trotskyite’ involvement.
    In keeping with the ‘furtiveness’ characteristic of ‘neoconservatives’, the ‘Policy Exchange’ website no longer lists the organisation’s trustees.
    However, it is easy to find out that, from 2014 to June 2017, the Chairman of Trustees was David Frum – co-author with Richard Perle of the 2003 manifesto ‘An End To Evil: How To Win The War On Terror.’
    In June 2017 – that is, it, Frum was replaced by the former Australian Foreign Minister and High Commissioner in London Alexander Downer, who has clearly been a key figure in the conspiracy against Trump.
    From his entry on the King’s College, London, website, where he is ‘Executive Chair of the International School for Government at King’s College London’, it appears Downer is still Chairman of Trustees at ‘Policy Exchange.’
    He also earlier played a key role in the Hakluyt/Holdingham Group, another important – and underinvestigated – ‘nexus’ of the conspiracy.
    (See https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/alexander-downer ).
    The speech by Carter, like the ISC report, is a fine example of standard-issue ‘Borgist’ drivel.
    As in the ‘ISC’ report, it is assumed that it is prudent to make all kinds of ‘worst case assumptions’ about ‘authoritarians’, without any need to attempt to understand how they may see the world, or indeed produce anything very much in the way of ‘evidence’ justifying your claims.
    All this only gets so far in answering the questions you raise. However, a key part of the background is that key elements in British ‘élites’ swallowed ‘hook, line and sinker’ the ‘neobolshevik’ project of American ‘neoconservatives.’
    The inevitable ‘shipwreck’ of this project, with the decisive turning away of Russia from the West – the end of the ‘Petrine era’ in Russian, and indeed world, history, one might say – and the ‘populist’ revolts that produced both ‘Brexit’ and Trump’s victory, are things that cannot be accommodated within their corrupt utopian vision.
    As with previous such visions, blaming ‘foreign devils’ is a natural response.
    Accordingly, having happily ‘colluded’ in what was assumed would be a successful attempt to cover up the truth about the DNC leaks by exploiting ‘Russophobia’ and so save Hillary Clinton, the – unexpected – victory of Trump posed large elements in British ‘élites’ with intractable dilemmas.
    Should they follow their American ‘co-conspirators’ in ‘doubling down’? Or should they make their peace with Trump, adopting the obvious strategy of making Christopher Steele the ‘patsy’, or ‘hanging him out to dry’?
    Should they assume that ‘business as usual’ could be restored, or should they conclude that the assumption that they, like other Europeans, could indefinitely rely on American ‘krysha’ in a joint attempt to reduce Russia to ‘vassaldom’ was no longer valid?
    It is, I suspect, likely to be in part the inherent difficulty of the dilemmas involved which accounts for the way in which so many in Britain have been going around like the proverbial ‘headless chickens.’
    This I suspect has been even more so in recent weeks, given the unpredictable nature of the current American election, and its aftermath, and the way that ‘Bojo’ has attempted to be both ‘anti-Borgist’ and ‘Borgist.’
    As to our prospects of getting out of the ‘blind alley’ in which we find ourselves – where we are trying to be ‘Global Britain’ while it seems doing our level best to antagonise almost everybody – it seems to me they are not good.
    However, a start might be possible if we made a serious effort to escape from the world of drivelling self-congratulatory fantasy so well exemplified in the ISC report and the speech by Carter, and attempted to reckon with the real world, as it is.
    Among other things, it might be helpful if we realised that this is a world in which many – including a lot of people in Russia who used to like, admire, and want to emulate and be part of the ‘West’ – now regard us with complete, and in my view largely justified, contempt.
    Do I think a political system in which ‘democracy’ means a choice between ‘Bojo’ and Jeremy Corbyn, and then between ‘Bojo’ and Keir Starmer, gives one much hope of doing any of this?
    Question expecting the answer ‘no’.

  16. English Outsider says:

    David Habakkuk – thank you for that as ever comprehensive and as ever illuminating reply.
    It was with some diffidence, some time ago, that I disagreed with your assessment of the Horowitz report. You suspected a “limited hangout”. As an outsider I had a different take and saw that report as the first cautious steps in uncovering the “Russiagate” scandal. I still hope AG Barr is ponderously working on putting all that right – but if I were a betting man I’d have to give your take far shorter odds.
    Thank you also for your reference to the report by that Parliamentary Committee. In passing, it’d be interesting to know whether those MP’s were having the wool pulled over their eyes or whether they were industriously assisting in pulling the wool over ours. I suspect the second.
    That speculation aside, the report made grim reading. I saw with astonishment that a Committee of the House of Commons believes that the Russian presence in Syria “presents the West with difficulty in supporting peace in the region.”
    “Supporting peace in the region.” Right. R2P rides again. And don’t whatever you do look at how those Jihadis who wrecked an entire region got their arms and ammunition and access.
    I also saw with astonishment a footnote in that same report – “In the words of Edward Lucas in his evidence to the Committee: “If you believe that the West is run by hypocritical, incompetent, greedy politicians, then it becomes much harder to take any kind of moral high ground about Russia which really is run by very, very bad people.”
    The hell! Are they pretending the swamp doesn’t exist in SW1?
    https://docs.google.com/a/independent.gov.uk/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=aW5kZXBlbmRlbnQuZ292LnVrfGlzY3xneDo1Y2RhMGEyN2Y3NjM0OWFl
    So it’s the standard snow job, that Parliamentary Committee. Nothing out of the way. Except for this:–
    “8. This has been a major Inquiry, spanning a number of evidence sessions with a broad range of witnesses over the course of eight months, in addition to a substantial volume of written evidence. We are grateful to those outside the Intelligence Community – in particular Anne Applebaum, William Browder, Christopher Donnelly, Edward Lucas and Christopher Steele – for volunteering their very substantial expertise on Russia, which provided us with an invaluable foundation for the classified evidence sessions.”
    So three years after a British ex-Intelligence officer was assisting a bunch of Americans in their attempt to ditch Trump we find that same IO being feted by the Great and the Good in a UK Parliamentary Committee.
    Doubling down?

  17. David Habakkuk says:

    EO,
    We live under ‘Ingsoc.’
    No, I am not joking.
    If you look at the different accounts that have been given of the activities of Christopher Steele, and the uncritical way in which they have been recycled by supposedly reputable journalists, they make the activities of ‘Miniluv’ and ‘Minitrue’ in Orwell’s novel look cautious and conservative.
    In one version, the – supposed – author of the dossier published by ‘BuzzFeed’ has been the master-spy, using his top level Kremlin contacts to expose a sinister ‘Putin plot’ to undermine Western democracy.
    According to another, (see, for instance, the initial comments by the former GCHQ person Matt Tait) he was simply an enthusiastic ‘case officer’, who however was rather more than a touch uncritical about what his sources produced.
    And, in the latest version, Steele had no real sources at all, but simply sent a boozy ex-Brookings Institution colleague of Fiona Hill off to Russia, to gather ‘tittle-tattle’.
    And, predictably, the ‘next stage’, has been the suggestion that the – supposed – ‘Primary Sub-Source’ for this ‘tittle tattle’, Igor Danchenko, was an instrument for just such a ‘Putin plot.’
    The disagreements, however, do not end there. So, if Michael Horowitz is to be believed, the – supposed – author of the dossier published by ‘BuzzFeed’ elaborated a farrago which had little to do with what Danchenko told him.
    But central to Mr Justice Warby’s judgement in the case brought against Steele by the Alfa ‘oligarchs’, however much he may try to disguise it, is the insistence that the defendant did actually accurately report what his sources told him.
    (See https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2020/1812.html&query=(Aven) )
    At the moment, I suspect, the judgement by Warby in the case brought by Aleksej Gubarev is being deliberately delayed, until it is absolutely clear whether it should be based upon the assumption that a Biden victory means ‘business as usual’ or not.
    As for the old-fashioned belief that we in Britain had a judicial system which to some extent at least was independent of the security services, by contrast to the Russian – it was a nice dream while it lasted.
    Meanwhile, two reports on the ‘Consortium News’ site cast fresh light on the activities of ‘Miniluv.’
    The first, by Ben Norton, discusses the most recent publications by the group calling themselves ‘Anonymous’, following on from the materials they produced back in 2018 from the ‘Integrity Initiative’ and the ‘Institute for Statecraft.’ (Note, Chris Donnelly was a pivotal figure in both those initiatives, as also in the ISC report.)
    (See https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/12/leaked-docs-expose-massive-syria-propaganda-operation-by-western-govt-contractors-media/ .)
    It seems clear that the earlier materials – which may indeed have had a Russian origin – were authentic.
    And particularly given that it ‘meshes’ with a lot of other evidence, it is likely, although not certain, that the picture the new materials paint of the frenzied efforts of the London-based sections of ‘Miniluv’ and ‘Minitrue’ to hand Syria over to jihadists is accurate.
    That General Valery Gerasimov played a pivotal role, in a range of ways, in frustrating these efforts is very probably a reason why he has been a principal target of ‘strategic communications’ operations by both London- and U.S- branches of ‘Miniluv’ and ‘Minitrue.’
    Yet more interesting is the report by the editor of ‘Consortium News’, Joe Lauria, on the lawsuit they filed on 13 October against the Canadian ‘Global News Corporation.’
    (See https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/13/consortium-news-sues-canadian-tv-network-for-defamation-over-report-cn-was-part-of-attack-directed-by-russia/ )
    This is in relation to claims – which it appears were instigated by the ‘Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE)’ – that the reporting by ‘Consortium News’ on the career of the grandfather of Chrystia Freeland was part of an ‘attack’ and a ‘cyber influence campaign’ directed by Moscow.
    So, it seems that we have a most interesting case of the collaboration between ‘Minitrue’ and ‘Miniluv.’
    And, obviously, one comes back to questions to do with the ‘Five Eyes’ system, and the relations between the CSE and its American and British counterparts, the NSA and GCHQ.
    (Within the ‘deep state’ of ‘Oceania’, it has to be remembered, ‘national’ divisions are quite secondary.
    For a long time, I had sympathy with sceptics about the use of a term drawn from the experience of Turkey and similar political systems. But, I cannot any longer resist the overwhelming evidence that, as it were, we have become ‘Turks.’)
    As to the allegations in question, it does seem that anyone has seriously called in question the factual basis of the assertion that the Ukrainian Michael Chomiak, the grandfather of Chrystia Freeland, currently Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Canada, having earlier served as Foreign Minister, was a notorious Nazi collaborator.
    There is, however, another aspect of this.
    A pivotal moment in the history of the Russian ‘Nineties was when in November 1996, following Yeltsin’s election victory that summer, Boris Berezovsky gave an interview to the ‘Financial Times’, in which he explained that the seven ‘oligarchs’ who were largely responsible for it, controlled about fifty per cent of the Russian economy.
    It may be useful to imagine that you were a Russian ‘deplorable’, who had read the interview.
    And this is all the more so as the lead interviewer was Freeland, whose political career owes a very great deal to the successful journalistic career she made with the ‘Financial Times.’
    (If one puts ‘Freeland’ into the ‘find’ button, one can read the interview at https://archive.org/stream/FinancialTimes1996UKEnglish/Nov%2001%201996%2C%20Financial%20Times%2C%20%231%2C%20UK%20(en)_djvu.txt )
    In August 2008, following the Georgian War, Freeland, then ‘U.S. Managing Editor’ with the paper, produced an article headlined ‘The oligarchs could be Russia’s best bet.’
    (See https://www.ft.com/content/aee68316-6faf-11dd-986f-0000779fd18c .)
    It concluded:
    ‘An oligarch recently told me that Mr Putin’s tragedy is that he wants to rule like Stalin but live like Roman Abramovich, the Russian plutocrat. We need to make it clear to him and his business buddies that they cannot do both.’
    If you want to understand why Brennan’s fantasy of having Joe Biden and Alexei Navalny as presidents of the United States and Russia as the key to world piece is close to simple insanity, I think that looking back at the history of coverage in the ‘FT’ may be helpful.
    It seems overwhelmingly likely that the kind of delusional thinking exemplified in Freeland’s pieces is a key part of the background to ‘Russiagate.’
    So, if you look at the complications of the roles either of Oleg Deripaska or of Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman in the whole story, the continued power of the dream that, as it were, we could have the ‘Nineties back seems critical to making sense of the evidence.
    In this context, the fact that, while, supposedly, the FBI knew in January 2017 that Steele 1. had no real sources, 2. sent someone with as few sources as he to gather ‘tittle-tattle’, and 3. did not honestly report the ‘tittle tattle’, but constructed a ‘farrago’ upon it, they seemingly did not bother to inform ‘HMG’, is interesting.
    Had there been at least minimal candour, one might not have seen a report, published three years later, in which the poor deluded fools in the ‘ISC’ appeared oblivious of the fact that, not only was Steele absolutely useless as a source, but that, rather obviously, an organisation that could appoint him as head of its Russia Desk was, to be blunt, ‘crap.’
    Some serious discussion of these matters, and particularly of the relentless exclusion of alternative perspectives over the past thirty years would, I think, be appropriate.
    And certainly, it would have to take into account the accumulating evidence that Western claims that our enemy was simply communism, and we were ‘on the side of’ the ‘Russian people’ were, to put it bluntly, a ‘load of horse manure.’
    But, if we can face facts, there seems little risk of any such discussion, any time soon.
    Obviously, I hope that Joe Lauria and his collaborators can successfully take on the massive power of ‘Minitrue’ and ‘Miniluv.’
    But then, from my experience with British judges – Warby is only the latest example – and observation of some American, such as Emmett Sullivan – I think they may have the odds ‘stacked against them.’
    And this is all the more so, of course, if, as seems quite likely, the majority of American electors can be persuaded that Biden is ‘the lesser weevil.’
    In that case, in the short term at least, we can anticipate that the consolidation of ‘Ingsoc’, on both sides of the Atlantic, will proceed without serious immediate challenge.

  18. David Habakkuk says:

    Apologies for poor proof reading.
    I left out a crucial ‘not.’
    So, a key paragraph relating to the Nazi-collaborator past of Michael Chomiak should have read:
    ‘As to the allegations in question, it does not seem that anyone has seriously called in question the factual basis of the assertion that the Ukrainian Michael Chomiak, the grandfather of Chrystia Freeland, currently Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Canada, having earlier served as Foreign Minister, was a notorious Nazi collaborator.’
    Also, I wrote Brennan’s fantasy related to the notion that having Biden and Navalny in power was the key to world ‘peice’, when I meant ‘peace.’
    ‘My bad’, as they say. But sometimes one comes across comments so utterly inane that, as it were, one ‘loses one’s cool.’

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