The Bear Street Journal.

• Mass media offer a precise range of Russian foe endorsers.
• However, they cover only a frame of this category.
• Some EU-leading countries have deep worrying relationships with Vladimir Putin.

It happened. Years of tension between the Ukrainian government and the separatist militias of Lugansk and Donetsk led to Russian military intervention, triggering the first real war in Europe in the third millennium. That was already announced, but we have been forgetting for 8 years, so the effect was disruptive, although it was widely predictable.

The West, on the verge of sanctioning Moscow and supporting Kyiv, is increasingly questioning its mistakes and who from within would have had ambiguous ties with Vladimir Putin: We immediately remember Salvini’s famous shirt in Red Square or the outings in the hut with Berlusconi. There is also an ongoing discussion about the possibility that Donald Trump was a Kremlin tool and how his 2016 election would have been facilitated by Russian intelligence. However, in this brainstorming many names have been forgotten, maybe less high-sounding, but definitely crucial.

First of all, looking back to the “Russia-gate”, the accusation that the DJT presidential marathon was financed and supported electronically by bodies close to the Moscow government: after years of suppositions and accusations between both holders, US Justice Department Lawyer John Durham stated a few months ago that the campaign and the mandate of the Newyorker tycoon were closely observed by agencies strictly tied to the challenger Hillary Clinton, supported by some Obama administration officials in possession of sensitive data about Trump close endorsers, which may have been distorted to create a link between “The Donald” and the Russians.

In the submerged world of the Italian “friends of the Tsar”, there are plenty of well-respected names, first of all Romano Prodi: the “chairman” of the Democratic Party assiduously participates in bilateral forums between Italy and Russia and he was “one of best Italian interlocutors ever, as the same level of Berlusconi”, Mr Putin stated.  Both former Prime Ministers, to be honest, found themselves in a historic moment when the Russian President was not yet showing signs of belligerence and was a prominent interlocutor in the fight against international terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, as evidenced by the Pratica di Mare agreement, so a hotlink with him was practically obliged.

An unsuspected name is the one of Enrico Letta, former prime minister and current PD leader. During his short stay at Chigi Palace, he took part in a symbolic meeting in Trieste with the Russian president, in which more than 20 trade agreements were signed, including some regarding energy supply issues, between ENI and the Russian state giant Rosneft. Moreover, he was the only western leader to fly to Sochi as the 2014 Winter Olympic Games were inaugurated. In those months, tensions between Moscow and Kyiv were already rising as Ukraine was still in full negotiations with the EU for a possible entry into the Union, which didn’t happen due to the skepticism of Ukrainian President Yanukovich.

5 Star Movement, after hesitations similar to those of the League, denies actual links with Kremlin, but many individuals don’t conform with the officious party filo-western position. Among these, there’s Vito Petrocelli, who held the position of President of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee: like many of his colleagues, he grew up in anti-western fringes of the far-Left and during his office he put a blizzard of vetoes on military supplies to Ukraine. A largely underestimated event that took place during a 5SM governmental term, was the entry of Russian troops in Italy in March 2020, on record as “relief for the epidemic”, but in fact their real goal is not yet clear at all.

The diplomatic lethargy of the European Union institutions, which have once again demonstrated the impossibility of implementing a common foreign policy, has given national states full powers to act on their interests, especially France and Germany, which tried to find a compromise with Russia, but without any gain. In particular, Germany holds an ambiguous position.

In 2014, during the Euromaidan protests and the dismissal of Yanukovich, German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to intervene in the crisis, proposing Vitali Klitschko (current Kyiv mayor) as president, who has been living in Germany for years and working with the Adenauer Stiftung, an organization close to Merkel’s CDU. Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the US State Department, declared in a telephone conversation with an official the inefficiency of the candidate supported by Germany on behalf of the EU, after sending the EU proposals to hell (not in a metaphorical way).

From there, the United States and Germany have been holding different positions in the Ukraine crisis, leading Germany to start its own negotiations with Russia and evidencing a very hot issue: gas supplies. Berlin imports from Russia almost 50% of the natural gas it needs, according to data from the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Suppliers. If several countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have recently declared that they are sacrificing their Russian gas quotas in order to sanction Moscow, Germany has expressed several concerns, rejecting the unity of purpose of the Eastern members of the Union. In this regard, Germany has proved to be the most disrespectful country towards the “Green Paper on Security of Energy Supply”, a kind of compromise on the change of course towards self-sufficiency and sustainability of energy in the EU. More than 20 years after the signature, Russia still supplies 40% of the European gas quotas, the same amount as in 2000.

However, the real skeleton in Berlin closet has not yet been exposed: the Bundestag had discussed for years the possibility of strengthening energy ties with Russia, through the construction of the NordStream2 gas pipeline. Its realization was suspended evidently after the events of recent months, but everything was ready: on July 2021 US President Biden bowed to the will of Merkel-Putin axis to build the pipeline, which would have connected St. Petersburg and the German Baltic coast, thus avoiding passage through Ukraine and removing a powerful contractual weapon from Kyiv’s hands, that would no longer have had a say in the opening and closing of pipelines to Europe.

Finally, the consistency of German colony at the President’s court is very worrying, in particular, 2 figures stand out: the first is Matthias Warnig, businessman and former STASI official (the secret police of the former communist regime of East Germany), who probably knew Putin in the 80s, while he was serving in Dresden as a KGB agent. As a close friend, he held important roles for German bank branches in Russia, as well as being part of the top management of Rosneft and financier of the project NS2. The other main character is Gerhard Schroeder. During his term, the former Social-Democratic Chancellor defended the decision of Green allies to close 16 nuclear power plants, removing a very credible alternative to imported gas. Almost 20 years later we understand the motivation of this irrational and unjustified choice: today, Schroeder resides in Russia, where he sits as president of Rosneft and member of the design committee of NordStream2, speculating on Germany’s serious energy dependence.

Plenty of names can be added to this list, but the ones highlighted are very few. That’s because mass media focus on a limited range of extremely symbolic names, sending into the oblivion others that would not sound familiar. That’s precisely the concept of symbolism that is fundamental in all this mess. Links with dictators and criminals are often remembered for symbolic and emblematic acts, rather than for tangible relationships such as trade deals or illicit financing. For this reason, Berlusconi’s jokes at the hut bonfire will remain more engraved in the memory, compared to the NordStream2 gas pipeline and other forms of energy subordination that actively finance Vladimir Putin’s bloody machine.

RESOURCES:

³https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/trump-aided-elections-usa-2016-the-senate-prosecutor-hacker-russians-e-facebook– AELvhB1G? refresh_ce=1

⁴https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/durhams-jaw-dropping-revelation/

⁵https://www.money.it/Politicians-Italians-who-are-the-relations-with-Putin

⁶https://www.lastampa.it/politica/2013/11/27/news/cosi-putin-e-letta-blindano-l-alleanza-1.35960974

7https://www.editorialedomani.it/politica/italia/petrocelli-m5s-protocollo-dimissioni-russia-ucraina-ngjxs3wi

⁸https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/chronicles/came-good-and-less-good-shadows-on-the-military-2020200.html

⁹https://formiche.net/2014/01/vitali-Klitschko-pugile-ucraina/

¹⁰https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

¹¹https://www.huffingtonpost.it/esteri/2022/03/07/news/italia_e_germania_bloccano_le_sanzioni_sulgas_russo-8913232/

¹²https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/IT/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM%3Al27037

¹³https://www.wired.it/article/gas-russia-ucraina-conflitto-dipendenza-europa/

¹⁴Https://www.ilfoglio.it/esteri/2021/07/23/news/l-agreement-on-the-north-stream-2-and-a-gift-to-putin-e-kiev-hear-left-alone-2709689/

¹⁵https://it/www.insideover.com/schede/politica/matthias-warnig-il-richelieu-del-nord-stream-2.html

¹⁶http:///www1.adnkronos.com/Archivio/AdnAgency/2000/06/29/Foreign/NUCLEAR-SCHROEDER-DEFENDER-LABBANDONO_131400.php

¹⁷http://www.agi.it/estero/news/2022-03-03/schroeder-legami-con-mosca-15857336/