Gefira 68: Appearances as an adornment of reality

Russia’s war with NATO continues. Did it have to happen? Of course not. However, this war was wanted. If you review the media over the past 30 years, that is, since the collapse of the USSR, you will find that Russia (as well as Belarus) was constantly portrayed in the media in an unfavorable light. Russia was allegedly ruled by a dictator, there was no democracy or freedom and so on, we all know it by heart. Russia was subjected to constant sanctions, constantly accused of various bad things. Suffice it to recall the comedy that unfolded around Navalny, a Russian renegade (for the Western media: a Russian dissident), whom the Russian special services failed even to poison, whom the intransigent Russian government extradited to Germany only for German doctors to determine the presence of poison in Navalny’s body, who, as soon as his health improved, willingly returned to Russia, to a cruel dictator and an inhumane system.

One need only recall the case of the NordStream pipelines. These pipelines allegedly threatened Europe’s energy security, but the most important member of the European Union – Germany – nevertheless built them together with Russia (Europe’s enemy) and somehow did not care about the energy threat. Leaders of other EU member states protested and wailed that they felt betrayed by the European Union, although they had previously told their own citizens that only in the Union was their safe and prosperous future. After all, one NATO country (the United States? the United Kingdom?) blew up the pipeline, and the supposedly sovereign German state didn’t even squeal about it. After all, everyone knows that the pipeline was blown up by the Russians because they didn’t want to turn off the gas tap and decided that bursting the pipe would be faster, cheaper and easier.

Such absurdities can be enumerated in abundance. Gefira 68 takes up some of them. For example, it debunks the myth that nations can determine how they want to live. Gefira 68 also considers whether people are better off under the dictator Lukashenko or the liberal democrat Zelensky. Gefira 68 marvels at the repetition of historical events and the fact that, unfortunately, no one is able or even willing to learn from the past, even the most recent. Isn’t the defeat of Imperial Germany in 1918 similar to that of the Soviet Union in 1991? Don’t the economic problems and resulting social unrest of Weimar Germany resemble the same problems experienced by Russia in the 1990s? Finally, aren’t the resulting wars unleashed then by Germany and now by Russia somehow similar in their genesis?

It is also necessary to take into account that history can repeat itself and the West might “take over” Russia, like many other states around the world, and something “entirely” new, Western might emerge on the Russian ruins. We are trying to confront the concept of the “heartland”, the strategic, untouchable center, thanks to which one can control the world and which must be defended cost it what it may, with the fact that Moscow’s authority in the Russian regions, as in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, is not so secure at all. Note that just before the Ukrainian war there was unrest in Kazakhstan, to which Moscow reacted very strongly. We immediately drew attention to this in our bulletin. In this context, this time we turn our attention to Siberia, where Russia’s treasures rest.