The Tsar’s Effective 5th Column
Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, China, April 13th, 2014
Salaroche


Tsar Vladimir the 1st has really taken the West by surprise recently, particularly with the use of his 5th column within Ukraine, which has been remarkably efficient. First he took Crimea partly via the manipulation of public opinion inside the peninsula, now his fifth column in eastern Ukraine is poised to gain considerable autonomy concessions from interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, concessions that will most surely translate into full independence sometime in the near future.

And what’s the Tsar going to do next? Well, expect the unexpected for, as the situation stands today, the only one who knows what’s next in that area of the world is Tsar Vladimir the 1st.

On the Western front, he has the EU clearly on the defensive and the US basically out of the game, at least for the moment. Satellite photos of the Russia-Ukraine border now show an unequivocal gathering of aggressive Russian military forces capable of invading eastern Ukraine in a matter of hours, yet there’s nothing NATO can do about it other than observe from outer space.

Ukraine is desperately trying to keep its remaining borders intact while the Tsar’s threat to cut the gas flow hangs like the Sword of Damocles over Kiev, to the point of having Germany and France offering to reverse the flow of gas backwards into the Ukraine, as if Merkel and Hollande didn’t know their countries could be next in line.

Isn’t all of this making the West look like startled children standing at the mercy of big bad Uncle Vlad?

No doubt about it: The new Tsar is an excellent chess player at the geopolitics table. He’s got the Western Tiger by the tail. When the Ukraine wanted to tilt seriously toward the West, a single “Niet” from the new Tsar was enough to stop that process and initiate another that looks like it may only end when the Ukraine is shaped according to his imperial designs, although no one can be sure about that either.

So the question still persists: What’s next on the Tsar’s agenda? Russian aggression doesn’t yet seem to have reached a satisfactory point for the Tsar. If the high degree of disregard for Western opinion from the part of the Russian leadership is any reliable sign, there seem to be a few more surprises yet to come. Sergey Lavrov’s gall in publicly voicing complaints against NATO for sending military reinforcements to the Baltic States is not a sign that the end of the Ukraine episode is about to be reached.

One day the Tsar tells Angela Merkel that Russia has no intentions of going any further into Ukraine and the next day satellite photos reveal a massive gathering of air and land Russian military forces poised to go into eastern Ukraine on very short notice. No doubt about it, the Tsar knows how to play the West very well, particularly as he’s well aware that Germany will have to take plenty of deception and abuse from him before retaliating in any significant manner.

And the long-term consequences for Russia in all of this? Just let the Tsar’s fifth column succeed in bringing about the independence of Eastern Ukraine, and later let the Tsar proclaim its annexation into Russia. Then let a few months go by while the new status quo settles in, and watch how things go back to business as usual between the EU and Russia not too long thereafter.

And what’s the model for that line of thinking? The island of Cyprus. Turkey took the coup d’état staged by Greece in 1974 as an excuse for invading the northeastern part of the island, and now it’s been forty years since that very same area has been under Turkish control. And what have been the long-term consequences for Turkey for doing so? Basically none, except for probably having the EU reject Turkey’s accession to the Union partially because of that land-grab.

But Russia doesn’t have any immediate need to become part of the EU neighborhood. On the contrary, the Tsar actually seems opposed to the liberal principles holding that Union together. As the situation stands today, Tsar Vladimir is holding the frying pan by the handle with one hand and the knob for increasing heat with the other, while Europe, which is sitting inside the frying pan, cannot do much about it other than hope he won’t make the situation sizzle any further.

In the meantime, Vladimir the Great is basking in his newly-acquired glory, sitting down on his throne at the world’s center stage while the West scrambles to find ways to save face.

And the moral to be drawn thus far from this episode? Never fully trust any of those opaque authoritarian and autocratic regimes. Always keep your guard up when dealing with them, for you never know when they might throw any treaty they have signed with you right out the window.

Salaroche