I begin by referring to Diana Johnstone's article for Consortium News about the REAL Russian interference in US politics in the person of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Bill Browder and how the oligarchs obtained their wealth in the Yeltsin era and manipulated Washington and Congress to support them with legislation and sanctions against Russia such as the Magnitsky Act in which he was able to transform Browderâs crooked accountant into a âhuman rights âmartyr when he died from neglect in a Russian prison.
She relates the history of Khodorkovskyâs rise from being a Soviet apparatchik to the be multibillionaire owner of Lukos oil and his arrest when he was planning to sell parts of it to Exxon and Chevron, which was his springboard to becoming a hero in the US Congress.
When Putin tried to reign in the activities if the oligarchs, they had the option of fleeing to Israel (all were Jewish-JB) where they had no fear of extradition and their money was welcomed, Johnstone points out the US is only too happy wo welcome interference in US political life when it comes from scoundrels and gangsters, in groups and individuals, who seek US backing in their efforts to overthrow their governments, in a word, traitors, and cites, most immediately, the MEK, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq , formally listed as a terrorist group by State, now embraced by the likes of Rudy Giuliani.
The points of her article and her comments are if Putin is interfering in the US system it is protect him from the US efforts to overthrow his government and return to the corrupt era when Yeltsin was Washingtonâs puppet and that the clash between the US and Russia is not one of competing ideologies as we saw in the Cold War, but of Putinâs view of a multipolar world as opposed to the US view of American world domination. And much more.