Because a “forecast” is when you make assumptions about what will happen without understanding the mechanisms of what is happening. And when you see someone putting a match to an open gas tank to see how much gasoline is left there, then your understanding of what is about to happen is not a “prediction”, but simply a “statement of a future fact.”
What I will write about next is based on my very good (well, very good!) understanding of the working mechanisms of the “behind the scenes” power mechanism, left over from the times of the USSR. It is “backstage” and not “state”, because it is he who ultimately decides everything.
I already wrote about how Putin’s decline will begin in the article “Luntik vs. Schizophrenic.” I won't repeat myself. What I wrote about in that article has already happened and I won’t dwell on it.
Now much more interesting processes are beginning, which leave no doubt as to where the vector of events is directed.
I apologize in advance to the “smart guys” and “initiates” for the exaggeratedly simple logic that I will resort to later, but I want the essence of the processes to be clear to absolutely everyone.
Look!
There is such a person - Navalny. Who says he wants to become president of Russia. Moreover, even an idiot understands that they will vote for him (unlike other possible candidates) and that they will vote well. And he will not get 2-3% of the votes, like some, God forgive me, Zhirinovsky, but he will get a lot. Maybe even tens of percent.
But at the same time, the same idiot understands that Navalny will not become president anyway, that Putin will be elected anyway, and right away in the first round. Why this will happen, we will not discuss with you now, but simply accept this obvious fact as an axiom.
And therefore Navalny is the most ideal rival for Putin. A real rival who will give the upcoming elections 100% legitimacy, no one will reproach Putin that his rivals were “fake” and “dummy”.
I have already written earlier in the article “International Concepts” about how important formal legitimacy is for the Russian government and why it is so important. Or “What will you do to Putin!”
I won’t repeat myself, just read it, it’s important.
But there is such a catch: for Putin there is an ideal rival for everyone, but he cannot participate in the elections, since he has a real (albeit suspended) criminal sentence for a “serious” crime.
And here we see an elegant feint with our ears - the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation overturns the criminal conviction and expunges Navalny’s criminal record in the Kirovles case*.
And thus, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin gets the ideal opponent for his future choices, which will give them absolute legitimacy.
Yes, I almost forgot, and don’t tell me that “the Supreme Court overturned the verdict in Kirovles because that was the decision of the ECHR.” How many cases can you name when the Supreme Court would overturn an existing criminal sentence based on a decision of the ECHR? That's it!
So, as soon as the sentence was overturned, Navalny immediately announced his intention to become president.
And then bam, he was immediately given a suspended sentence on the same canceled case for the same term. And he is no longer a candidate!
What happened? Why was he “imprisoned” again? Have any new circumstances of the case come to light? Are there new documents in the case? Or were new witnesses heard? Or were there any requests granted that were not granted last time? Has anything changed in the case?
But no! The court simply took and reproduced one to one the verdict, which had already been declared illegal in two higher authorities, the ECHR and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.
You might want to ask: “But if the court simply reproduced a sentence that had already been declared illegal, doesn’t that mean that the reproduced sentence is also illegal?”
You are extremely insightful, that’s exactly how it is!
The sentence is obviously illegal and will be overturned at the next independent authority. But not only this is obvious, but also something else. Namely, it is quite obvious that those who passed this sentence and the entire judicial and power chain knew about its illegality already at the time of the verdict.
This means that the deliberately illegal exclusion of Putin’s only real rival from the election process makes his future election as president illegitimate within the framework of those very “international concepts” to which I gave a link above. And these are not my guesses, even the European External Action Service (EEAS) declared “serious doubts about the democratic nature of the elections” even before they began.
Yes, I know. Lawyers are already discussing this incident. On forums and social networks, analysts make guesses about how this could happen, and who pulled what strings and who is behind whom...
I will not speculate, I will simply draw your attention to one little thing that for some reason did not come to the attention of either lawyers or analysts.
Actually, I wrote this article only to draw your attention to this little thing.
I just have one innocent question. But what if the Supreme Court had not so hastily made this very decision to overturn the first verdict in Kirovles? Well, as usual, would I have let this case slide, would I have delayed the process for a year, as often happens with them, or would I have somehow interpreted the decision of the ECHR in my own way, as it always happens with them?
What then? Think! Think carefully!
And then this would be what it would be like!
Then Navalny would also not be able to run for president, but this could not be called “removing him from the presidential race,” because that verdict was pronounced back in the days when this race was not yet discussed.
This means that problems with Putin’s future legitimacy arose not at the moment when Navalny was re-convicted, but at the moment when the Supreme Court acquitted him last November. This is such a paradox.
At a completely unexpected moment, I would say. The strategic stupidity of the Great Leader has long become a byword among players in big politics. In general, he is not stupid, but he is not a strategist. Winning one tactical victory after another, he constantly gets into problems at the strategic level. The Great Leader is not able to calculate (or sense) the long-term consequences of certain events. He would have very quickly detected all the ambushes and scams immediately before the elections. But the Great Leader is definitely not able to connect the events of November 2016 with his elections, which were supposed to take place (will they take place?) only a year and a half later.
And don’t tell me that this is “stupidity”, “an accident” or “a multi-step”. This trick was played on the Great Leader by a certain, let’s say, very competent strategist, and I’m afraid to even imagine what this strategist had in mind. I'm afraid it's not good.
In a good way, if you have any plans for the future, and the personality of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin can somehow be related to these plans of yours, I would advise you not to take this person into account anymore. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is blown away. There is no such political character!
Now his life’s path is bifurcating and at the end of one of the roads one can see the alternative of not reaching the 2018 elections, and at the end of the other road, winning future elections, but not receiving the degree of legitimacy that, according to international standards, would allow him to rule at home and especially abroad.
And don’t tell me that “this legitimacy is such a trifle, Putin doesn’t care about it.” It would be a trifle, it would be indifferent, it would already be in Russia, just like with Old Man Lukashenko in Belarus or with friend Assad in Syria. In the meantime, we see how these Kremlin boys thickly cover themselves with legal straw for every sneeze, we know that oh how they don’t give a damn about it.
In short, to be continued... And soon.
Andrey Shipilov:
The story with Russian Eurobonds has taken a new turn.
Let me remind those who have forgotten the background. Russia, which due to sanctions lost access to loans from Western banks, decided to attract currency from abroad by issuing Russian government Eurobonds.
Proposals for their purchase were sent to 20 of the world's leading banks and investment organizations. At the same time, the Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Siluanov made a statement that these Russian Eurobonds were in extremely high demand.
However, Western companies were at first in no hurry to express their consent to the purchase, and then began to refuse one after another, according to the Russian version of events, “due to pressure on banks from the United States.”
And last Thursday, insiders in the Russian government told Bloomberg that Russia was abandoning the issue of Eurobonds. But not because they did not find demand (demand, according to Russia, is very high), but to “punish” Western investors who succumbed to US pressure. As a result, Western investors lost the opportunity to make an extremely profitable investment in very reliable Russian Eurobonds.
And the very next day the deputy. Finance Minister Storchak made a statement that Russia has no need to attract investment from abroad at all, since it has its own wonderful reserve fund from which it can freely draw money.
“The budget deficit is closed through the Reserve Fund and internal borrowings. First the Reserve Fund, then borrowing. ... Thank God, there are enough of them for now; we are counting primarily on the Reserve Fund,” Storchak noted.
Andrey Mikhailovich Shipilov- Soviet and Russian writer and journalist.
Biography
At the institute he began his Komsomol career, headed the student scientific society of the faculty, and was a freelance instructor at the Komsomol Moscow State Committee.
After graduating from the institute, he was sent to work in the KGB of the USSR, where he was involved in technical support for operational work.
In 1996-2000 he worked at the Computerra Publishing House, first as deputy editor-in-chief of the weekly, and then as editor-in-chief of the online publication Computerra Online. In 2000-2005 he headed the Digital Photo magazine he created. In 2006, he returned to the Computerra Publishing House to the position of editor-in-chief of the Online Business Magazine, but left it six months later.
Since 2000, in parallel with his journalistic activities, he has been actively engaged in startups on the Internet. With the financial assistance of the WebMoney payment system, it launches the services Plati.Ru, DigiSeller, and Dom Domains. In 2007, as an antipode to the Runet Prize, Andrei Shipilov established the Runet Anti-Prize.
In the early 2010s, Andrei Shipilov was mainly engaged in teaching and continued to actively publish. He wrote columns for Moneynews, Finama, and Infoboom. Collaborated with the publication Kommersant Money. Currently lives in Paphos, Cyprus. After the events on the Ukrainian Maidan, he switched to active opposition to the Russian authorities, collaborates with Kasparov.ru, Grani.ru and other opposition sites, created his own opposition page on Facebook, to which about 15,000 people subscribe.
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Excerpt characterizing Shipilov, Andrey Mikhailovich
Villarsky bowed his head. “One more question, Count,” he said, to which I ask you not as a future Freemason, but as an honest man (galant homme) to answer me with all sincerity: have you renounced your previous convictions, do you believe in God?Pierre thought about it. “Yes... yes, I believe in God,” he said.
“In that case...” Villarsky began, but Pierre interrupted him. “Yes, I believe in God,” he said again.
“In that case, we can go,” said Villarsky. - My carriage is at your service.
Villarsky was silent the whole way. To Pierre's questions about what he needed to do and how to answer, Villarsky only said that brothers more worthy of him would test him, and that Pierre needed nothing more than to tell the truth.
Having entered the gate of a large house where the lodge was located, and walking along a dark staircase, they entered a lighted, small hallway, where, without the help of a servant, they took off their fur coats. From the hall they went into another room. Some man in a strange attire appeared at the door. Villarsky, coming out to meet him, said something quietly to him in French and went to a small closet, in which Pierre noticed clothes he had never seen before. Taking a handkerchief from the closet, Villarsky placed it over Pierre's eyes and tied it in a knot from behind, painfully catching his hair in the knot. Then he bent him towards him, kissed him and, taking him by the hand, led him somewhere. Pierre was in pain from the hair being pulled in by the knot; he winced in pain and smiled from shame for something. His huge figure with his arms down, with a wrinkled and smiling face, moved with uncertain timid steps behind Villarsky.
After walking him ten steps, Villarsky stopped.
“No matter what happens to you,” he said, “you must endure everything with courage if you firmly decide to join our brotherhood.” (Pierre answered in the affirmative by bowing his head.) When you hear a knock on the door, you will untie your eyes,” Villarsky added; – I wish you courage and success. And, shaking Pierre’s hand, Villarsky left.
Left alone, Pierre continued to smile the same way. Once or twice he shrugged his shoulders, raised his hand to the handkerchief, as if wanting to take it off, and lowered it again. The five minutes he spent with his eyes tied seemed like an hour. His hands were swollen, his legs were giving way; he thought he was tired. He experienced the most complex and varied feelings. He was afraid of what would happen to him, and even more afraid of not showing fear. He was curious to know what would happen to him, what would be revealed to him; but most of all he was joyful that the moment had come when he would finally embark on that path of renewal and actively virtuous life, which he had dreamed of since his meeting with Osip Alekseevich. Strong knocks were heard on the door. Pierre took off the bandage and looked around him. The room was black and dark: only in one place was a lamp burning, in something white. Pierre came closer and saw that the lamp stood on a black table, on which lay one open book. The book was the Gospel; that white thing in which the lamp was burning was a human skull with its holes and teeth. Having read the first words of the Gospel: “In the beginning was the word and the word was to God,” Pierre walked around the table and saw a large open box filled with something. It was a coffin with bones. He was not at all surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter into a completely new life, completely different from the previous one, he expected everything extraordinary, even more extraordinary than what he saw. The skull, the coffin, the Gospel - it seemed to him that he expected all this, expected even more. Trying to evoke a feeling of tenderness in himself, he looked around him. “God, death, love, brotherhood of people,” he said to himself, associating with these words vague but joyful ideas of something. The door opened and someone entered.
Do you know who Pavel Korshikov is? If you don’t know, then I’ll tell you now.
Pavel is the founder of Prague Maidan. A citizen of Russia, but he moved to the Czech Republic a long time ago and has been living there for many years.
When Russia began its aggression against Ukraine, Pavel organized pickets and rallies in Prague in support of Ukraine. This series of performances became widely known in Europe and was called “Prague Maidan” in Western media. Thanks to the Prague Maidan, many Europeans who were far from international politics learned about the problems of Ukraine.
When Russia invaded the Donbass and war began, Pavel Korshikov abandoned all his affairs and began helping the National Guard of Ukraine. Not in words, but in deeds.
Pavel purchased SUVs that were much needed by the National Guard in Europe and sent them to the ATO Zone. He organized fundraising and purchased necessary medical equipment and protective equipment. He spent his personal money, his time and all his strength to help Ukraine. He lost his life for a whole year while organizing assistance to ATO fighters.
I think he has saved more than one life of Ukrainian fighters.
And when the hottest time was over, Pavel Korshikov did not beat himself in the chest and remind him of his merits, he simply quietly retreated into the shadows, like many who did real things and did not show miracles of heroism on Facebook and Twitter.
And then such a nasty thing happened.
Russia, realizing that it could not take Ukraine with force and weapons, launched a new phase of its creeping hybrid war, deciding to shake up the situation in Ukraine from the inside. One of the elements of this creeping war was the task of forcing Russian supporters of Ukraine to change their position and hate Khokhlov.
How to do it? Very simply - flattery. A proven method, it worked well with our own people, but it worked well with the Russians. Television tells Russians 24 hours a day what a great nation they are, and they believed it! This means we need to do the same with Ukrainians, and even if Ukrainian TV is inaccessible, there is the Internet.
And then in December the campaign took off across social networks. Pre-prepared accounts with Ukrainian avatars suddenly began to broadcast a simple and pleasant thought: “We are Ukrainians - we ourselves have a mustache, we are a great nation, we dealt with the Katsaps and now, when the Katsaps offer us friendship, we need to scare them away properly.”
The idea is simple and generally correct. This thought comes easily to the soul. Therefore, a slight initial push was enough for it to warm the hearts of many, and then it began to quickly spread and live independently. But there was one small flaw in this idea: she had not yet said where the border between “Katsaps” and “non-Katsaps” was.
And when the idea spread and became familiar, the organizers of the action had to put one more small touch on this canvas, to “correctly” draw the line between “Katsaps” and “Not Katsaps.” After all, the task is not simple and requires thought. But man is a lazy creature; if he is given a ready-made simple solution to a complex problem, he will no longer think about it. He always likes simple solutions.
And so the Ukrainians are unobtrusively given a simple solution - a “katsap” is any citizen of Russia. No matter what he thinks and does. And so that no one experiences cognitive dissonance - after all, among Russian citizens there are obvious friends of Ukraine, an information attack is immediately organized on the most visible of the “friends”.
Everyone is accused of the same thing, they pretend to be “big brothers” and teach Ukrainians how to live and what to do, but we Ukrainians don’t need advisers, we ourselves have a mustache, we are a great nation... This is so pleasant for the soul, and no one even thinks that if you ask what the “teaching” and the “image of the elder brother” are, no one can really answer.
Millions of Ukrainians immediately write down yesterday’s friends as enemies: Arkady Babchenko, Sasha Sotnik, Andrey Malgin... Alas, these katsaps haughtily taught us how to live and what to do...
What exactly was this “teaching from above”? Yes, what difference does it make, everyone says so, they teach, they won’t lie!
Well, okay, these are publicists, they just prattle on (although this is mortally dangerous for them in today’s Russia), but what about those who, like Pavel, invested their strength, gave up their personal lives, spent their money on helping Ukraine, which found itself in trouble? Without demanding anything in return.
And here a simple, pleasant, “heartbreaking” answer is ready: “But they were indebted to us, and all their help does not, even to a small extent, compensate for the harm that the Katsaps caused us. So let them be grateful that we deigned to accept this help from them.”
It is all this dirt that is thrown in the face of the newly-minted “katsaps” on social networks. This is written to them in a personal message, so that it “gets across”, so that it probably dawns on them that Ukraine no longer considers them friends or even just decent people.
Pavel Korshikov, the most intelligent and modest person, could not stand it this morning and directly asked today on Facebook: “Why are you doing this to me?”
This is what he received in response. Sorry, I’ll just cite here the most polite and correct, without swearing or insults:
The saddest thing is that it was not Kremlin agents or FSB bots who poured all the dirt on a person - they, having done their job, dumped him in the bushes. This was written by normal, adequate Ukrainians whom I have known for quite some time. And other Ukrainians liked it. Not a single voice was heard in defense.
I wrote to everyone in a personal message. I wrote to 56 people who insulted Pavel and liked these insults. I told everyone who Pavel Korshikov was and that he had done more for Ukraine than all his Ukrainian passport commentators combined. I asked everyone to apologize to Pavel.
Do you think at least one apology was made? That's right - no! Not a single one was heard. Only one lady shyly told me that she “withdrew her comment.” But the truth is, after that she banned me.
Some responded to my request to apologize. What do you think they answered me? That’s right: “When will you katsaps stop teaching us!”
And some added that Ukrainians are a great nation! And at that moment I realized that Putin had finally achieved his goal and defeated Ukraine!
Andrey Shipilov,
Anton Blagin writes:
The crash of the An-148 plane in the Moscow region could have been planned!
Everything you read below is the analysis of Andrey Shipilov. His mathematical mindset allowed him to look at the crash of the An-148 plane, which happened on February 11, 2018 in the Ramensky district of the Moscow region, in a completely unconventional way and to conclude that this catastrophe was not “natural.”
“I know quite definitely that when the plane taxied along the path to the runway, it was followed by the eyes of those who knew that this board was setting off on its last journey,” Andrei Shipilov wrote at the end of his analysis.
The An-148 passenger plane was supposed to fly from Moscow to Orsk. It crashed on February 11, 2018, just minutes after takeoff. At the time of the tragedy, there were 65 passengers and 6 crew members on board the An-148. None of them managed to survive.
For many years, since my early youth, I have been mining information minerals from the depths of information. My sense of smell and hunting skills are honed to the limit. Therefore, I immediately sense when someone is trying to disguise information, hide it deeper, and I break down such situations “at once.”
So, the crash of AN-148 in the Moscow region.
No matter how cynical it may sound, “a plane crashed” is quite a typical situation, causing a typical chain of further events: a commission of inquiry, expressions of condolences, publication of lists of the dead, stories and memories of the dead in the press and blogs, and of course , where would we be without this, the emergence of all sorts of conspiracy theories. All sorts of blogger analyzes of the trajectory of the fall and the radius of scattering of fragments on social networks, the study of photographs from the crash site - the public in Russia instinctively does not trust official information and looks for a catch in it.
I don’t trust it either, and I’m also looking for it. But I don’t analyze the radius of scattering of fragments and the like, because this is too subtle and complex matter, requiring such qualifications and such a large amount of initial data for analysis, which, by definition, cannot be available to a single outside observer.
I'm looking at something else. Does the sequence of events fit into a typical scenario? One very simple rule applies here, without exceptions - if there are critical deviations, it means that in reality we have not quite the original event that they want to show us.
And now I see these same deviations from the typical scenario.
A list of the dead is published, but nine people do not have middle names indicated. This situation arises for the first time in the history of publishing lists on the Ministry of Emergency Situations website, and, therefore, requires attention. Statistical processing of other lists from other disasters shows that the deviation is obviously inexplicable. For Russian citizens, patronymic names are always published. The Ministry of Emergency Situations always has this information at its disposal. Registration on board is carried out using passports, the numbers of all passports are known, which means patronymic names are also known: they are indicated in both civil and international passports of Russian citizens.
Here, there are no clear reasons why the patronymics of only some of the passengers disappeared.
To 99.99% of the general public this will seem like a complete nonsense. But for the information hunter, it is a huge red flag on a high pole, attracting attention from many kilometers away.
Because he sees that this flag carries signs of another typical situation - hiding information.
Having a middle name makes it easy to google information about a person. No - patronymic, finding information is difficult. If I needed to make it difficult for the general public to identify one of the dead, that's exactly what I would do. I would indicate his details without a patronymic, and so that this fact would not be conspicuous, I would make it noisy - I would remove the patronymics of several more people chosen at random.
This requires a lot of tedious technical work. And then I do what I usually do in such cases - I go to Facebook and write a short message about the fact that some passengers do not have patronymic names on the list of dead. And that’s it, I don’t write anything else. No conclusions, no hints. Just a fact.
I know that now at least a hundred people rushed to check this fact and look for information to confirm or refute, and at the same time discuss all sorts of “versions” and “conspiracy theories” arising from this fact. I just need to wait a little. An hour and a half, and they will comb the entire Internet and bring in so much information in the comments that it would have taken me more than a day to find it alone.
And then a surprise awaits me, I run into another deviation from the typical scenario, and what a deviation!
https://blagin-anton.livejournal.com/1005708.html
Andrei Shipilov simply carried out his analysis brilliantly, and, as we see, he made the most careful conclusions so as not to “tease the geese.” And I, in turn, want to draw attention to these words of his: “And - not a single word (in the media) about at least one dollar millionaire, of whom there were a fair number on board - they were all invited to a family celebration by one Russian oligarch.”
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