The Second Front of the World War III
According to the polls presented by “Radio Liberty”, 71% of Russians feel proud about the war with Ukraine. Of course, maybe this feeling is formed by the media they consume and by the narratives that were created and disseminated by Russian propaganda. However, this absolutely does not matter for 109 children killed by the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian information bubble has completely closed. The last nail in its coffin was hammered by thousands of Ukrainian communication volunteers, who posted the pictures of bombed civilians and dead Russian soldiers in the commentaries to the Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and VKontakte posts by Russian social media users.
After that the Russian government has stated that this is an information attack launched against Russia by the US and the EU, that cost 270 millions dollars, and banned all the social media that could be used to deliver the information to Russian citizens.
In this regard, the part of the Russian society is sure that the bombing of Mariupol maternity house was staged specially for the fake pictures and videos.
Thus, for example, a fragment of the TV channel “Russia-24” was published on the website “Vesti.ru” under the heading “Ukrainian model was suspected of filming a fake about a maternity hospital in Mariupol.”
“Social media users suspected Ukrainian beauty blogger Marianna Podgurskaya of participating in the filming of staged photographs against the backdrop of an allegedly destroyed maternity hospital in Mariupol,” the article says. “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” posted on its website an article entitled “Another fake of the West: a woman filmed in a Mariupol maternity hospital turned out to be a fashion model in makeup.”
“Komsomolskaya Pravda” told its readers about “another fake from Ukrainian propaganda: in all the photographs from the destroyed maternity hospital, the same girl in different clothes, and all the pictures were taken by the same photographer.” Later, a similar description of what happened was supported by the Russian officials: the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Igor Konashenkov, said that “the alleged air strike that took place was a completely orchestrated provocation to maintain anti-Russian excitement among the Western audience.”
The very important fact is that this is happening not for the first time. In April 2018th Russian officials stated that the chemical attacks in Syria which were reportedly made by Syrian armed forces with the full support of the Russian Ministry of Defense were also staged “to discreditate Russia’s special operation in Syria”.
These facts tell me that the problem is not in Russia actually. As well as the crimes of the murderer, who was not prosecuted for his crimes, are not only the guilt of him personally, but also the guilt of those, who failed to prosecute him.
The world continues to invest dozens of millions of dollars and euros for fact checking and fighting with the fakes, while the real issue is much more in the beliefs of Russians and their religious faith in what their leader does. Just like in Nazi Germany, we are witnessing Russia is ending with “Ruzi regime” extremely hostile for other nations.
But, there is one more thing that reminds me of the Nazi approach to the reality. Tons of materials, reports, researches and scientific books were written on the business side of Holocaust. Wikipedia even has a list of companies involved in it: BASF, Bayer, BMW, Hugo Boss, Krupp (now TyssenKrupp), Siemens and many others worked with Adolf Hitler administration, including the usage of slave labor during the Nazi regime.
On March 2019th German billionaire Reimann family, the owner of JAB Holdings (brands Krispy Kreme, Panera Bread and Pret a Manger) recognised their cooperation with Nazi regime that brought some profits though.
Bild newspaper journalist Maximilian Kiewel reported that Albert Reimann Sr. and Albert Reimann Jr., both dead, were active in the Nazi Party and used Russian civilians and French prisoners of war as slaves during World War II.
Peter Harf, the spokesman of the Reimanns, said that descendants who inherited $3.7 billion each are willing to donate money. This is a rather widespread practice of donation as the excuse for the wrongdoings we can witness widely in our times. The EU and the US, who did not have a political will to call Russia to account, are trying to donate money and technical support to the victims of the Ruzi regime.
Reinmanns were not alone in participating in Nazi activities or profiting from the Nazi regime. More than a dozen European billionaires and their families created their initial capitals in cooperation with Hitler’s administration. This is not a surprise because in 1944, one third of the whole workforce in Germany was forced labor, says Roman Köster, a German historian, in his comment to Forbes.
According to Christopher Kopper, a German professor of economics and business history, says that contracts with the Nazis were not uncommon for an exclusive circle of entrepreneurs who were in the friendship circle of SS leaders or had other connections. And there were no only German families who had to conduct and rise their business in Nazi country.
Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, has decided to support and develop his German subsidiary company Dehomag. Watson even has got the medal from Hitler for the development of the Nazi industry.
According to University of Edinburgh historian Stephan Malinowski, elites that had hoped to control Hitler had misjudged him totally by overestimating their political intelligence and their capacities, and very much underestimating the technical intelligence of the Nazis and the ruthlessness and brutality with which they were going to dismantle and destroy the state, and use their power against their conservative allies.
Unfortunately, nowadays we see too visible parallels with the 30–40-s years of the XXs century. Of course, dozens of Westerns brands refused to cooperate with Ruzi because of the genocide of Ukrainians which is totally supported among Russians.
However, some of the Western brands don’t care about it. Auchan, Décathlon, Leroy Merlin, Metro, Credit Agricole, Danone refused to seize their operations with Russia.
Auchan, Décathlon and Leroy Merlin are controlled by Gérard Mulliez’s family, who is one of the dozen richest families in the world. So, now the Mulliez family is doing the same with Ruzi Russia, that the Reimann family did with Nazy Germany. And, unfortunately, Mulliez is not the only one.
Before Russia started its aggression against Ukraine in 2013, energy accounted for 86,7% of German import from Russia, and natural gas import amounted to 38% (36% in 2014) of the total volume of its consumption; oil import amounted to 34% (30% in 2014). For decades major French and German energy companies built bridges with Russian oil and gas miners. The largest producer of natural gas in Russia is JSC NOVATEK associated with Putin’s close friend Gennadiy Timchenko. NOVATEK has deposits in the world’s largest gas-bearing region.
On July 16, 2014, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury issued the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications List which included JSC NOVATEK and companies where its ownership was over 50% (including Yamal LNG). However, in the Russian company they said that sanctions did not affect the projects, assets or liabilities (including borrowings).
The world’s largest oil and gas company Total (headquartered and owned in Paris) has not reduced cooperation with Russia after the imposition of sanctions and even increased its ownership interest in the equity capital of NOVATEK to almost 20%.
According to Michael Borrell, Senior Vice President Continental Europe and Central Asia at Total, as of January 2016, the amount of investment by the French giant in NOVATEK’s biggest project Yamal LNG reached $3,7 billion.
In June 2016, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Patrick Pouyanné, Executive Vice President of Total, stated that Total managed to create financing schemes for Russian projects for nearly $20 billion in circumvention of sanctions, attracting European and Chinese banks and financial institutions.
June 21, 2016, at the shareholders’ meeting, the financing of JSC Yamal LNG was approved (construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant with the capacity of 16,5 million tons per year). The press service’s news release indicates that the volume of financing exceeded $19 billion. NOVATEK’s 2015 financial report showed that revenues from sales of oil products increased by 32,9%, operating income — by 11%. The volume of liquids production rose by 51% in 2015.
The service maintenance of the Yamal LNG plant and training of Russian specialists was planned to be conducted by Italian Nuovo Pignone. More agreements were signed with Italian SAIPEM S.P.A. and German Linde AG, who own two oxygen plants and several enterprises in Russia.
The former CEO if the Linde AG Wolfgang Büchele, speaking at the one of the St. Petersburg Economic Forums, said that “Ukraine is at a deadlock in relations between Europe and Russia”, underlining that the problem is in the “absence of their desire to overcome the crisis inside the country and the failure to abide by the Minsk agreements.”
Büchele actively promoted the idea of the North Stream 2 launch among the representatives of German business and urged to “modify” the EU strategy for the sanctions policy. And there were a lot of people like Büchele in Germany and in France.
June 2015, Engie (another former shareholder of the Nord Stream 2) signed a long-term (23-year) contract with “Russian Novatek Gas & Power” (NOVATEK affiliated structure) for the supply of 1 million tons of LNG annually, under the Yamal LNG project. President of the company Gerard Mestrallet stated that the company is taking great pains to convince the EU leadership that the latter should strongly support the start of the construction of the Nord Stream 2. He underscored that Russia is definitely worthy of investments.
October 2015, CEO of German chemical giant BASF (which owns 10% of shares in the Nord Stream-2 AG and actively invests in natural gas production in West Siberia) Kurt Bock announced his plans to invest around 2 billion euros in the construction of the Nord Stream-2. The German manufacturer also noted that “Russia is and will remain the major and reliable supplier of oil, natural gas and other energy resources to Europe, and Europe is and will stay an important and stable market for Russia”.
“Russia should not be put on its knees”, “European Russia should not be lost”, “a new ‘cold war’ should be prevented”, “let us build European security together with Russia” — these and similar statements could be heard from German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and from Coordinator for Intersocietal Cooperation with Russia Gernot Erler in 2015–2018 years.
Even now, after the Ruzi invasion has taken 108 children’s lives, German MPs are only talking about “economy, economy, economy” and trade with Russia after the round of ovations given to Zelenskiy on his speech in Bundestag.
Before we find the strength to recognize that the EU leaders and businessmen have totally misjudged Putin and overestimated their political intelligence and their capacities, we can not move forward in revising the international security architecture, that was ruined by Ruzi.
France and Germany have already started to review their faults, made because of the underestimation of Ruzi narratives and willing to earn more money trading with Russia.
On March 14th, 2022 the French media “Disclose” published its investigation on how France delivered state-of-the-art military equipment to Russia between 2015 and 2020. According to French journalists, this equipment has enabled Vladimir Putin to modernise 1,000 tanks, fighter planes and combat helicopters, that are being used now for the genocide of Ukrainians.
Despite the arms embargo on exports to Russia imposed by the EU on August 1st 2014, according to the classified documents obtained by journalists, since 2015 France has issued 76 export licences to Russia for military equipment worth a total of 152 million euros.
The main beneficiaries of these contracts were French aerospace and defence companies Thales and Safran. They supplied thermal image cameras for tanks, navigation systems and infrared detectors for Russian fighters and attack helicopters.
François Hollande cancelled the planned sale in 2015 of two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships to Russia under the pressure from the international community. However, other contracts (like Mistral-class ships supply) were continued because the embargo prohibited signing new contracts, but the old contracts were still in force. So, Thales and Safran continued to supply Russia with arms and services on repairing the supplied goods just continuing the old contracts.
On March 4th, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated that Russian tanks that were hitting the nuclear power plant, were equipped with thermal cameras, knowing what they are shooting at. It is highly likely that those cameras were supplied by French companies. According to “Disclose”, 800 cameras of this type could be exported to Russia under the contracts mentioned above.
What a sad irony to understand that French companies could help Russians to destroy the Ukrainian nuclear power plant and another nuclear disaster from Ukraine could hit the European Union nations.
Russian SU-30s that are killing civilians, children and pregnant women in Mariupol can be equipped with navigation systems (TACAN), and the latest cockpit display screens and viewfinders (SMD55S and Head up Display or HUD). A contract to supply these was signed in 2014 with deliveries staggered until 2018, according to “Disclose”. As well as MiG-29 navigation systems and helmets “Topowl” from Thales. As for the Safran company, it supplies electro-optical infrared system for Russian helicopters, which was also revealed in 2015.
All the facts mentioned above make me laugh out loud, when I hear some European politician stating that supplies of arms to Ukraine can provoke Russia or Putin to do some violent actions.
In fact, Western politicians fueled Putin’s anger for years, feeding him with promises of “business-as-usual” despite his crimes all over the world. The repetition of history took place in less than 100 years. After Adolf Hitler and Nazi came to power, international bussiness and political leaders were sure that they can control him by proposing logical outcomes of mutual cooperation. Instead, they made Hitler believe that they are weak and can not counter his determination.
For this mistake Ukrainian people paid 8 millions of lives, lost in World War II. Almost a century has passed and we have to pay again for the same mistakes, but now made because of the beliefs that Putin is not Ruzi, but the logical geopolitical player.
Now, Ukraine is, factually, fighting on two fronts. One is with Ruzi, who is trying to erase Ukrainian nation from this planet. Second is with European and American beurocrats and bussinessmen, who are trying not to lose their money, while Ukrainians losing their lives and relatives.
Maybe, it is already the time to recognize the mistakes and start to correct them?
