[Cross-posted from European Tribune – where dissent is NOT troll rated!]

[Edits and links in article added are mine – Oui]

From Russia with love, as Putin kicks off soft power Games | Asia Times | by Pepe Escobar

It started as an oil shock. After all, Russia and Saudi Arabia are on the verge of deciding what happens next, price-wise, in global energy markets.

Yet, way beyond Russia thrashing a pathetic Saudi Arabian team 5-0, the iconic takeaway in the Cup opener was Vladimir Putin’s body language toward his guest, Mohammad bin Salman, in the VIP box in Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium.

Geoeconomically, call it Gazprom/Rosneft toppling Aramco. Geopolitically, call it the SVR/GRU thrashing the ideological matrix of Daesh.

Continued below the fold …

Talk about return on investment. Putin is even allowed the luxury of spurning Trump’s invitation back to the G7 (the former G8). With the World Cup expected to draw a global TV audience of 10.8 billion spectators, Russia has ceased to be a “regional power” (Barack Obama). And we’re not even talking about the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, now configured as the real heart of geopolitical action.

Across the West, the Sochi Olympics in 2014 were widely dubbed “the Putin games”. For the bulk of Western corporate media, especially in the US, Britain, France and Germany, the 2018 World Cup is like an unshakeable, extended hangover.

Embedded in any “sports” coverage is the usual “malign” litany: the “invasion” of Crimea; the “armed intervention” in eastern Ukraine; the support to “dictator Assad” under the “pretext” of fighting Daesh; the Russian “disinformation war” and cyber-war; the “interference” in the American elections; the assassination attempt against the Skripals on British soil.

There’s no escaping the evil dark tentacles of the Putin alternative reality machine. The World Cup turbo-charged the narrative of Putin using football as an instrument of propaganda and power, forcing oligarchs to build stadia so they might be left alone to “prosper”, in Russia and abroad.

Enter, for instance, strategic Kaliningrad, the enclave between Poland and Lithuania that is very much in NATO’s sights. Putin wanted a 35,000-seat stadium in Kaliningrad – bound to remain a cathedral in the desert. The company that built the stadium is owned by Azeri billionaire Aras Agalarov, a close pal of President Trump, with whom he organized the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Agalarov may have been the conduit for the meeting of Donald Trump Jr. and lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya featured in Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Corrupt FIFA, Putin’s World Cup and Russia-gate; the serpent eats its own tail.

…
Much to the distress of the usual suspects, the fact is “Russian elites” are already winning the soft power war embedded in the World Cup. And Russia may even win the love war as well. According to Tass, it’s Russian parliament member Mikhail Degtyaryov who has issued the definitive World Cup directive: “The more love stories we have connected to the world championship, the more people from different countries fall in love, the more children are born, the better.”

So feel the love, and let the Putin Games roll. But, just in case, keep an eye out for another “chemical attack” in Syria, Ukraine trying to invade Donetsk and Lugansk, the odd false flag; and – last but not least – more sanctions.

○ Zbigniew Brzezinski: “Ultimately Ukrainian independence can only be built and sustained by the Ukrainian people themselves” (1998)
○ America On Path to Break-up the European Union

○ Crimean-Nogai raids into East Slavic lands

○ The Crimean Tatars and Their Influence on the ‘Triangle of Conflict’ — Russia-Crimea-Ukraine | Naval Academy – 2008 |

    Since the demise of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1991 and the emergence of the newly independent states (NIS), Russia has employed various techniques to preserve its dominance over them. It is very important for Russia to keep Ukraine under its influence because of Ukraine’s exceptional strategic location. In the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Russia,  with a subordinated Ukraine, becomes an empire, and without it, ceases to be one.
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