Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Faced with determined opposition to Russia’s rigged 4 December elections, as we predicted the Kremlin is intensifying its appeal to nationalism.  Perhaps the most dramatic example of this to date came on 12 December from Russia’s permanent representative to Nato, Dmitriy Rogozin, who seemed to warn that Russia faced an attack from the West - and that only Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was capable of protecting Russia.

Speaking to a United Russia rally in Moscow on 12 December, Rogozin warned: “Russia is experiencing difficult times.  The forces that are active in Europe are thinking that Russia may be an easy prey  They have bombed Iraq, they have crushed Libya, they are closing in on Syria, they have trampled the people of Yugoslavia under their feet, but they are thinking about Russia, and they are waiting for every moment when they could use our country’s weakness.  Unfortunately, right now there is not a single leader in Europe who could stand up to the diktat of...Washington...We have such a leader.  It is Vladimir Putin.  He is ready to stand up for Russia.”  On 13 December, Rogozin joined Putin’s HQ for the presidential election in March.

Another noteworthy point is that Russia’s Chief of General Staff General Nikolay Makarov has reiterated his warnings about the danger of full-scale war around Russia’s periphery.  As we reported in a Special Alert, on 17 November, in a speech to the Russian Public Chamber Makarov warned: “The possibility of local armed conflicts along practically the whole of the perimeter of the border has increased dramatically.  Under certain circumstances I do not rule out the possibility that local and regional conflicts may develop into a large-scale war, including with the use of nuclear weapons.”

On 7 December, Makarov embellished this warning when he told a gathering of foreign defence attaches: “[In] North Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Africa...there are a huge number of conflicts with a tendency to intensify...Under certain circumstances a whole number of other states could be drawn into these conflicts.  This will be full-scale war.”

Another example of playing up the external threat came on 8 December when Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Nato could be pushing Georgia into “a repetition of something like the escapade in August 2008” when the two countries briefly went to war.  On 13 December, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev warned that “individuals are being trained on Georgian territory to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia”.

In the same interview, Patrushev argued that Nato’s anti-missile shield was not aimed at Iran and North Korea but at Russia and China.  No doubt sensing an opportunity from the deepening rift between the US and Russia, on 12 December China’s Vice-Premier Li Keqiang called for a strengthening of the China-Russia “all-round strategic cooperative partnership”.