Don't worry, Russia is different

Moscow is in lockstep with the Great Reset but it's a good thing?

There is nothing to worry about

Your humble Moscow correspondent created this blog in mid-October, about a month after quitting our job at RT and after it became clear to us that Russia-related commentary was becoming dangerously unhinged—to the point where observable reality was being denied and ignored, on a daily basis, all over the internet.

Our basic message—“hey, can we talk about how Russia is adopting all the same soul-crushing COVID policies seen in the West, instead of pretending that Putin will liquidate the central banking system and bring peace and harmony to the world?”—seems to have been fairly well received. Edward Slavsquat grows stronger each day.

Our recent survey of the very obvious and weird ties between the World Economic Forum and Sputnik V’s main sponsors has caused quite a stir—it was even translated by a Swiss site, Uncut News, that sometimes features our articles auf Deutsch.

This translation seems to have found its way to a German gentleman by the name of Thomas Röper, who was very displeased by what he read. According to his bio, Röper lives in St. Petersburg and writes about Russia-related issues and western media lies about his adopted homeland. Cool. Sounds like a nice enough guy.

We are happy to engage in constructive dialogue with those who disagree with us. Nobody has all the right answers. The truth is always crowdsourced.

Questions!

Röper’s basic argument—as we understand it—is that “some important people in Russia have connections with the World Economic Forum” and that this is not inherently concerning or even surprising:

“This is not new and if I wanted to write an article like that, the list would be a lot longer. The question is not whether someone has connections to something, the questions are, why do they have the connections, what are their goals and how close are the connections?”

Actually we agree—which is why we didn’t include a full list of Russian officials and businesspeople with ties to the WEF, which is actually quite large. That wasn’t the point of the article, if you read it. What we were trying to argue is that the bigshots behind Sputnik V have deep ties to the World Economic Forum. That’s quite literally the sub-headline of our article.

Röper pretends this is not the case—and he sidesteps the most compelling aspects of our article. Nonetheless, we will briefly respond to his critique.

“The article claims that the Russian government is basically just an executive organ of Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Since the author backs his story well with sources, the article is very convincing.”

We don’t claim that anywhere, actually. We guess the article could be interpreted in that way, so just to be clear: We think the WEF-Russia relationship is far more nuanced than: “do this, Herr Putin”; “okay, master Klaus.”

Probably it’s more like: “It would be cool if we could do these things that would usher in global oligarchical collectivism, so that we can stop pretending that democracy exists, which is annoying to do”; “yes, that is a good idea.”

But again, we don’t know. We are open to suggestions and alternative theories.

Also, thank you for appreciating our convincing, well-sourced story.

“The article itself is not from uncutnews, it was originally written by another author who publishes on the American portal Substack under a pseudonym. He describes himself as a ‘Moscow based writer’, but writes in English.”

We almost stopped reading here. This is just lazy, Röper.

Not really hard to find.

Also, what is he suggesting? Is it illegal to write about Russia in the English language? Isn’t this guy writing… in German? Jawohl!

To be honest this is almost disqualifying. But let’s continue.

“He publishes a lot of articles and they all have one direction: Russia's government is stupid, Sputnik-V is stupid, everything that happens in Russia is stupid.”

“He publishes a lot of articles, they are all so mean!”

Welcome to Slavsquat. I love you.

“The uncutnews article was written by someone who obviously has no idea how networks work. I consider such people, whom I call ‘amateur conspirologists’, to be dangerous because they bring things into the world that sound good but are nonsense. […]

Working on my book Inside Corona was about networks and the World Economic Forum got a very extensive chapter in the book. My informant Mr. X and I worked with a dataset that Mr. X created as an expert on big data that shows the networks behind the pandemic. […]

But when we looked at the connections that the analysis software showed, it became apparent that not all connections that the software showed had something to do with preparation for a pandemic (which was then described as possible). Research showed that we could cross some of the organizations off our list.”

We’ll translate: “This guy is an amateur conspiriologist. If you read my fancy book, which cites impossible-to-verify information from my top secret informant, Mr. X, it’s very clear that Russian officials are in no way connected to the nefarious networks behind this pandemic. And when they are connected, it is totally meaningless.”

“When the Russian government set up the Russian Direct Investment Fund in 2011 to manage the Russian government's assets, who should they have hired? An amateur or a good man? […]

Dmitriev is not dependent on those with whom he once studied or gained his first professional experience, Dmitriev sits in a warm post in Moscow. The fact that he was a Young Global Leader shouldn't matter in his case, because he didn't benefit from it. He did not become dependent on these networks, but made his career outside of the networks.”

Röper is unhappy that we slandered “good man” Kirill Dmitriev, a veteran of Goldman Sachs and McKinsey—two small but extremely patriotic Russian firms. Maybe you’ve heard of them if you follow Russia-related news closely.

Dmitriev is a liar. He spouts outrageous and easily disproven lies about Sputnik’s “proven, time-tested” viral vector platform. Is Röper suggesting otherwise? If so, make your case, kind sir.

So basically: Dmitriev is a Harvard-educated corporate hack who got his start at some of the shadiest Western institutions on Earth, and is also a WEF Young Global Leader, and he is also a liar, but there is absolutely no reason to suspect him of anything. He is a “good man.” Okay, if you say so.

“This also applies, for example, to German Gref, the head of the largest Russian bank that is state-owned. Gref is an old companion of Putin who made his career in Russia and was a close confidante of Putin from the first day of Putin's presidency. […]

That Gref holds a position on the Board of Trustees of the WEF is not surprising. The WEF is an organization that cannot be ignored in the global economy and Gref also wants to do international business with his (state) bank. Conversely, the WEF wants to have influence on Russia and therefore likes to have an influential Russian in its ranks. The question is again who is dependent on whom, and I suspect that they are trying to mutually benefit from each other without one being able to dominate the other.”

Röper is almost making our arguments for us here.

Notably, he does not mention Sputnik V’s extremely creepy and suspicious ties to Gref and Sberbank. He mentions nothing about what “Sber” has been doing since it became a “universe of services” in September 2020. You can read about it here:

The green checkmark that cares for all Russians

Sorry, we have questions about all this. And Röper acts as if there is nothing to see here. Nein! Gref is just an old Putin pal! Thanks for reminding us? Not reassuring.

“It is very unlikely that Russia is on board and that the Russian Prime Minister is a Schwab lackey, because the man had nothing to do with the West before and had no contacts with Schwab. And above all: he is absolutely independent of Western networks, he owes his career to his good work in Russia as head of the tax authorities.”

Mishustin is a friendly ex-taxman. He is his own man. He did not sign the order making Sberbank the sole provider of Sputnik V. He’s just good at collecting taxes and taking care of Russians. There’s nothing weird about him being the guest of honor at a joint WEF/Sberbank forum on the upcoming Cyber Pandemic that Schwab is always drooling about.

“As I said, I consider the article on uncutnews to be the work of a ‘hobby conspirologist’, because if I wanted to list connections between Russian decision-makers and Schwab or the WHO and other organizations important in the pandemic, I could name a lot more people than the author of the article at uncutnews.”

Translation: “I will continue to pretend that the major decision-makers and financers behind Sputnik V are not in lockstep with all the soul-crushing Great Reset policies being promoted by Schwab and implemented around the world. I know a lot more than the author of that silly article, so just listen to me and my top secret informant, Mr. X.”

“If the article shows photos of Putin and Schwab as evidence of Putin's closeness to Schwab, then that's a nice effect, but a distraction and not evidence. How many photos are there of Putin and Obama together? But, just because they both smile in the photos, would you assume they are friends or have shared political goals? Hardly likely. This is also the case with Schwab and Putin. Schwab is powerful and you have to talk to each other, you are polite and smile. But that says just as little as with the pictures of Putin and Obama.”

Is that all the article shows? We didn’t mention anything that Putin said, at a WEF forum that discussed “The Great Reset”? We didn’t explore Putin’s current support of insanely unpopular national QR code legislation? We didn’t talk about his two-faced statements on compulsory vaccinations, or his desire to jab toddlers?

Weak sauce, Röper.

“Bill Gates is against Sputnik-V, Gates propagates mRNA technology, especially the vaccine from BionTech / Pfizer, because Gates is a strategic investor in both Pfizer and BionTech, he earns money on every vaccine dose from BionTech / Pfizer. Gates does not earn anything from Sputnik-V and Sputnik-V is not an mRNA vaccine. Gates is using all his influence on the WHO to ensure that Sputnik-V does not license for its programs for as long as possible, because the money that the WHO collects from the states of the West is primarily intended to buy the vaccine from BionTech / Pfizer . [..]

From this you can see that the basic thesis of the article at uncutnews is completely wrong.”

I think we’re done here.

“Articles like the one at uncutnews cause more confusion than the information, because they do not answer the question ‘why’. But only the ‘why’ (or ‘cui bono’) brings an understanding of the situation. Every crime thriller (and also real life) constantly shows us that we can only solve puzzles if we understand the motivation of those involved. But the ‘hobby conspirologist’ does not answer this question.”

Oh we see now. We need to have a perfect, airtight theory—using data from Mr. X—to show exactly why Herman Gref does everything that he does. Pointing out that all the major players behind Sputnik V are WEF fanboys just causes confusion because it doesn’t help answer any questions! It doesn’t help us better understand the world—it just raises disturbing questions that we don’t want to think about.

Look, we just want to be very clear about our position.

If you are against QR codes, unproven genetic vaccines (that’s what the Gamaleya Center calls its high-tech vector platform!), biometric ID systems in elementary schools, the total destruction of small businesses, compulsory inoculation, and a general, overall policy of soul-rape, you cannot possibly support what the Russian government is doing.

The fact that the World Economic Forum strongly advocates for all these things is significant. The fact that the main guys behind Sputnik V hang out at Davos is significant. How significant? That’s debatable. We are willing to have that debate.

But please, if you’re going to argue: “the Russian government is different, even though it is doing exactly what everyone else is doing!”—at least make an effort. Get Mr. X on the phone. Maybe he can provide you with hot scoops proving Putin’s support for digital cattle tags is a 5D chess move designed to save humanity.

Yes, maybe.