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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGerman Intelligence: Cracks Are Starting To Show Between Russia's Oligarchs And Putin's Hardliners
German Intelligence: Cracks Are Starting To Show Between Russia's Oligarchs And Putin's HardlinersTony Paterson, The Telegraph/Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-may-not-be-a-united-front-2014-7
"SNIP........................
Germany's intelligence services have informed Chancellor Angela Merkel's government that a power struggle is under way in the Kremlin with hardliners and oligarchs at loggerheads over how best to respond to western economic sanctions, according to media reports.
German intelligence chief Gerhard Schindler has told the Berlin parliament's foreign affairs committee that cracks are beginning to appear in the united front that President Vladmir Putin is seeking to present to the world, Der Spiegel magazine said on Sunday.
Mr Schindler was reported to have told the committee and subsequently Mrs Merkel personally that a struggle had broken out in the Kremlin with hardliners and oligarchs seeking to exert their influence on President Putin.
"According to German intelligence it is quite possible that some of the oligarchs who are worried by European Union sanctions will soon start putting economic interests above political concerns and try to put the brakes on Putin," Der Spiegel wrote.
..........................SNIP"
applegrove
(118,600 posts)msanthrope
(37,549 posts)I have to wait for Snowden and Greenwald to tell me how I feel about this.
applegrove
(118,600 posts)msanthrope
(37,549 posts)spying on the Kremlin?
Obviously, this type of intelligence-gathering is bad and morally wrong!
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Why yes, yes they do. But 'intelligence' isn't all spying. Sometimes it's just reading papers and talking to people who know more than you do about a given event on the phone. If the oligarchs are displeased, it's not going to stay secret long.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)this surprising turn of events.
applegrove
(118,600 posts)on Germany.
Tarheel_Dem
(31,230 posts)BillZBubb
(10,650 posts)Russia is not Germany's ally. Get a clue.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)So then why did Snowden disclose US espionage activities against China?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014762667
freshwest
(53,661 posts)herding cats
(19,558 posts)I recommend it for anyone who wants to know more about the budding schism.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/a-new-russian-revolution-cracks-start-to-appear-in-putins-kremlin-power-bloc-9631894.html
blm
(113,040 posts)and the steadfastness of Obama and Biden have been throughout this entire situation.
The corpmedia's had it wrong. It's been obvious to some of us all along.
Tarheel_Dem
(31,230 posts)Assholes.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Economic sanctions are intended to be about money, so the strategy all along has been to hurt Russia's politically capable oligarchs to get them to turn on Putin's policy.
Those sanctions were going into place when a plane load of dead civilians was a seemingly unlikely hypothetical.
Russian supplied armaments could do a wide range of destruction, getting Russia to reverse it's support for pilfering provinces from neighboring countries through destabilization/civil war is the goal and it potentially limits all types of mayhem.
The alternatives to economic sanctions include doing nothing --unacceptable-- and turning Ukraine into the battlefields of a very thinly veiled proxy war --also unacceptable.
Tarheel_Dem
(31,230 posts)like this to put the screws to the Kremlin. I heard this morning that the UN HRC says there's over a thousand dead in the fighting started by these so-called "separatists".
I am all for sanctions, and always have been, but I'm just sad & disappointed that it took this for the EU was so slow to the table.