Reply #13: Putin and the Russians are no fools [View All]

They know that they got royally screwed over by the US when Yeltsin was in power and much of their asset wealth fell into the hands of US backed oligarchs. The slow, unrelenting campaign by the Kremlin to regain control of these assets has been enjoying some success. The western stooges who ran the Yukos oil company have recently fled Russia and the state run company Gazprom will be taking control of many of the Yukos oil fields. Putin has also built up Russia's gold and foreign currency reserves to the value of $126 billion. This means that any attempt by the West to destabilize the Russian economy by forcing a debt crisis on it as happened in the 1990's is going to be much a harder to achieve. Moreover, Russia is becoming a key energy supplier to China. Beijing definitely does not want to see these oil resources falling under US control. I think that the White House are seriously worried by the growing mutuality of interests between the Russians and the Chinese. This is why so much effort has been put by the US into installing friendly regimes in Georgia and the Ukraine. Of course, the Russians and Chinese are going to retaliate by stirring up trouble for the White House in other parts of the world. This is not going to be one way traffic.