36 hours commotion in Russia: Fight For Dollars in mineral resources it is.
In Russia, life has always been cheap. Historically, rulers of the erstwhile Soviet Union and later day Russia have had no regards for the people they govern rather they see them as expendable and replaceable.
It is on record that a US army General, Dwight Eisenhower, said he once had a conversation with a Soviet Marshal, Georgy Zhukov who admitted to him that the Soviet army’s method for clearing minefields during the Second World War was to “send infantry brigades across the minefields” as if they were animals.
For example, you may have heard of Holodomor or man-made famine perpetrated against Ukrainians for resisting “collectivization” policy of Joseph Stalin.
If you are not aware of it, know that in 1929, the Communist Party forced peasants all over Soviet Union to relinquish their land, personal properties and houses and farms to “communal living”.
Meanwhile, people of the Ukrainian region resisted in a series of peasants rebellion leading to arm struggles.
As a result, production in farm produce dropped drastically leading to mass food shortages and exacerbated the famine. Stalin and Russian rulers were incensed because 10 years ealier, the Ukraine Province had engaged the Red Army fiercely during the Russian Civil War.
Said he in a letter to Lazar Kaganivich .. “ If we don’t make an effort now to improve the situation in Ukraine, we may lose Ukraine”.
Swiftly, the Politburo( the elite leadership of the Soviet Communist Party) decided to blockade Ukrainian Countryside. Villages and all the towns in Ukraine were prevented from receiving food and people were prevented from leaving the Ukrainian Province in search of food elsewhere.
By the winter of 1932-33, organized groups and police ransacked the homes of the people and removed everything edible- from crops to personal food and even eatable pets. Ukrainians started dying and between 1931 and 1934, at least 3.9 million Ukrainian citizens died of malnutrition, cannibalism, lawless lynchings; hence Holodomor, a term derived from Ukrainian word for hunger(holod) and willful extermination (mor) or murder by starvation.
Killing fellow human beings seemed an ordinary thing in Russia from time immemorial just as Vladimir Ilych Lenin the founder of the totalitarian country who was often described as a “merciless terror”, was himself shot twice in an assassination attempt at age 48.
One bullet lodged in his collarbone after puncturing his lung and another got caught in the base of his neck. As if it was a form of divine punishment, both bullets remained in place till he died in January 21, 1924, a few months before he clocked 54 years of age.
Meanwhile, then the second leader of the Soviet Union, was Joseph Stalin. Born Losif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili on December 21, 1879, he adopted the name Stalin, which means “Man of Steel,” while still a young revolutionary.
Stalin rose to power using administrative skills and ruthless maneuvering.
He was said to have rid himself of all potential rivals in the party, first by having many of them condemned as “deviationists,” and later by ordering them executed.
In propagating socialism (principally aimed at securing his own position) he skillfully put the erstwhile Soviet Union (of 15 nation states) on a course of crash collectivization and industrialization.
An estimated 25 million farmers were forced onto state farms and the so called “collectivization” alone killed as many as 14.5 million people. And, instead of great agricultural output, it was actually reduced by 25% according to various sources.
By 1930s, ‘the man of steel’ launched his “Great Purge”, ridding the Communist Party of all the people who had brought him to power.
History have it that more than 1.2 million party members (more than half the party) were said to have been arrested and between 1936 and 1939, over half a million were rounded up tortured and shot or sent to Siberia to perish in the Gulag, (a system of labour camps maintained in the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1955 in which many people died).
Howbeit, l have laid up the behavioral pattern in Russia in the context of Putin ordering the bombing of residential, life supporting infrastructures and restaurants far away from the war front in the cities of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the 36 hours commotion in Russia between 24th and 26th of June 2023 was long in coming.
The main actors were Putin, Prigozhin, Shogui and Gerasimov and by extension Lukashenko, the president of Belorussia .
Therefore, the reason for Prigozhin rejigging their cultish relationship, plainly is dark commerce.
It is on record that the government of Ukraine led by Volodmyr Zelenskyy was planning to issue the first license for mining of Rare Earth Elements which is in abundance in the Donbas, eastern Ukraine. Up until that time the most sort after element has never been mined in Ukraine. That was when some actors needed to fast track the plan to overtake the whole Ukraine by making the east and south the focal points.
At home, the elites and Oligarchs needed to be carried along or eliminated.
Vladimir Putin, a former top secret service KGB officer could not stand or tolerate opposition. Apart from the popular opposition to him in the person of Alexey Nalvalny who almost paid with his life when he was poisoned in Siberia and after being healed in Germany ended up in prison as soon as he was back at home. Others like Boris Nemtsov, and Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko and Segei Skripal were targeted for poison assassinations.
Furthermore, putting opposition down by death seemed natural to Russian leaders.
For example, many Russian Oligarchs involved in oil and gas and top notch dollar earning businesses who may use their monies to raise opposition to Putin and the ruling click have all died mysteriously.
Just as the invasion of Ukraine was building momentum and being rumored amongst the elite in Russia, some who felt and expressed the project as a “strategic mistake” received threats and many relocated abroad. But distance did not prove to be far enough. In late January 2022, a month before Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Leonid Schulman, a 60 year old multi-millionaire at Gazprom was reported dead from “Suicide” while the oil magnate Mikhail Watford was found hanging dead in the garage of his country estate in Surrey, south England.
By March 24, the billionaire Vasily Melnikov the head of giant medical supply company MedStorm was found dead alongside his wife, Galina and their two young sons in their luxurious multi-million dollar house in Ninzhni Novgorod.
By May 2nd 2922, the death of Andrei Krukovsky was reported of having fell from a cliff to his death. The death of this 37 years old director of the Ski Resort of Krasnaya Pollyanna located near Sochi was perhaps most untidy. This is because Putin, President of Russia always invite people to the same resort to “relax” and to ski. More importantly, for Andrei Krukovsky to have fallen off a cliff of a ski resort he managed seemed dramatic and preposterous.
Back in 2020, Sergei Skripal, the former head of Russia’s GRU Intelligence Agency was poisoned, so also was Alexander Litvinenko, also a top notch operative Russian security officer who had defected to UK and was in retaliation poisoned with polonium in London.
By April 19, 2022, Segei Protosenya and his wife were found dead in their villa in Spain. They were both killed. A day later, Vilcdislav Avayev and his wife and their 13 years old daughter were found dead in their remote villa in Spain.
Dial to 24 May 2023. The so-called “Protest” march to Moscow by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenary outfit named Wagner was actually a feud over the returns from the loot in the seized mineral resources in the Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
. Prigozhin had been ‘shortchanged’ in the lucrative deal.
According to information gathered inside Russia, Prigozhin who is known to be the leader of Vladimir Putin’s “alternative private army” named Wagner Group has vast experience in taking over minefields in Africa by force of arms and profiting massively in it.
So, like the deals in Africa, Prigozhin wanted a sizable share in the mining of the much sort after mineral resources.
Indeed, it is farcical the idea or lies professed by Prigozhin that General Shogui deceived Putin to invade Ukraine because Shogui wanted to become a Field Marshal. All of the top military brass in Russia and even the intelligence arms of the western countries all knew the real reason for the invasion of Ukraine. Resource control by General Shogui, the Defense Minister, and Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of Defense Staff have cornered the Ukrainian jewel and with eyes on the mining of the ‘hot cake’ Rare Earth Mineral deposits and Titanium.
Incidentally, Ukraine is one of the leading nations in the world with vast reserves of Titanium, Iron and other non-metallic raw minerals. Rare Earth or REEs are used in manufacturing components in high technology devices like smart phones, digital cameras, light emitting diode (LED) lights, flat screen televisions, computer monitors and majorly in defense technologies.
Apart from being an agricultural powerhouse exporting to destinations in Europe, Latin America and Africa, Ukraine is also home to about 120 most used minerals and metals. As things are, Moscow has seized 11% of its oil deposits, 20% of its natural gas deposits, 42% of its metals and 33% of its rare-earth elements. Put in plain language, Russia special forces and Wagner mercenaries have seized 41 coal fields, 27 natural gas sites, 14 propane sites, 9 oil fields, 6 Iron Ore sites, 2 zirconium sites, and 1 lithium site.
Other seized resources include 1 uranium site, a vast gold minefield, and a large quarry of limestone.
The above resources are exactly why Prigozhin is angry with Shogui and Gerazimo of being shortchanged and that is why Lukashenko (a passive stakeholder) intervened and the untold reasons why Putin did not order an attack on the so called rebellion and funnily dropped all criminal charges against all Wagner operatives.
Now, what the western countries and their media are not saying out load is that Russian occupation of the east and south Ukraine has direct implications for the energy security of Western Europe.
Indeed it is a tactical set back for Europe and America given that Ukraine has enough oil and gas and more so because China supplies over 90% or rare earth elements in the world.
Again the West are pretending that they do not understand that Russia is presently in the War Lord era.
The big country is presently in the hand of few elites and a handful of military cliques. For his survival after the June 24 disgrace, Putin has become a cornered tiger and is likely to exercise brutal totalitarian power over the military, the politicians and the economy through coercive and draconian controls.
Just as the erstwhile counter intelligence service KGB which was succeeded by FSK and presently by Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), we are likely to see a brutal house cleaning operations of so called traitors very soon.
.My angle here is that from Rostov-on-Don to Veronishe and to Lipetsky which is 125 miles to Moscow, no force from national guards, to the Russian elite forces and various garrisons of soldiers along the 673 miles confronted the small scale army sent by Prigozhin along the M4 road. Were they ghosts?
Should we believe that the CIA does not know that some army generals and elites are not aware of the plot by Prigozhin?
Is it not in the interest of the West that Putin and other warlords remain in charge of Russia; not because of nuclear weapons’ security but rather that Russia remain undeveloped despite vast resources?
All these makes you wonder why even the western media and the western governments have always based their support for Ukraine on “defense of democracy” and never spoke about the control of vast mineral resources in the Eastern and Southern Ukraine called Donbas or Donets Basin.
You could wonder as well why Zelenskyy always repeat the phrase that “we are fighting for the whole Europe”
This region is the most important fuel source and the most important industrial region of Ukraine and indeed the whole Eastern Europe. In it’s the location of highly develop coal industry, the best ferrous-metallurgical establishments and machine building, chemical and construction industries.
The region has enormous energy resources and fully diversified agriculture compared to any country worldwide. And, geographically speaking, the area called Great Donbas is about 60,000 Square kilometers,’of which about 45,000 kilometers lie in Ukraine and the remainder in the Russian Federation.
Is it any surprise that Russia is not jolted by the estimated loss of over 25,000 men to the dollar induced war?
Between January 24, 2022, and February 24, 2023 why would the U.S. government provide $76.8 billion in aid to Ukraine?
As Yorubas would say, “ Oye omo tonke, oye iya e toun be” ( The child that’s crying and the mother begging understand what is exactly at stake).
The BBC and CNN and other international broadcasting companies never told their viewers that Prigozhin himself never embarked on the ‘staged’ journey to Moscow.
Every actor knows that Prigozhin only needed to capture the strategic command and control center which is the southern headquarters of the Russian Federation Army and more importantly the staging post of the war in Ukraine.
The food, big weapons and munitions wharehouse feeding the war was captured by a private mercenary army.
That the commanders of this command and control center were seized and filmed by a former cook seemed a Nollywood action film, if we don’t know better.
The western media and the government of the western countries never cared about Wagners’ mercenary operations in the Congos, Central African Republic, Sudan, Mali, Mozambique, even as they kill and plunder the gold, diamonds, oil and gas, uranium and Titanium non stop even as you read this article.
Volodomyr Zelenskyy, the present war time president of Ukraine was one of the first leaders who congratulated our new President, Sen. Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
.Now that the country is in the right pathway to restoring our lost glory, and to start leading Africa ( presently without a clear leader), wouldn’t it be right that we define our own interest in regards to the war situation in Ukraine pragmatically and choose our friends wisely?
