Yuri Orlov traffics Soviet weapons globally. He identifies himself as a Russian from Odesa, Ukraine. He has dubious connections to the Soviet military complex and the Jewish community in New York’s Brighton Beach. The story of this fictional movie character is based on Russia’s real-life arms dealer Viktor Bout. It illustrates a valid point in Vladimir Putin’s assertion that “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”. Namely, it set the Kremlin’s hybrid monsters loose.
The collapse of the Soviet Union disturbed a bipolar world in which all international political events, and the arms race, were explained away by the oppositional Soviet and American blocks. Its collapse gave rise to 15 new and independent states; each with its own interest in defense and the arms trade. Despite (or perhaps in spite of) disarmament pacts such as the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (by which 3 Soviet republics naïvely exchanged their very real nuclear arsenals for paper promises), the Kremlin gained a fair amount of control over Soviet weapons and their components. It also maintained a loyal, transnational political-criminal network; raising the chances of achieving its geopolitical objectives.
Forget, for a moment, that what Putin identifies as a ‘catastrophe’ freed over 15 nations from the Kremlin’s yoke, and, hundreds of millions of people from the threat of Siberian labor camps rivaling those in North Korea. And, appreciate, for a second, the brilliance of Moscow’s war aimed at the establishment of a Kremlin-fashioned, multipolar world.
The effectiveness of Moscow’s strategy is reflected by its illegal annexation of Crimea, the ‘un-war’ in Ukraine and increasing reports of Russian military triumphs in the Middle East.
On Jan. 13, 2018 Israeli Defense Forces attacked a 1.5-kilometer-long smuggling tunnel allegedly connected to some funky trafficking. The Hamas countered Israeli air strikes with air defense units which may have been crafted and equipped with Russian support. Israeli counterintelligence has not excluded the possibility that Russia smuggled the modern air defense system which had been deployed to Syria.
Such Russian support seems likely, in light of recent developments in the region. Lebanese Hezbollah field commanders, with troops fighting in Syria, admit receiving heavy weapons directly from Russia with no strings attached. Moreover, Russia has a history of supplying surface to air missiles to international terrorists.
One of its most famous “terrorists,” Colonel Igor Girkin, (a.k.a. Strelkov), is believed guilty of killing 298 humans by downing flight MH17 using a Russian BUK missile over Ukrainian airspace. When not “openly” serving the Kremlin within the Federal Security Service, or FSB, he “volunteers: in its separatist wars. He is known to enjoy transporting Russian Orthodox icons for Konstantin Malofeev (the blacklisted Russian billionaire and founder of the so-called “Safe Internet League”). Girkin conveys weapons and gives dodgy interviews. Most recently, this terrorist-spy has been reporting on dead, Russian Wagner ‘mercenaries’ in Syria. More than 200 died in a failed attack on a base held by U.S. and mainly Kurdish forces. “Wagner” is a ‘pseudo-private’ military company. Led by Dmitri Utkin, it is an unregistered, armed marionette guided by the Kremlin’s hands.
The Wagner construct allows Russia to formally deny its operative presences and is a small masterpiece in the Kremlin’s hybrid arsenal. However, it is One which is simultaneously striking chords of discord within Russia’s own population (which is believed to be an apple of discord between Putin and his Minister of Defence Shoigu).
The hard, vast evidence of illegal, supplies of Russian arms, ‘contract soldiers’ and ‘volunteers’ in Crimea, Donbas, Transdniestria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, is growing. Disturbingly, it is growing alongside evidence of Russian operatives and ‘volunteers’ provoking societal and political conflict inside the EU and US.
To date, Russia’s operative presence in the U.S. has ‘only’ been linked to an attack against a main pillar of American democracy; the presidential elections. In reaction to this assault, the U.S. has already expulsed over 35 Russian diplomats. In a long-awaited move, special counsel Robert Meuller has finally announced indictments against 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian entities on charges related to the Kremlin’s electoral interference. Outstandingly, the CEO of one of those entities, Concord Consulting is Dmitiry Utkin, the leader of the private military corporation Wager.
Days before Meuller announced the indictments, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a travel warning. It asserts U.S. intelligence services are on a “hunt” to detain Russian citizens traveling abroad. Strikingly, its list of examples of “innocent Russian businessmen” being “kidnapped” by the United States includes the infamous arms dealer, Viktor Bout; better known to moviegoers as Yuri Orlov in the “Lord of War”.
The Kremlin is good at weaponizing things. In a very Soviet manner, it weaponizes hearts and minds by turning monsters into heroes. With an expert disregard for ethnicity and nationhood, it weaponizes the principle of self-determination. It weaponizes international law, simultaneously remaining seemingly free of its limitations. In turn, its weapons are used to pursue its own vision of a multipolar world. Notably, according to Mr. Orlov, weapons are “the Russian people’s greatest export, after that comes vodka, caviar and suicidal novelists. One thing’s for sure, no one is lining up to buy their cars.”
In recent years, Moscow’s arms, terrorism, corruption and propaganda have become recognized as Russia’s greatest exports. The time is ripe for those with an appreciation of liberty, nationhood, innovation, and the rule of law to unite and catch the Kremlin’s hybrid monsters. Lest, the greatest catastrophe of the 21st century be the collapse of human-based democratic freedom and dignity in favor of multi-polar corruption, killing and greed.
