Crushing the Russian Economy: the Real Aim of the Anglo-American Empire

Officials of the Biden Administration and of the British government have made crystal clear over the past week that their ultimate aim is to stop the industrialization of Russia and thus irreparably weaken the state. From the geopolitical standpoint, Ukraine is but a useful pawn in the game, to be dropped if and when need be.

Seen from Washington: Two “senior administration officials” held a background phone call with reporters on Jan. 25 to elaborate on the measures planned by the U.S. and its allies to inflict “severe economic costs” upon Russia and its people, in the event of an invasion of Ukraine.

“The gradualism of the past is out, and this time we’ll start at the top of the escalation ladder and stay there,” they promised. They took credit for “deepening” a sell-off in Russian markets, raising its borrowing costs, and driving down the value of its currency already, through the talk of “sanctions with massive consequences” to come.

The goal is not is protect Ukraine, but rather to “hit Putin’s strategic ambitions to industrialize his economy quite hard” and to “undercut Putin’s aspirations to exert influence on the world stage”. For this, not just financial sanctions are promised, but export controls to deny Russia access to technologies which are “critical to its own ambitions to develop high-tech capabilities in aerospace and defense, lasers and sensors, maritime, AI, robotics, quantum, et cetera…. We’re willing to work with any country in order to deny Russia an input that it needs to diversify its economy,” because this, they delude themselves, “would lead to an atrophying of Russia’s productive capacity over time.”

A blood-curdling admission of what amounts to the intention to impose genocide on the Russian people!

Given the fact that Europe relies on Russian natural gas to heat and power its economies, the two officials also spoke of stepped-up efforts to ensure delivery from other sources,so that everything is set when we decide to “press this trigger.”

Seen from London: The total destruction of the Russian economy is necessary to “deter” Moscow from aggression, London’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told Sky News on Jan. 30. The way to do it, in her view, is to sanction any and everyone who is doing business with Russia – which includes, of course, many vital European companies. As reported in the Daily Mail, the would-be “Iron Lady” said: “Currently, the economic sanctions are fairly narrowly drawn, so we could only target companies with a direct involvement in destabilizing Ukraine. What we are looking to do is widen that so any company of interest to the Kremlin and the regime in Russia would be able to be targeted, so there will be nowhere to hide for Putin’s oligarchs, for Russian companies involved in propping up the Russian state.”

The British are also targeting their supposed “allies” in Europe, that do not go along with the empire’s policy. Liz Truss demanded the shutdown of the completed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, calling the defense of freedom and democracy “more important than immediate financial issues”. (And was it really to defend freedom and democracy that Iraq, Libya, and Syria were destroyed, we might ask…)

As for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he plans to talk to Putin this week, and is sending his Foreign Secretary and his Defense Secretary Ben Wallace to Moscow, supposedly to “encourage de-escalation.” But at the same time, he has instructed his defense and security chiefs to plan further troop and military hardware deployments to Eastern Europe, to “send a clear message to the Kremlin.” Apparently trying to sound like Winston Churchill, he said the British armed forces would “deploy across Europe next week, ensuring we are able to support our NATO allies on land, at sea and in the air.”

The U.S. officials did not mention cutting off Russia from the Western financial payments system, SWIFT, but according to Boris Johnson, discussions are ongoing with Washington about this “very potent weapon”. To which Nikolay Zhuravlev, the Vice Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, responded with a question: How well can European countries get along without the Russian goods — oil, gas, and metals, among them –which they will not be able to purchase if Russia is thrown out of SWIFT?