By John Helmer, Moscow
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, would do almost anything to get
and keep power.
That, in the opinion of powerful German bankers,
includes making herself look ready for war with Russia in order to make
her political rival, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (lead image, right), the
coalition Foreign Minister and opposition leader in Berlin, look too
weak to be electable when the German poll must be called by 2017.
So,
sources close to the Chancellery say, Merkel insulted President Vladimir
Putin and all Russians to their faces last week. This week Victoria
Nuland, the junior State Department official who told the chancellor to
get fucked a year ago, was in Moscow, replacing Merkel with a settlement of the Ukraine conflict the Kremlin prefers.

“We are ready for this,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said
last Thursday after meeting Secretary of State John Kerry. Referring
to Nuland, Lavrov added: “we were not those who had suspended
relations. Those, who had done it, should reconsider their stance….But,
as usual, the devil is in the details.” Lavrov meant not one, but two
devils, who have sabotaged every move towards a settlement of the
Ukraine conflict since the start of 2014 – Nuland and Merkel.

Merkel’s Kaput! moment came on May 10, when she went to Moscow to lay
a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Deutsche Welle, the state
German press agency, called it Merkel’s “compromise after she stayed away from a Russian military parade the day before.”

At the following press conference with Putin, Merkel said:
“We have sought more and more cooperation in recent years. The criminal
and illegal annexation of Crimea and the military hostilities in
eastern Ukraine has led to a serious setback for this cooperation.”
German sources report the word Merkel said, “verbrecherische”,
has rarely been used by her before; it carries the connotation in
colloquial German of gangsterism — and of Nazism. “Merkel doesn’t seem
to care what she says any longer,” a high-level German source says. “She
exhibits more and more emotion these days, more irritation, and less
care for what she says, and where. Putin understood exactly what she
meant, and on the occasion she said it. He acted with unusual generosity
not to react.”

The Kremlin transcript
omitted Merkel’s remarks altogether. The Moscow newspapers ignored
Merkel’s word and emphasized the positive Putin ones. “Our country
fought not against Germany,” Putin replied to Merkel, “but against Nazi
Germany. We never fought Germany, which itself became the Nazi regime’s
first victim. We always had many friends and supporters there.
US state radio followed with an attempt to endorse Merkel’s
“verbrecherische”, and castigate the Kremlin for ignoring it. “An
official interpreter at a Kremlin press conference has omitted a top
Western leader’s stinging criticism of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s
Crimea region”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on May 12.

Reporter Carl Schreck claimed he “is unclear whether the interpreter
made a conscious call to soft-pedal Merkel’s rebuke, or simply missed
the word…One person who certainly would have understood the German word
for ‘criminal’ used by Merkel – ‘verbrecherisch’ — is Putin himself. The
Russian leader, who was stationed in Dresden with the Soviet KGB in the
1980s, is a fluent German speaker and in the past has spoken with
Merkel in her native language. Whether he heard the word might depend on
what ear Putin was listening with. He sported an earpiece on his left
ear, presumably to listen to the Russian-language interpreter. His right
ear — the one closest to Merkel — was free of electronic
accoutrements.”

Schreck
(right) – the word in German means fright or scare — was a reporter for
the Moscow Times for several years before moving to Prague for the US
government. On his own website
he doesn’t explain his German background, or whether his Washington
state upbringing included the German language. Compared to Putin,
Schreck is a soft touch for the oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov. For him
Schreck’s most sensitive question has been: “What do you look for in a woman?”

Verbrecherische isn’t the first instance of Merkel’s loose lips sinking her own ship. Last November
she picked more aggressive German for impromptu remarks than were set
down in the chancellery’s script. But that was in Australia, and Putin
had already left the country. Merkel isn’t the only politician to say
things in Australia which don’t count in the rest of the world.

The irony of Merkel’s May 10 attack on Putin is that Kremlin sources
believe Putin has been the last of the officials on the Security Council
to give Merkel the benefit of their strategic doubt. Yevgeny Primakov,
Putin’s most experienced strategic advisor, has been telling him
privately for months there is no prospect of salvaging the
German-Russian entente while Merkel is chancellor, and no hope for the
German opposition to break her grip in the short run.

October 29, 2014: Putin calls on Primakov at his home to celebrate the latter’s 85th birthday.
Source: http://en.kremlin.ru

In public, on January 15, Primakov said:
“External changes that would favor Russia should not be expected
anytime soon. It is doubtful that the sanctions will be cancelled in the
near future. Betting on some politicians and European businessmen who
speak against the sanctions is not realistic.” Primakov omitted the
adjective German out of politeness. He and the Russian intelligence
services regard Merkel as Washington’s patsy.

Two days after Merkel’s trip to Moscow, on May 12, Kerry met with Putin and Lavrov in Sochi. The Kremlin communique
was minimal, acknowledging that “special focus” had been given to the
Ukraine conflict.
“The Russian side gave its assessments of the reasons
behind the Ukrainian crisis, stating the key points of Russia’s
position. It was stressed during the meeting that Russia strives to
implement the Minsk Agreements in full and will do its utmost to support
this process.”

By “reasons behind”, Putin and Lavrov meant Nuland and the Washington
war party.
Ahead of the Sochi meeting, the State Department spokesman
had tried to play up Kerry, and downplay Nuland. “You can’t deal with
diplomatic issues if you don’t do diplomacy,” the spokesman declared
on May 11. On May 13, the spokesman was asked if “United States is
ready to put pressure on Ukraine to fully implement Minsk II
agreements”, and ducked the question.

On the next day, by the time Nuland was in Kiev meeting Prime
Minister Arseny Yatseniuk and President Petro Poroshenko, the spokesman claimed
the “United States’ full and unbreakable support for Ukraine’s
government, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. We continue to stand
shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate our deep
commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the
other regions of Ukraine.”

Whatever devil can be read in these details, US Government statements
indicate something new — there are now only two pairs of shoulders,
Merkel’s having been shouldered aside. If there’s to be a settlement of
the Ukraine conflict, it will be trilateral, according to the US, one
between the US, Russia, and Ukraine. From the Russian point of view,
it’s plain this means a deal between Russia and the US, with Nuland to
keep the Ukrainian government in line.

Nuland has insisted that she was right beside Kerry in his meetings
in Sochi. The press photographs have excluded her. The Kremlin, Lavrov
and Kerry have spoken as if Nuland wasn’t there.
In Sochi Kerry also went to the trouble of showing Merkel how to
behave in front of a memorial to the Russian dead in the war against
Germany.

According to Kerry,“the
war memorial here in Sochi [is] where more than 4,000 of the millions
of courageous then-Soviets who died in World War II are buried. And it’s
a very beautiful memorial and I was very moved by the young children
who were there taking part in the ceremony. And I think Sergey and I
both came away from this ceremony with a very powerful reminder of the
sacrifices that we shared to bring about a safer world, and of what our
nations can accomplish when our peoples are working together towards the
same goal.”

Kerry also gave the regime in Kiev a warning of what not to interpret
from anything Nuland may be saying.
“If… President Poroshenko is
advocating an engagement in a forceful effort at this time,” Kerry said
in Sochi, “we would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in
that kind of activity, that would put Minsk in serious jeopardy.
And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that
kind of action at this time may be.”

Now that Nuland has been excluded from the decision-making of the big
boys, her job was to go to Kiev to tell the smaller boys what the new
US line is.

Yatseniuk’s version
of their talks – minus the customary photo opportunity – was that “the
key topics of the talks were questions of overcoming Russian aggression
and the implementation of the Minsk agreements, the implementation of
economic reforms and the fight against corruption, as well as the
assistance from the United States in these processes. Yatsenyuk and
Nuland discussed the status of implementation of the program of
cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, as well as the
preparation for a free trade zone between Ukraine and the European Union
from January 1, 2016.”

Poroshenko stuck to pledging allegiance: “coordination of our actions
with the U.S. is vitally important,” is the only quote the presidential
website posted from the meeting. Photo opportunities were also curtailed.

Nuland’s version, according to the US Embassy transcript,
was to emphasize just how “eager [we are] to deepen our involvement in
helping the parties achieve full implementation—everything from
complete ceasefire and pullback on the line of control, to the political
pieces, to the border pieces.” By “political pieces” Nuland meant the
constitutional changes for eastern Ukraine Putin insists on and Kerry
mentioned, while Nuland bit her tongue.

Nuland has also ignored Yatseniuk’s requests for more money because
Washington will neither declare it’s in favour of a Ukrainian default on
its US-held sovereign bonds at the end of this month, nor provide any
money to stop it.

Instead, the US Treasury rolled out its former Secretary, Lawrence Summers, to announce
that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “has done as much as can
reasonably be asked”. Summers, on the receiving end of Ukrainian
oligarch Victor Pinchuk’s treasury (right), is this week omitting to
call for fresh European Union money or contributions from the Ukrainian
oligarchs.
Summers says he is also opposed to an offer of new American taxpayer
money. Instead, his US Treasury plan is that “Ukraine’s creditors — led
by the investment firm Franklin Templeton, but also with the support of
a number of major US fund managers, who are sufficiently embarrassed by
their selfish and unconstructive position that they avoid public
identification — are playing hardball and refusing any write-offs.
Understandably, if there are a substantial group of such free riders,
other debt holders including the Russians will not accept writedowns…
The IMF and national authorities should call out the recalcitrant
creditors on their irresponsible behaviour.”

In Kiev Nuland put Merkel in her place, relegating her and the French
to a single mention in last place in the process to decide the outcome
of the Ukraine settlement.
The US, she said in Kiev, is “in lockstep
with our European allies and partners”. Lockstep means chain-gang —
Germany must follow where the US leads.
The Merkel Kaput! has been
followed by the Merkel kibosh!

Dictionary note: Kaput started in French, when
it meant losing in cards, and passed into English via the German kaputt
during World War 1. Kibosh, disposed of in English, is derived from the
Irish caidhp bháis, meaning death cap — the hood put on someone before
execution, or the black cap worn by English judges when pronouncing the
death sentence. 

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