Russian news from Praslin Island, the Seychelles
When I checked into my hotel on Praslin Island yesterday, there was a copy of the Seychelles’ daily newspaper The Nation in the lobby that I picked up and flipped through in the afternoon. News was thin, but the classified ads section was thick, including several pages of ‘help wanted’ announcements. Among them, the following:
Russian Translater [sic]
1. Prepare quotations for Russian market partners
2. Translate tours information and collateral materials in Russian language
3. Assist Russian speaking guests during their stay
4. Ensure translated content conveys original meaning and tone
Given that the Seychelles are as close to Paradise as I have ever been, I felt a pang of regret that my time at a work desk is long past. However, if there are any of you interested in the contact phone and email of the employer, just send me a message.
Apart from that item, which attests to the growing Russian presence in Seychelles, there is a more important Russian news item which motivates me to put pen to paper. Like my last essay, it relates to a Russian state television broadcast on Pervy Kanal that I watched on the satellite television of my hotel last night.
The program in question was the latest installment of The Great Game, a high level talk show moderated by Vyacheslav Nikonov, grandson of the Communist leader Molotov, long time head of Russian World (Russky Mir), a state funded organization to support Russian culture in the diaspora abroad. He is today Deputy Chair of the Committee on International Affairs in the State Duma.
The program focused on the announcements coming from the United States and from Germany with regard to dispatch of Abrams and Leopard-2 main battle tanks to Ukraine. Nikonov put up on the screen extensive video clips from the speeches by Biden, by Scholz and by Western television commentators about the decision to send these most modern offensive weapons to Kiev. He also presented a remarkable minute from the Bundestag session of the day during which Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock says: “..we are at war with Russia.”
Though he made the round of his panelists, Nikonov himself delivered the most important comments on these developments. If I may cut to the quick, he said that the numbers of tanks pledged to Kiev by the various NATO countries, approximately 100, make for painful news because they will certainly kill Russian soldiers as intended. And yet, in terms of the outcome of the ongoing war, they will have no importance whatsoever because, for its part, Russia has ready on its side between 12,000 and 13,000 tanks to deploy when and if necessary. The U.S. and German tanks will simply be destroyed.
Per Nikonov, the importance of the decisions announced by Germany and the United States lay in the political domain, signifying as they do the formation of a broad and deep war coalition that cannot be undone. It spells the complete subordination of Germany to its American occupiers and the casting aside of decades of work with Germans to achieve some rapprochement and put the denouement of WWII, and in particular the memory of the Soviet flag being hoisted over Berlin in 1945. As for Annalena’s indiscretion in the Bundestag, Nikonov asked whether the Kremlin should not take this as a declaration of war and proceed accordingly.
Nikonov’s remarks about the United States also bear repeating here. He gives no weight to Joe Biden and his administration as leaders. The strings are being pulled by the Deep State which absolutely requires that the U.S. be at war. The six months following the American withdrawal from Afghanistan were too long for the Deep State to live with. They set the stage for a war in Ukraine and they now are reveling in their success. They have no wish to see an early end to the conflict.
I close with a comment on the unusually pained, strained look on Nikonov’s face during the entire program. From watching The Great Game over the past several years, I was used to his energetic and positive personality. Not last night. There was weary resignation in Russia’s carrying on with a fight that is inescapable, that will be victorious but at great cost.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023