Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Kremlin Invites Californian, Texan and Puerto Rican Separatists to Moscow Conference



Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 27 – Last September, Vladimir Putin hosted a conference of separatist leaders from around the world. Now, he will be hosting a second such meeting next month that will involve, among others, pro-separatist activists from the US states of California and Texas and the American Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

            Russian commentator Leonid Radzikhovsky says that these meetings should not be taken seriously. They simply attract to Moscow marginal figures who are prepared to travel if someone pays their airfare and hotel accommodations. But they do show that the Kremlin is prepared to troll among even these (apostrophe.com.ua/article/world/2016-07-27/moskovskiy-syezd-separatistov-edinstvennaya-ih-ideologiya--otklonenie-ot-normyi/6433).

            According to the organizers of this year’s meeting, it will cost only 20,000 US dollars, a figure that suggests how relatively unimportant such gatherings are, the commentator says. Moscow will in this case at least get what it is paying for and not much more besides demonstrating once again its approach to the world.

            He says that he “doesn’t think that someone is counting on seizing Texas for two million rubles.”  But what holding such meetings may do is create “a Komintern of the psychologically ill,” a group Russia can make use of for propaganda purposes. But no one should confuse this was the huge financial support Moscow provides to groups like Marie Le Pen’s National Front.

            According to Radzikhovsky, all of those who have been invited are “official marginal. They can be neo-Nazis, Trotskyites, anarchists, or cannibals.” They have only one thing in common: all of them are mentally handicapped and have delusions of grandeur.

            “I too could proclaim an independent republic of the size of my apartment,” Radzikhovsky says.  But that wouldn’t have an impact on anyone else, and neither will these people, especially given that they are sponsored by someone who doesn’t tolerate even the talk of separatism regarding Russia.

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