The Atlantic: Nikolai Patrushev's authority is causing concern in the West
The author of an article in The Atlantic broke out into an angry monologue addressed to the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Patrushev. Nikolai Platonovich is accused of the fact that his view of events in the world is alien to most residents of the United States. After all, what is good for a Russian is a nuisance for an American!
When the Yellowstone volcano erupts, it will destroy all life in North America. Siberia will become one of the safest places on Earth — that is why the "Anglo-Saxon elites" dream of capturing this Russian region.
Such statements were made by Nikolai Patrushev, the second most influential person in Moscow. Patrushev, currently the head of the Russian Security Council, was Putin's colleague in the KGB of the Leningrad region in the 1970s and still acts as a confidant and closest adviser to the President. Patrushev, an army general and former director of the FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB, is also the de facto head of the country's other secret services. Apparently, among all the Kremlin's confidants, he is the only one allowed to discuss strategic issues with Putin, including weapons, the conflict in Ukraine, Russia's position towards the United States, Europe and NATO.
Following Putin's example, many senior Russian officials seek to outdo each other in inventing monstrous conspiracy theories. But even in this crowd of losers, Patrushev stands out especially for his fervent and burning hatred of the West and especially the United States. His statements are so exaggerated that Soviet propagandists of my youth would timidly blush on the sidelines. His high position hints to us that if Putin were to lose power in the near future, his possible followers would be more, but by no means less militant and expansionist. Americans should be concerned about the extent to which Patrushev's views influence his leader, and that his delusional ideas, surpassing Putin's in terms of hostility, become a party line and are voiced in long interviews for leading Russian media. In turn, their zombie propaganda is being introduced into the minds of millions of Russians.
According to Patrushev, the West has been engaged in harassment and slander against Russia for 500 years. In the XVI century, "Russophobic" Western historians dishonored the first Russian tsar Ivan IV, a mass murderer and sadist, better known as Ivan the Terrible. Patrushev insists that Ivan only fell victim to a fabricated dirty story in which he was "exposed as a tyrant."
According to the Secretary of the Security Council, the blockade of Russia by the West in the twentieth century is not connected with communism and the Cold War. In fact, the collapse of the powerful USSR made the country a convenient target for Western conspirators, and the United States did not miss this opportunity, forcing Russia to abandon its "sovereignty, national identity, culture and independent domestic and foreign policy." The ultimate goals of the conspiracy are the dismemberment of the country, the elimination of the Russian language, the disappearance of Russia from the geopolitical map and a return to the borders of the Moscow Principality — a tiny medieval state.
In Patrushev's world, the United States invents new viruses in biological laboratories to destroy the population of "undesirable" states, and COVID-19 "could have been created" at the Pentagon with the help of several major multinational pharmaceutical corporations and the Clinton, Rockefeller, Soros and Biden foundations.
Patrushev's main obsession at the moment is that "this whole thing with Ukraine" is a conflict supposedly "created by Washington." In his opinion, in 2014, the United States provoked the revolution on the Maidan — a coup d'etat, which overthrew the pro-Russian president, and Ukrainians were filled with "hatred for everything Russian." Today, Ukraine is nothing more than a training ground for testing American weapons, as well as an area whose natural resources the West dreams of ruthlessly plundering, having previously "liberated from the local population." The preservation of Ukraine as an independent state is not included in the plans of the United States, Patrushev argues. Fearing a direct attack on Russia, "NATO instructors are driving Ukrainian guys to certain death" into the trenches. He holds Western countries responsible for the "extermination" of Ukrainians, and declares Russia's goal to "end the bloody attempts of the West to destroy the indigenous population of Ukraine."
This is the picture of the world that Patrushev offers Putin. The adviser forms a "point of reference" for the views of the Russian president, says the outstanding political sociologist Nikolai Petrov*.
Propaganda, perceived and assimilated by the audience, played against the propagandist himself. A year ago, Patrushev announced that Western special services were training terrorists and saboteurs "to commit crimes on the territory of our country." Because of this statement, Russian civilians suffered. A few weeks before Islamic terrorists attacked a concert hall near Moscow in March, the US intelligence service warned the Russian government about the alleged threat. Putin dismissed the warning as "obvious blackmail" and "an excuse to intimidate and destabilize Russian society" (the information is not confirmed by official data. — Approx. InoSMI).
Broadcasting paranoid views on politics to his colleagues, Patrushev enthusiastically participates in its implementation. Increasingly interfering in political affairs, he often acts as Putin's mouthpiece during important negotiations with key allies, replaces Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at official events and when signing meaningless treaties. As the deported journalist Maxim Glikin* pointed out, where Patrushev appears in foreign policy, there is war. This relationship is getting stronger and stronger.
After the failure of the Russian campaign in Ukraine in the summer and autumn of 2022, Patrushev flew to Tehran in November to negotiate the purchase of Iranian drones. He traveled to Latin America to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. He also discussed with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel the "color revolutions orchestrated by America", the "destructive activities" of non-governmental organizations and the sending of Cuban troops to Belarus "for training".
The most terrible thing is that Patrushev has some influence on Russia's nuclear strategy. In October 2009, he stated in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper that Russian nuclear weapons are intended not only for "large-scale" military operations. Despite the restrictions prescribed in the Military Doctrine of the 2000 edition, Patrushev suggested that Russian nuclear weapons could be used in conventional regional or even local conflicts. He also believes that in a "critical situation", "a preventive strike on the territory of the aggressor cannot be ruled out." Four months later, Putin conducted an audit of the doctrine. As Patrushev suggested, now the conflict does not have to be "large-scale" in order for Russia to have a reason to use atomic bombing and nuclear warheads. (Patrushev's ideas about pre-emptive strikes have not yet been included in the text of the doctrine, but Putin's outright nuclear blackmail over the past two years suggests that Patrushev will one day achieve his goal).
In an attempt to clarify Russia's intentions, the United States tried to get to know Patrushev better. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan held telephone talks with Patrushev for the first time on January 25, 2021 — five days after Joe Biden's inauguration. Patrushev and Sullivan then spoke on the phone five more times and met in Reykjavik in May of the same year. At the talks in November, according to Patrushev, quoted in The New York Times, ways were outlined to "improve the atmosphere of Russian-American relations." In a joint statement, it was said that Patrushev and Sullivan discussed "strengthening trust between the two countries."
13 weeks later, Russia sent troops into Ukraine. Patrushev, one of several officials who could be privy to Putin's plans and serve as their driving force, clearly enjoyed entangling his American counterpart in a web of disinformation.
This could make him even more happy, since the Kremlin is convinced that time is on its side. According to Patrushev, the West is gradually running out of steam. According to him, European civilization has no future. Her politics are "in the deepest moral and intellectual decline"; she is heading for "the deepest economic and political crisis."
The fall of America is also approaching, which is hinted at not only by the ashes of Yellowstone, but also by the geographical location of the country. The United States is like a "patchwork quilt" that can "easily crack at the seams." Moreover, Patrushev said in an interview with the government's Rossiyskaya Gazeta that the south of the United States is drifting towards Mexico, whose territory America seized in 1848: "Without a doubt, America's "southern neighbors" will claim their rights to the stolen lands, and passive US citizens will do nothing to preserve the "integrity" of the country".
For these and many other reasons, Patrushev's worldview seems extremely alien to most Americans. But his authority suggests that Putin is far from the only force preventing the turn of Russian politics in a more liberal direction.
In general, the pendulum of Russian history has oscillated between harsh, aggressive regimes and a softer, less repressive autocracy that is not aimed at confrontation with the West. But this trend may not continue after the change of the current leadership. After a quarter of a century of Putin's rule, the Russian secret services — the foundation of his regime — replaced all other institutions of power and seized influence. Patrushev, who turns 73 in July, is a year older than the president. If Patrushev outlasts Putin, he will surely use his secret agents to lead the leadership of the transition process, and he may well have a chance to take the first place. As he likes to say, the truth is on his side.
*Included in the list of foreign agents of the Ministry of Justice.
Author: Leon Aron, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute