The media spectacle that’s being made over President Putin’s supposed partnership with the East German Stasi is a form of Hybrid War being waged by the West against Nord Stream, incidentally using the exact same tactics that Russia is commonly accused of employing in seeking to sow chaos, discord, and confusion in German society over Moscow’s geopolitical motives for this pipeline.
The Western Mainstream Media has found a new object of fixation earlier this week after reports surfaced of a German document that was “discovered” in the country’s archives alleging to prove that President Putin used to work for the East German Stasi. The Kremlin commentated on this spectacle by claiming that it’s indeed possible that the Russian leader had at one time received Stasi papers as part of a cooperation agreement with the KGB whereby the two allied security services swapped documents in order to facilitate their counterparts’ work, but the story nevertheless doesn’t seem to be going away since some forces evidently have an interest in keeping it on people’s minds.
This might seem a bit strange at first because this so-called “revelation” is too little too late to make any difference in shaping how most of the world perceives of President Putin and his country, with most people having already made up their minds long ago. In general, the global audience is desensitized to anti-Putin defamation campaigns after being incessantly exposed to them for nearly the past five years since the success of “EuroMaidan” and the subsequent reunification of Crimea with Russia. The German public naturally falls within this category, but it’s here where the relevance of the Mainstream Media’s obsession with President Putin’s alleged Stasi past comes into strategic play.
The Stasi is a very sensitive topic in German society, and introducing the narrative that President Putin might have actually worked for this structure at one time is meant to sow distrust about his geopolitical motives for constructing Nord Stream II, one of the most politicized infrastructure projects in European history after the US decided to wage an all-out infowar against it for fear of gradually losing its hegemonic dominance in the continent if it were to be completed. It’s because of this heated context that the timing of the document’s public revealing is extremely suspicious because it appears intended to sow chaos, discord, and confusion in German society at this sensitive moment.
Incidentally, this outcome is exactly what the West accuses Russia of seeking to do all across the world through Hybrid Warfare, and doing the exact same thing that one accuses their rivals of doing is the essence of what MI6’s spymaster recently described as “fourth generation espionage”. It could very well be that this latest infowar campaign against Nord Stream II – aided and abetted by the “discovery” of President Putin’s supposed Stasi credentials at this specific time – is meant to prove that strategic effectiveness of this concept if it succeeds in getting Germans to doubt the apolitical nature of Nord Stream II after being distracted by spectacle.
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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
