Yesterday I wrote about the skinny-tight links between the new Greek Minister of Defense and Moscow, in particular between his Institute for Strategic Studies and the FSB-linked Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS). As you may remember, shortly before the unprecedented horse-shoe coalition was formed (on November 24th 2014), Panos Kammenos’s “think tank” signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding with the Kremlin-funded RISS, in turn being chaired by a freshly retired FSB General. That memorandum apparently opened his eyes to the expediency of forming a coalition with his diametrically opposed ideological enemies. Now let’s fast-rewind a month back to October 9th 2014. On this date, a key official of RISS – Prof. Eduard Popov, head of the Black Sea-Caspian Center of RISS, authored a secret plan. That is, it was secret, until his plan turned up as part of the hacked email correspondence between Dugin, Malofeev’s circle and Greek politicians. I read the secret plan back in early December and tweeted frivolously about it, calling it a lunatic’s wet-dream. However, in today’s Greek reality, I feel I should bring it up as a serious possibility. The strategic plan was titled: A Byzantine World. The subtitle: “A proposal for integration of the peoples of the Orthodox (post-Byzantine) cultural realm around Russia.” Here are some excerpts:

Currently, in the SEE countries (mainly Orthodox-influenced) we see a rising momentum of skeptical and negative sentiment towards the EU and the USA. Events in Novorossiya have demonstrated the dependence of the political “elites” on the West and, at the same time, the growing level of approval of the actions of Russia that the peoples of these countries (including the business community). However, the pro-Russian sentiments are poorly converted into a political result mean total control over the political sphere by the pro-Western “elites.” We can change the situation in different ways. First of all, by building a parallel existing political mechanisms of social structures and cross-border links, aimed at the growth of Orthodox Peoples Solidarity – pariahs of the Western world order. Since religious authenticity causes a wave of criticism in many circles, we propose to build a new line of integration around Russia on the basis of the historical and cultural identity. Russia and most countries in Eastern and Southern Europe (most of the Slav countries, both the Greek state, Romania, Georgia, Armenia) belong to the post-Byzantine cultural area. The strategy of Russian foreign policy to this day had a noticeable emphasis on the Atlanticist (west) and the Eurasian integration vectors. The “universal” values were exported from the West, geo-economic interests lay in the East. However, the success of integration projects Russia needs the demographic resources that can be taken only in the area of spiritual and culturally similar countries and peoples, with which are not of the Muslim peoples and Confucian East. Russia today has the potential to build a new line of defense and, at the same time, create a new big market on its western and south-western borders – in the post-Byzantine area.

Well…I had read this and had totally scrapped it from my memory. Until I just saw this photo from today: UPDATE: This photo was reported to be photoshopped and used by this respectable news site sarcastically, apparently to make a point. The problem was, it was so close to the script, that Occam’s Razor did not scream “Photoshop”.

What can we expect in the developing Greek saga? A secret byzantine order with KGB generals worthy of a Dan Brown novel? Sure, why not. Here’s a proposal to Alexander Dugin from Syriza’s advisor, and Russian security firm board director, Nicolas Laos (click to enlarge and read).