Tony Cartalucci

Activist Post

The coordinated manipulation of global energy prices, a NATO build-up in Eastern Europe, and the rekindling of terrorism in Russia’s southern Caucasus region all appear to be ever-increasing crescendos toward a much larger event – a “Russian Maidan.”

The necessary components of a successful Western bid to overthrow the Russian political order include a political front protesting in Russia’s major cities, as well as a full-spectrum economic war to put pressure on Russia’s population, increasing dissent as well as swelling the ranks of staged protests Wall Street and Washington put in Russian streets. Another necessary component includes armed components to act under cover of “peaceful protesters” to escalate street demonstrations, prevent security forces from restoring order, and to carry out the actual physical overthrow of these security forces.

These elements could all be seen in neighboring Ukraine – a nation in which America and NATO’s incessant meddling is a matter of long-standing public record. The Guardian would admit in its 2004 article, “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” that (emphasis added):

…while the gains of the orange-bedecked “chestnut revolution” are Ukraine’s, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes. Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box. Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze. Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko. That one failed. “There will be no Kostunica in Belarus,” the Belarus president declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade. But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev. The operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections.

Not only has Ukraine suffered because of this admitted US-backed political destabilization over the years, but as revealed by the Guardian and other sources, all of Eastern Europe has fallen prey to this brand of foreign-backed subversion, manipulation, and regime change. Considering this documented fact, the prospect of Wall Street and Washington trying likewise in Russia itself is not only possible, it has already been tried before, with likely attempts in the future only inevitable.

The Blockade…

Already at work is a coordinated manipulation of world oil prices. Revealed among plunging oil prices is that the entire industry is centrally manipulated not by market forces but by political agendas involving the US and its partners in the Middle East, most notably the enduring dictatorship in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. While any nation possesses the ability to weather such economic measures in the long-term as Iran and Cuba have proven; in the short-term, economic instability is one of the harbingers of political subversion where ranks of street demonstrations can be swelled by those who perceive such economic instability as the fault of the current government, rather than an economic attack from abroad.

The Political Front and Muscle

The political front that will take to Russia’s streets has already long been identified. It includes the same brand of extreme “nationalists” and ultra-right groups seen overrunning Ukraine’s political order. This includes literal Neo-Nazis. One of the prevailing figures among Russia’s ultra-right is US-backed Alexey Navalny – billed by the West as an “anti-corruption activist,” who is in all reality a neo-fascist operating openly in the service of Wall Street.

Alexey Navalny was a Yale World Fellow, and in his profile it states:

Navalny spearheads legal challenges on behalf of minority shareholders in large Russian companies, including Gazprom, Bank VTB, Sberbank, Rosneft, Transneft, and Surgutneftegaz, through the Union of Minority Shareholders. He has successfully forced companies to disclose more information to their shareholders and has sued individual managers at several major corporations for allegedly corrupt practices. Navalny is also co-founder of the Democratic Alternative movement and was vice-chairman of the Moscow branch of the political party YABLOKO. In 2010, he launched RosPil, a public project funded by unprecedented fundraising in Russia. In 2011, Navalny started RosYama, which combats fraud in the road construction sector.

The Democratic Alternative, also written DA!, is a US State Department National Endowment for Democracy (NED) fund recipient, implicating Alexey Navalny as an agent of US-funded sedition. The US State Department itself reveals this as they list DA! among many of the “youth movements” they support operating in Russia:

DA!: Mariya Gaydar, daughter of former Prime Minister Yegor Gaydar, leads DA! (Democratic Alternative). She is ardent in her promotion of democracy, but realistic about the obstacles she faces. Gaydar said that DA! is focused on non-partisan activities designed to raise political awareness. She has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a fact she does not publicize for fear of appearing compromised by an American connection.

That this funding is nowhere on NED’s official website indicates that full disclosures are not being made and that NED is engaged in clandestine funding.



Navalny was involved directly in founding a movement funded by the US government and to this day has the very people who funded DA! defending him throughout Western media. The mention of co-founder Mariya Gaydar is also revealing, as she has long collaborated, and occasionally has been arrested with, Ilya Yashin, yet another leader of a NED-funded Russian “activist” opposition group.

Ilya Yashin leads the Moscow branch of the People’s Freedom Party and is a leading member of the “Strategy 31” campaign whose ranks are filled with activists trained and coordinated by US NED-funded NGOs. Deleted from the official NED.org website was Strategy 31’s US funding:

Moscow Group of Assistance in the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords $50,000 To draw greater attention to the issue of freedom of assembly in Russia and to the “Strategy 31” movement, which seeks to protect this fundamental right. The organization will train a network of regional activists and coordinate their activities through mini-seminars and field visits, and conduct an information cam­paign through press conferences, posters, and educational handouts pertaining to freedom of assembly, to be distributed to the general public by regional partners.

Also deleted was a NED “Democracy Digest” article titled “Strategy 31: A sign of civil society’s resilience.” In it, the “Moscow Helsinki Group” is explicitly stated as leading Strategy 31 marches and that the group is a “long-time grantee of the National Endowment of Democracy.”

The multiple deletions across NED’s networks of Russian “activists” it is heavily funding and directing is yet another sign of imminent subversion, in hopes that links cannot be provided fast enough as the unrest unfolds to undermine the legitimacy of the otherwise US-engineered subversion.



Yashin’s People’s Freedom Party is lined not only with NED-funded “youth,” but also lined with career politicians and businessmen collaborating with foreign-interests. Among them is Vladimir Ryzhkov a member of the NED-funded, Washington-based World Movement for Democracy (whose profile has also been recently deleted). There is also Boris Nemtsov whose adviser, Vladimir Kara-Murza (of Solidarnost) took part in a September 14, 2011 NED-sponsored event titled, “Elections in Russia: Polling and Perspectives.”

Revealed is a political front entirely created by the US State Department to pose as the aspirations of the Russian people while in reality a creation and perpetuation of the aspirations of Wall Street and Washington. Under the unrest this front creates may be a heavily armed front consisting of ultra-right Neo-Nazis as observed in Ukraine, heavily armed sectarian terrorists backed by Saudi Arabia, or both.

A Look At America’s “Sedition” Handbook

The use of armed elements to assist in US-engineered political subversion is not speculation. Rather, it is a documented policy included in plans laid for the undermining and overthrowing of other governments around the world. In one particular 2009 US policy paper titled, “Which Path to Persia?” by the Brookings Institution regarding the overthrow of Iran, it is stated specifically that:

One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.

Here, US policymakers are openly conspiring to covertly provoke a nation through political subversion. The resulting “act of aggression” would be portrayed as “unprovoked,” just as has been done regarding Russia’s involvement in neighboring Ukraine and all moves since Moscow has undertaken as the US and NATO continue to move toward war.

The policy paper also openly talks about the particulars of fomenting political unrest. Under a section called literally, “Finding the Right Proxies” it states:

One of the hardest tasks in fomenting a revolution, or even just unrest, is finding the right local partners.

After openly admitting the goal of “fomenting a revolution” or “unrest,” it then details what support to provide these proxies:

…students and other groups need covert backing for their demonstrations. They need fax machines. They need internet access, funds to duplicate materials, and funds to keep vigilantes from beating them up. Beyond this, U.S.-backed media outlets could highlight regime shortcomings and make otherwise obscure critics more prominent. The United States already supports Persian-language satellite television (Voice of america Persian) and radio (radio Farda) that bring unfiltered news to Iranians (in recent years, these have taken the lion’s share of overt U.S. funding for promoting democracy in Iran). U.S. economic pressure (and perhaps military pressure as well) can discredit the regime, making the population hungry for a rival leadership.

The report finally mentions armed groups supporting US-engineered sedition:

Some who favor fomenting regime change in Iran argue that it is utopian to hold out hope for a velvet revolution; instead, they contend that the United States should turn to Iranian opposition groups that already exist, that already have demonstrated a desire to fight the regime, and who appear willing to accept U.S. assistance. The hope behind this course of action is that these various opposition groups could transform themselves into more potent movements that might be able to overturn the regime.

What is troubling about this 2009 report is that each and every conspiracy contained within is not only confirmed by the authors to already be well underway against Iran, it is now clear that similar tactics have been used against Syria, China, and Russia itself. The “Arab Spring” was little more than these tactics used on a regional scale, and what was done in Syria and even Ukraine are almost verbatim pages torn from this playbook.

For a campaign aimed at Moscow itself, it is likely the same playbook will once again be employed. Exposing the insidious, malicious criminality of US policymakers who openly conspire to provoke other nations into conflict and manipulate public perception to maintain moral primacy is the first step to undoing attempts to destabilize and undermine Russia, and all other nations caught in the crosshairs of Wall Street and Washington.

While the West continues to portray Russia as the “aggressor,” throughout America’s own policy papers it can be seen that such accusations are just one part of an immensely insidious and deceitful plan. Portraying Russia as the “aggressors” helps justify further measures to set the board for widespread political subversion within Russia itself. It seeks to justify not only direct ties to opposition groups when they are finally revealed, but also increasingly aggressive interventions both by armed proxies and NATO forces themselves to continue propping up these opposition groups.

The spectacular nature of “invasions” as we imagine them, such as the Nazi blitzkrieg into Western Europe are behind us. Invasions within fourth generation warfare utilize faux opposition groups, covert military support, and full-spectrum economic, political, and information warfare. Russia has built defenses against this form of warfare, confounding the West , but ultimately the moral high ground and all of its advantages is a position only one can hold. Either by truth through exposing the West’s means and agenda will Russia climb to the top, or through the West’s continued successful deception, will Russia be pelted below.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook,” where this first appeared.