Putin’s Tender for the Ukraine

by Joseph P. Farrell, Giza Death Star
July 15, 2022

When C.A.F. sends you an email that says “you can tender for a company, you can also tender for a country,” you tend (no pun intended) to sit up and take notice, especially if the email is accompanied with another article containing a history lesson on how the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl tendered for East Germany. If you don’t know that story, I’ve discussed it often, but here’s the article, and the headline says it all:

Kohl Offers 1 to 1 Exchange Rate for E. German Money

There you have it: Kohl offered to convert the nearly worthless East German mark at par value into the West German Deutschmark, and with that ingenious Anschluss, the Communist state was no more, for East Germans predictably lined up to get the more valuable West German marks, which, of course, they could then spend in West Germany to get those things they could not purchase in the socialist workers’ paradise of East Germany. It’s good to know that Kohl was a German chancellor in the best, sneakiest Walter-Rathenau-Treaty-of-Rapallo tradition. Mögen ihre Erinnerungen hoch leben, dreimal hoch!

Now it appears that Mr. Putin may be playing a similar game, according to this article that C.A.F. sent along, which I’m passing along to you:

Putin Signs Decree Offering Russian Citizenship to All Ukrainians

The article is so short that it’s worth citing the whole thing:

All Ukrainians can now apply for fast-track Russian citizenship, according to a decree signed Monday by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Previously, this option had been open only to residents of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as residents of the southern Zaporizhzhia and the Kherson regions, which are largely under Russian control.

It was unclear how many would apply for Russian citizenship, but between 2019 — when the offer was made available to residents of Donetsk and Luhansk — and 2022, about 18% of the population in rebel-held areas of Ukraine received Russian passports.

In May, the program was expanded to residents of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Ukrainian officials have yet to comment on Putin’s decree. (Italicized emphasis added)

Notice that the dateline of the article is June 29, and that the information comes from prior Reuters and AP articles. Interestingly, I do not recall any of the western legacy lamestream broadcast propatainment media covering this story, nor any team of “experts” or panels of “analysts” offering explanations of what it might mean. So herewith my own:

In my opinion, it means exactly what C.A.F.’s email states it means: it’s Mr. Putin’s tender for the country, but cleverly, not in the form of a currency swap for what must be increasingly valueless Ukrainian hryvnia. Mr. Putin is tendering for the population of the Ukraine, or at least, a significant part of it, by fast tracking applications for Russian citizenship and passports not only in occupied regions, but the whole country.

It’s a clever way of accomplishing, in effect, what Mr. Kohl did three decades ago with his par value tender for the East German mark. In fact, in a way, it’s much more clever, for as Ukrainians apply, and get, Russian passports and citizenship, inevitably they have to transact in roubles if they’re intending to travel inside of Russia or do any business with it. Once they do travel or do any business, they’ll discover that Russia is not suffering anything near the economic dislocations as the Ukraine. Russian money can actually buy something which the Russians just also happen to produce (little things like oil, gas, and food). They will return to the Ukraine, where, doubtless, they will continue to use those roubles to buy things… it’s rather like many people in the Confederacy during the American Civil War using Union currency, because it could actually buy things that the increasingly worthless currency put out by the crumbling Confederate government could not. The Confederate economy was a kind of financialized “service economy” that could (and did) print lots of money and financial instruments, and that could (and did) produce lots of misery, but that could not produce much in the way of things like locomotives, steel, and so on. Think of Zelensky, in this context, as a kind of Jefferson Davis, version 2.0.

All this to say, it’s Mr. Putin’s clever way of integrating the everyday Ukrainian economy into the Russian federation’s; no “regime change” necessary. Actual ability to buy food, gas, and make things(like food and gas and cars), wins out over bonds, promises to pay, sustainable policy agendas, derivatives, and stock options, every time.

Meanwhile, it will be up to the central banksters of the West to prop up the Ukrainian economy with more secret laboratories, and to prop up the Ukrainian currency, perhaps even by buying vast quantities of Ukrainian bonds and the currency itself with dollars and euros, et voila! One collapsing satrapy is propped up by a union of other collapsing satrapies in Brussels, propping up a crumbling empire that can only export wars and drones. Be sure and put those bonds in the same strong box as all those Khoumintang Chinese Bonds from 1934….

Welcome, Klaus, to the “Great Reset,” Putin-style; you will own nothing, and you will be happy.

See you on the flip side…

Connect with Joseph P. Farrell

cover image credit: sm-ekb2005 / pixabay