AK 239: The Enemy Is Already Here

Moscow, Russia — Lubyanka Square

^{Three days ’til Christmas}

While Portland, Oregon today is raining and a dreary forty-five degrees Fahrenheit, Moscow’s high for the day is a brisk high of twenty-six degrees with six inches of snow!

At night here the streets are absolutely beautiful!

Lights, lights and more lights!

There are over 3,000 trees with Christmas lights. A giant red ball in Red square with a map of the world on it, the center, of course, is Moscow!

Today, a very secret meeting has been called for Russia’s top military leaders at Lubyanka Square, inside the old KGB building, 900 meters from Red Square.

General Petrov Andropov, General Sergei Aleksandrov, General Aleksandr Bortnikov and Admiral Victor Perchinkov sit in General Andropov’s office. It might be below zero outside but inside it was exactly seventy-six degrees. The general’s office is decorated in beautiful Italian White Carrara marble and African black woods. General Andropov loved his caviar, vodka and women. Andropov was an old friend and longtime business associate of President Ivan Mironovich and was, in fact, appointed to office personally by the president.

Generals Aleksandrov and Bortnikov were from the SVR and GRU military wings, respectively. Admiral Perchinkov is clearly the brightest of the bunch. The admiral is also a close, personal friend and business partner of the president.

Fact is: All of these guys are close and have many business dealings together.

One prominent example of their business dealing in which they’ve entangled some of the largest American companies is the Skolkovo Innovation Center, Russia’s Silicone Valley.

It is built on the old Russian Potemkin Village model: Beautiful and perfect on the outside with all sorts of devious rot on the inside.

Located just outside of Moscow with 30,000 workers all under the strict control of the “president’s counsel.” A secret organization with an even more secret board of directors. About 100 major American corporations have business dealings here. This entanglement was considered so dangerous that the FBI, Boston, warned American corporations in 2014:

With the end of Communism, as Russia was attempting to transition to a market economy, only a handful of oligarchs fully understood what was happening and profited immensely. They were known as the siloviki clan. They were mostly former Communists from the KGB and other military agencies. They were in the right place when this Russian form of capitalism took root.

There is nothing exactly like them in the West. The closest explanation would be to combine billionaires, mobsters and generals, a lethal combination:

Crony capitalists with nuclear weapons!

Around these cronies grew a few but very wealthy crime syndicates who would intimidate and kill if necessary to further their business interests, generally with the quiet blessing of the Russian government. If you were one of them you could get away with murder, literally.

Although many Russians are living far better than they were under Communism, by Western standards, many people are still far behind.

The employed were just happy they weren’t forced to drive the Communist East German car, the Trabant, voted the world’s worst automobile ever created! The Trabant had a smoke-induced, ear-splitting 18 horsepower engine, and you were lucky if you could find one that ran.

It cost at the time about five years’ worth of the average East German’s salary and you were told never to buy one made on a Friday. That was because most of the “people’s workers” would get their free bottle of vodka that day and would likely knock off early and no telling what was missing on your beautiful new Trabant.

Today, amazingly, the official unemployment rate of Russia tracked very close to that of the United States except, of course, it was always slightly better!

Coincidence?

Maybe, but probably not.

As Winston Churchill once said, “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

Kind of like a matryoshka doll also known as a Russian nesting doll, which is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. In Russia, things are usually not exactly as they appear.

With the end of the Cold War and the fall of Communist USSR, Russia was made to feel inferior and less than the West. President Ivan Mironovich came to power vowing to stop this slide. Ivan vowed to return Russia to its former glory.

But Russia was so far behind militarily, it could not have any hope of catching the West either in sheer military numbers or in military aerospace technology.

Admiral Perchinkov knew Russia could not beat America in a naval battle head to head. However, with sixty-five submarines (twenty-four more in the works), the Russian submarine fleet (now under the personal direction of President Mironovich) it looks like Russia was trying to beat America, should it come to that, under the great oceans of the world.

For a while President Mironovich really did try to better relations with the U.S. His FSB warned the FBI about the Boston bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but the FBI didn’t catch a misspelling of the terrorist’s name until it was too late. The FSB had stopped several terror attacks on Russian soil but the FSB had, in some ways, become a very sophisticated terror group itself as it now moved, seemingly, against anyone hostile to the president.

Several courageous Russian journalists had written articles on the massive amounts of money being poured into Skolkovo and submarine technology but now those voices had mysteriously gone silent. This wasn’t mysterious to the average Russian over the age of forty. They could see what was happening. Russia was transitioning into this weird form of an oligarchy, run by communist KGB oil and gas billionaires.

Six reporters had turned up dead and several others were jailed for investigating the Russian military. Opposition leaders and journalists had been trashed, imprisoned or ended up murdered as well.

A political consultant commented: “This is a now a Weimar atmosphere where there are no longer any limits."

Weimar is obviously a reference to the regime just prior to the Nazi takeover of Germany.

This is the greatest insult you can tell a Russian as the Nazis attacked Russia and killed many millions of Russians in World War II.

But there is some truth to the Weimar insult. Russia is now the third deadliest country in the world for journalists only behind Algeria and post war Iraq!

With President Ivan Mironovich graduating more pilots, taunting American warships, making new ICBMs and running massive war games, the military has boosted his popularity in Russia to over eighty percent.

Crazy Ivan was even more emboldened in his plan to restore Russia knowing he had a far higher approval rating in the U.S. and Great Britain than their own president and prime minister!

Mironovich, through his friends, have let it be known that he does not want a repeat of the 100,000 people who marched in Moscow in 2011 against him. The President, a former KGB officer in the old Soviet Union, believes the CIA was behind that dissent. So President Mironovich is doing all he can to insure his own reelection would proceed without any disturbances.

So why are all of these generals assembled in the same room at the old KGB headquarters near Red Square?

All these Russians (and some Americans) have seen much weakness in the U.S. and, now, believe they have a way to “help” the world.

Just in case anything went wrong and nuclear war broke out they could always retreat to the Metro-2 running under the Kremlin to their hardened command posts some 275 meters below ground! This Top Secret Metro-2 line is rumored to travel to several hardened military sites and directly under the president’s house. Metro-2 travels all the way to Vnukovo airport, just in case they start a war and someone fights back, they can make a quick get a way.

Admiral Perchinkov presided over an aging fleet of outdated ships, mostly relics of the old Cold War. He knew what most every expert in the world had concluded: Irreversible collapse of the Navy was imminent. Instead, he had managed the impossible. He modernized his 271-ship Navy at an incredibly rapid pace.

The problem was many commanders now were refusing orders to be more aggressive against Western and especially American planes, ships and subs.

The situation had become so bad that Admiral Perchinkov was promoted to Minister of Defence.

That meant the only person he would now answer to would be: President Mironovich.

This quiet little move made Admiral Perchinkov the second most powerful man in all of Russia.

All submarine orders would now be given directly from the president’s office to Admiral Perchinkov and not go first to naval command.

In addition, the new admiral had been given the task of sacking over fifty naval commanders in his Baltic Fleet for refusing to follow presidential orders.

Many considered this similar to some of Stalin’s famous military purges.

It is clear to any reasonable observer what’s going on. The president was consolidating power with his siloviki clan loyalists. Any dissenting opinion and you were, at best, not trusted, at worst you could end up missing and nobody wanted to end up missing.

Jane’s Fighting Ships, the Bible of military assessments, felt the emphasis the Russians were putting on their submarines for fighting old Cold War scenarios was misplaced but even Jane’s had no idea what the Russians were really up to. In fact, no one in the West had a clue as to what had been transpiring for five years on American soil.

It’s not good to keep such powerful men waiting. Not good unless you’re the right hand man to the most powerful man in Russia, President Ivan Mironovich.

Viktor Sokolov was a serious man with immense power. The president trusted this child prodigy with his life. So everyone waited patiently.

Russian history is full of great drama and a great drama is once again about to unfold.

Finally, Viktor Sokolov, enters with a leather briefcase and in a $2,000.00 Italian suit.

An eerie hush falls over the room. Sokolov is not happy that he is leading this meeting and yet had to walk over here from his office in the Kremlin. Sokolov was a man of business and didn’t believe in chitchat.

Viktor pulls exactly four sealed envelopes from his black Italian briefcase. He passes them out as he speaks.

“Good morning. The President sends you his warmest greetings. He is sorry he could not be here personally but he assures you he is working hard to make this project successful.”

“Each of you now has sealed orders directly from the president.”

“Your president has tried everything to be friendly with America.”

“We have invited business leaders and U.S. Senators to Moscow.”

“We paid them over five billion Rubles for a few speeches.”

“We have wined and dined and come up empty handed.”

“Those days are now in the past.”

“The United States is pushing Russia into what we Russians know will be disaster.”

“The U.S. is waging proxy wars in Eastern Ukraine and Syria and creating unnecessary confrontations in the South China Sea. There is an increasing likelihood that these tensions will flare into an all-out military conflict with the United States. Should this occur, Proyekt 239 would be necessary for us to have leverage against the United States and their military superiority in terms of sheer numbers. But we Russians like to play chess and we are a few moves ahead of the Americans.”

“Last time the Americans and Reagan forced us into an arms race they forced us into bankruptcy.

“This time it is us that shall force the United States into bankruptcy.”

“The Americans have unsustainable debt just as we had in 1990.”

“The difference is: The United States dollar is the reserve currency of the world and will take the rest of the world into bankruptcy soon.”

“We will not let that happen, will we?”

All the generals present mumble, “Nyet.”

“When the dominos fall this time we want to be the last ones standing. While the Americans are talking about turning aircraft carriers like the, USS Peleliu, into homeless shelters we’re building bomb shelters capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.”

Sokolov continues, “U.S. and NATO are now conducting war games on our borders regularly. US destroyers are in our Black Sea to ‘promote peace.’ Their planes and submarines are coming closer and closer to our homeland.”

“It is time we increase our military operations in the United States of America.”

“The Americans have noticed we have increased our submarine operations by fifty percent in retaliation to their aggression. It is only a matter of time until one of our submarines are found and sunk just like during the days of our fathers and grandfathers.”

“The Americans have been trying to flood the world with cheap oil and gas to bankrupt us again. They have allowed ISIS and Iran to sell oil to undercut their own allies like Saudi Arabia, all for one sole purpose:

“To once again drive our Russian oil and gas companies out of business.”

“Now we move quickly.”

“We have President Mironovich’s full authorization to proceed.”

“You will see his signature and instructions in your orders.”

“Phase I of Projekt 239 is now complete.”

“The President has given the order to proceed to Phase II, the AK Phase.”

“Any questions?”

“I have a journalist asking questions about 239,” says General Aleksandrov.

Sokolov looks long and hard at this seasoned general before choosing his words carefully, “Russian journalism can be a very dangerous business, general. Handle it!”