Posted: Dec 19, 2022 1:11 pm
The prospect of Putin pushing the big red button if NATO forces are actually stationed in Ukrainian territory, is the one big factor that's keeping that option in the realm of the impossible at the moment.
But there are other ways of attacking Putin. One option is to hack his offshore slush funds and steal his loot. If memory serves, the Panama Papers informed us that he has $2 billion (US) squirrelled away in places such as the Cayman Islands. I'm pretty sure that the CIA or MI5 have the tools to pull that off successfully and swiftly. I suspect Western intelligence agencies have been tracking his financial skulduggery for a very long time, and that they have intimate knowledge of his bank accounts waiting for just such an operation.
Deprive him of the money to keep other oligarchs sweet and standing by him, and I suspect he'll be enjoying what Latin American death squads used to refer to as "haircut and a manicure" in pretty short order.
It's an unwritten rule among oligarchs, that you don't steal money off each other. Not least because Russian oligarchs will respond to the resulting theft with knives and guns, or possibly something even more exotic (more polonium-210 in your tea, comrade?). if you're an oligarch, you can steal as much money from the plebs as you want, and the other oligarchs will mostly respond by slapping their foreheads when you devise an ingenious way of doing so they never thought of. Start a financial war among them, however, and that'll quickly turn into an internecine knife fight.
If I was head of state of a NATO member, I'd be thinking of hitting Putin with this.
But there are other ways of attacking Putin. One option is to hack his offshore slush funds and steal his loot. If memory serves, the Panama Papers informed us that he has $2 billion (US) squirrelled away in places such as the Cayman Islands. I'm pretty sure that the CIA or MI5 have the tools to pull that off successfully and swiftly. I suspect Western intelligence agencies have been tracking his financial skulduggery for a very long time, and that they have intimate knowledge of his bank accounts waiting for just such an operation.
Deprive him of the money to keep other oligarchs sweet and standing by him, and I suspect he'll be enjoying what Latin American death squads used to refer to as "haircut and a manicure" in pretty short order.
It's an unwritten rule among oligarchs, that you don't steal money off each other. Not least because Russian oligarchs will respond to the resulting theft with knives and guns, or possibly something even more exotic (more polonium-210 in your tea, comrade?). if you're an oligarch, you can steal as much money from the plebs as you want, and the other oligarchs will mostly respond by slapping their foreheads when you devise an ingenious way of doing so they never thought of. Start a financial war among them, however, and that'll quickly turn into an internecine knife fight.
If I was head of state of a NATO member, I'd be thinking of hitting Putin with this.