Putin’s Pulp Fiction Foreign Policy – PVV Ep. 56

Hi, I’m Brian Whitmore, director of the Russia Program here at CEPA, and this is a Vertical video. When The New York Times reported last month
about GRU Unit 29155, a top secret military intelligence unit engaged in a campaign to
destabilize Europe, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov dismissed it as “Pulp Fiction.” Now one could take that comment two ways. The obvious interpretation is that Peskov
was denying the report by calling it fiction. But one can also argue that it was something
of a Freudian slip — an inadvertent recognition that Russia’s foreign policy behavior does
indeed resemble that of the gangsters portrayed in Quentin Tarantino’s classic 1994 film. And a few data points from the past several
days seem to support the latter interpretation. The investigative outfit Belingcat reported
this weekend, for example, that at least eight suspected Russian intelligence officers traveled
to Bulgaria around the time that local arms dealer Emilian Gebrev was poisoned in Sofia
back in 2015. One of those eight intelligence officers,
Denis Sergeyev — who in the past has also gone by the pseudonym Sergey Fedotov — has
also been implicated in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 and in Russian
meddling in the 2016 Brexit referendum. And last week, El Pais reported that the Spanish
High Court is investigating Sergeyev’s role in attempting to influence Catalonia’s independence
referendum in 2017. One of Sergeyev’s traveling companions, Vladimir
Moiseev — who has also used the alias Vladimir Popov — has been tried and sentenced in
absentia in Montenegro over a 2016 coup attempt in that country. So we’ve got two men who have been linked
to GRU Unit 29155, operating under pseudonyms, who have been tied to assassination attempts
in the UK and Bulgaria, a coup attempt in Montenegro, and fostering separatism in Spain. Peskov is right. It’s Pulp Fiction. Except that it’s fact. The West is dealing with an international
crime syndicate in the Kremlin that is masquerading as a state — and we must treat it accordingly. Keep telling us what you think on Twitter
and on Facebook. I’m Brian Whitmore and this was a Vertical
Video.