By John Helmer, Moscow
The Kremlin doesn’t want to say so exactly. But right now it is as
reluctant to support the Greek Government in its conflict with Germany,
as Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Politburo wanted to back the Greek
Communist Party during the Greek civil war between 1946 and 1949.

 So,
when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (right) met in Moscow with Greek
Foreign Minister Nikos Kotsias (left) two weeks ago,
he offered Athens a hypothetical conditional: “Russia is also in a
tough financial situation caused by a unilateral illegitimate policy of
our Western colleagues. However, if the government of Greece ever comes
up with any requests then, as Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said, they
will, of course, be considered…”

Speaking a few hours before on Athens television, the new Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos
proposed the Greek hypothetical conditional: “if we see that Germany
remains rigid and wants to blow apart Europe, then we have the
obligation to go to Plan B. Plan B is to get funding from another
source. It could the United States at best, it could be Russia, it could
be China or other countries.”

Asked to say what Greek Government requests Finance Minister Siluanov
is considering, the ministry spokesman said today – nothing. That’s to
say, the Greeks haven’t proposed a Plan B, and if they do, the Russian
response will be — nothing. The Russian reason – the new Greek
Government, like its predecessors, is regarded by the Kremlin as a US
client, engaged in secret dealings with Washington which would put a
Russian loan, if it were extended, at risk of being wasted, or lost.

In an American television interview on January 30, Siluanov had said:
“we can imagine any situation, so if such [a] petition is submitted to
the Russian government, we will definitely consider it, but will take
into account all the factors of our bilateral relationships between
Russia and Greece, so that is all I can say. If it is submitted we will
consider it.”
Asked today to clarify Siluanov’s hypothetical conditional – had the
Greeks proposed any form or value of a Russian loan – the spokesman for
the Finance Ministry in Moscow replied: “we do not comment on this
topic before the decision will be taken.”

In the circumstances, this was being diplomatic. Siluanov’s (below, left) deputy for international relations, Sergei Storchak
(right) very clearly said no on Tuesday. Storchak was quoted by the
state news agency RIA-Novosti as saying that financial aid to the
government in Athens is excluded because there is no budget allocation.
“To date, [financial aid to Greece] is ruled out because the law on the
federal budget does not provide such facilities.”

Asked whether a Moscow loan in Plan B has been tabled, the new Greek
Ambassador in Moscow, Danai-Magdalini Koumanakou, said through a
spokesman that she would consider her answer, and decide when to give
one. Koumanakou presented her credentials to President Vladimir Putin
four months ago, on October 23. She is still considering what to say.

At the start of 1949, when the Politburo was discussing what
assistance to provide the Greeks, the country had already recorded a
loss of more than 100% of its GDP caused by the invasions of the Italian
and German armies. The civil war, triggered by British forces in
December 1944 and funded on the Greek Government side by the UK and US,
halted the post-war recovery of Greece, so that it lagged far behind the
recovery of the countries which had been occupied during the world war;
and also behind the enemy states, Italy and Germany. The one sector of
the Greek economy to benefit until 1950 was the military, police, and
security agencies. Altogether, they received $400 million from
Washington; that’s equivalent to $4.4 billion today. A recent econometric calculation
indicates that the annual loss of Greece’s GDP growth, counting
destruction of livestock and non-agricultural capital, unemployment,
casualties and displacement of population during the civil war was
12.15% per year until the war ended in August 1949.

The GDP loss
in Greece since the start of the German-directed EU bailout programme
has been about 30%; that’s an annual rate of almost 6% or about half
the loss rate inflicted by the German invasion or by the civil war. The
casualty rate – dead and wounded – is less today; the displacement rate –
from village to city or emigration – almost the same.

Stalin’s decision not to contest Greece with the Americans, and the
calculation in Moscow at the time of higher priority state interests
have been well documented.
Less well-known is the calculation of the last Soviet Politburo in
1989, then ruled by Mikhail Gorbachev: he decided not to come to the aid
of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, who requested assistance ahead of
the parliamentary election of June 1989. Papandreou lost that election.
The calculation this time round is unchanged. The new Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, is viewed in Moscow as a closet American.

Greek assessments of Tsipras’ current negotiating tactics with the European Union (EU) come to the same conclusion. Tsipras conceded as much in an interview he gave the German magazine Stern on February 19.
Asked if President Vladimir Putin has promised money, Tsipras replied:
“if only it were so easy to accumulate the funds. But it’s true —
Russia’s ambassador was the first diplomat to congratulate me. However,
prior to that I received a phone call from President Obama. And later on
from President Putin and the Chinese premier. It just goes to show how
much global interest there is in Greece continuing on its path to
stability and returning to growth.”

“Q: Do you want money from Russia or from China? A: “For the time
being, we only have a European solution in mind. We as a country belong
to the eurozone. It would be a mistake to jeopardise this political
unity. We are fully aware of the key geopolitical role Greece plays in
the world, and we will continue to be a stable anchor in a fragile
tri-border region.”
Russian strategic analysts do not agree that Greece is as important
as Tsipras claims, nor as stable. Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Duma
Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he refuses to discuss Greece. Sergei
Karaganov, head of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, prefers
discrete silence. Yury Kvashnin, head of the EU studies section at the
Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, says
the new Greek government is pretending to approach Moscow in order to
play at “blackmail” with the EU.

“[Tsipras says to the EU] you are going to make concessions on the
debt issue for us, and we in our turn will be ready to reconsider our
position on the future relations with the Russian Federation. Thus, it
appears that at the moment the tactical interests of Russia and Greece
are the same. It can be expected that as long as there is no settlement
of the Greek debt issue, there will be very warm relations between
Russia and Greece. I do not exclude that there will be mutual visits at
the highest level, and a lot of words will be spoken about friendship,
about the need for partnership between the two countries, the necessity
for deepening economic cooperation.”

“However, we must understand that Greece is an integral part of the
Euro-Atlantic structures. It is part of the EU, it enters into NATO.
Therefore strategically the main purpose for Greece is to stay in these
structures, but on more favourable terms. So I think that now we will
see some warmth in the relations between Russia and Greece . Everything
will be well and good. But in the future, of course, all this may come
to naught. That is, of course, if Greece manages to agree on
restructuring their public debt.”

Gazprom said this week it is not less skeptical of Greek intentions,
and much more confident of Turkey’s strategic importance by contrast.
Asked if the Tsipras government has requested talks on new pipeline
deliveries to Greece, a Gazprom spokesman implied no, but replied with a
hypothetical conditional: “it’s better to ask first the government of
Greece about this issue, and after that we will be able to respond.”

The source also noted that early this month Gazprom chief executive
Alexei Miller (below, right) toured eastern Turkey with Turkish Energy
Minister Taner Yildiz (left) and discussed the route of Turkish Stream,
the renamed South Stream pipeline project which was cancelled after EU
pressure last December.

According to Gazprom, if the Greek government wants Russian gas, it
is welcome to build a pipeline to Ipsala, on Greece’s western border
with Turkey, to buy it. The Gazprom release
says its priority in the meantime is delivering gas to meet rising
Turkish demand. “The parties defined the key reference points of the
route and technical solutions for the gas pipeline in Turkey. In
particular, the meeting chose the landfall location – near Kiyikoy
village, the gas delivery point for Turkish consumers in Luleburgaz and a
border crossing between Turkey and Greece in Ipsala. The gas pipeline
length will total 180 kilometers. In the near future a permit is to be
obtained for conducting FEED operations for the new Turkish offshore
section. The growing demand for natural gas in the Istanbul district
will be taken into account in the gas pipeline design; therefore, the
volume of gas to be delivered to the border between Turkey and Greece
was specified and estimated at 47 billion cubic meters. The capacity of
the offshore gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey will amount to 63
billion cubic meters a year, the first string is to be completed by
December 2016.”

Alexei Makarkin, an analyst with the Center for Political
Technologies in Moscow, refuses to answer direct questions on Russia’s
Greek strategy. He recently published
a warning that, for the time being, “[Greek] rhetoric, as is often the
case, is much more radical than real action. So, at a meeting of EU
foreign ministers on January 29, Kotsias did not block a decision to
extend sanctions against Russia, and even conceded some expansion… The
new ‘sectoral’ sanctions have not been approved, but this is associated
with the position, not only of Greece, but also of a number of other EU
countries — Italy, Hungary, Cyprus, and perhaps France…The Greek
government will continue manoeuvering, trying to find a common language
with the European centre-left and get their relief in the economic
sphere. In this case, it will make active use of the Russian factor to
put pressure on the EU (as does the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor
Orban…”

Moscow analysts of Greece dismiss claims published in US and UK media
that there is an influential relationship between Ministers Kotsias and
Kammenos and Konstantin Malofeev (below, left), the financier of
Orthodox causes and the Novorussian resistance to Kiev, and Malofeev’s
ideologist, Alexander Dugin (right).

US Government radio, the Financial Times, and Der Zeit
have reported this month: “Powerful Russians want to drive a wedge
into the EU and are fighting for Moscow’s dominance. Confidential emails
reveal how they are influencing the Greek government.” Malofeev and
Dugin are the “powerful Russians”, Kotsias and Kammenos the influential
figures in the Greek government.
According to Sam Jones, NATO spokesman at the Financial Times,
“European and Nato intelligence officials are now poring over links
between the Kremlin and senior figures from Syriza and its coalition
partner, the Independent Greeks party… Mr Kotzias — a former Piraeus
university professor — has espoused increasingly nationalist positions,
developing a relationship with Alexander Dugin, the Russian nationalist
philosopher, during several visits to Moscow, according to a colleague
who declined to be identified. Mr Dugin, who is close to several figures
in the Moscow security establishment and last August called for a
‘genocide’ of Ukrainians, was invited by Mr Kotzias to speak at an event
in the Piraeus campus in 2013, where he extolled the role of Orthodox
Christianity in uniting Greeks and Russians. Mr Kammenos has also been a
frequent visitor to Moscow. A picture shows him in the Russian capital
two weeks ago, meeting the chairman of the Russian Duma’s foreign
affairs committee and the deputy chairman of its defence committee.”
Dugin asked to be paid for an interview before he would respond to
questions. For the source of the state bank funds which Malofeev has
been spending, read this.
Malofeev describes his financial contributions in Crimea and Donbass as
religiously-inspired philanthropy and humanitarian aid; he denies
funding troop formations or military operations.” According to a source
close to Kremlin policymaking, “whatever contacts they may have had with
the Greeks make no difference to Kremlin policy. That’s because neither
the two Russians, nor the two Greeks make a difference.”

Dances with Bears