Sunday Roundup: Slovakia, Ukraine, Money Laundering

As reported last night in the previous post, the election in Slovakia wasn’t nearly as close as we had been led to expect. The polls and early expect polls predicted a Progressive win—but that looks like a disinformation ploy and the Progs didn’t come close to that. Instead, former PM Robert FICO—who characterized the Prog candidate as “an American Agent” and ran on an anti-war platform—finished in first place quite handily. Of course, in Slovak politics a handy first place finish translates to about 23.4% of the vote, so the next step is forming a coalition. However that seems to be in the cards.

Last night I was quoting from The Guardian's coverage. Today Zerohedge has a good summary. The important aspect of Fico’s win and prospective ministry is that he has pledged to end all military aid to Ukraine. That’s an easy pledge to keep, since Slovakia has already given away its entire air force (all 13 MiG-29s) and air defense missiles, as well as much of the rest of its military. However, Fico is also aligning with the EU defiance of its neighbors Hungary and Poland—banning Ukrainian grain imports. He also campaigned on a variety of other EU defiant positions, so the Slovak elections increase the appearance of EU and NATO fracturing.

First a picture:

Of some historical interest is the fact that during the period between the two world wars the stretch of Carpathian mountains between Slovakia and Romania were part of the then Czechoslovakia. It’s an ethnically complicated region that includes Hungarians and others.

Slovakia May Stop Backing Ukraine War After Populist Election Win

A potential new crack in Europe's support for the war in Ukraine emerged Saturday, as a populist left-wing party took the most votes in Slovakia's national election.

With 98% of the districts having reported their results, the populist Smer (or "Direction Social Democracy") party had racked up 23.4% of the votes, well ahead of the 16.9% received by the newcomer, liberal Progressive Slovakia (PS) party, Reuters reports. The leftist Hlas ("Voice") party took 15%. The populist party solidly outperformed opinion polls leading up to the election, which showed a neck-and-neck race.

Smer is led by former Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has been pointed in his determination to pursue peace in Ukraine rather than continuing to pour weapons into an increasingly hopeless campaign to evict Russian forces from the country's eastern provinces.

“Peace is the only solution," said Fico in early September. "I refuse to get criticized and labeled as a warmonger just for talking about peace, ...”

Fico has also said the Ukraine war didn't start in 2022: “I say it loud and clear and will do so: The war in Ukraine didn’t start yesterday or last year. It began in 2014, when the Ukrainian Nazis and fascists started to murder the Russian citizens in Donbas and Luhansk."

A March opinion poll found that 51% of Slovakians think the West and/or Ukraine are responsible for the conflict. Half also said the United States posed a security threat to their country.

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Aside from ending military aid to Ukraine, Fico has also pledged to veto Ukrainian membership in NATO and economic sanctions against Russia. Slovakians tend to identify with their Russian slavonic "cousins."

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Though Fico's Smer party took the most votes, it fell well short of an outright majority, which means it will have to form a governing coalition with other parties. Promisingly, the third-place Hlas party is lead by Fico's former deputy, Peter Bellegrini. Expect Washington to take a keen, active interest in the negotiations.

As the election tally is finalized, observers are watching two parties on the cusp of the 5% threshold required to earn representation: the ultranationalist Slovak National Party, and the People's Party Our Slovakia, whose members cherish Slovakia's Nazi-Germany-subservient World War II government and use Nazi salutes. Both are potential members of a Fico-led coalition.

That last paragraph illustrates that conventional labels whose meaning those in the West think they’re familiar with don’t always translate well. Smer and Hlas are considered Left populist—or something like that—but are considering a coalition with far Right parties. We’ll see what it all means, but it’s a setback of sorts for the war mongers.

Speaking of war, there’s an interesting tweet regarding NATO participation in Ukrainian drone attacks deep into Russia. First the tweet text:

Mencho

@MilitaryEye

𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗢-𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆?

Russian MoD: On October 1st, from 09.00 to 10:00 Moscow time, at least 5 Ukrainian UAV’s were destroyed by air defense systems on duty over the territory of the Smolensk region.

@DD_Geopolitics

3:18 AM · Oct 1, 2023

Smolensk is just to the NE of Belarus. Two maps accompanied the tweet. The first shows the route of a NATO aircraft in Lithuanian and Polish air space. It appears that the transponder was turned off, so this plane was probably providing some sort of support for the drone attack. However, another tweet notes that for actual control of the drone the controller would need to be within about 100km. I’m not knowledgeable enough to guess at what kind of support the plane was providing, but the actions of NATO here certainly look like an act of war to me, implicating Lithuania and Poland. Note the rather high altitude of the flight, which may increase the effective range of its radar for supporting the low flying drone:

The second map is more general, but highly informative. The two maps taken together graphically illustrate why Russia doesn’t regard NATO as simply a “defensive” alliance:

I’ve always considered that Alex Krainer is probably affiliated in some way with the Larouche movement. This is because he often focuses on typical Larouche themes, such as the role of the British Empire in global politics and war and of British controlled or influenced banks in money laundering, going back to the Opium Wars. Today Krainer has an article on money laundering at his substack:

The 21st century Opium War

Like in the 19th century, the perpetrators are the bankers, but this time, the target is the USA

Krainer’s basic point is twofold: first, organized crime, and especially the drug business, couldn’t operate on the scale that it does without world class money laundering support from big banks, and second that there’s plenty of evidence of big banking involvement in money laundering for organized crime operations. The amounts of money involved are quite staggering.

I also came across this interview with Krainer by the Larouche organization:

The U.S.-UK Obsession with Defeating and Looting Russia

Probably the bulk of the article is devoted to two matters: Bill Browder role in the looting of Russia during the Yeltsin years, and Germany’s position in the war on Russia. Krainer also puts in a good word for Jeffrey Sachs regarding Sachs’ role in the Yeltsin years.