• The Russian 31st Separate Airborne Assault Brigade are flown in to Leonidovka from their home base in Ulyanovsk to secure chemical weapon stores;
• UN peacekeeping forces cross the Polish-Ukrainian border at Eava-Ruska and Ustrzyki-Dolne;
• The Muslim Federation’s offer to provide troops as part of the peacekeeping arrangements in Ukraine is warmly welcomed by the EU;
• Joint EU and Muslim forces operating west of the Dnieper stop their advance 50 kilometres from Kiev;
• EU leaders interrupt emergency meetings with the Russian delegation in Strasbourg about the best way to respond to the ‘Great Migration’ humanitarian crisis in order to face Jerusalem during their prayers;
• UN armoured columns comprising personnel carriers, and Leclerc and Polish PT-91 tanks supported by F-4E aircraft operating out of the Holzdorf Airbase enter Lutsk, Rivne, and Lviv;
• The encirclement of Ivano-Frankovsk results in mass arrests of extremists and allegations of mistreatment of deportees in the hastily established containment centres near Lublin and Zamosc;
• Rumours of mass drownings in Lake Hancza are steadfastly denied by sources in Brussels and Warsaw;
• The Royal Navy enters the Black Sea in a deliberate act of provocation against the Russian fleet based in Sevastopol.
‘What do you think the wars in Syria and the threats to Iran are all about?’ Grigori barked. ‘Americans scream about human rights but still support anti-Assad rebels who eat the hearts of their enemies. They fund groups like ISIS and see the world through a distorted lens. Some of our own worst gangsters have been welcomed to Western countries with open arms, and we have created scapegoats at home who our enemies champion as martyrs. Think of the journalists who have died mysteriously, the frauds like Khordokovsky and Berezovsky. They robbed Russia once and their type will try again.’
‘Things were different before, the old President got control over the oligarchs’, Dimitry asserted.
‘Or was their partner?’ Sveta echoed. ‘Putin was a functionary of the sistema. Who passed the law criminalising anyone challenging the findings of the Nuremberg trials? Who talked about the threat of militant nationalism? Both Fradkov and Chubais wear the Star of David. Lavrov went around Europe making speeches about the rise of anti-Semitism. I think he was a Fifth Columnist.’
‘We need someone like Alexander Lukashenko or Islam Karimov’, Dimitry demanded.
‘Head boilers!’ Sveta interjected. ‘Better, our old friend from Zavtra, Alexander Prokhanov, Zakhar Prilepin, and Konstantin Malofeev at the Valaam monastery.’
‘Yes, and also people like Baron Ungern-Sternberg, Captain Semenov, and Mikhail Drozdovsky, who liberated Rostov from the Red Army’, Tom chimed in wistfully.
‘I want a Zil-4112P to drive me around’, Alexander toasted drunkenly.
‘And an Ilyushin jet with a solid gold toilet to shit in!’ screeched Grigori.
An hour later, they were still drinking. Anger was still evident when they recalled the riots in Sokolniki Park and the killing of a Spartak football fan, Egor Sviridov, by ‘them’. Then there was that Cameroonian ‘artist’ Pierre Narcisse, who had married a blonde Russian. Another O J Simpson slaying in the making. They agreed that it had been a positive sign that Putin had broached the subject of declining White demographics, but nothing had been done. The anti-immigrant riots in Kanopoga in Karelia in 2006, the fighting in Manezhnaya Square in downtown Moscow in 2010, and the rocketing crime statistics had all been ignored. Azeri, Chechen, and Georgian gangs dealt in arms, drugs, prostitutes, and scrap metal. The 3000 or so poppy fields in Uzbekistan and the infinite cannabis production of Kazakhstan had fuelled their takeover of the underworld from St Petersburg to Vladivostok. There were whispered expressions like inorodnye, khokhol, and ishak. Then there were references to sobornost and solidarism, the Harbin Russian Club, Konstantin Rodzaevsky, the ideologue Mikhail Mikhailovich Grott, Vasilyev’s Pamyat, Barkashov’s street fighters, Red-Brown alliances, Rutskoy, and the October 1993 rising. Soon they were raising glasses again, this time to the long-dead heroes of the ‘Hundred’. Then the New Generationists, people like Menshikov, Ustrialov, and Tikhomirov. They finished by honouring the exile Anastase Vonsiatsky and Danilevsky’s notion of a Slavic mission to save the world.
‘I have an original copy of Vehki!’ Dimitry announced.
‘Ah’, said Grigori, ‘so much for Berdyaev’s words… a conservative man of letters today is almost a contradiction in terms…’
‘I hear the same comments from current American pundits’, said Tom.
‘Same dirty tactic to marginalise us’, Grigori said. ‘You know our security services told the FBI about the Boston bomber, Tamerlan Tsanaev.’ Tom recognised the words Chechen and terrorist as they punctured the rapid Russian dialogue like bullets with a displaced centre of gravity, the ones that spiral through human flesh, lodging in the most difficult places in the bones for a surgeon to get at. ‘We can’t even protect the children in our schools or the people going out to the theatre’, Grigori cursed. ‘I tell you, Beslan shamed us. The Shahidkas set off bombs in our train stations and on our trolley buses.’ Tom recalled hearing of the thirty or so dead in Volgograd and seeing the uncensored TV footage of the Russian officer crucified in the city square in Grozny years before. The brutal execution of Rodionov, a young conscript clinging to his silver cross, even as his killer, Khaikhoroyev, sawed at his throat with a rusty blade, still haunted his mind. ‘And all this in the name of the desert god, Mohammed. Our armies have not been destroyed in battle’, Grigori was preaching. ‘Both Napoleon and Hitler were stopped in Russia. Our retreat from East Germany was a terrible mistake. Between 1989 and 1991 we gave up an empire. Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. At least our intervention in Crimea and South Ossetia arrested that decline!’
‘Back then our confidence was gone’, Dimitry moaned, ‘Remember Unit 20004? The officers stole the soldier’s wages. I blame the General Staff!’
‘No’, Sveta said. ‘It was Gorbachev’s mistake not to join the August Coup.’
‘Better they had seized Yeltsin and kept him in Zavidovo.’ Grigori sounded morose, even bitter.
‘Don’t talk to me of that hero’, someone breathed like hot steam. ‘What a fool, standing on top of that tank and shaking his fist. It is a pity one of those Alpha sharpshooters did not put him out of his misery.’
‘Like they did with Boris Nemtsov?’
‘California style!’
‘Put us all out of our misery’, they laughed, raising glasses in salute.
‘But at least it meant the end of a one-party state’, ventured Tom tentatively.
‘You think?’ Grigori’s drunken face betrayed his ill-temper. ‘Listen, English’, he said, ‘the government bombed our own people in Ryazan with hexogen to cause a backlash against the Chechens just to keep themselves in power. The Americans learned that trick from us. But as always, they had to do it in a bigger way. Look at the USS Liberty incident. That was a false flag attack! What do you think the Twin Towers were?
Читать дальше