“Framed by civil war”: a retired illegal intelligence officer spoke about the possible consequences of protests in the United States

- Andrei Olegovich, you have lived in the USA for more than 10 years under the guise of a Canadian. Is death after the arrest of black George Floyd with a criminal past a really good reason for unrest?

- The reason, of course, is good, and the time is very suitable - we will return to this. But the main thing is that the riots are not just motivated by racism. This is a riot on the basis of the social and economic situation that has developed in the United States. Together with dark-skinned people, a large number of whites, Hispanics, and other people in a rather poor economic situation go out into the street. The country has nearly 40 million unemployed. The racial incident served as an impetus, but the country was ready to explode without racial contradictions. Although they are the sharpest.

- Police officers  kneeling, a golden coffin , dismissal of journalists for the phrase “All lives matter” and the Republican Senator column in NYT on the introduction of troops, and now the removal of the film “Gone with the Wind” from the HBO Internet platform for “romanticizing slavery” - not too much?

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- Of course, bust. This is because the country is sick. She is rushing around, trying to find a new fulcrum - political, moral, ideological - in this crisis, which divides the country into two parts. One part self-abases - we saw this in the 1980s in Russia. Roughly the same thing is happening now in the USA: society is very painful and has not yet realized why, and the elites want to divert the conversation from the issue of money so that no one asks if they are fairly divided. And they translate this into other conflicts, including between blacks and whites, south and north. A classic like Gone With the Wind has always been for everyone. The Americans decided to erect monuments to the southerners general at the beginning of the twentieth century in order to reconcile the two parts of the country. About the same as we have with the Civil War.

- But the monument to Kolchak in Sterlitamak recently suffered too .

- But it is now. And America, now sick, is once again beginning to search for the right and the guilty and divide in two. It is dangerous that one side self-abases, offers to reconsider everything, and the other looks at it with wild eyes and says: "You taught us to believe that there were heroes everywhere, that there were reptiles on the side of the northerners, and now demolish the monuments." White Americans, say, from South Carolina are accustomed to consider themselves southerners, they have a different culture, and now they are told in their faces that they are bad, that they are slaveholders. This very deep conflict has surfaced because the whole country is in tension, and the Democratic Party, including its white and black leadership, is inflating it in every way. To remove Trump, they need to concentrate all their forces, drive people out to the polls, and raise the tension to the maximum. Indeed, many black and poor people do not go to the polls, considering them useless. And the Democratic Party is split in two - into that elite that has been in power for the last 30 years and has completely rotted, and that part that is quickly "left" and is fighting for power. They are at war, and they can be united only by radical methods on the basis of mobilization against an external force. This conflict is not racial in its depths; it was organized and developed by political forces that want to return to power.

“Will they succeed in preventing Trump from being reelected for a second term?”

- Hard to tell. By mobilizing the party and the population (approximately 50%), they simultaneously create other splits. For example, making extreme statements that the police must be dissolved and not given money to them, they play with fire. To destabilize the authorities, they need to corner the police, turn it off the game. Thus, they will set against themselves the broad masses of the population, who evaluate the police very positively (approximately 67%). This blow to the police can play against the Democrats. Over the next month, it will be clear who benefited from this. It is possible that the Democrats will lose. And Trump will say: “Do you want a mess and a ban on your favorite films? Vote for Biden. "

- And Biden will say in response: “So this is weak Trump. He can't handle it. ”

- No. Trump is clearly not weak in terms of media, and the Americans feel this. In the American mentality, a strong personality plays a big role, they often vote not for the party, but for the personalities. Trump is able to make decisions, he is a man. This is normal, especially when the country is sick. The search for simple solutions and tough people led Germany to Hitler. I'm not talking about Trump being Hitler. I’m saying that when a country feels bad, there is a request for strong personalities who will quickly return everything to normal. I do not have an insider regarding what is going on around Biden, but it is clear that he has passed a lot. He walks poorly, stumbles in speech. Sleepy Joe, as Trump calls him, is not a competitor.

There are two factors on which the outcome of the elections depends: the economic situation and the consolidation of the Democratic Party. If before the coronavirus it was clear that Trump was winning, because the economy and the fragmentation of the Democratic Party worked for him, now the economy has been shaken, but not so much hit the president. He can always say: this is not my economic policy, you saw how everything worked under me, the Chinese are to blame, the coronavirus is to blame. If the democrats are not united by radical methods, then they will not act as a united front. A large mass of blacks generally became disillusioned with the democrats. Under Bill Clinton, a pact was concluded between the Democrats and black leaders, who were introduced to the higher spheres of the party. They bring their voters and rise to the elite of the country. They rose, but did nothing for their electorate. And by 2016, dark-skinned voters lost interest in the Democrats and did not come to the polls in the mass in which they had done this before.

“Answers about the intervention put on the answering machine”

“ Does Trump now remind you partly of Yanukovych, who was afraid to use force and set up defenseless Golden Eagles?”

- No. He will not let anyone in and will make the toughest decisions. He does not want to go down in history as a weak president. He has enough narcissism and inner conviction to not escape anywhere at the time of making tough decisions. He did not use the army because the situation was not so tense. If he had, he would be blamed for dictatorship, usurpation of power. This, of course, bullshit, because the law allows him to. So far, the authorities have mobilized 40 thousand fighters of the National Guard, but this is a trifle throughout the country. In general, he in no way showed himself in the image of Yanukovych.

- I cannot but ask about my favorite topic of foreign intervention. The US Attorney General spoke about him, without naming the country, and the ex-adviser to Barack Obama, Susan Rice, directly accused Russia, but did not provide evidence. However, the "photo evidence" is already walking on the network - a tattoo with the inscription "Russia" on the hand of a policeman. 

- You can laugh about a tattoo for a long time. Who knows what wrote. As they say, what’s written on the fence, and there’s firewood there. People like Rice are the professional ideologists of the Democratic Party and will never change. They Russia will always be guilty of everything. They need to PR, especially since they are not in power. And even more so on CNN, where the hand washes his hand. In addition, any American politician would now like this problem to fly away somewhere. Blaming it on someone would be fine. As the economic crisis hangs on China, so does internal destabilization on the external enemy. Iran is not of that scale, therefore Russia. Now China will be connected there. In no case should we leave these things just like that, but the reaction can be put on the “answering machine” with the text on duty.

- Same since 2016?

- Russophobia did not start yesterday and end tomorrow. This is a sign of geopolitical and ideological struggle and even our strength.

- Now the Republicans proposed that  Congress recognize Russia as a sponsor of terrorism and impose even more stringent sanctions. 

- There, in Congress, they really begin to go crazy against the backdrop of an internal conflict, about which they are mostly silent, because they can not do anything. This is not the last such attack of "sanction". You need to carefully look at what sanctions are being proposed. Some of them may just hit American investors themselves. In any case, our best answer is the answer within our country. First, to secure our financial sovereignty from the USA and the IMF, which will give us the opportunity to finally ensure economic growth in Russia. Secondly, to shed light on those who play along with the Americans inside our country.

- How plausible is the version of involvement in the unrest in China, which decided to distract Trump and Congress from the coronavirus and the accusations against it?

- I do not believe. The Chinese are very cautious. Plus, intervention attempts do not really work. Whatever you do, the American nation lives on its own, according to its internal laws, and it is very difficult to turn these processes through external influence. When we are accused of interfering in the 2016 elections, remember what kind of alignment was on the eve. American politicians and experts who predicted voting in each state were mistaken. If people who are constantly engaged in elections and assessing influence in the USA themselves do not understand what is happening in the country, then what do you want from an external force? Who should she influence and set if the whole political machine could not do anything and was mistaken? This is just stupid.

Socialism in America

- You noted that the request in the USA for the left agenda is big, it is very simple to bring people to the streets. Does American Socialism Have a Future?

- It depends on what is called American socialism. America has already entered a severe political crisis and is likely to enter a deep economic crisis. Through an election cycle or two, we will see a generational change in power. The people will live worse and will wait for profound changes. If Trump wins in the fall, then four years later the left democrats will get tired of him and come. If Biden wins, the centrists will not be able to do anything and we will see the new leadership of the Democratic Party or some alternative force. What problems do you have to solve? This is the restructuring of the economy to new technologies, investments in infrastructure, health care reform, education and income redistribution. If nothing is done during the crisis, a much stronger social explosion will occur than the current one. Like in the crisis of the 1930s, when Roosevelt, who was not a leftist, was forced to resort to reforms that kept the country afloat. If the country does not go left, it will have even deeper problems.

• Andrey Bezrukov
• © Photo from the personal archive

- You and your colleagues from MGIMO have released a report on the imminent change of not only American, but also world elites. What to prepare for?

- The current elites have led the world for the past 30–40 years and brought it to a deep crisis. At the heart of this are problems with the development model that they promoted. First of all, with economic and social and ideological models tied to it. They simply do not work, and the crisis destabilizes the elites themselves and their countries. First of all, Western, in China, a different dynamics. There will be a rejection and replacement of existing elites, as well as a normal generational change. They will have to carry out what time requires of them - a fairly deep restructuring of the economic and social models.

- Does this also concern Russia?

- Of course.

Aggravation to the election

- Your forecast for the near future? How much more will we watch the riots?

- The active phase is already ending. It is impossible to protest and rob every day for more than two weeks. People get tired and start to come across strong resistance from society. Everything will calm down, but the problems will not go away. The Democratic Party will try to mobilize everyone against Trump, and most likely, the next aggravation will be for the elections.

• Andrey Bezrukov with his wife and colleague Elena Vavilova, wedding photo
• © Photo from the personal archive

They will certainly be difficult, if not throughout the country, then in some states, where it is not clear who won, and you can inflate a media bubble on this. In many states, the struggle will be competitive and the numbers will be close. In these conditions, the Democratic Party, if it feels defeat, can bring people to the streets. Throw off the "dictator" trump, in fact, the "Maidan." Or block everything, declare the process illegitimate, count the votes. If Donald is re-elected normally, then the Democrats have nothing to catch. This will be a collapse of the party with organizational conclusions and a hard change of leadership. But I believe that the instability will be very high - both before and after the election. If the police can be discredited in a polarized country, then conservatives who are well-armed and for the most part do not live in big cities can resist the rioters. This will be fraught with a real civil war. God forbid, of course.

Dossier

Andrei Olegovich Bezrukov was born on August 30, 1960 in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and graduated from Tomsk State University with a degree in history.

There he met his future wife Elena Vavilova, with whom they worked for more than 25 years as illegal intelligence agents abroad. Since 1999, he lived in the United States under the name of Canadian Donald Howard Heathfield. In 2010, he was arrested as a result of treason and exchanged together with his wife and a group of eight more illegal immigrants for four Russian citizens, including Sergey Skripal.

Retired Colonel SVR. Member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Advisor to the President of Rosneft, Associate Professor, Department of Applied Analysis of International Problems, MGIMO.

He has two sons - Tim and Alex, who considered themselves Canadians before their parents were arrested.

He was awarded the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" IV degree and other awards.