April 8, 2014

Ukraine: Garry Kasparov On Putin

Early in the month of March Tom Ashcroft, host of On Point Radio, had a discussion with Russian political activist, and world chess champion Garry Kasparov about Russia, Ukraine and going after Vladimir Putin’s oligarchs. Mr. Kasparov is considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time and is considering running for President of Russia.

Mr. Kasparov describes Putin as an evil man with a thought process similar to Adolf Hitler. He will not
on his own stop his aggression on eastern Europe. Negotiating with the west is simply a tactic used by Putin to buy time to regain Russian control of former Soviet Bloc countries.

Kasparov's main strategy is go after the assets of the Russian Oligarchs and they will take care of Putin. He acknowledges that Putin will retaliate and the west will feel pain, however he suggests that if nothing is done the pain from dealing with Putin later will be even greater. His is a three step solution.
  1. Go after the assets of the Russian oligarchs. Don't go after all of them and those remaining will take care of Putin out of fear of losing their wealth.
  2. Go after the assets of state owned companies.
  3. This Mr. Kasarov's "nuclear solution" is to go after Russia's state owned assets, many of which are held in New York Banks.
Kasparov says Putin is a master of political poker.in which he keeps raising the stakes until everyone else drops out. There will be costs to the western world but the sooner it takes action the lower will be the cost.


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  3. I thought the judge was the only one aloud to do cram downs!

  4. "Go after the assets of the Russian oligarchs"

    You don't need to be chess master for that advice. It is what the US did in Ukraine by having Firtash arrested and threatening the other oligarchs.

  5. Putin is a pretty good chess player too. Like kleptocrats throughout history he's stirred up foreign tensions and points to foreign enemies to unite and distract the Russian people that were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the corruption and theft of Russian resources by Putin and his inner circle. Kasparov is right that the West should target the kleptocrats to (i) make oligarchs change the value equasion for Putin and (ii) return attention of the Russian people to the corruption and theft of their resources.