Persecuted Russians To Be Airlifted Out Of Estonia?
Vlad and Valentina. Pillow-talk tactics
Copydude’s Moscow correspondent, nfb, has revealed that plans to defuse the Russia-Estonia crisis were underway a whole year before it even started.
Well, isn’t that just typical of chess-playing Russians! Always so many moves ahead.
As long ago as June, 2006, Kremlin associates were negotiating to buy Estonia, starting with the Tallinn suburb of Lagedi. The purchase was initiated by the son of the Governor of St Petersburg, Valentina Matvienko - who frequently features in the press as Putin’s femme fatale.
Sergei Matvienko (son of Valentina) has bought a picturesque, 10 hectare island on Tallinn’s Pirita river, together with the CEO of Lukoil Eesti, Evgeny Bolshakov, and the co-owner of Russian bank ‘OAO St-Petersburg’, Alexander Saveliev. They are jointly funding Russia’s SMB Invest which is building eight houses on the island for influential Russian businessmen.
Valentina’s son told Kommersant: ‘Estonia is very pleasant business environment and I’d like to visit this country more often’.The second stage of the investment involves creating a helicopter service between St-Petersburg and Tallinn. For this purpose SMB is planning to buy 15 American or French helicopters, because ‘to cross a border involves too much time and the road from St-Petersburg and Ivangorod/Narva is in very bad condition anyway’.
Speculation concerning Putin and Matvienko is rife. Perhaps it is inevitable that Vlad the Bad would be attracted to a tough woman who some describe as having ‘the sexiest sneer ever turned up on a Google image search’. (See Googled image.)
Other influential Russian journals, however, like ‘Astrologi i Fakti’, portray Valentina as an ordinary Russian woman. Here she is reported as saying to Vlad, ‘If you really loved me, you’d buy me a country. My son likes Estonia.’
As we all know, the Ivangorod/Narva road is not impassable by off-road Jeeps nor even Eurolines buses. Insiders suggest that the 15 helicopters might be employed in resettling unpopular Russians from Estonia to special welcome centres in Norilsk and Naberezhnye Chelny.
In return, influential Russian businessman moving to Estonia could receive priority EU passports.
There is an interesting article on the BBC about Estonian Russians:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6630197.stm
The second, the way policy is devised, is a game many countries now play: policy laundering. The game goes something like this. The US wants, say, biometrics in passports, and the UK likes the idea, toosecond passports