French MPs paid from Russian coffers for Crimea propaganda trip?

Lafayette said:

I've not only read them, I've cited them.

You just do not know how to debate - ad hominens are not a viable rebuttal ...

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I think instead of googling up fancy expressions in Latin you yourself probably should learn to debate, and especially to reference.

For example, you've cited:
(a) Russian Oligarchs Are Moving Assets Out Of Russia, Converting Rubles Into Hard Assets
(b) GurievRachinsky.pdf

To support the following claims you've made:
"The Russian people are already paying for the Putin's inane foreign policy, the purpose of which is to draw focus away from the internal economic catastrophe brought on by only two factors:
(1) *The Russian economy is regressively non-productive because of a lack of necessary investment (with the exception of arms manufacturing), and,
(2) *It has been raped of its national assets (once owned by the Russian people as a whole) by Putin's oligarchs who keep their mouths shut whilst he follows whatever inept "foreign-policy" he dreams up.

(3) This rip-off of state owned properties was seen a long, long time ago (as early as 2005) and is nothing new. See here. Since, only the largeness of the booty has changed."


Funnily enough as I've mentioned previously it seems that you haven't even read what you've cited.

Reference (b) directly invalidates your points (2) and (3), as it is clearly states that oligarchs actually gained their enormous wealth in the early and mid 90's (long before Putin rose to power, and not "as early as 2005" either) through various privatisation, loan and voucher schemes, dividing Russia's natural resources and industry between themselves (p.138-139). It can also be added that a lot of those people have/had direct links with various forms of mafia and other shady organisations.
When Putin rose to power he steadily started to "clean" the oligarchs ranks from people that were in his opinion too involved in his and Kremlin's affairs, as previously oligarchs had a very significant influence on Russia's political system, this resulted in multiple and major shifts in power and wealth (p.145-147). Nonetheless, Putin still needs "loyal" oligarchs as they still retain a lot of power and have a lot of influence on Russia's economy and politics.

Interestingly, this paper repeats exactly the recollection of events I've presented in my previous posts.


Reference (a) I assume that you wanted to use it as an example of point (1).
That's very cool and all, and shows that Russia's economy is indeed in a difficult situation, the sanctions and the economic hardships are especially felt at the lower socioeconomic levels and I don't think that anyone would actually deny this. However, interestingly enough not everyone shares your doom and gloom prophecies, as contrary to your article from Jan 2015, few of the more recent articles have a calmer and more measured outlook on Russia's economy, investments and its general future.

Just from a quick google search.
Contraction in Russia's economy eases as worst of recession said to have passed - economiccalendar.com
Russian economy shrinks less than forecast as crisis peters out - bloomberg.com


Fallen.