{"id":197663,"date":"2019-11-10T09:15:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T09:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=197663"},"modified":"2019-11-13T07:15:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-13T07:15:35","slug":"construction-boom-shows-doomsayer-experts-wrong-on-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=197663","title":{"rendered":"Construction boom shows doomsayer \u2018experts\u2019 wrong on Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">RT \u2013 Nov 9, 2019<\/h1>\n<div id=\"attachment_187573\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Moscow-City.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-187573\" class=\"wp-image-187573\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Moscow-City-768x512.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Moscow-City-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Moscow-City-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Moscow-City.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-187573\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Moscow City, Moscow. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The cottage industry of \u2018experts\u2019 predicting the inevitable demise of Russia for years is ignoring the hard evidence of progress such as the infrastructure projects that the West is unable or unwilling to undertake itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The late US Senator John McCain once famously snarled that Russia is <em>\u201ca gas station masquerading as a country.\u201d<\/em> British scholar Robert Service \u2013 a biographer of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky \u2013 seems to echo that sentiment in his latest work, \u2018Kremlin Winter\u2019, published last month and receiving fawning reviews in mainstream Western outlets such as the Financial Times.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Kremlin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Kremlin<\/a> Winter by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/RobertService?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#RobertService<\/a> \u2014 how strong is <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Putin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Putin<\/a> in reality? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DgWXBc4VWo\">https:\/\/t.co\/DgWXBc4VWo<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Geopolitics &amp; Empire (@Geopolitics_Emp) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Geopolitics_Emp\/status\/1191958502073393152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 6, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Judging by the reviews, Service\u2019s book is little more than a journey through well-worn cliches about Russia popular among the experts in \u2018Thinktankistan\u2019, the league of doomsayers who have been predicting \u2018Russia without Putin\u2019 for as long as he\u2019s been in power. He describes the Russian economy as being roughly the same size as that of the Netherlands, dependent on oil and gas exports, and not manufacturing much.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">One could counter that the Russian economy is actually twice that size, or offer reams of data on its ongoing diversification.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Problematic trends such as alcoholism, violent crime, and demographic collapse have largely been halted or reversed since the 1990s, when they emerged as a side effect of predatory privatization \u2013 pushed and praised by the very think tanks lamenting Putin for 20 years now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In the view of Western experts, President Vladimir Putin is the one keeping Russia down while funneling money into the military. Except that he\u2019s not, slashing the military budget in 2018 to focus more on infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Russian military has not been any less effective \u2013 the success of its Syrian expedition is one obvious example, especially contrasted to the expensive but ineffective US interventions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Winter is commonly associated with gloom in the West (e.g. Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cwinter of our discontent\u201d), but the season simply does not have the same gloomy connotation in Russia. Instead, General Frost is remembered fondly as the ally against Napoleon and Hitler.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">While the calendar winter is coming, it\u2019s a metaphorical springtime for Russia in terms of construction. While public transportation and infrastructure in the UK and the US have fallen into disrepair under the austerity policies of the past decade, Moscow has embarked on an ambitious plan to expand underground and light rail. Over the past decade, the Russian capital has built over 120 kilometers of metro rails and 64 stations (as of <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mos.ru\/en\/news\/item\/42569073\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>mid-2018<\/strong><\/span><\/a>), in the most ambitious expansion program in the Moscow Metro\u2019s 80-year history. It might even be the most ambitious in the world, far as anyone can tell.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_179294\" style=\"width: 370px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Lakhta-Center-St-Petersburg.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-179294\" class=\"wp-image-179294\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Lakhta-Center-St-Petersburg.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"203\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Lakhta-Center-St-Petersburg.jpg 954w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Lakhta-Center-St-Petersburg-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-179294\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lakhta tower, St Petersberg. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The Moscow Metro is just the beginning, too. Once the last stretch of the federal highway M11 is completed by the end of 2019, any Muscovite will be able to drive the 684 kilometers to St. Petersburg to marvel at the Center. That 462-meter, 87-story skyscraper will be the tallest building in both Russia and Europe once it is completed in 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Good news isn\u2019t limited to Moscow or St. Petersburg, either. Crimea was connected to the Russian mainland by a 19-kilometer highway bridge in 2018, which is now open to both cars and trucks. With the completion of the parallel railway bridge, passenger train service is scheduled to start in early December, with freight trains following suit in the spring. This will be a major step in further integrating with the rest of Russia the peninsula that seceded from Ukraine in 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_170392\" style=\"width: 370px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Kersch-Strait-Bridge.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-170392\" class=\"wp-image-170392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Kersch-Strait-Bridge.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"203\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-170392\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Kersch Strait Bridge, linking Crimea with southern Russia. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The US and its European allies cited the accession of Crimea as a pretext to impose trade sanctions on Russia, hoping they would <em>\u201cisolate\u201d<\/em> Moscow and break its economy. Those hopes have been repeatedly dashed, however, as the sanctions spurred the growth of domestic industry and agriculture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">It also spurred Russia to sign a major gas deal with Beijing in 2014, and launch the construction of the \u2018Power of Siberia\u2019 pipeline in the Far East. The 2,000-kilometer pipeline will connect the gas fields of Yakutia with the Primorye region and China when it opens in early December, weeks ahead of schedule.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Two other gas pipelines \u2013 \u2018TurkStream\u2019 under the Black Sea and \u2018Nord Stream 2\u2019 under the Baltic Sea \u2013 are also on track for completion by the end of 2019. Once operational, they will provide Moscow with reliable avenues of supplying Europe with natural gas, free of potential obstruction by hostile governments \u2013 as was the case with Ukraine in 2009, for example.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Kremlinologists sitting in their ivory towers in the West dismiss all this observable evidence of progress and strength as mere <em>\u201csurface gloss of prosperity,\u201d<\/em> insisting instead on finding some <em>\u201cunderlying weakness\u201d<\/em> at the heart of Russia. Yet the past two decades have proven them wrong, time and again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">One is almost tempted to conclude that residents of Thinktankistan are projecting all the economic and political troubles of their own countries onto Russia, much like the proverbial scapegoat. The proof that they\u2019re wrong is in the pudding \u2013 or the roads, as the case may be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Nebojsa Malic, senior writer at RT<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/op-ed\/473021-russia-construction-boom-predictions\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has long been predicted that Russia would supersede London and the U.S. as the pre-eminent global power. Now, despite what western \u201cexperts\u201d may say, that prophecy is in the process of becoming reality<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[66,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Economics","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197663"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197674,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197663\/revisions\/197674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}