EDITORIAL: The Further Misadventures of Anna Matveeva

EDITORIAL

The Further Misadventures of Anna Matveeva

Anna Matveeva, Russophile Rat

We’ve written twice before about the scurrying Russophile insect Anna Matveeva, and now it’s time for installment #3.

We love Radio Free Europe, but nobody is perfect.  RFE’s Roman Kupchinsky, for instance, lauded Vladimir Putin’s doctoral dissertation just a few weeks before it was exposed as shameless fraud.  Yet Kupchinsky looks like Walter Cronkite next to Farangis Najibullah, who recently quoted Matveeva as if she were a military expert and without telling RFE’s readers a single thing about her virulent background in pro-Kremlin propaganda (she blogs for the Kremlin’s “Russia Today” propaganda network).

Najibullah can’t claim ignorance:  Just Google Matveeva.  The third hit is one of our editorials.   

Reporting on Russian efforts to wage cold war in Kyrgyzstan, Here’s what Najibullah writes about the divine Ms. Matveeva:

Uzbekistan has a history of isolating itself when it comes to multilateral efforts. Taskhent has threatened to leave the Russia-dominated CSTO, and along with Belarus has refused to sign off on the organization’s creation of a rapid-reaction force to fight terrorism.

Anna Matveeva, a visiting fellow with the Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics, says that by setting up a second base in Kyrgyzstan, Russia would demonstrate that it does not consider Uzbekistan its favored partner in Central Asia. “Uzbekistan has not been a stable partner to anyone,” Matveeva says. “It frequently changes its foreign policy, shifting from Russia to the West, from the U.S. to China and so on. Kyrgyzstan, however, has been much more loyal to Russia.”

Matveeva says Uzbekistan’s warning about a new Russian military presence increasing the threat of militancy is “baseless.”

“There is also quite a lot of military presence in Ferghana Valley and especially a huge Uzbek military buildup,” Matveeva says. “The Russian base — it will still take time until something of that order materializes — will still be a very limited presence, we are not talking about deployment of a kind of big army unit there.” She notes the presence of a larger Russian military facility in Tajikistan “in a very devout area” near the border with Afghanistan and says, “It doesn’t really provoke any passions of any kind.”

As always with this freakishly dishonest Kremlin shil, it’s hard to know where to begin in pointing out the fraud contained in her statements.  Suddenly, Russia’s actions in Kyrgystan have nothing to do with the fact that Russia wants influence in that country. Like the fabled fox and his grapes, Russia only wants to taunt Uzbekistan.

But leave that aside. Note instead how, while claiming Kyrgyzstan is “loyal” to Russia,  this insidious little reptile doesn’t even mention the fact that Kyrgyzstan had just suckered Russia into paying a billion-dollar bribe to oust the United States and then seen the tiny country pocket the money and leave the U.S. base untouched.  Apparently, this “expert” doesn’t see that as being any kind of problem for Russia because Russia doesn’t even want military bases in Kyrgyzstan. It just wants to taunt Uzbekistan.  It’s willing to spend billions and billions of the Russian people’s money to do so.

And leave even that aside. Is this crazed lunatic really suggesting that the Russian military doesn’t have any problems related to religion?  Paul Goble begs to disagree. He says the Russian army is being torn apart at the seams by religious and national divisions. 

All this is to say nothing of the fact that Russia has been totally humiliated by being snubbed by a huge number of former Soviet states at the latest powwow it tried feebly to host.  Russia is hated throughout former Soviet space, and can’t even count on the likes of Belarus anymore.

What we have here is an outrageous torrent of lies being told by a totally unqualified analyst with zero disclosure of her frenzied Russophile bias by the reporter in question. It’s total humiliating failure all around, and RFE should be ashamed of itself.