There is one thing you certainly cannot accuse these guys of and that is a lack of consistency. No sooner had the big scandal broke – along with the successful (to put it mildly) visit of Mikhail Mishustin to China – than the enormous Reuters story, amicably picked up by several media outlets, about China abandoning the Power of Siberia-2 in favour of the Turkmen pipeline, and another scandal broke out this weekend following the same pattern and using the same media grid, now at the behest of The Wall Street Journal
The WSJ writes that now it is no longer Beijing but Riyadh that is allegedly going to break off relations with Moscow in the near future. But for now it just expresses its sharp and unambiguous dissatisfaction with Russia’s incomplete, according to Saudi Arabia, fulfillment of its promise to reduce oil production amid Western sanctions. And, according to high-ranking (but, of course, unnamed) sources of WSJ, the heavy conflict between Moscow and Riyadh, caused by Moscow’s unwillingness to comply with the allegedly agreed oil production cuts, was not at all accidental just on the eve of the OPEC+ ministerial meeting.
What can be said here. As Bulgakov’s Woland said, delighted by the story of the cat Behemoth, how he wandered in the taiga and fed on the meat of a tiger he killed, “the most interesting thing about this lie is that it is a lie from the first to the last word”. And we are not even going to refute the stories told only by “Western investigative experts”, and not by the Saudis, about Russia not respecting the “agreed terms”. But just to remind you that there never were any such agreed conditions – from the word “at all”.
It’s that simple.
Let us recall in order what happened. First, Russia voluntarily and unilaterally announced reduction of production, and at that for reasons not at all connected with OPEC+ price policy. It was simply that when transferring volumes to the east – on the short-term track – our oil industry was not able to cope with this task purely logistically. Then, no less voluntarily and also without any mutual obligations, some – but by no means all! – countries of the OPEC and OPEC+ agreements (not the cartel, sorry). Starting with Saudi Arabia. So once again: there were no agreements, at least not formal ones.
Now again, let’s pay attention to how and for whom exactly this is being done. For an audience in the Kingdom of SA?!
Come on! We all remember all too well how the Saudis feel about the Western press. And in general, money loves silence. The Saudi authorities have other sources of information and other levers of influence on their Russian counterparts, mostly non-public. And the “almighty public opinion” to which the Western media appeals is about as purple as the problems of LGBT people, which the WSJ simply cannot be unaware of.
Which means this essay is, sorry, for us. And it is aimed solely at splitting not even the Russian society, but at causing further confusion in the minds of our already far from always professional and not at all staunch elites. That is, in fact, all there is to it. That is why we are simply stating once again that when you read any such materials, you should not jump in the mode of a mad squirrel from an American cartoon, but rather use a cool head.
Right now the economic press is also a war space.
Dmitry Lekukh, RT
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