Twilight of the Gods: Russia's Viking Mercenaries in Syria

#TwilightOfTheGods #ProxyWar #RussianVikings #Syria #WagnerGroup

Earlier this week, US Advisors with their Kurdish allies repelled an attack on their base in Western Syria near Deir Ezzor.  According to US official sources, the group was a "battalion size" movement that included up to 200+ Russian "mercenaries" with an organization called Wagner Group.  The US associated forces called in air and artillery support decimating the forces and turning the attack back.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/02/13/middleeast/russians-killed-us-airstrikes-syria-intl/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

Wagner Group is technically registered in Hong Kong, but their offices are closed.  According to European records, Wagner Group is contracted with Evro Polis (Euro People) that was supposedly a food contractor in Syria, but now holds a contract to capture and defend Syrian oil and natural gas infrastructure.  Evro Polis would get 25% of all profit as its payment (see Iraq and Halliburton, never say the Russians can't learn).  Evro Polis and it's contractor offices are empty in Syria

https://www.apnews.com/7f9e63cb14a54dfa9148b6430d89e873/Thousands-of-Russian-private-contractors-fighting-in-Syria

Deir Ezzor is the capitol and center of the oil and natural gas rich region the US and it's allies now hold.  Wagner Group is the Russian version of Blackwater.  With a few caveats.  Their employees may or may not be retired military. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group

There are reports indicating that these may be active duty "on leave" or other wise detailed out.  That these are headed by Russian special forces Spetsnaz.  A similar tactic as those the Russians used in Ukraine separatists to hold Crimea and support the war in Eastern Ukraine. 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-russian-blackwater-putins-secret-soldiers-in-ukraine-and-syria

Russia says they have no idea who these guys are or how many are there or how many have died or even why they would be crazy enough to confront a US protected base.  The US said it was in constant contact with Russian official forces up to and through the time the Vikings met their demise. 

***Wagner Group should sound familiar.  It is named after...Richard Wagner, famous composer, polemicist and nationalist godfather of Viking Nationalists everywhere whose widow was a favorite pet of Hitler.  Most famous for his Viking/Germanic operas Der Ring des Nibelungen cycles like Flight of the Valkyrie, Reingold, Seigfried and Gotterdammerung.   Like Glitnir from #TwilightOfTheGods.

Including a little article here where Putin gets irritated with the avant garde presentation of Wagner Opera Tannhauser and kicks the director out of office for committing blasphemy against the Russian Orthodox Church.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/29/russian-director-fired-over-wagner-opera-that-offended-powerful-orthodox-church

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-02-13/u-s-strikes-said-to-kill-scores-of-russian-fighters-in-syria?__twitter_impression=true

Twilight of the Gods: Russia Gone A-Viking

No, I don't think ancient Norse prophecy about Ragnarok and the twilight of the gods explains our current predicament.  Seeing it referenced in the middle of a financial crisis and potential espionage investigation reminded me that people have patterns and habits.

Patterns and habits are created by experiences, good and bad.  These tend to influence us consciously and subconsciously.  Even when we are trying to obscure our purposes, or in the case of criminal acts, even our identity, we tend to leave clues that can help identify the perpetrator and motives or link events together.

For instance, the appearance of Glitnir as the name of the bank that the FL Group created in Iceland to obscure their empty, worthless asset trading in order to create fake equity to borrow against and raid the Western Banking system of real capital.  FL Group was technically an Icelandic organization.  It just happened to be taken over by Putin's Family and Friends Fund.  After which it had created Glitnir and went raiding.

That's what it was.  Somebody comprehended the flaw in the western banking system created by unregulated loans for over priced property, creating inflated bank assets and value that was then being used for greater loans for real assets.  They decided they could do that with anything.  Your grandma's porcelain cat vase was suddenly worth a half million dollar loan with an asset value of a million.  No one was looking too closely at the details even if it was an obscure bank in Iceland few had heard of.  It had assets and loans.  It had value.

What gets overlooked in this review is the selection of the name Glitnir for the bank that was doing the raiding.  It could be as simple as, having chosen Iceland as their jumping off point for the raid and Iceland being traditional home of Viking descendents and their interlocutor being an Icelandic descendent of vikings,  decided to flip through a book of Nordic mythology and, seeing the description of Glitnir as a shining hall with a roof of gold and pillars of silver, thought it was an excellent name for a bank making them money while they became de facto vikings raiding the Civilized world.

Except that, if you were flipping through a book of Nordic mythology, this is not the first, nor most famous myth about gold and vikings.  But, I don't suppose anyone hoping to lure investors in is going to name their bank after a dragon or dwarves or vikings whose greed over gold led to death or curses upon their descendents.  Superstition can also be a powerful motivator.

Importantly, to discover the name of this Hall, you would actually have to be reading or flipping through a book about Ragnarok.  Because the god Forseti and his shining hall are largely known through his appearance in the Edda Epic Poem about Raganarok, written by Snorri Sturlson in 900 AD on the island of Iceland.  Then you would know that Glitnir was not a bank, it was the Hall of Justice.  That it was the home of Forseti, the presiding one, also sometimes referred to as "The President".

Again, it could be that they were simple barbarians who wanted a Viking name that denoted wealth.  That would discount that this was the front for Putin's Family and Friend's Fund or, basically, Putin investing under other people's names.

We know a lot about Putin.  For instance, appearance is important.  He likes a good show.  He is a fan of history and mythology.  We only have to look at his own appearances.  Shirtless.  Surrounded by good looking women.  On a horse.  Hunting and fishing.  All an image of virility and youth.

At the Kremlin, he has dressed the palace guard in uniforms from the period of Catherine the Great and the Tsars while working to rehabilitate Russia's Soviet past under the guise of The People's Great Patriotic War (WW2). 

Here he is diligently working to rebrand his opponents as Nazis through various means as a juxtaposition for the alleged abuses of Soviets.

He has supported efforts to discover the ancient Sarmatian and Scythian burials.  People who may have inspired tales about Amazons.  You simply cannot know Russian history if you don't know that, at the time that Snorri Sturlson was writing the Edda Epic about Ragnarok in Iceland in 900 AD, the Vikings had made their way to Kiev to raid, trade and marry into the local nobles creating the ruling Rurik dynasty.  The Greatest of which was Vladimir the Great, 972 AD, consolidated the Kievan Rus from Moscow thru Ukraine and the Baltics, creating much of modern Russia.  Also known for shirking paganism and bringing Christianity to Russia.

Vlad knows his history.  He sees himself as part of that history and a direct descendent of historic people with an historic responsibility to Russia.  This includes making himself the next #VladimirTheGreat.  A descendant of raiding Vikings.

It is difficult to imagine that Vlad had no idea what Glitnir means or what it was.  Or, that it was not chosen specifically to represent Justice for what he perceives as the wrongs of the west and, specifically, the US against Russia and Vlad himself.

Which brings us full circle to #Glitnir, the #FLGroup, the #CrashOf2008 and #TrumpRussia.  Vladimir Putin does not forget, nor does he forgive.  Here the original story takes us to 2009 and a writer trying to discover what made Iceland the epicenter of the 2008 collapse.  Here he casually mentions FL Group and Glitnir bank.

The second part of that story.  What happens when you steal $150 million dollars from a guy who throws his adversaries off of roofs for degrading or disrespecting his image by just talking, much less taking his money.