Rogue Nation - Top Russian Experts Believe the West Will Try to Use the "Iraq Approach" on Russia

Sergey Mikheev, top political expert:

- Whether Theresa May comprehends the situation, whether she resolves the internal issues, whether she's the person who's being pushed towards this decision, to blow up this scandal, it's a whole different question. However, the fact that the UK and the US share the opinion that Russia basically posts a chemical weapon threat to practically the entire world is truly incredibly disturbing. Why? Because it's obvious they're trying to create a brand-new model for the demonization of Russia. They're trying to take the pressure on Russia to a whole new level, trying to convince the world that Russia is dangerous not just because of how they've "wronged Ukraine," or because they've "annexed Crimea," but because they threaten the world with chemical weapons.

They've used this thesis about a weapon of mass destruction threat before, and they're using it now. Basically, they need to demonize Russia to the level of North Korea. They need to do this to prove that it's not about a particular case, not about some post-Soviet controversies, but the fact that Russia poses a threat, as a nation that's capable of attacking any civilized nation with chemical weapons. They're building up a scheme on the level of a primitive comic book. They need to dilute the brains of regular people and political experts so they accept this comic book as absolute fact. Russia is this Dr. Evil, who's immune to any and all reason. Russia has a different logic; it doesn't care about the election that's a week and a half away, or about the FIFA World Cup in 3 months. It just wants to kill people, in large numbers, and make sure they die as painfully as possible. Maybe, chemical and nuclear weapons don't work, neither do missile defense systems, so Russia resorts to chemical weapons of terrorists and dictators.

I think this scheme…

- Maybe, it'll be the next step? Maybe, they'll claim that Russia supplies Syria with chemical weapons.

- As far as Syria goes, we've already heard from Salisbury to Damascus; our military has already mentioned the chemical weapon provocation they're preparing near Damascus. The Americans are threatening to strike Syria.

There's no doubt that the next step, the recent UK events are a pretext for what might happen in Syria, for the upcoming provocation, so that this situation develops logically, where the West will demand a collective response from Russia, thus taking these sanctions to a whole new level. They also want to delegitimize the election as much as possible, even though it will be pointless to talk about whether the elections are legitimate or not since Russia is a country that uses chemical weapons.

- A rogue nation.

- Right. Besides, they want to take a series of pressure-applying measures which will let them make it extremely hard for Russia to reach the goals Putin spoke of. Obviously, such an operation takes longer than 3 days or a week and a half. Of course, it wasn't like they heard the President's speech and decided to do this. But, they knew the obvious when it comes to the election campaign — it will have a very clear winner, in my opinion, no offense. Generally speaking, it's decided, so they worked on a brand-new plan for applying pressure.

As far as our oligarchs go, who've donated 820,000, or more, they were clearly explained that they shouldn't just waste this money in London restaurants, they must do something way more serious, or nobody knows what might happen to them. Nobody knows what "evil Russia, the evil Kremlin, and evil Putin" would do to them. Maybe it won't be evil Putin. It doesn't matter. Something might happen to them. So, they need to consolidate, pay up, and make sure that the political situation in Russia changes.