Another significant factor in all this is that Russia’s economy is only thriving because of the high price of gas and oil in the world. Russia’s national wealth is totally dependent on the export of its vast natural resources. That also could be the very reason why Russia marches to the Middle East like Ezekiel says to take a spoil. The day may soon come when a powerful Russia built up with oil and gas money will suddenly see a crash of oil and gas prices. AT that time a Russia dependent on energy exports will become desperate and decide to take a spoil and move against Israel just like Ezekiel said in his chapters 38 and 39 prophecy.
Oil and gas could crash because of a world economic collapse or some energy breakthrough or even because of some massive new finds of deep oil deposits – perhaps found in Israel. I am expecting this conjecture to be fulfilled in about ten to twenty years. Meanwhile, a fascist system is being set up by Putin and he could rule Russia for decades. In my opinion, there is a better chance then not that Vladimir Putin is Gog.
No decision of any significance for the Russian people or the rest of us will be made in the foreseeable future without the say – so of Medvedev’s unsmiling master.
Just before he stood down as President, Putin declared: “I have worked like a galley slave throughout these eight years, morning til night, and I have given all I could to this work. I am happy with the results.”
As he surveys the nation today he reminds me of that chilling poem by Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting, in which the dreaded bird sits at the top of a tall tree musing: “Now I hold all Creation in my foot – I kill as I please because it is all mine – I am going to keep things like this.”
Russia may be a member of the G8 whose GDP (because of oil) should soon overtake the United Kingdom, but, in many ways, it is more like a Third World country.
Stricken with an epidemic of AIDS and alcoholism which both contribute to a male life expectancy of 58 years, the population is projected to shrink from 145 million to 120 million within a few decades.
So where has all the oil wealth gone? According to an Independent Experts Report, written by two former high-level Kremlin insiders who have had the courage to speak out, “a criminal system of government [has] taken shape under Putin” in which the Kremlin has been selling state assets cheaply to Putin’s cronies and buying others assets back from them at an exorbitant price.
The threat of prosecution for tax fraud is the Kremlin’s weapon of choice against anyone who dares to challenge its hegemony.
When Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia, used his oil wealth to promote human rights and democracy, Putin detected a threat to his throne.
The oligarch was duly arrested and convicted of fraud. He now languishes in a Siberian jail where he is in the third year of an eight-year prison sentence.
None of this is a matter of public debate in Russia where the media has been muzzled by the Kremlin, their freedom of expression stifled by the government.
Almost every national radio and television station is now controlled directly or indirectly by the state, and the same applies to every newspaper of any influence.
Some 20 Russian journalists have been killed in suspicious circumstances since Putin came to office. No one has yet been convicted for any of these crimes.
Putin calls the system over which he presides “sovereign democracy”. I think a better term is “cryptofascism” – though even the Kremlin’s few critics in Russia recoil when I suggest this.
After all, their parents and grandparents helped save the world from Hitler – at a cost of 25 million Soviet lives. Nonetheless, the evidence is compelling.
The structure of the state – the alliance between the Kremlin, the oligarchs, and the security services – is awesomely powerful.
No less worryingly is popular distaste – often contempt – for democracy and indifference to human rights.
