Anglo-American Aim Becomes Clear, To Collapse Russia’s Economy

Feb. 27, 2022 (EIRNS)—Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute have insisted that the Jan. 25 “background briefing” by two senior Biden Administration officials represented the real reason for the “Ukraine” crisis: With the Wall Street/City of London financial system nearing collapse, the financial oligarchs must try to destroy the economies of Russia and China, increasing allied. The senior officials said on the record that if Russia was driven into attacking Ukraine, NATO economic and financial sanctions would

“start at the top of the escalation ladder and stay there.... And I would say the deepening selloff in Russian markets, its borrowing costs, the value of its currency, market-implied default risk reflect the severity of the economic consequences we can and will impose on the Russian economy in the event of a further invasion.... It would lead to an atrophying of Russia’s productive capacity over time. It would deny Russia the ability to diversify its economy.”

This was made blatantly clear during the day Feb. 26. There was apparent compulsion of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine to drop his proposal of negotiations over neutral status with Russia, and keep Ukraine fighting. Germany was pushed into abandoning its refusal to send lethal weapons to Ukraine and is sending Kyiv “Stinger” anti-aircraft missiles, while military forces from various NATO nations were rushed to the Eastern European countries bordering Russia.

And London and Washington late on Feb. 26 broke the resistance of European countries to financial sanctions against Russia which are comparable only to the “extreme sanctions” against Iran by the Trump Administration since 2017, and the seizure of the assets of Afghanistan by the Biden Administration. They issued a “Joint Statement on Further Restrictive Economic Measures.” Great Britain, United States, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and European Commission (later joined by Japan) agreed to deny SWIFT interbank messaging service to “a certain number of Russian banks” and were driving the other European countries to agree. And EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Twitter: “Second, we will paralyze the assets of Russia’s central bank. This will freeze its transactions. And it will make it impossible for the central bank to liquidate its assets.” Those assets are in excess of $650 billion.

The first measure may exhibit large holes because European NATO countries fear their own inflationary breakdown and want to keep importing oil and gas from Russia even as they try to drive it to the status of a third-world country. But the central bank freeze is an attempted brutal repeat of the cut-offs of Iran and Afghanistan. It is also an implied, immediate threat to China to try to prevent it from conducting trade, mutual investment and financial services with Russia.

Apparently Ukraine is supposed to keep fighting with more rushed-in weapons systems until these financial actions are stampeded across the NATO and EU membership, and then receive “thoughts and prayers.”