The New Great Game: Is It Still Chess? And What Do New Moves with Resurgent Fascism Do to It?

Dennis Etler: "The real objective of the US is to thwart China's rise. It's important to compromise China's northern and western flanks by destabilizing Russia but it's only one piece in the larger geopolitical game of looming super-power rivalry and contention."

Speaking of China, back in March, Kolomeysky made an interesting and cryptic comment about Putin and the game of chess or the grand chessboard. Here is the text of the interview as it was published back then on Ukrainian portals:

Chairman of Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration Ihor Kolomoisky in an interview with the LB.ua edition outlined in chess terms and analogies his vision of Vladimir Putin's policies towards Ukraine and the possible steps to be taken by Ukraine in response.

He has resorted to this after a journalist asked the former businessman whether it is true that he is a perfect chess player, and then proposed to discuss the more serious events simulating them while sitting at a "big chessboard.”

"No, I'm against. This is not the case - we are grandmasters, and people - pawns on the board. This is wrong. Moreover, we all the participants of the game. So first we should determine who is a player, who are pieces. If before us, as you say, there is the board, so where we are: on it or behind it? "Kolomoisky said.

"Okay, let it be this way: Vladimir Putin is on the board or behind it? " the journalist asked.

"Putin is without a doubt behind the board. And we, given the specifics of the situation, are likely to find ourselves on the board. Generally, if Putin is behind the board, and we are on it, it's not a game between us, too unequal conditions," Kolomoisky said.

"Why? Because he - as you said - is a schizophrenic?" this was the next question.

"Well, he has just started his game, yes. Why should we join it? We should start either our own game, or stop being pieces, pawns in the game he plays.

“Well, if we are about chess, the young players have such a term - "Chinese draw". This is when all the pieces are knocked off the board. And that's all, the game is over. If he wants he may start a new game. On a Chinese front," Kolomoisky said.

What I take from it is that Kolomeysky tacitly turned upside down the meme falsely attributed to Putin about Obama’s way of playing chess “like a pigeon.” Paul Danish explains:

It is not true — as some conservative websites have recently claimed — that Vladimir Putin once remarked that “negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game.” That particular wisecrack is attributed to one Scott D. Weitzenhoffer, who made it in 2005, not about negotiating with Obama, but about debating evolution with Christian creationists. Like a lot of topical humor, it’s been updated [to its now popular form]. 

It seems that Kolomeysky very cunningly implies that, in his view, that's actually the method of his and US side--instead of being confined to certain rules and notions of space or stability, the point (almost paraphrasing Marx) is to overturn the game, its rules, the order and "knock out all the figures." 

Kolomeysky then concludes equally enigmatically that "the next new game" could be/will be started "at a Chinese front[ier]." My translation: the point is not only to knock out Russia's figures and pawns by overturning the whole game and all established notions about it, but by overturning and radically changing Russia in this way, Russia could become in relation to China what Ukraine is now in relation to Russia in the hands of the masters of the New Great Game. And Kolomeysky is not only one of the richest men in Ukraine and the chief banker of fascist shock troopers. He might also be the Brain of the regime.

So, yes, it is about Russia. And it is also about China. The Dao versus death.