Both the Severstal and Borei class submarines are known as SSBNs (Ship, Submarine, Ballistic, Nuclear). While the Severstal is nearly thirty years old, no one but myself and a very small group of Russians knew it had been upgraded and all of her ballistic missiles removed!
That’s right!
I knew all the ballistic missiles had been removed.
However, she was then reequipped to be much more silent and much, much more deadly.
(More on that later.)
Meanwhile I’m thinking,
Why?
I didn’t wait thirty years to captain the greatest ship in the world just to murder millions, if that was the plan!
I had faced death on several prior occasions but those instances were for something in which I believed. This, I felt, was starting to feel like provocation, pure and simple.
And, little did I know, I was not given the half of it.
However, Nikolai Alexi, Kapitan, 2nd Rank, was given a full briefing but, I, the captain of my own boat, Valentin Vasili, wasn’t even invited!
I thought: This kid is part of the siloviki clan and more trusted than I, a loyal officer of thirty years! I snarled to myself as I look at the kid who just turned thirty years of age!
I’m still a bit confused: I am pretending to travel towards the old NATO underwater listening stations that have long been abandoned. The Cold War G.I.U.K. Gap between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom was the only way Russian subs could travel if we wanted to reach the oceans of the earth.
I then proudly forgot about my confusion, thinking:
Was… was the only way we could travel to reach other oceans!
The West was clueless as to my president’s true intentions. The United States had pressed its famous “Reset button” and had reduced its air, naval and ground strength to unprecedented low levels in light of the “new peace” between the U.S. and my country.
NATO was no better.
For example, the Royal Norwegian Navy sold their military base at Olavsvern. The base was built into the side of a solid rock mountain and housed submarine hangers that could withstand a direct nuclear strike.
It cost NATO five hundred million to build and would track all Russian sea vessels from Russian Naval bases on the Kola Peninsula, but no more.
It sold for five million U.S. dollars, a mere one percent of its cost to build!
It’s now rented to a “research group” owned by the Russian government!
I thought,
We are finally going to see some peace dividends. This caterpillar drive, I’ve helped work on my whole life, could be put to some important peacetime uses.
As they say in America:
Boy, was I stupid!
Just before I left I saw the president of Russia, Ivan Mironovich, on TV.
He made yet another bold pronouncement on, state-controlled, Russian TV-12.
The president said,
“Russia & China will co-operate with all of our friends and allies as we have many mutual economic and military interests around the world. We shall continue to hold regular, joint military exercises with China to show America and the West that we will not be bullied.”
I saw German banking expert, Hans Meiner, interviewed just before that. He said,
“Russia and China have become the world’s leading buyers of gold to weaken the world’s dependence on the almighty U.S. dollar. A new Cold War has already erupted in the financial sector. And like China’s President, Ji Xixping, stated: ‘The world’s economy is at a critical juncture.’”
This alone would not have worried me but there are other worrisome events taking place:
Several government ministries have now blocked over one million Russian web pages and invited Chinese experts to show them how to block even more.
More worrisome: Journalism had become a very dangerous business in my country.
Scores of journalists had been jailed.
A worse fate had befallen six dissidents: Murder.
One was a friend of mine.
It was safer these days to be a common criminal than it was to be a dissident or an opposition journalist.
And the siloviki had the common criminals on their side too. With illegal drugs, alcohol and cigarettes and much more.
In addition, I’ve noticed dozens of hardened, underground bunkers being built in or near important government buildings and homes.
In fact, I recently rode on the underground subway that goes from President Mironovich’s house outside Moscow to a leadership command center, completely underground.
These hardened sites are for one purpose and one purpose only:
Preparation for a first strike nuclear war on the West!
So there I was, on my couch, watching my favorite TV show starring: Olga Kasparov.
She is a friend and a very, very cautious journalist interviewing the President of Russia.
More courageous journalists had openly nicknamed the president: Ivan the Terrible, Ivan the Terminator, or just Crazy Ivan.
The President, in his humility, preferred: Ivan the Great!
So I have a nice tall glass of Russian Standard Platinum vodka watching our president on the TV say:
“The Americans try to blame Russia for everything wrong with the world. We Russians have a word for this: Russophobia.”
“For example, Guccifer 2.0 has hacked U.S. Democratic Party emails and state election boards.”
“Americans claim Guccifer is Russian intelligence services.”
“However, our intelligence services tell me: These are disgruntled people in the CIA and in American intelligence agencies who don’t like or trust their own corrupt bosses. Russia is blamed for all this American hacking but Edward Snowden has proven the American government has been illegally surveilling millions of their own citizens. Russia would never interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”
“However, I will stand up to the arrogant American leadership that’s not trusted by their own CIA. We love the American people but I shall never allow our seas to become a pond for NATO or the American military in which they can freely play. We shall help our friends like the Syrians and the Iranians. And we shall build up our defensive forces in our territory, especially on The Crimean Peninsula.” said Crazy Ivan confidently.
I practically spit my expensive Russian vodka clear across the room!
“Our territory?”
“The Crimean Peninsula?”
I understood exactly what Crazy Ivan was saying:
First, this would rally ordinary Russians to an increasingly dictatorial president, claiming to stop Western aggression while he moves further and further into “our territory.”
Ukraine!
Second, it was to misdirect attention away from Russia and my Severstal.
And it worked!
While a brand new class of Borei sub, the Knyaz Vladimir, would pretend she was on sea trials tooling around the Barents Sea, for photo ops, I dove TK-20 deep, deeper, silent and in the opposite direction.
As I did, I put on a pair of old iPod headphones and hit play: ‘A Mad Russian’s Christmas’ by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.[1]
How appropriate, just seven days ’til Christmas!
Merry Christmas, Mrs. Vasili, I thought as I commanded,
“Caterpillar drives to full speed.”
“Aye, captain. Caterpillar drives to full speed.”
We would soon be under Arctic ice heading directly to Alaska!
And then it hit me:
Oh God no!
Palmer Glacier — Mount Hood, Oregon
My Diary
Seven Days ’til Christmas
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