By Pepe Escobar

August 02, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  The latest demonstrations in Moscow are part of a crude hybrid war US strategy against Russia. But Russia is not easily pliable Brazil. Russians on the scene, sent me their impressions. Example: "It was a farce. Incidents were created right before my eyes with one eye on the newsreels and the other on the police to be sure they were being filmed. There was nothing spontaneous. One demonstrator struck the police and then the cameras were turned on. This happened all over."

Crude hybrid war will be back. And sanctions remain. The ultimate target of sanctions - a neocon wet dream - would be to undermine the government of Russia for good, and replace it with a new Yeltsin mob to restart mass looting. You'll never read this in the WSJ or the FT, of course. The ultimate objective would be to break up Russia into twenty countries, as the Baltic states, and then loot one after another.

Every informed person in Russia knows that in Ukraine, oligarchs are looting and robbing the place blind - all that promoted as "independence from Russia". Ukro-oligarchs were even allowed to steal from IMF loans - as long as they were against Russia.

Two key vectors to watch. I'm not convinced by the actions of the Russian Central Bank. It definitely has not achieved independence from the US. And let's see if US Deep State actors manage to engineer cutting Russia off from SWIFT-CHIPS.

Pepe Escobar is correspondent-at-large at Asia Times. His latest book is 2030. Follow him on Facebook.