Summary
Russia will continue to “clean house” in removing or functionally neutralizing uni-polar-linked elements in the country whether through public or discrete actions, and this will empower the country to more assuredly practice its multi-vectored diplomacy of geopolitical balancing and thus strengthen its position as the core of the emerging Multi-polar World Order.
House Cleaning
2016 was a wonderful year for Russian patriots, as President Putin got them excited by going after corrupt Economic Development Minister Ulyukaev and arresting him in mid-November for accepting bribes. Ulyukaev is a hated figure among patriotic Russians who see him as a neoliberal sellout to the uni-polar world order, so his removal from the political scene was met with joy by many people.
The Russian government insists that this was just a simple anti-corruption operation and that there wasn’t anything deeper to it, but popular military analyst and blogger The Saker predicted earlier in the year that Putin would undertake such a move against what he calls “Medvedev’s allies”, or in other words, the “Atlantic Integrationists” who behave as a sixth column on behalf of the US.