EX- PUTIN AIDE: Russia would attack Russians to justify war in Ukraine"

[link to www.globalpost.com]
“Right now, Russian special forces from the 22nd Brigade are in Ukraine, and we should expect staged attacks on Russian soldiers and citizens.”

Andrei Illarionov doesn't mince words. For the past few days, the senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, DC, has been telling anyone who would listen that Russian President Vladimir Putin is intent on an all-out war with Ukraine and isn't all that fussy about how he gets there.

In a telephone interview with GlobalPost this week, the 52-year-old Illarionov, who until 2005 was a key economic adviser to the Russian president, sounded the alarm about his former boss.

“[Putin] wants to overthrow the government [in Kyiv] and start a civil war,” he said. “Why not? The reality is that Obama and the rest of the world will do nothing.”

While the international community shakes its collective head disapprovingly and talks about sanctions, Illarionov insists that the benefits of invading Ukraine far outweigh the risks for Putin.

The Russian president is alarmed at events in neighboring Ukraine, where a wave of protests toppled the Moscow-friendly elected president and installed a more Westward-looking leader.

Analysts say Putin is determined, at all costs, to bring Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit and, in the process, return the sunny Crimean peninsula — a traditional Russian elite playground the Soviets gifted to Ukraine in 1954 — back to Russia.

“He will have done what nobody else could do: He brought Crimea back,” Illarionov said. “The Russian people will be grateful. Putin will be in power forever.”

According to Russia’s Constitution, there’s no limit on the total number of years a president can serve. A leader is barred from more than two consecutive terms, which explains why Putin and his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, switched jobs for four years in 2008.

More from GlobalPost: Ukraine's crisis is a wake-up call for the West

Putin is now in his third term, and, at a fairly vigorous 61, shows few signs of slowing down.

So be prepared for some very dark days, Illarionov says.

The former Kremlin insider will not divulge the source of his information about the “spetsnaz,” or special forces, that he says are looking to stage provocations against Russians, but he is convinced that something is in the works.

Putin and his team will resort to what the former presidential aide said are the Kremlin’s tried-and-true methods: provocation, violence, and outright lies.

“Look at what has been done before,” Illarionov sa

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