The long-awaited offensive from Ukraine has begun. So far the results have been mixed with both sides claiming victories per the normal flow of propaganda. None of that matters.
What is not up for discussion is the tragedy, aimed squarely at civilians, of the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, attacked last night releasing the Dnieper river into the valley in Kherson oblast.
This dam provided not only local electric power but also cooling water for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.
The ZNPP has been the subject of numerous incidents since this war began with battles being fought over it, and accusations flying wildly from the West as to how irresponsible Russia was. None of that turned out to be true as ZNPP was set up to be the site of a massive false flag involving UN inspectors which failed.
It doesn’t matter who you back in this war or whose incentives you sympathize with. Acts like this serve many purposes, some of them military, some of them political.
And they follow a particular pattern.
Like the narrative from last year surrounding the attacks on the ZNPP, this attack on the dam begs very obvious questions.
Why would Russia attack a nuclear power plant in an area under its control?
Going back to Syria right after Donald Trump took office in early 2017, why would Assad gas civilians when he and Russia had the momentum and was clearly winning the war in Idlib province, invoking the wrath of the world?
Why would Russia blow up Nordstream 1 and 2 as they were initially accused of?
Why would Russia attack a dam in territory they control that provides local power to Kherson, cooling water to the ZNPP and fresh water to Crimea?
The answers to all of these questions is simply, “They wouldn’t.”
So now let’s do a little more historic digging into past behavior.
Before the war officially started who blew up power stations denying Crimea power in the fall of 2015, creating blackouts and real civilian hardship?
Who is on record saying that the Minsk Agreements were simply a time-buying exercise to arm Ukraine and freeze Russia for the war we have today?
Who staged a terrorist attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge?
Who has tested the waters on attacking the dam?
Whose leadership continues to go around the world desperately trying to convince rational people that this irrational ethnic war between tribes of Slavs is a fight for the future of western civilization?
Who intentionally helped stoke simmering hatred of all things Russian across the entirety of Eastern Europe to push the world to this moment?
In short, who armed Ukraine while never once acting with one ounce of humility or basic human decency to find a solution that didn’t involve thousands of dead Slavs?
The answer is the same people accusing Russia today of blowing up a dam that severely weakens their strategic position in southern Ukraine.
The first person out the gate was EU Council President Charles Michel:
The rest of the world will pile on for the next 72 hours or so until some footage or evidence makes its way into the information space. It’s the same pattern as Nordstream, the chemical attacks in Ghouta and Khan Sheykoun, MH-17 and a host of other attacks on civilians over the past decade since Putin helped thwart Obama’s “Coalition of the willing” to take out Assad in 2013 following Ghouta.
Right on schedule: Perfidious Albion weighs in.
Everything in Ukraine is downstream (all puns intended) of that. Everything. It’s all one big long policy decision after another. In this respect Ukraine has been a series of moves on a chess board leading to a particular outcome.
And that outcome will be a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia over Ukraine. It’s what everyone in power actually wants, even when they mouth words to the contrary. EU officials like Michel, EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and now presidential candidates in the US say the same thing.
There can be no victory for Russia in Ukraine. It would be the end of the West.
Waffle House Waitress Nikki Haley is out repeating the lie that Russia will take all of Poland and the Baltics if he wins on CNN. It doesn’t matter that she’ll get 1% of the primary vote, her job is to reinforce the narrative.
We’ve all been waiting for the next big ‘disaster’ to up the ante in Ukraine. It’s been too quiet for too long. Now with the fighting intensifying along multiple fronts, this move is it.
So, with it done what does it mean?
The most obvious is that this materially weakens Russia’s position in Kherson and then Crimea. It follows that this is just the prelude to the long-expected full on attack on Crimea.
It could be some weird statement by the Ukrainians that they are looking for an offramp by drawing an impassable barrier between their territory and Russia’s but I’ll need to see a lot more evidence of that before I can even contemplate it.
Because Occam’s razor reminds us of the intense need to take not only Ukraine to the next level but the entire Davos Great Reset agenda there as well.
For more than a year the West, primarily the US with a lot of British assistance, have tried to craft a humanitarian crisis narrative around Russia to justify a wider war.
This is just the latest example of their handiwork.
The Ukrainians want this to elicit sympathy from gaslit morons with Ukraine flags in the Twitter name.
The Brits need this because their centuries-long feud with Russia simply cannot end with a whimper in Ukraine.
The US thinks they need this because of the ridiculous Great Powers mind virus unleashed on us by our colonial “betters.”
Davos needs this because you can’t roll the world up into your total control if there are any great nations left.
When viewed through the lens of the power-mongers who unleashed this war I leave you with one last question.
What do you call a hundred thousand dead Slavs fighting over swampland?
A good start.
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I remember when I was a child, there was a huge rehash of the Warren Commission report and the “magic bullet” theory, that I was not able to participate in, being too young.
I had a relative on the NYPD who took me aside and whispered “when you are older and get some firearms experience, you will understand why they have called it a MAGIC bullet”. The thought back then was that there must have been some cock-up in evidence collection and/or chain of custody, and that it was a CYA operation, as it was not even possible for veteran NYPDers to think the unthinkable.
Over the past decade, I am continually drawn back to that wondrous “magic bullet” explanation and that naive, believing-period, of my childhood. Why is it that we are now almost always asked to believe in “magic bullets” …the least likely most implausible explanation?
In this day and age, if a gorilla is found roaming around the Bronx, you don’t call the zoo to inquire if they have any gorilla’s missing, but start opining about parallel evolution or about how a gorilla might make a journey from Africa to the Bronx.
The whole UFO revival seems like a similar construction… which thankfully reduces the number of links I have to click-on and stories I have to read. Imagine the consequences to history if Roman or Aztec engineers had got their hands on a modern-day Ford 150?
It seems like our entire Western civilization is based on “magic bullets”. (sigh)
I wonder who is going to drop the first nuke.
I think Russia is ready to kick NATO’s ass. They have been manufacturing and stockpiling all types of missiles and artillery for the past year.
If we take them on, they will be ready. And NATO has enough ammo to fight one or two weeks.
I would say you put your finger on it:
1] You can’t invade a country like Ukraine without a significant (year-long) military build-up that can’t be disguised due to satellite surveillance. Think the allied D-Day preparations which took more than a year. Desert Storm took six months to organize and supply. For example, any real attempt to invade Taiwan would show up months before on US satellites. This past year was the build up phase.
2] Had the Russians put the “build-up” before the initial SMO incursion, NATO would have detected it and significantly strengthened Ukraine, either conventionally or with nuclear weapons, and possibly declared a no-fly zone over Ukraine, daring the Russians to cross it.
3] By keeping the conflict confined to the Donbass it shows restraint. Russia can’t go around stopping former USSR republics or it would suffer blow-back in the 4 “stans” , playing directly into Western hands. The “stans” are politically unstable and need to be delicately managed; all have a significant stranded population of ethnic Russians. Hence the “measured and necessary” seizure of Crimea, for the Sevastopol naval base and tepid support for the breakaway Donetsk areas in 2014. Putin and Lavrov went along with the Minsk accords for eight years, to reassure the “stans” that they were not trying to recreate the USSR.
4] By keeping the conflict confined to the Donbass, it creates the impression of a “foreign war” in Ukrainian eyes. We see a continual stream of disgruntled Ukraine soldiers questioning why they are fighting in the Donbass, for them they don’t feel like the Donbass is their country. That would be a different story in Galicia.
5] The Wagner Group is the face of Russia in the Global South. They are now the “Liberators of Bakhmut” and allowed to publicize that extensively. If you were an African leader, who would you want to invite to your country? The winners or losers of the Battle of Bakhmut? By letting Prigozhin “off the chain”, as a potential challenger to Putin, it is difficult for the West to make the claim that Wagner is a Russian puppet bent on colonizing Africa on behalf of Putin.
My guess is a lot more of the “puzzle pieces” will fall into place when historians have a full look at this in the future. IMHO
So this is why McCarthy did the deal. I don’t think this is a WWIII or nothing scenario. It’s either the “embarrass the USA” strategy, or the “Biden is a wartime President” strategy. I don’t think the Biden strategy will work because any more public appearances risks a broken hip, not just a flub of the teleprompter read or shaking hands with a ghost. A repeat of 2020 may be out of the question, but will a 2022 repeat be enough? They really only need a couple of states extra. The Arizona thing in 2022 was a special case because it is still needed as a CIA drug running and human trafficking hub, so all that is required is an establishment person regardless of party. They can’t let someone like Kari Lake break that up.
The only thing that might hold any of this back is that there are still powerful forces in the USA that don’t want the USA to be embarrassed militarily. They will attempt to walk the line of keeping the gravy train running and avoiding the embarrassment.