DESPERATE STRATEGY

What might be the consequences of widening the sources of instability against Russia? Is Turkey's repositioning an advantage or a disadvantage?

 

By Sidney Hey

The events of the past week in Ukraine have prompted the White House and NATO to launch moves outside the Ukrainian theatre with the clear objective of complicating the situation for Russia. Once again, military and intelligence advisers commissioned in Kiev realised the mistake of provoking Russia with the attack on the Kerch Bridge.

Beyond the parsimonious Western news reports and the Biden administration's comments peppered with propaganda that is not credible at this point, the reports on the ground are overwhelming. This was experienced firsthand by mercenary groups working with British ex-SAS advisors in preparing special operations involving the waterborne drone attack on the Crimean bridge.

According to confidential sources, these task forces operating alongside the SBU in Odessa and Nikolayev could feel the “Kalbir” and “Kinzal” missiles falling on their heads destroying important supply and fuel depots in the docks on the Black Sea shore. “Sirens blared and anti-aircraft batteries fired into nothingness and a second later the ground shook from the impact of one of those damn missiles”, said a British mercenary who escaped the attack.

Another major absentee was the US Patriot anti-aircraft system which, had it been operational, could have done little to intercept the hypersonic missiles. 

The Russian attacks were replicated and occurred at the same time on the entire Ukrainian port infrastructure, as evidenced by the explosions in Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Kirovograd, Nikolayev, Odessa, Poltava and Cherkasy, which, in addition to the damage, left the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defences exhausted.

These strikes were not only in retaliation for the Kerch bridge, but also for having been using the agreed grain corridor as an access route for smuggling Western weaponry. Russian intelligence was aware of this perfidy and kept the executive informed of these shipments and their destinations, demonstrating that Zelensky and his backers (led by the US) care little about food supplies to poorer countries and the impact on global costs. It was for this reason that Russia terminated an agreement that the US and its partners once again ended up violating.

At the same time, the Americans with the help of their partners (mainly British) were already preparing to reactivate other theatres. Syria is one of them, and so the US forces still occupying the north of the country with the cooperation of Kurdish armed gangs and jihadists fortified in Idlib (where, among others, MI6 assets are sheltering), have tried to trouble the Damascus government and the Russian contingent. This could not be happening without the agreement of Ankara which, let us remember, was the central partner in NATO's ploy to use jihadists (Jabbat Al Nusra, ISIS, among others) to try to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic and reshape the region.

We witnessed Erdogan welcoming Sweden and claiming that “Ukraine deserved to be a member of NATO” while shaking hands with an enraged Zelensky in a supreme effort to feign disappointment. The bizarre display was a bad sign for Russia.

As we saw, Erdogan not only turned a blind eye to the Islamophobia on display in Sweden with the burning of copies of “The Koran” and the constant attacks on Muslims living there, but having been conformed at the Vilnius summit (omitting the principle of indivisible security), there will surely be no problem for the Kurdish collaborators of the Americans to operate unhindered against Damascus. All this fits with the Turkish leader's treacherous nature, a quality that is well known in Moscow. The problem for Erdogan is that his Judeo-Christian partners do not guarantee that they will not operate against Turkey.

For Washington and especially for military advisers in the Pentagon, embarrassing Russian logistics is a priority objective to try to disempower him in actions over Ukraine. At the same time, Moscow is aware of this move, and Vladimir Putin in particular knows that it is not a question of exerting more force, but of knowing how to wait.

In the meantime, and to oil this strategy, the Americans and NATO are counting on the collaboration of Israel which, obviously denying this link and no doubt taking advantage of the pragmatism of the Turkish leader, is launching its air attacks with drones, surface-to-surface missiles and from the Golan Heights on Damascus, without the United Nations attending to these repeated (hundreds of attacks recognised by Netanyahu) cases of aggression as foreseen in Chapter VII of the Charter.

But this move may bring more complications than benefits, and Tel Aviv knows that the risks are high. What if Russian troops are killed again as they have been? The current circumstances are too different and dangerous to risk Moscow legitimately retaliating for further such actions.

In the meantime, Erdogan's sudden but expected U-turn suggests that Turkey will not be neutral in the current conflict and may allow the MIT (in cooperation with the CIA) to deploy protected ISIS assets after the fall of Mosul in 2017. If this is possible, Moscow will have already foreseen it and if it is proven that there are plans to act within Russia, Erdogan will no doubt not have a second chance to apologise with crocodile tears like those he shed to Vladimir Putin after the November 2015 downing of the SU-24 aircraft.