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.