Elijah J. MAGNIER
In recent weeks, Russia was under a terrorist assassination attack in the heart of Moscow when a bomb exploded under Darya Dugina’s car, killing the daughter of the Russian philosopher Alexandre, known to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The US intelligence officers claimed that elements of the Ukrainian security forces were behind the terrorist attack and authorised the assassination. Also, a few weeks later, the Russian pipeline that supplies Europe with gas and runs under the Baltic Sea in an area heavily monitored by NATO forces was blown up in different locations. US President Joe Biden had promised he “will be able to bring Nord Stream 2 to an end”.
The consequences of the explosions in the gas pipeline fall in favour of the US’s policy. It closed the path for European leaders who might have weakened in front of their citizens if they had been willing to contemplate the return of the Russian gas flow to the continent due to the severe inflation and rising energy prices. Russia could regain the gas delivery to Europe if included in the investigation. Also, repairing the sabotaged lines can be helpful only if Europe wants to restore gas flow to the mainland, which is unlikely to occur unless Moscow shows more determination to win the war quickly and the US and its allies accept their defeat.
Furthermore, last week, a truck with explosives blew up on the bridge linking Crimea with Russia at a perfectly organised time, during the crossing of a supply train to the Russian forces in the south of Ukraine. The international community never condemned the terrorist attack, but US and Ukrainian intelligence sources claimed that Ukraine was behind the attack. Russia responded by bombing selective targets in over twenty Ukrainian cities, re-establishing the moral balance on the battlefield and on social media among anti-US supporters.
As the West presents it, are these tactical hits considered a real blow to a Russian leadership struggling to win over the US and NATO in Ukraine? What are the general losses? Who has had the upper hand thus far?
WWI was not triggered by a Serbian assassinating the Austrian archduke in 1914. The war was an inevitable German challenge to Great Britain and the build-up of nationalism in Europe. In Ukraine, the war was not triggered by Russia’s attack on February the 22d. It has had many reasons to occur for over a decade now. The broken US verbal promises to Moscow following the fall of the Soviet Union; the expansion of NATO where the US prepared the future uprising of Russia; the fear of unity between China and Russia challenging the US “Western order”; The growing influence and solidarity among Asian nations; the economic wealth accumulated by Russia in the last decades due to the selling of its natural resources at an attractive price; the effect of the cost of the Russian gas on the very expensive liquify US gas; the once growing colossal business trade between Europe and Russia; the waking up of the Russian bear in 2015 during the war in Syria to defend its access to warm Mediterranean waters; the reconfirmation of the US hegemony over Europe reacting to the plan to have its own army and detach itself from a “brain dead NATO”.
Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, has been chosen as the best US war theatre for its loyalty to Washington and readiness to play the most crucial role in confronting Russia regardless of the consequences. Kyiv is ready to offer the country and its inhabitants to fight Russia in a proxy war. The US could have done nothing against Russia without Ukraine’s readiness for sacrifice.
This US objective has been carefully planned since the 2014 Maidan coup when Washington was responsible for appointing the future Ukrainian leaders, disregarding the EU interest and well-being. The US-NATO training of the Ukrainian army for confronting Russia started in 2015 under President Barack Obama and not in February 2022. The current US administration officially wished to annex Ukraine with minor damage but had been preparing for war for a long time. He who sows the wind reaps the storm, and Biden got what had been wished for.
Some people in the West resist the idea that the ongoing war in Ukraine is between Washington and Russia. However, a four-star general Jack Keane (former vice chief of staff of the US army), has said that “the US has invested $66 billion in the Kyiv regime, a relatively small sum, which helped in arming Ukraine and motivating the public for a war against Russia. It is quite well worth it. We (US soldiers) are not doing the fighting, but Ukraine is (on our behalf).”
Moreover, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said that his country, along with more than forty countries – beyond NATO allies – have established a Contact Group at the US Air Base in Ramstein, Germany, “to express commitment and intensify the support to Ukraine.”
The US has been the driving force ahead of all European and western countries in sending weapons, offering intelligence support and “US and allied Special Forces” on the ground in Ukraine. Many more elements confirm that the US and its NATO allies are directly involved in an entire proxy war to weaken Russia and outlast President Vladimir Putin by investing more than $200 million per day to achieve its target. Ukraine just volunteered as a theatre to defend the “global international security order” (in fact, the US hegemony), as General Mark Milley, the Joint Chief of Staff Chairman, said.
So far, the US has succeeded on several military and economic levels and gathered enormous gains from the war on Russia in Ukraine. It is reviving NATO, suspending the Nord Stream 1, selling its expensive gas, breaking the financial Russian-European relationship and pushing Europe to send weapons to Ukraine to confirm the continent’s military involvement. All these are tremendous achievements for the US in a war where those killed are tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers but no Americans.
However, there is another damage relating to the US domestic affairs: The US oil reserves are called upon, the price of food and gasoline are increasing, and two-thirds of the world has rejected the US hegemony, waiting for the result of the confrontation. The economic and energy damage Europe suffers also falls to the US advantage. Europe is buying expensive US gas, and European industry is impoverished because the war’s circumstances eliminate it as a competitor to the US industry. The well-being of Europe is certainly not the US’s top priority in this ongoing war in Ukraine. Many EU leaders have accepted being under the US dominance and leadership for years to come.
In the past months, the US and its allies gathered in the US air base in Germany, at Ramstein, and managed to plan for the Ukrainian army to reconquer thousands of square kilometres in the northern province of Kharkiv. They also slowed down the Russian advance in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Russia controls more than half of the two regions declared following a referendum of four provinces, part of the Russian territories. Moreover, Ukrainian forces re-captured the city of Lyman, in Donetsk province, in a successful counter-offensive.
The US and its NATO allies are purposefully provoking President Putin to use more lethal weapons to accuse him of further brutality. This is how the West justified Ukraine’s increasing military and financial support when EU nations faced financial difficulties. The US aims to spread fear among the European population by claiming Russia’s ambitions to expand its control to other Western European countries after Ukraine. The other US objective is to embarrass Putin domestically and make him lose popularity in front of warmongers who want Russia to win at all costs and destroy Ukraine.
The end game in the West is to see Russia plunge further into the Ukrainian mire to destroy its economy or change the regime. The US’s bottom line is to ensure that Europe believes Russia should be stopped in Ukraine before it expands its control over the continent. On the other hand, Russia needs European finance for Europe to prosper and buy more gas and other natural material ( Lithium, nickel, fertilisers, wood) but not to impoverish the EU purposefully.
In Russia, the former Russian intelligence KGB officer and current President Putin announced that “Ukrainian intelligence forces were behind the terrorist attacks”. However, a high-EU official in Brussels said, “Putin understands which intelligence service has the capabilities to carry out similar attacks and has the intelligence on the ground and the technicality to send these kinds of messages to Russia. Since 2014, nothing in Ukraine happened, mainly when the war started, without being sanctioned by US officials directly involved in Kyiv”.
Moscow accused the Ukrainian intelligence service of the sabotage and terrorist attack on the bridge. However, it is unlikely that the western intelligence services were not involved, at least the CIA, when the US has been pouring billions into “conquering” the politicians and military leaders in Kyiv since 2014.
If what the EU official said is correct, Putin knows who is the real responsible but wanted to send a message to the US that he accepts for Ukraine to be the battlefield and blamed Ukraine for the sabotage and terrorist attacks. The Russian President realises the rules of engagement and that the face-to-face war against the US and NATO is destructive for the world’s population. Therefore, it is in the global interest to contain the war between the two superpowers in one theatre. However, tactical hits and intelligence strikes are part of that war because victory is for those who win at the end of the battle and have the last word.
Undoubtedly, these supposedly Ukrainian strikes are fuelling the Russian nationalists, who demand a more violent war and a harsher strike against the US and NATO proxy war in Ukraine. The social and media war is equally essential to the battlefield. The West wins on social media and mainstream media as long as Russia doesn’t offer a demonstration of force on the battlefield and hits back in a show of power.
This is precisely what President Putin did in the last days against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities to boost the morale of all the anti-US streams. Putin’s restraint would have been seen as a weakness in the West and the Kremlin and that the US is prevailing. Russia’s answer of bombing selective targets in many Ukrainian cities has a deterrence objective to stop the various intelligence services led by the US and prevent their invisible war to embarrass Russia. Otherwise, there would be a hefty price to pay.
But Russia has registered several strategic gains that the West is undermining or side-lining. The consequences of western sanctions hit the US and its allies. President Joe Biden is angry with Saudi Arabia for its approval during the OPEC+ meeting to reduce the oil production by two million barrels to protect the oil revenues of 23 nations who have decided to ignore the US demand. Biden wanted OPEC+ to preserve the high output of oil to reduce the price and for many countries not to blame the US for its sanctions on Russia, one of the largest producers of energy worldwide. As his mid-term is closing, Biden is trying to register any substantial victory in Ukraine against Russia before the congressional elections. So far, the Russian economy is surviving, which cannot be said to be the case for the US’s European allies. Saudi Arabia and Russia, the oil-producer giants, had a joint stand at OPEC+ that falls against the US and its allies’ interests.
Moreover, the war against Russia has emptied all the western warehouses, which now complain about the critical level of their strategic weapons reserves. The West is exhausting its weapons and finance, proposing tens of billions of dollars to keep Ukraine fighting, disregarding the high cost of reconstruction after the war.
The US has indeed selected Ukraine as its battlefield against Russia. But it is also correct to say that the Russian army is fighting on Ukrainian territories. Therefore, Putin can afford to lose already conquered Ukrainian territories when, in the first months, he already occupies over 100,000 sqkm that used to belong to Kyiv and not Moscow. Consequently, any withdrawal of the Russian army from any city, regardless of how big or small the surface is, is not fundamentally a loss for Putin. Preserving the life of the Russian troops is more important for Moscow than holding on to the Ukrainian territories and dying for them.
Russia cannot win all its battles against the 30-NATO nations. But its withdrawal from several cities does not confirm the victory of the West in the ongoing war. The Russian President is preparing a new army of hundreds of thousands of men who will plunge into the battle this winter, which is expected to be harsh on everyone in Europe. Putin has appointed a new Russian military commander – the seventh since the Russian war began last February – to lead the upcoming winter battle to end Ukrainian gains in the east and south of Ukrainian territories and exhaust the West’s resources. That indicates that more ties of troops will be seen, and more intelligence services hit on both sides are expected.
For a long time, the CIA did not act so openly against Russia, and the United States did not engage in a war of this magnitude against a superpower country determined to win at all costs. However, Ukraine’s territory is the theatre of the military operations, and the collateral (economic) damage affects Europe this time, the natural US partner in its last decades’ wars. Washington can withstand long years of this war of attrition. Does Moscow have the patience to sustain a long battle with the will to win at any cost? It seems so to Putin’s determination to grab more Ukrainian territories and destroy more of the country’s infrastructure. Undoubtedly the belligerents are preparing for a hot but rather cold forthcoming winter.
History observes the shake-up of the Pax Americana that is taking place in modern times. Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan and other states are prepared for new world order. This is building up in Asia with solid industry, an exchange of trade in local currency, large reserves of food, and a prosperous future for those who represent almost half of the world’s population. This leaves the West, which means only 11 per cent of the world’s population, struggling to find enough energy to fill up its gasoline stations and thinking about its crumbling industry and gas reserves in 2023.