Real War vs Ukraine PR Terror (3): Terrorists Captured

Crocus City Hall, Moscow

Conventional terror attacks are a frequent recourse of an otherwise losing entity that seeks continuing media attention (and western funding), so it would be no great surprise to find that Ukraine or the US or the intelligence agency of a European power - the CIA or MI6 come to mind - were behind the so-called ISIS Khorosan attack (i.e. related to Central Asia) on a rock concert at the Crocus City Hall in an area of Moscow yesterday, March 22. Extremist Islamist or Salafist movements are so frequently used as camouflage by imperial powers for their own nefarious purposes. As is indicated below, signs that this was actually an ISIS attack are diminishing.

Distracting from Russian Victory

And what better purpose than a blood-curdling terror attack (perhaps as many 133 dead and well over a hundred, possiby hundreds, injured) to distract attention from Russia’s clear demonstration that it has in effect won the war in Ukraine. The demonstration was Russia’s second wave of missile, drone and bomb attacks throughout Ukraine, in as many days, targeting power and energy sources. These encountered little by way of Ukrainian air defense responses because Ukrainian air defense, what remains of it, is concentrated on the combat lines.

For the moment it seems that Ukraine is resisting the temptation - or Russian provocation - to withdraw air defenses and relocate them around Kiev or power stations. A significant weakness of the Western-supplied Patriot system, by the way (of which Russia has recently taken out five) is that it can only fire in one direction, so is vulnerable to Russian missiles that can be redirected in flight and that have the capability of turning around and striking from behind.

The thinking may be that were Ukraine to relocate air defenses back to the cities and power plants, then it would essentially be giving Russia the green light to move westwards at dramatic speed, mopping up all those many local conflicts which it could win with air superiority or which it deliberately keeps going as tactics of attritional warfare. These include battles for Kupyansk, Siverne, Bilohorivka, Terny, Ivanivske (where Russian forces have now taken the high ground between Ivanivske and Chasiv Yar, opening the way for Russia to consolidate its control over Ivaniske, complete its attack on Chasiv Yar, and enforce the collapse of Klishchiivka and Andrivka to the south and of Bohdanivka to the north), Berdychi, Pervomaiske, Novomykhailivka, Staromaiorske, and Robotyne. In April the ground will harden and this will benefit the speed of Russian advances westwards, with the help of Russian guided 3000 FAB bombs. The latest Russian missile attacks on Ukraine, in addition to hitting energy facilities, have targeted Western weapons stocks and weapons production, supply and repair facilities.

FSB Captures the Culprits

The FSB has reported to President Putin that 11 people have been arrested in association with the Crocus Hall incident. of whom four participated directly in the Moscow attack. Up until now we had heard only of two being captured and the others escaping by car in the direction of Ukraine. In a subsequent address to the Russian people, Putin indicated that there are others whom the authorities must hunt down. He said that the four major terrorists, those who had fired and killed, had been captured in Briansk region on their way to crossing the border into Ukraine where an exit “window” had been prepared for them on the Ukrainian side. Prepared caches of weapons and ammunition were involved. Putin drew comparisons with Nazi massacres in World War Two. Putin has recently equated the Ukrainian government with the Nazis, and in a recent broadcast I note that Moscow-based analyst Mark Sleboda gives empirical examples of the extent to which the regime and its supporters do exemplify Nazi believes and practices, including Satanism. The notion that Russia itself staged the attack as a false flag is manifestly absurd.

Western Foreknowledge

Two weeks ago the US issued warnings to American citizens in Russia of just such an event, minus specific details, and so did the embassies of Germany and the United Kingdom. The complicity of these countries is a real possibility. Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, backed by his former colleague Ray McGovern, noting the near immediacy with which the US State Department claimed that Ukraine did NOT do it, and bearing in mind US foreknowledge as indicated by its warning to US citizens in Russia, conclude that Ukraine was indeed responsible. US claims to the contrary, it does not seem likely that the terror advisory was shared with Russia (the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has indicated no such thing). If western capitals did have prior warning, then further clarification is needed as to where that information came from, and the clarification should be shared with Russia.

It is true of course that Moscow has experienced comparable terrorist attacks in the past, some of them Chechan. We should bear in mind how Western intelligence sought to weaponize the Chechan conflict to serve Western interests. The victims once again are innocents, many of them young people. Larsry Johnson notes how in many previous terrorist instances the CIA has trained unsavory people over whom it has insufficient control.

Johnson recalls how, by contrast, advance information a year ahead of the Boston marathon of plans for such an event was passed by Moscow to the US.

The dialectics of war point first to the greater freedom of maneuver that these developments hand to Putin, given the darker public mood in Russia, in determining Russia’s response. An 87% vote, on a 77% turnout, in the presidential election a few days ago has already made Putin almost invulnerable in terms of options. Given the capture of some of the terrorists it seems very likely that we will soon have much better information as to culpability and, therefore, the nature of the retaliation.

ISIS Less Likely

I notice Alexander Mercouris’ caution this morning of March 23 that it is too soon to be sure that the attack was NOT a genuine ISIS Khorsan attack given the softness of its target and its savagery, and ISIS was a major target of Russian forces alongside Syrian during the conflict in Syria. But ISIS is now a much diminished; it is not clear what exactly it is and what it represents and who may control it. Given what we now know of likely Ukrainian implication in the attacks, the involvement of ISIS is beginning to seem less likely. As Mercouris himself notes, it is unlikely that members of ISIS would have allowed themselves to have been taken alive. The ISIS modus operandum is that of suicide attack.

Eastern Ukraine the Aim

Putin’s spokesman Peshkov yesterday, March 22, seems to confirm Russian intent to take the whole of Eastern Ukraine, including all of Zapporizhzhia and all of Kherson, to which it would be prudent for us to add Kharkiv, Kiev and Odessa. Peshkov addresses Russian refusal to deal with or even live with the Neonazi regime of Kiev. Russia is therefore now formally wedded to a mission for regime change in Ukraine or even, rather, to an entire change of the Ukrainian state.

Putin’s demeanor since his recent re-election appears ever more determined to wear down the increasingly dejected forces of Ukraine. Western media claims of previous Russian attempts to restart negotiations should be read with skepticism. Russia does not need negotiations while there are signifiant further gains to be achieved. Zelenskiy won’t negotiate because he is a fanatic under instruction to keep Ukrainians dying so that other Europeans don’t have to; and European leaders fear exposure of the full vanity and greed of their project.

Russophobia RIP

The writing is on the wall for this long history of fabricated Western fearmongering and Russophobia. Glenn Diesen this morning references a critical 1836 quotation by John Stuart Mill testifying to this very same phenomenon even at that time (not forgetting of course the then recency of the Napoleonic Wars and Napolean’s doomed invasion of Russia). And so it continued through the Crimean Wars of 1853-1856, isolation of Russia by the Triple Alliance 1892-1915, Western support for the anti-revolutionary White Russians during the Bolshevik revolution, intial support for Hitler’s equating of Russian Communism with international Jewry, the measures taken towards the end of World War Two (including the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki) to prepare the world for the subsequent Cold War, continuing anti-Russian manouvering following the demise of the Soviet Union to move NATO ever closer to Russian borders and the manufacture of a string of ludicrous propaganda smears including the blaming of Russia for the murder, in Britain, of Litvinenko, and for the attempted murder, in Britian, of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, the claims from intelligence cut-out Bellingcat and the Dutch inquiry that Russia had used a BUK missle to deliberately bring down MH17 in 2014, the claim that elected Ukrainian President Yanukovyich was militantly pro-Russian, the provenly silly claims that Russia interfered with the 2016 US election ("the Russiagate Hoax”) and that Russia was behind the scandal of “Hunter Biden’s laptop” which is a significant but not the only source of evidence in Republican-led investigations of Biden family corruption.

Russia and BRICS

All this while Russia is experiencing falling inflation (amidst still inflatiory pressures), record investment activity, increasing savings deposits, increasing production, high business confidence, record consumer spending, and high employment (with unemployment at 2.6%). The expanding BRICS alliance of which Russia is a founder member, is engaged in planning for a major shift to a dedollarized trading system. Escobar reported yesterday that this is maturing far faster than expected.

Palestine

On Palestine, the US call to the UNSC for a ceasefire turns out not to have actually been a call for an immediate ceasefire since it was conditional on hostage releases and called for support for ongoing conversations with Hamas in Doha. It went to a vote despite clear knowledge that it would be vetoed by China and Russia. As Ray McGovern commented yesterday, this kind of thing gives hypocrisy a bad name. It is, Larry Johnson adds, simply a domestic political play to bamboozle US voters.