Significant Drone Strike on Largest Russian Arms Depot

Dima of the Military Summary Channel, reporting very shortly after the event occurred and now endorsed by some other media I have seen this morning of September 18 (California time), including Radio Free Europe - speaks of a 100 Ukrainian drone attack on Russia of which some got through to the town of Torovets, 400 miles west of Moscow in the Tver region. Dima claims that Russia’s largest ammo dept was hit and possibly destroyed; RFE sources and witnesses speak of a nearby village having been destroyed and of other local damage.

Dima suggested there was some controversy over the nature of the missiles (in other words, could this have been a NATO long- range missile, which the scale of the damage might indicate) and about their launch location, with some sources suggesting they were launched in the Baltics, currently a venue for NATO military exercises.

If the latter is proven or found even to be just likely then we are talking about the kind of NATO involvement of which Putin last Thursday warned, in effect, would constitute the start of World War Three.

The other major smoldering trigger of World War Three is in the Lebanon. Reports today mostly suggest that the pager attack yesterday which killed at least 200 and wounded around 3000 was not to do with the pagers’ lithium batteries as Associated Press had initially indicated, but the result of the injection into each phone of a small packet of explosive. Further explosions are reported today.

Associated Press cites an anonymous source claiming that Israel fully briefed the US on this operation. If so, the US must add itself to its own list of terrorist states and organizations, and sanction itself. And if the US was party to the information of an upcoming act of terrorism and did nothing to prevent it happening, then the US is implicated in yet another episode of egregious terrorism carried out indiscriminately.

We can fully expect that the estimated numbers of casualties and deaths will increase in the coming days.

First reports suggest that this act of mass terrorism has not impacted the state of tension between Southern Lebanon and the IDF, but has elicited Hezbollah threats of commensurate retaliation.

My own assessment is that Hezbollah has suffered a major setback, thus creating a window of opportunity for Israel to invade. This could very well lead to further escalation that would drag Iran and then Russia into the war, but we should also listen to those who say that Iran is a divided polity, compromised by Mossad penetration, in which reformists are not sympathetic to Iranian expenditure of scarce resource on support for Palestine.

Both these developments (above) are extremely recent. The relevant facts and their significance are likely to evolve and to surprise in the coming days.