As we know, on Saturday, October 8, two sections of the brand-new Kerch bridge linking Russia to the Crimean peninsula, were destroyed. Crimea was recently incorporated manu militari by Vladimir Putin. (Although – everything must be said – it found a certain support among the ethnic Russians that abound in that tortured region of the planet).
What is not known is how they blew up the two sections of the bridge simultaneously. Was it a Ukrainian submarine? Was it a sabotage operation carried out by a truck transporting flammable material? There are eight detainees, presumably subjected to torture sessions, which will end up generating any type of answers induced by the butcher who acts as an interrogator.
Or could they be two Ukrainian-made Neptune missiles, like those used to sink the Russian flagship Moskva (Moscow) in the Black Sea on April 14, a few weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine?
If I had to bet, I would bet on the option of the Neptune missiles from the Ukrainian factory Luch. It is not a matter of nationalism; it has to do with the fact that the Americans watch very carefully that the weapons that they give to the Ukrainians are not used offensively against Russia. They are for defense. Since the Neptune rockets seem to have worked splendidly for them in the Black Sea against the flagship Moskva, they will feel inclined to repeat the feat. What seems unlikely is that they used a truck-bomb. (So far, the only suicides in this wonderfully skeptical age, where there is no belief in the afterlife, are Islamists, who hold other beliefs.)
In any case, Putin reacted like an angry bull after the attack on “his bridge.” He built it in record time. It was his project. It was a personal matter. The sinking of the Moskva was not. She was a ship with a length of 186 meters and a beam (width) of 26 meters, built in the early eighties for a crew of 510 sailors and officers. She was a missile cruiser. To prevent dive raids, the invaders have ridiculously declared it to be a “sacred underwater park.” The Moskva had served to create terror in the Syria of Bashar al-Assad, a puppet of the Russians.
That is why Putin unleashed a missile attack on the capital – Kyiv – and numerous major cities. He was the victim of an uncontrollable fit of rage, despite his proverbial gill breathing. The missiles have hit universities, schools, hospitals and workers’ homes. To the extent that many feared that he would use the adverse course of the war to use nuclear energy against Ukraine.
Fortunately, he didn’t. He thought that the United States would have retaliated, also using nuclear weapons, against Moscow, as we will see below. Ultimately, the United States bears an enormous responsibility in this conflict, which Washington has fully acknowledged. In early 1994, Bill Clinton, then president of the US, Russia’s Boris Yeltsin and Ukraine’s Leonid Kravchuk were part of a “Partnership for Peace” formed by NATO.
Subsequently, Russia promised to collect the almost three thousand atomic missiles deployed on Ukrainian territory, under the watchful eye of the US and England, which served as guarantors of the pact between Moscow and Kyiv, later destroyed by Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine.
It remains to rule out the nuclear threat from Putin. Is it serious? I don’t think so. And I don’t think so for the same reason that Khrushchev had in October 1962 – because he would be totally defeated. If Moscow has lost the conventional war with Ukraine, what would happen to it in a nuclear confrontation against the US? Every rail hub would disappear, as well as every concentration of troops, and Russia’s military bases. They have been observing through satellites for a long time. Satellites that are capable of recognizing the facial features of the major officers, which allows them to assign them the importance they really have.
Naturally, France and England would destroy cities with more than 20,000 and less than 50,000 inhabitants, and then we would see how wise it was to create NATO, and how foolish Vladimir Putin was to start a war that he simply cannot win, not paying attention to one of the wisest advice of Sun Tzu in The Art of War (“avoid battles in which it is impossible for you to win”) as we are seeing very clearly. Simultaneously, Israel would take the opportunity to suppress the Iranian nuclear threat and delay the emergence of that danger for another 20 years.
Is there someone to the right of Putin? Of course. There is always someone who is willing to attack leaders for not being extreme enough. Igor Girkin, a kind of “Scarlet Pimpernel,” but contrary to the fictional character, he denounces Vladimir Putin whenever he can, and accuses him of betraying Mother Russia. Girkin calls himself “Stalkov” – a stalking gunman – and has been declared a “hero of the Russian motherland” on multiple occasions, so it is impossible to rule out the denunciations of a person committed to the semi-independent destiny of “Donetsk,” as it is in Girkin’s case. Sometimes it seems that Putin tries to please or resemble Girkin. [©FIRMAS PRESS]
*@CarlosAMontaner. CAM’s latest book is Sin ir más lejos (Memories). Published by Debate, a label of Penguin-Random House, the book is available through Amazon Books.
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