On August 20th, Darya Dugina – daughter of the Russian nationalist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin – was killed by a car bomb on her way to Moscow. Like her father, Dugina had been a staunch advocate of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She’d even been sanctioned by the British Government, which described her as “a frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine”.
Two days after her death, the FSB (the successor to Russia’s KGB) alleged that Ukraine was responsible. Yet the Ukrainian Government denied any involvement, and there was speculation that the killing was a false flag carried out by the FSB – perhaps with the aim of bolstering support for the war.
Yesterday, the New York Times poured cold water on the false flag theory. “United States intelligence agencies believe,” the paper reported, “parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina”.
U.S. intelligence agencies are not omniscient, of course. But they have no reason to falsely blame Ukraine, which suggests the leaked information is probably accurate.
What’s more, U.S. officials went out of their way to distance themselves from the killing. As the New York Times noted:
The United States took no part in the attack, either by providing intelligence or other assistance, officials said. American officials also said they were not aware of the operation ahead of time and would have opposed the killing had they been consulted. Afterward, American officials admonished Ukrainian officials over the assassination, they said.
Now, intelligence agencies usually have a reason for leaking information; they don’t do it just to keep the public informed. What could the reason be here?
One possibility is that the U.S. is trying to preempt retaliation from Russia by signalling that it does not condone attacks on civilian targets, and hence that it was not responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. I should emphasise: this is entirely speculative on my part. But the timing of the leak is certainly interesting.
(I’m aware the U.S. has attacked civilian targets in the past: in May 1999, it bombed Serbia’s energy infrastructure, shutting off power to about 80 percent of the country. My point is about what the U.S. might be trying to signal in this particular case.)
On the other hand, Gazprom has announced that part of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline may still be operational, which – as I noted in my article on Tuesday – raises the probability that Russia was behind the sabotage.
Like everyone else, I had been led to believe the sabotage had rendered both pipelines inoperable. This would have been very bad for the Russians, making it highly unlikely that they were responsible. However, if only Nord Stream 1 has been rendered inoperable, the situation for Russia is not nearly so bad.
Since July, Russia has been trying to coax European countries into undermining their own sanctions – perhaps in an effort to split the Western alliance. Europe agreeing to open Nord Stream 2 would therefore be a strategic victory for the Russians, even if it came at the expense of half the pipeline.
In other words: it’s possible that Russia did sabotage the pipelines – as a way to force Europe to open Nord Stream 2 and thereby violate its own sanctions. But to make it look like someone else was responsible, they had to blow up Nord Stream 1 as well as part of Nord Stream 2.
To be clear: I don’t give this theory much credence. But to my mind, Gazprom’s announcement means we can’t rule out Russia as the culprit.
We know that Ukraine was behind the sabotage of Russia’s airfield at Saky in Crimea. And we now have good reason to believe they were behind the assassination of Darya Dugina. Were they also behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines? It seems distinctly plausible.
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This news plus the strange spectacle of Zelensky making a big show of signing Ukraine’s NATO application only to be followed immediately by NATO’s message saying ‘no’ suggests to me that not all is not well in the Ukraine – US alliance.
Hard to know what’s really cooking though.
Whatever it is I struggle to see how it’s in our interests (I mean the UK and it’s citizens)
It was never in our interest to become involved, but our politicians are weak and eager to please their puppet masters and have ensnared us in this web of deceit and misery for the ordinary people in Eastern Ukraine. The plan to destroy Russia has been brewing for quite some time, a despicably evil plot which I pray will never happen.
“Yesterday, the New York Times poured cold water on the false flag theory. “United States intelligence agencies believe,” the paper reported,”
Which is enough to turn the laughter feature on. Ha bloody ha.
So what’s really going on?
The truth will of course be nowhere near this version of events. I suppose it at least alerts us to the likelihood of some other BS coming out of the woodwork which might be vaguely covering for something.
NY Times. Must be true?
‘We’re hunting them down and shooting them like pigs’: How the Ukrainians are taking brutal revenge on the collaborators who’ve betrayed their neighbours – and country – to the Russians
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11284819/How-Ukrainian-intelligence-chiefs-tracking-collaborators-worked-Russians.html
Daily Mail outlines the Nazi style extermination our “allies” are exercising as they retake ethnically Russian areas….death squads.
And this is just reported as if it’s ok. We are living in a sick society. Assassinations are just par for the course.
That said, it is very heartening to see that the vast majority of comments on the article are, to say the least, anti Ukrainian.
Maybe the average D. mail reader has more intelligent insight than the average sheep.
-And, for the life of me I’d never have thought that 2.5 years ago – (something called covid changed my mind on that one).
FFS wake up. Good old USA are the baddies.
The UK, EU, Canada, Oz & NZ are no better & equally deeply implicated by association.
I’m anti-both sides. In a war, no-one has clean hands…
Unless Resident Biden has soiled his diaper.and the Secret Service tidy him up AGAIN.
Yes the Covid plandemic has most certainly awakened a lot of people and not before time! Ukraine is just an extension of the lies and deception we have been subjected to, but now we can see them!
It’s occasionally sensible to read article one is linking to: The gut of the article is about Ukrainian authorities working towards bringing Ukrainians who collaborated with the FSB (Russian secret service) to interrogate Ukrainians enemies under torture to trial:
Kyiv has already opened investigations into 1,309 suspected traitors and launched 450 prosecutions of collaborators accused of betraying their own nation and neighbours.
Some of them (29 killed, 13 wounded) are also being hunted down and attacked by vigilantes. Considering
‘The tortures were all different,’ said Sergey Bolvinov, lead investigator for police in the Kharkiv region. ‘I won’t describe them all… but the lightest was being tortured with electricity.’
One man held in Balakliya’s police station told how guards switched off the noisy ventilation system so everyone could hear the screams of pain from people given electric shocks.
[This referring to police actions during the Russian occupation]
one could argue that these people brought this unto them themselves.
NB: I don’t claim that what the mail reports is necessarily true, just that it absolutely doesn’t support your statement.
You are an annoying Ukrainian shill
“Others are being tracked down and slaughtered by resistance fighters. A list passed to this newspaper by a Kyiv government source identifies 29 such retribution killings, with 13 more assassination attempts that left some targets wounded.
‘A hunt has been declared on collaborators and their life is not protected by law,’ said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior ministry. ‘Our intelligence services are eliminating them, shooting them like pigs.’ “
I’m not responsible for the fact that the article in the Daily Mail doesn’t fit your run-of-the-mill naziing, but it doesn’t. I don’t quite understand why you believe quoting something I wrote about myself out of context (vigilante killings of people complicit in Russian torturing of Ukrainian civilans) would somehow contradict what I wrote.
An advisor to the interior ministry is some mostly non-descript person (ie, what are his actual responsibilities?) without the power to make any decisions. The statement was probably translated (either by him or by the mail) from Ukrainian and while it sounds rather gross when worded in this way, this is not consistent with the remainder of the article (vigilante killings of a small number of collaborateurs among a much larger effort of authorities to bring them to trial) and verbatim translations of idiomatic Ukrainian into English are very unlikely to render the meaning (including connotations) properly.
Lastly, you seem – certainly coinicidentally – to have missed my last sentence: What the Mail wrote doesn’t reflect my opinion on the topic (due to lack of information, I don’t really have one), it just doesn’t support your boilerplate naziing. You could thus legitimately accuse the Daily Mail of Ukrainian shilling but not me (at least if you have other information about this issue).
They are killing civilians who dared to vote to be with Russia, you might ease your conscience by believing the Ukrainian authorities who have strong ties with ‘neo nasties’ are right in what they are doing, but these people in the Donbass have voted to be with Russia and yes it was carried out democratically with over 100 outsiders overseeing these elections.
Politics is stuffed with sociopaths and psychopaths and Ukraine and the West has more than its fair share. How anyone can think these revenge killings are acceptable shows how ‘sick’ we have become.
Whenever I see people making accusations of disseminating misinformation, why do I immediately assume that it is the accusers who are trying to suppress the truth?
Because you are awake/ening.
Perhaps I am being dense but for the life of me I can’t see how the fact that the pipeline is still partially operational makes it slightly more likely to have been Russia that sabotaged it. Why would they sabotage their bargaining chip?
It’s a war, nasty and unpleasant things happen, even when soldiers are killed by the opposing forces.
Anyone expect anything different?
Whatever the justification, they will eventually get their war. I’ve no idea why but they absolutely love a bloody good tear up. I think it must be like the ultimate blood sport for them.
Sorry, do you not think the idea that Russia blew up it’s own pipeline is idiotic? There’s no reason to do it. You think they would do it to bring Nordstream 2 online? But what about Nordstream 1 that they’ve lost in the process?
I don’t think you’ve thought this through.
Russia will get the market price for its gas based on high demand when people in Europe start freezing to death. This would have happened regardless of any highly risky scheme like this to coax Europe into a political decision and greatly diminish their overall capacity.
It’s not in their interests to lower the supply one bit. It’s in the United States’ interest to make Europe, and to a certain extent us, dependent on their oil and gas. That’s all this is about.
The pipelines were damaged through incompetence. Totalitarian states are always hopelessly incompetent because anything state run always is incompetent.
We know Putin’s Russia is hopeless because Russian state bureaucrats tell us so themselves:
Russian Deputy (Kherson) Stremousov has just alleged that a “small number” of what he called “corrupt marauders and other miscellaneous riffraff” were responsible for “gaps” on the battlefield. He singled out Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, saying he “allowed this situation to happen.”
Members of Russia’s parliament and regional officials have begun to level similar criticisms at the Russian military, alleging that not enough troops were deployed to hold the parts of eastern and southern Ukraine that Russian forces captured in the initial weeks of the conflict.
Col. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, the head of Russia’s State Duma Defense Committee, said Thursday officials need to “stop lying” about developments on the ground.
“People know. Our people are not stupid,” Kartapolov said in an interview with a Russian journalist.
No doubt Zelensky will be put forward for the Nobel Peace prize. Dolittle Obama was , so anything is possible in Bizarro world
I don’t support the USA’s proxy war in Ukraine. I don’t care about Ukraine – they have never been our allies. I’d rather the British Government wasn’t shovelling our money at Zelensky or supporting his ambition to join the EU …. which is another anti-British supra-national organisation.
And I certainly don’t believe anything the American Government says. Any more than I believe Putin.