Throwing Ukraine under the bus
On the "ukies blew up Nord Stream without the aid of NATO"-narrative
So this is an interesting development. Now, we’re not just throwing Ukraine under the bus as a matter of fact, but also in terms of narrative.
The allegations which surfaced a couple of days back entail that Ukraine, or rogue actors within its military and political apparatus, single-handedly sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline, without any aid from the US or any NATO polities or organizations.
Mind you, these are enormous structures designed to withstand awesome amounts of force. You don’t just send a couple of scuba divers down there with a brick of C4 and hope for the best. Most governments would not be able to pull something like this off, and the suggestion that rogue entities within the Ukraine managed to do this entirely below radar, under the watchful eye and against the will of NATO?
Preposterous as this may be, what we have here is a very significant situation in terms of political narrative.
It not only opens the door to NATO polities such as Germany severing ties with the Ukraine government.
It also potentially affords NATO an opportunity to save face in brokering a peace deal on top of its own proxy war, which now can be framed as a brilliant exercise in statesmanship where the enlightened West successfully forged a reconciliation between two ostensibly rogue, authoritarian and illegitimate regimes.
At this stage, the US regime is however careful to maintain that there’s currently no evidence that this was an official act of the Ukrainian government, yet there’s obviously a rift, or a lack of coordination here, since Ukrainian officials are adamant in denying a connection, and also cast doubt on the very narrative as such:
Kiev had nothing to do with the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, the Ukrainian defense minister has said in response to media reports blaming last September’s explosions in the Baltic Sea on a “pro-Ukraine” group.
“For me, it’s a little bit strange story,” Aleksey Reznikov replied when asked about the issue after his arrival at an informal meeting of EU defense ministers in Stockholm on Wednesday.
…
The claims of Ukrainian involvement in the sabotage are “like a complement for our special forces, but this is not our activity,” the minister added.
(RT.com)
Gonzalo Lira posted to Twitter this reflection which to some extent overlaps with the above, while adding comments on the developments being connected to an internal NATO conflict, and the fact that, well, Germany has gotten shafted pretty bad through the Nord Stream sabotage:
So what do you think?
Is it reasonable that the US really would need an excuse of this sort to disentangle itself from its proxy war? It seems at least somewhat plausible that a peace deal could be effectively marketed from quite a few other angles, but then again, we’ve had an incessant propaganda of a historically unprecedented character lauding the righteous cause of Ukraine (as a tool of US foreign policy).
In the background, of course, is the intensified Russian offensive and gains in the Battle of Bakhmut, which if successful may force a peace deal on terms decidedly unfavourable in relation to NATO interests.
Some have pointed out that Bakhmut’s strategic importance and location is why both Ukrainian and Russian troops have directed a lot of attention to Bakhmut. The city is located on the key supply routes and communications site between the two largest Ukrainian cities in the Donetsk Oblast; Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The former is the de-facto capital of the Donetsk Oblast after Separatists from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) captured it briefly in 2014.
Losing Bakhmut to Russian forces would effectively destroy the large number of Ukrainian troops stationed there, which protect the city from Russian capture, and would open the gateway to a rapid Russian capture of the entire Donetsk Oblast, leaving Ukraine with less troops to defend against the larger Russian army.
This would make it nearly impossible to fully re-capture the Russian occupied territories in Ukraine.
Accelerating a disenganglement at this point in time may well be the most reasonable way to save face and minimize damage from the West’s point of view.
My first thought is that the people in charge need a way to pivot from "we've always been at war with East Asia" to "we've never been at war with East Asia" without waking too many people up from the TV trance.
"Whoops, All Nazis!" is just enough of a fig leaf, maybe, to pull off the transition.
The next question is, if we do back away from Ukraine, what new crisis will take center stage?
Gonzalo's take is pleasingly cynical and therefore probably correct. Politicians are quite happy to pretend to believe absurdities if it gives them the cover they need.
As to whether the Western public will go for it, of course they will. Remember when the NPCs pivoted on a dime from 'just the flu' to 'PANIC!' in March 2020? The media can reverse its narrative and the NPCs don't even notice.