After two Russia posts in a row, on media coverage of Vladimir Putin’s election victory and on Russia’s return to great power status, I’d thought to write a third on that subset of Russia’s critics – including but not confined to many on the Marx-Leninist Left – which agrees she was provoked over Ukraine and much besides, but condemns the invasion of February 2022 while maintaining a deafening silence on alternative paths the Kremlin could and therefore should have taken in response to those provocations.
With that post written, I told myself, I could turn my attention to the subject, neglected on this site since October 7, of warmongering provocations in the South China Sea by America and its vassals allies. Without, of course, completely taking my eye off Ukraine and Gaza.
But that was yesterday. Since then two things – three if we include Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s not insignificant claim that what had been a special military operation, its objectives reiterated in my post yesterday, is now a war – have happened:
- Heavy and co-ordinated strikes on Ukraine’s hydro-electric capacity, including the largest HEP plant in Europe.
- The terrorist attacks on Crocus City Hall in Moscow last night which have left ninety-three concert-goers dead at time of writing, though the toll appears to be rising.
When I read, first thing this morning, that (a) Islamic State is claiming responsibility – so many years after peace broke out in Chechnya – and (b) Washington says it has evidence in support of that claim, my instinct, instant and unthought through, was that yet again the entity Michael Hudson has dubbed America’s Foreign Legion had swung into action at Deep State behest.
But why, in that case, would Washington be so swift to say it has evidence to support Islamic State’s claim? Because its past form, from Syria to Xinjiang, meant it would be suspected anyway? Pass. But here’s someone whose detailed accounts I value, even if they do come in long posts which to the casual eye have all the organisational structure of a DOS screen dump.
Over to Simplicius the Thinker, who addresses both the power strikes and last night’s atrocity, while making passing reference to Mr Pescov’s remarks.
Eventful 24 Hours: Moscow Terror Attack Follows Massive UA Grid Strikes
Let’s begin with the tragic event that has eclipsed everything else: a large terrorist attack on a packed Friday night shopping center at the outskirts of Moscow. But while there are many dead, and the event is clearly momentous, there is actually not much of substance to be said on it yet, without rehashing the same baseless gun-jumping discussions from Twitter and elsewhere.
There’s simply too little solid verifiable information, so we’ll only gloss it over for now, and tie it into events on the ground in Ukraine at the end.
The more directly salient events occurred last night, when Russia launched one of the larger and more impactful strikes of the war, hitting numerous Ukrainian hydro-electric power plants, including the big one in Dnipro—one of the largest in Europe—Zaporozhye, and a plant in Kharkov, as well as dozens of other military production sites in Kiev and west Ukraine.
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