The denunciation of news of the Kinzhal strike on a NATO underground center near Lviv
It is a pity that a several weeks old denunciation of Russian claims to have destroyed the NATO bunker near Lviv is being brought into our Salon discussion as a kind of answer to the information I included in my essay today.
The point I was making is that the whole discussion of this event yesterday moved up from unknown internet sources in Greece and Russia and equally unknown denouncers in the West to the very respectable Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda and an identified author in their team. This takes the Russian side very close to the official Kremlin, and that is not a trivial point at all.
Meanwhile the denunciation of the attack remains from a, shall we say, marginal source: Alex Asprak. Google search shows him as a guy whose hair stands straight up and whose master’s degree from Brown University in geological sciences make him a peculiar expert on Russian military prowess.
Be that as it may, the Komsomolskaya Pravda article is a game changer. The article I have cited gives details that we did not hear earlier, as for example the parked cars near the entrance to the Stalin-period bunker which tipped off Russian reconnaissance. And it alludes to articles appearing in the Ukrainian press - I also await greater information about such articles.
The article also gives cogent reasons why neither side, Russian or American, wants to see this incident land on the front pages of The New York Times.
Biden does not want to escalate to cobelligerent status. The Russians also prefer for that not to happen. It would take us all much closer to a nuclear exchange. And even at the banal level of dollars and rubles, the present so-called proxy war keeps whole Russia's 350 billion in assets frozen in the EU. There were articles in the FT and elsewhere over the past few days saying that Europe is obliged to unfreeze those assets after the war ends. Should the confrontation advance to a formally declared war, those assets will be irrevocably lost unless Russia smashes up NATO.
So, please be assured, I am not dealing in idle speculation by some irresponsible unsocial types. This is real and it tells us a lot about what made Putin decide to enter on this war while he has a window of opportunity by possessing hypersonics years ahead of the USA, and also years ahead of the Chinese