The purpose is to derail the peace talks by provoking Russia into either preemptively escalating against Ukraine as a deterrent or authorizing an overmatched retaliatory escalation right after that could in any case be spun by the Europeans to manipulate Trump against Putin.
Andrew Korybko
Putin warned on the fourth anniversary of the special operation
that Ukraine and its Western patrons are plotting “a possible explosion
targeting our gas pipeline systems – TurkStream and Blue Stream
pipelines – along the floor of the Black Sea. They simply cannot back
down. They do not know what else they can do to undermine this peaceful
process aimed at settlement through diplomatic means.” This isn’t the
first time that Russia warned about such a plot, with prior ones
analyzed here, here, and here.
What’s
most important about this latest warning is that it coincided with the
Foreign Intelligence Service warning on the same day about an
Anglo-Franco plot to transfer nuclear technology and even bombs to
Ukraine. That was analyzed here, and just like with Putin’s warning about the latest plots against Russia’s pipelines to Turkiye, the purpose is to derail the peace talks
by provoking Russia into either preemptively escalating against Ukraine
as a deterrent or authorizing an overmatched retaliatory escalation
right after.
In either scenario, the aforesaid talks’ US mediator could then be manipulated by the Europeans, who’ve been trying to subvert
Trump’s peace efforts this entire time, into misperceiving such moves
as “unprovoked aggression on false pretexts”, thus possibly torpedoing
their negotiations. In response, Trump might then also be manipulated
into authorizing his country’s own overmatched “retaliatory” escalation
if the Europeans claim that Putin “humiliated” him, which could risk
spiraling out of control.
The Europeans and
Ukrainians’ shared goals are to perpetuate the conflict, drag the US
back into its Biden-era level of involvement, and then provoke a
Cuban-like brinksmanship crisis between Russia and the US that they
believe would ultimately result in significant concessions from the
former. To that end, they’re plotting to provoke the usually restrained Putin
into preemptive escalations or overmatched retaliatory ones, absent
which he’ll be forced to accept a nuclear Ukraine and more blown-up
pipelines.
The only realistic way for Russia to avoid
this zero-sum dilemma is publicly warning the world about these
provocations in the hope that Trump will hear about them from the media
even if the provably untrustworthy CIA
doesn’t brief him about what Putin and his spies just said. They’d then
expect him to either do his utmost to avert these planned provocations
or not fall into the trap of being manipulated by the Europeans if
Russia preemptively escalates or authorizes an overmatched retaliatory
escalation.
Russia’s main motive is to preserve the
US-mediated peace talks with Ukraine, therefore preventing the dangerous
scenario of US escalations that could spiral out of control, while its
secondary one is to show Trump how the Brits, French, and Ukrainians are
working behind his back to subvert his peace efforts. This speaks to
Putin’s sincere desire to peace, albeit not at any cost, ergo why his
team continues negotiating hard and won’t accept the far-reaching
concessions being demanded of it by Ukraine.
All in all, nobody
knows whether Ukraine and its Western patrons will still try to go
through with these two provocations after Russia just exposed them, but
at least Trump can’t credibly claim to be ignorant of these plots in the
event that Russia either preemptively escalates or escalates
afterwards. As of now, Russia doesn’t want any escalation either from
its adversaries or that which their provocations might soon force it
into, but it’s signaling that some escalation is possible if Trump
doesn’t thwart these plots.