It was aimed at meddling in next Sunday’s parliamentary elections in order to help depose Orban.
Andrew Korybko
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that the authorities discovered two bombs planted along the TurkStream gas pipeline
transiting through his country. Their location in close proximity to
the Hungarian border suggests that it was the target of this attempted
terrorist attack. Hungary receives 60% of its gas
through this Russian-originating pipeline so a sudden disruption would
be disastrous for its economy. It could also throw the population into
panic ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
On
that topic, the EU and Ukraine have been meddling in the democratic
process in order to help the opposition that’s under their influence
depose incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who they each despise due
to him being a conservative-nationalist that prioritizes Hungarian
interests. Neither like that he refused to arm Ukraine and continues
openly buying energy from Russia. If he wins despite their meddling
efforts, however, then they plan to delegitimize his victory through the
latest Russiagate plot.
That’s
Plan B, while Plan A is of course for him to lose, to which end the
attempted terrorist attack on TurkStream could have furthered that goal
had it not been thwarted by Serbia. As was touched upon in the
introduction, the population could have been thrown into panic, thus
possibly inclining more of them to vote for the pro-EU opposition upon
thinking that Hungary would then need the EU more than ever. Even if
Orban still won, the economy would still crash, thus falsely
legitimizing preplanned protests.
About that, even though RT
downplayed the scenario of “a Maidan on steroids” if the opposition
loses, the combination of the latest Russiagate plot and a crashing
economy could still serve as the “publicly plausible” triggers for
giving this a shot out of desperation to topple Orban even if it
ultimately fails. At the very least, the security services’ dispersal of
the rioters could be exploited as the pretext for EU sanctions,
including radical measures for de facto freezing Hungary out of the bloc.
Circling back to the attempted terrorist attack that was just thwarted, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto noted
that this “fits into a series of incidents in which Ukraine is
constantly trying to obstruct the transportation of Russian gas and oil
to Europe.” He also reminded everyone about how “dozens of drones have
been constantly attacking the TurkStream pipeline, which supplies gas to
Hungary, on Russian territory, and now the terrorist attack foiled by
Serbia appears to be part of these attacks.”
Ukraine predictably denied any involvement and its Foreign Ministry spokesman retorted by speculating that this was a Russian false flag provocation, which opposition leader Peter Magyar implied was the case. Nevertheless, this analysis here
from last December warned that Ukrainian intelligence agents likely
already infiltrated Europe under the cover of refugees and that some
refugees could also work with such agents due to their difficult
situations, thus spiking the risk of politically motivated terrorist
attacks.
That’s what appears to have happened with
the thwarted bombing of TurkStream: Ukrainian agents relied either on
their own nationals or others to plant those bombs as part of a
politically motivated terrorist attack against Hungary to meddle in its
elections and preemptively punish it if Orban wins. With this
explanation of events in mind, any other country like Slovakia
that emulates his policy of cutting off arms to Ukraine and continuing
to openly buy energy from Russia could be Ukraine’s next target.