America’s big bear trap for Putin

Russia is holding the United States responsible for a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula involving five U.S.-supplied missiles that killed four people, including two children, and injured 151 more on Sunday.

The Russian Defence Ministry said air defence systems shot down four of the U.S.-delivered Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles that were equipped with cluster warheads, and the ammunition of a fifth had detonated in midair.

Russian said missile fragments had fallen onto a beach on the north side of the city of Sevastopol, where locals were on vacation.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that the U.S. specialists had set the missiles’ flight coordinates on the basis of information from U.S. spy satellites, meaning Washington was directly responsible.

“Responsibility for the deliberate missile attack on the civilians of Sevastopol is borne, above all, by Washington, which supplied these weapons to Ukraine, and by the Kyiv regime, from whose territory this strike was carried out,” the ministry said.

The United States began supplying Ukraine with longer range ATACMS missiles, which have a 300-kilometer range, earlier this year.

Reuters.

Why now and what will be Russia’s response to what they believe is a deliberate targeting what they now see as part of Russia? Apart from rhetoric, I would say nothing.

You see this attack by the US – for Russia is right to call them out on this, for the Ukrainian army – or what is left of the Ukrainian army, does not have the trained operators or the means to target such missiles, that require download from US satellites.  

One thing Putin is not and that is daft, he knows only too well that this is a big bear trap that the US has set for him. They want him to retaliate and why? well there is a NATO summit coming up and they will have to discuss the situation in Ukraine and how dire it has become for NATO. If they say we are outclassed in Ukraine on all fronts – we simply do not have the wherefore all that it will take to go up against the Russians at this time, it will take money and time to build a culpable force to hold our own against Russia. 

However they can not say that, for if they did how could the politicians, justify the high cost of rebuilding a great armed force, or even justifying the NATO budget as is, far less to increase it to 2.5 to 3% of GDP. 

The high cost of living across Europe and here in the UK we have 50% of Children (and as high as 80% in some areas) living below the poverty line. At a time when the only growth area is food banks has scuppered that plan.  

Immigrants coming into the country at one every minute all needing homes, schools, medical and social care. Our NHS is starved of funds, with waiting times for minor operations stretching into years, and according to the Labour party they will, if elected, fill in 1000 pot holes a year – therefore there must be at least 1000 pot holes to start with – more spending on NATO is not what the population wishes to hear.

Which brings us back to the deaths on a beach north of the city of  Sevastopol, a city that most in Britain was ignorant of until Sunday last, and the average American could not even find Crimea far less, Sevastopol in an atlas, why would they want to spend more on defence of a european country more so one they can not find on a map? 

However if the Americans could provoke Russia into a rash response, and attack an American satellite, or attack an American ship in the Black Sea that was relaying those satellite flight coordinates to a ground base in Ukraine, well that would be all they would need to go to the NATO conference and tell them how Russia is now attacking a NATO member, let’s prepare for war and the politicians would have to jump on board and open up the coffers (add more debt to an already debt mountain) for what even NATO asked.

This smacks of desperation to save NATO and keep the money flowing into the American arms industry, it’s a big bear trap that I don’t believe Putin will fall into. Putin will simply keep doing what he is doing, whittling down the Ukrainian forces and winning the war on the ground.