The Flood Of Disinformation Is Standard Russian Operating Procedure In Defeat

Dams and pipelines don't explode by themselves

Means, motive, and opportunity: these are the elements of any criminal case, even in a war crime trial. To prove that Ukraine blew up the Kakhovka dam, as the Kremlin and its apologists would have us believe, Russia could easily provide evidence. Instead they withhold security camera video of the explosion and refuse to let international experts examine the dam.

Surely, Twitter vatniks insist, it is a total coincidence that while the dam was under the complete control of Russians, the water level reached its highest possible limit just in time for the destruction. Surely, they say, all those months of reports about Russians mining the dam for detonation were just fake news to frame Vladimir Putin later.

So far, however, no one can find a video or an eyewitness account of a jet, missile, or artilley fire near the dam at the time of the explosion. Everyone seems to agree that it just went BOOM, boom, boom, swish. There was no “incoming.” As though the dam exploded from within. Which is pretty much the only way you could destroy a dam with explosives.

How did Ukrainians get the boom-boom into the dam, one wonders? Did they wear enemy uniforms and sneak past the guards, Guns of Navarone-style? Or have the flying saucer reverse engineers at Area 51 figured out Star Trek teleportation and shared the secret with Kyiv? The world wonders. We are meant to wonder.

Meanwhile, on planet earth: Ukraine has intercepted phone calls from Russian troops discussing the demolition preparations and decision. Even if we dismiss this evidence, Russians themselves are cheering the dam being destroyed. Russian state media has talked about blowing up the dam for months. The talking heads are ecstatic that the dam has been blown up, are calling for even more dams to be destroyed, and in fact Russian troops are destroying even more dams right now in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, almost as if Russian media mouthpieces are confusing destruction with victory, and so are their helpful idiots in the west.

The old Russian imperialist habit of leaving scorched earth behind in retreat is coupled in modern times with the pathological psychology of an autarkic state. Blowing up the dam and then pointing the finger at Ukraine is a textbook KGB/FSB move.

More to the point, this is what Russia always does when they are losing a war in Ukraine. Every stinking time. It is the Russian defeat doctrine.

Defeat is seeping through the halls of power in Moscow. Bloomberg reports that the siloviki (Kremlin insiders) have lost faith in Putin’s war.

A mood of deepening gloom is gripping Russia’s elite about prospects for President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, with even the most optimistic seeing a ‘frozen’ conflict as the best available outcome now for the Kremlin.

Many within the political and business elite are tired of the war and want it to stop, though they doubt Putin will halt the fighting. While nobody’s willing to stand up to the president over the invasion, absolute belief in his leadership has been shaken by it.

Destroying the Kakhovka dam is consistent with Russian talk of “freezing” the war since last September, when the Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed. It also creates a temporary military advantage.

As the independent analysts at Rochan Consulting point out, “the destruction of the Nova Khakovka dam and subsequent Dnipro’s overflows halt Ukrainian operations in the Kherson Direction and free up some Russian forces that could be deployed to more pressing areas.”

Rescue, relief, refugees, and a long, muddy subsidence will give the Russian forces defending Zaporizhzhia and Bakhmut between two and four weeks in which Ukraine cannot cross the Dnipro in force. Not that it will matter.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive is underway and images of a clump of burned-out and damaged western armored vehicles are all over social media. This was to be expected. The war in Zaporizhzhia has far more in common with the Hundred Days campaign of 1918 than Desert Storm. Attrition was always a given. The way to Mariupol was always going to be littered with Leopards and Bradleys. No other scenario was ever possible in a combined arms attack on prepared fortifications.

Because Ukraine is going to take losses in soldiers as well as equipment, progress on the ground will be a much better measuring-stick for the victory or defeat of the UAF (Ukrainian Armed Forces) in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Fog of war and disinformation (deza. short for dezinformatsia), like chemical smoke on the battlefield, can obscure our vision of reality for only so long before a victory or defeat is undeniable.

Assume that there will be more Ukrainian losses, then. What is gained for them? Measure this in a week, or a month, or three months, because it takes as long as it takes.

The UAF is a learning army. Will they learn from the errors of Day One in Zaporizhzhia, distribute these lessons, and improve their performance? The objective also matters. Vuhledar was not worth a whole brigade of armor, nor did Russians seem to learn from mistakes there. Tokmak might be worth the same price to Ukrane if it wins the war, however.

Early indications are early. Yet the UAF seems to be achieving real, if costly, progress on the ground at this hour. Keeping up the pressure, learning from their mistakes: that is their test. Their pass-or-fail grade depends on whether they can force Russia out of Ukraine.

For Russia, the test is whether or not they can “freeze” the war somehow in a way that leaves Muscovy with a foothold on Ukraine. Maximalist goals about annexing Odessa may be forgotten in the emergency of defeat, but no one in Moscow is publicly backing away from the war itself, yet. The Kremlin hopes that Ukraine can be stopped and forced to negotiate on their terms: this is their objective pass-or-fail rubric.

If Americans are still having trouble seeing through Kremlin maskirovka, battlefield deception, it is because the media sources they depend on are still getting suckered into declarative headlines that serve Kremlin purposes.

Recall that The Washington Post, where democracy dies in darkness, once published headlines and stories about the “Steele Dossier” that had to be corrected later.

In 2016 Christopher Steele was gathering raw HUMINT (human intelligence), which is never a project for public consumption, as HUMINT always requiring corroboration from other sources.

The Kremlin also seems to have been aware that Steele was fishing, which gave them an opportunity to float disinformation through a cutout. Thus, while much of the contents of the Dossier were real, some of its specific claims are either false or unproven.

Following the post-Soviet approach to deza, the Kremlin does not attempt to substitute a singular false reality for the real one anymore. Instead, Kremlin sources surround the public with so many different versions of reality, from so many channels, that no truth can be shared by all. The line between postmodern resignation and PSYOPS is a blurry one.

So while I will not accuse Shane Harris and Souad Mekhennet of being suckers for Kremlin disinformation, I find this reporting just too sketchy. It has the whiff of deza about it.

Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.

This declarative paragraph leaves no room whatsoever for doubt. Ukraine is definitely responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, case closed, and the top soldier in Ukraine knows this, because he planned it all himself:

The European intelligence made clear that the would-be attackers were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wouldn’t know about the operation, the intelligence report said.

So: why is Zaluzhny not on the carpet in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office? Surely the President of Ukraine would be concerned about this situation and have questions? Oh yes, Gen. Zaluzhny has a counteroffensive to run, right now, doesn’t he? Now, I am not suggesting that the timing of the article is in any way deliberate, of course. I simply note that Harris and Mekhennet are repeating earlier reportage as new, and that they are doing it right as the Ukrainian counteroffensive begins.

Timing, they say, is everything.

Because again, this is not actually a new story, just a new story about the old story, one that modifies the original story in ways that do not necessarily reinforce it. Walkbacks begin in the second paragraph, my emphasis:

The June plot differs from the September attack in some respects. The European intelligence report notes that the Ukrainian operatives planned to attack the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but it makes no mention of Nord Stream 2, a newer line. The intelligence report also says that the saboteurs would embark from a different location in Europe, not Warnemünde, a German port town on the Baltic, where the Andromeda was rented.

This plan changed. Someone did rent a boat. Supposedly, there were divers. The Germans say traces of explosive were on board. The rest is still unclear. We are presented with a plan, a boat, a whiff of gunpowder, six divers still to be named, and a mystery.

When the CIA found out about this report that Ukrainians were planning to attack one of the two pipelines, they did not like the source. Again, in boldface and caps, for the kids in the back of the room: THE CIA DID NOT LIKE THIS SOURCE. It was too new, too untried, too unvetted. Nevertheless, Langley (the home of American HUMINT) did their duty by sharing the intelligence with allies.

Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure.

And by “specific evidence,” we are supposed to understand … what? The journalists never say. No one ever says. Did one of the divers take his boots off and leave them at the bottom of the Baltic? Did they leave a commemorative plaque? What?

The highly specific details, which include numbers of operatives and methods of attack, show that for nearly a year, Western allies have had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage. That assessment has only strengthened in recent months as German law enforcement investigators uncovered evidence about the bombing that bears striking similarities to what the European service said Ukraine was planning.

“Methods of attack” — what does this mean? No one can say quite how the pipelines were actually destroyed. No trace of whatever these divers supposedly left behind at the bottom of the Baltic has even been reported. According to everyone, it is still a mystery just how the pipelines were destroyed. How are these reporters so sure that the “method of attack” described in some communications is the same one actually used on the pipelines, if no one can say what that method of attack was?

Again, I am not accusing this unnamed European intelligence service of falling for Kremlin deza. I am just saying that if they did fall for Kremlin deza, then the entire chain of reporting for “highly specific details, which include numbers of operatives and methods of attack” may just be another Steele Dossier. Truths, in admixture with lies, to do what the Kremlin does best: global gaslighting.

Again, this story has developed for a while. The German prosecutors’ work has been freely reported in the German press. It has been covered in the New York Times as well. The story comes down to a yacht with “traces of residue” and a half-dozen still-unnamed people:

German investigators now believe that six individuals using fake passports rented a sailing yacht in September, embarked from Germany and planted explosives that severed the pipelines, according to officials familiar with that investigation. They believe the operatives were skilled divers, given that the explosives were planted at a depth of about 240 feet, in the range that experts say helium would be helpful for maintaining mental focus.

THIS WAS THE MOST EPIC UNDERWATER DEMOLITION EVER Y’ALL. Six people in a rarefied profession set up specialized explosives at points separated by miles of open water, requiring presumably as many dives as there were detonations, working at the bleeding edge of the state of the art, from a rented yacht? HFS I would so watch the streaming series about this mission, it is a story straight-up made for Hollywood. Is it maybe too good to be true?

I think so, a little bit.

German prosecutors “have linked Ukrainian individuals to the rental of the boat via an apparent front company in Poland.” Who are these individuals? “Investigators also suspect that at least one individual who serves in the Ukrainian military was involved in the sabotage operation.” Who? Indictments won’t help. German law protects the privacy of the accused, even protecting the names of convicted criminals until their appeals run out.

In short, we may wait forever to find out what German prosecutors actually know. How inconvenient. Or convenient, depending on your perspective.

To be sure, attacking the Nord Stream pipelines was a popular idea among certain Europeans, including Ukrainians, who hate Russia. But it’s not a very strategic choice for helping Ukraine — or the west, for that matter. One wonders what military advantage Zaluzhny, a military man, could expect from a covert operation in the Baltic, that he would risk his career to pursue it. A man with much to do, this would not be a good use of his time.

On the other hand, this Washington Post story would absolutely fit the Russian mold of “hybrid warfare” and elaborate deception. Russian spy careers are made on complex schemes. A yacht, some divers, some traces of explosive, and then … this. Remember?

Yes, what was the SS-750 doing, out in the middle of the Baltic, when it was photographed four days before the Nord Stream pipelines exploded?

What was the AS-26 Priz submersible, equipped with “arms” that can lift up to 110 lbs (50 kg), more than enough to transport demolition explosives down or recover them from the sea floor, doing out there?

Why were the SS-750 and all its support vessels operating with their transponders off and following a course that avoided shore radars? On a sea like the Baltic, where hiding is impossible, anyway?

If you are the GRU — which Putin favors over the FSB, anymore — and you have developed a plan to put divers on a yacht with explosive traces, then this makes sense as kayfabe.

Russia was aware of the plan to sabotage the pipelines, comrades. Russia took measures to foil the attack.

Unfortunately, Joe Biden must have used a science fiction sonar trigger to destroy it, conspiring with the Norwegians, the Danes, and the Germans all at once.

We know all this from Seymour Hersh, who is definitely not just a stovepipe for Kremlin agitprop in his dotage, tovarisch. See how that works?

We are supposed to choose from this menu of unlikely possibilities.

We are not supposed to imagine that Russian pipeline pigs, made of foam that would rise to the surface and disappear in the Baltic flotsam, filled with explosives and timers, left behind the mysterious craters and shards of pipe at the explosion sites. No, this explanation is too simple and diabolical for anyone to consider because Putin is such a nice guy. He could never. Ever. Even think of this. Obvious idea.

No way the Kremlin did the simplest thing in the universe. No way

We should await indictments, you see. Investigations. Results from the lab. Like with the Kakhovka dam. Like with MH 17 and the massacre in Bucha and all the rest. We just can’t be sure, so we should pretend we cannot see what is happening. Plentiful propaganda is available to let you believe what you want, see what you want, blame who you want, and never, ever ask yourself how steel pipelines and massive concrete structures can possibly explode from the inside.

Ukraine is creating truths on the ground. Russia is creating new myths to rationalize their defeat. Everything we see, that wants us to believe some shady story about the crimes of war in Ukraine, exists in the universe of lies between these two agendas. Yes, Ukraine plays in this space, too. It’s a war. Truth was the very first casualty.