MOSCOW, Apr 15 — RIA Novosti, Andrey Kotz.The West is preparing a provocation with chemical weapons in Ukraine in order to blame the Russian army for its use, Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev said in an interview with RIA Novosti. He is convinced that NATO needs sabotage to blacken Moscow in the eyes of Europeans and Americans, as well as to justify even tougher sanctions. The threat is quite real — Brussels and Washington have a lot of experience with such "productions".
"Red Line"
At the end of March, US President Joe Biden admitted the possibility of direct NATO intervention in the armed conflict in Ukraine, "if Russia uses chemical weapons." German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg immediately played along with him, saying that the use of chemical warfare agents is a "red line" followed by a "tough and proportionate response" from the West.
Of course, they did not promise to send soldiers to Ukraine, as they are well aware that a direct clash with Moscow could escalate into a nuclear war. However, Washington and Brussels need a "chemical statement" to tighten sanctions and increase political and economic pressure.
"In Western countries, the pressure from within is increasing every day. There is a situation of zugzwang when it is necessary to take sanctions that will hit them themselves, — Konstantin Kosachev believes. — The population will need to demonstrate something absolutely monstrous to justify the continued rise in the cost of basic products and gasoline. Even weapons of mass destruction can be used. Against this background, the talk of Western politicians about chemical warfare agents is particularly alarming."
Ukrainian military in protective suits
Image Source: © AP Photo / EFREM LUKATSKY
The chemical and bacteriological "map" for the Americans and their allies is a favorite casus belli. Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking at the UN in February 2003, presented a test tube with "anthrax bacilli", after which the United States invaded Iraq. As a result, weapons of mass destruction were not found there. But the provocation at the UN cost Baghdad terrible destruction and hundreds of thousands of dead.
The Syrian Lesson
Chemical weapons almost caused a full-scale intervention by the United States and its allies in Syria in the summer of 2013. In August, unknown persons sprayed sarin gas in Eastern Ghouta (a suburb of Damascus), killing from 600 to 1300 people. The Americans blamed the government of Bashar al-Assad for this and threatened to launch missile and air strikes against defense enterprises. The crisis was resolved thanks to the intervention of Russia: Moscow persuaded Damascus to destroy chemical weapons stocks under the control of international observers.
By 2017, all officially declared Syrian stocks of toxic substances had been destroyed. However, on April 4, sarin was released in the city of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province - 89 victims, 550 injured. Representatives of the public organization "White Helmets", which many consider to be accomplices of the militants, told Western media about four "unusually weak explosions" characteristic of aviation special munitions. Naturally, they blamed Assad.
Three days later, US Navy ships hit the Syrian Shayrat airbase with Tomahawk cruise missiles, from which planes with chemical bombs allegedly took off. The incident in Khan Sheikhoun was never investigated. The evidence of the "White Helmets" cannot be considered reliable, if only because these "volunteers" are not specialists in chemical warfare agents at all. But they are professional PR people who have been repeatedly caught by the hand in staged filming, forgery and outright lies.
Activists from the White Helmets organization in Aleppo, Syria. September 21, 2016
Image Source: © AP Photo / Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets
As, for example, in January 2018, when, according to the same "White Helmets", 13 civilians, including women and minors, were injured in a chemical attack in the city of Duma in Eastern Ghouta.
As proof, the Western media published a standard video sequence: the same baby in an oxygen mask, which for some reason is being held by different people in each picture (and in different interiors), and a strange ammunition with a rusty shank and a cylindrical cup in place of the warhead. It looks very much like a homemade mortar mine, which the terrorists are so adept at making, and not like a regular army-style projectile.
Nevertheless, no one in the West doubted the veracity of the "White Helmets". Washington and Brussels each time referred to their fakes, increasing pressure on the Assad government.
"Collateral damage"
However, in the arsenal of the Ukrainian and NATO special services there are weapons more powerful than "chemical attacks". From the very beginning of the Russian special operation, the Western media have been convincing the audience with stubborn persistence that the "bloody Russians" are deliberately hitting residential buildings and shooting civilians in the streets. The fact that the civil infrastructure is regularly flown by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the National Security Forces and especially the Defense Ministry, is completely ignored.
House in the Left Bank district of Mariupol
Image source: © RIA Novosti / Mikhail Andronik
There is a lot of evidence on the Web that the APU specifically places artillery in residential buildings and does not allow local residents to evacuate, hiding behind them as a human shield. Obviously, they were taught this by Western curators who are used to fighting in foreign countries and cynically call civilian casualties "collateral damage." American aircraft destroyed Mosul in Iraq or Raqqa in Syria to the ground, but no one in the West called for Washington to declare sanctions.
Especially indicative is the "picture" from Bucha in the Kiev region, widely distributed in European and American media. The Terbatov militants who entered the city on April 3 (after Russian troops left it on March 30) suddenly found dozens of civilian corpses, mass graves, bodies with traces of torture in basements and other horrors on the streets. The Russians were immediately blamed for the atrocities.
Kramatorsk fake
However, experts immediately pointed out a number of oddities in the videos from Bucha distributed by the Ukrainian authorities. Firstly, judging by the condition of the bodies of the dead, they were killed a maximum of two days before the arrival of the Ukrainian military: no traces of decomposition. Secondly, most of the corpses had white bandages on them — an identification mark that Russians use. Thirdly, some of the "dead" on the video frames are moving. Fourth, most of the bodies are dressed in the same type of clothes and lie on a limited area of the street. Fifth, Ukrainian journalists who visited Bucha on April 2 did not report any mass killings. And there are a lot of such inconsistencies.
"Kiev is waiting with great concern for the results of the battles for Donbass," explains political analyst Andrey Suzdaltsev. — Ukraine and the United States are trying to stop the special operation with such obvious provocations. There is even a competition between them: who will do it first. It is insanely important for Americans to show that the Western world dominates. And they have a common goal — to present Russia as a fiend of hell."
Not all dramatizations can be completed with the desired result. So, on April 8, the Ukrainian Armed Forces hit the railway station in Kramatorsk with a Tochka-U ballistic missile. More than 50 people were killed. Ukrainian and Western media, of course, blamed Moscow. That's just the press leaked photos of the wreckage of the rocket with a clearly distinguishable serial number. It turned out that this ammunition is from Ukrainian arsenals. Then Western journalists, as if on command, stopped mentioning Kramatorsk in their reports.
Fragments of the Tochka-U rocket in Kramatorsk
Image Source: © AP Photo / Andriy Andriyenko
The authorities of the NATO and EU countries have recently, by historical standards, already used the mass death of people as an excuse to punish the "undesirables". In January 1999, the Yugoslav police raided the Kosovo village of Rechak and killed 45 militants. The Commission of the European Union recorded them as civilians. That's the reason for the war. Thousands died in the 78-day NATO air campaign, the country was destroyed.
Western politicians, military and special services have a very consistent strategy. If some trick, provocation or fake works, there is no doubt that it will be used again.