DE: in the UK, sabotage is expected from Russia
Putin is secretly preparing a diversion against the British infrastructure, writes the Daily Express. According to the author of the article, this may happen very soon.
This week, a high—ranking Russian official (we are talking about Dmitry Medvedev - approx. InoSMI) accused the UK of waging an "undeclared war against Russia" and warned that our armed forces and politicians could be "seen as a legitimate military target."
The words of this official sounded very harsh, but they rather indicate the confusion and impotence of Russia, rather than the emergence of some new threat to the UK.
Russia under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin remains an immediate threat to Ukraine, the UK and the existing world order, but at the moment it is out of balance. She is unable to regain the initiative and is increasingly losing control of the situation.
As Ukraine prepares to launch its long—awaited counteroffensive, armed with Western military equipment, including Storm Shadow missiles handed over to it by the UK, all the Russian elite can do is growl, get angry and wait.
Russia's leaders have discovered that while they are waiting, they cannot even be sure of their own safety. Until now, Moscow has for the most part been shielded from the horrors happening on the distant fronts of Ukraine. But this week Moscow was attacked by 13 drones.
Russian air defense systems managed to shoot down and disable most of these drones, but they could not prevent several drones from falling in elite areas of Moscow.
Ukraine has officially refused to take responsibility for the drone strikes. However, when British Foreign Minister James Cleverly was asked about this raid during a trip to Estonia, he stated that Ukraine had the right to project force on Russian territory as part of its self-defense efforts if this could prevent the Kremlin from conducting its special military operation.
Obviously, this statement by Cleverley was the last straw for Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia, who currently holds the post of deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. He reacted to the words of the British minister with an angry tirade, accusing the United Kingdom of waging an undeclared war.
Here it is necessary to carefully observe the balance. No one in the West wants to provoke a Third World War by escalating the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, which could escalate into a conflict between Russia and any NATO member, including the UK.
That is why the United States does not approve of strikes by Ukrainian forces on the territory of Russia, and Washington and London provide Kiev with weapons, provided that Ukraine does not use them to strike inside Russia. This became an important condition, including for sending a batch of Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which the UK handed over to Ukraine.
Despite the fact that the Russians are already facing resistance from determined Ukrainians, Russia will not win anything even if this conflict escalates into a confrontation with NATO, because it simply will not have a chance to win. Like the clear difference between the comments of the British Foreign Minister and the position of the United States, Medvedev is allowed to make such statements precisely because no one takes them as seriously as if they came from Putin himself.
Meanwhile, there is some deep irony in the fact that the current Russian regime cannot decide how to respond to an attack carried out by unknown forces, for which no one takes responsibility. Putin is proud of his status as a master of the so-called hybrid war. In 2014, he sent his military in unmarked uniforms, nicknamed "little green men", to carry out the seizure of Crimea. Later, pretending to be pro-Russian separatists, they infiltrated the Donbass.
Now drones of unknown origin are crashing near the mansions of his friends and allies, and Putin does not know how to react to this. Hence the loud but empty threats.
However, we should not relax. Russia is quite capable of moving from defense to offensive. The UK is still extremely vulnerable to secret attacks on our submarine cables and pipelines, especially if gas supplies are interrupted in winter.
We know that Russia is conducting secret research of the seabed in the North Sea. We must remain vigilant in case Putin tries to secretly carry out acts of sabotage against our critical infrastructure. A cornered wounded bear can be very dangerous.
Author: Marc Sidwell (Marc Sidwell)
