As the scenario of the umpteenth “imminent” Russian invasion of Ukraine crumbles, the BBC’s Moscow correspondent Steve Rosemberg complains that the Russians won’t open up their game. He says: “Have you ever tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing? It’s frustrating. It’s confusing. You never see the whole picture. Welcome to the world of the Kremlin.
By Alexander Kirk
It’s called “Maskirovka”, the complex web of tactical and strategic deceptions and distractions in which the Soviet military, and its Russian heirs, achieved mastery and which today has US strategists mad.
It seems that Washington was counting on an endless local conflict that would wear Russia down as in Afghanistan, in which they would sell a lot of weapons, and the dead would be borne by the Russians and the client, Ukraine, which in addition, by getting into debt with Western banks to pay for the almost one hundred tons of supplies it has received in recent weeks, would increase the business.
Western military analysts consider that the maskirovka was one of the decisive elements in the Soviet victory against the German invaders in the Great Patriotic War (World War II), playing on their own prejudices and perceptions.
Basically, it consists first of all in knowing or intuiting the enemy’s thinking in order to reinforce it in its conclusions and then to act in a different way than the adversary anticipates, and to hit him by surprise.
In the case of the Germans, as related in memoirs by their former generals, the Soviets invariably carefully induced them to expect the attack where and when they (the Nazi generals) would have made it themselves.
The British journalist implies that in this way, Russia is playing dirty in Ukraine: it is not known if, when and where it will attack, while spreading rumours and playing with silence.
Putin, the cunning villain
The corporate media attribute all the cunning and all the decisions to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is an old media tactic: personalise and demonise the adversary every day of the year, and make people think that he is a lone despot who sums up all evil. The troops are Putin’s, the tanks are Putin’s, the planes are Putin’s. But Soviet military history gives the impression that Putin is a lone despot.
But Soviet military history tells of another method, even when the ogre Stalin was in power. One of the greatest offensives and maskirovka operations was carried out by Marshal Ivan Konev, precisely on the Ukrainian Front, against the opinion of Stalin and the entire Stavka (General Headquarters).
As the nervous tension caused by the maskirovka rises, the thuggery wears thin, first of all because none of the thugs has any intention of going down into the arena and confronting the Russians. The Spanish send a frigate to Romania, the British sell arms shipments, NATO threatens, but none offers soldiers.
The case of the Spanish must be the most pathetic, because their “left-wing” government offers planes and ships without anyone asking for them, and in the virtual meeting that Joe Biden held with NATO heads of government, he did not include the super willing socialist Pedro Sánchez.
And now the exasperation is growing even more, because the Ukrainians realised that the whole bill is on them, including a deepening of the country’s economic meltdown, with no prospect of success, unless a global nuclear war is a success.
As the Ukrainian foreign ministry had done in previous days, President Volodymir Zelensky declared on Friday that there is no imminent danger of war, and called on Western countries to end the campaign of terror: “There are signals from respectable leaders that tomorrow the war begins. This is panic… How much is that costing our state?”
And since Ukraine – which was part of Russia for centuries, and the Soviet Union afterwards – also knows the maskirovka inside out, Zelensky gave hints of where things are headed: “Internal destabilisation is the main threat,” he said.
The incendiary Ukrainian nationalism stirred up by the international media is based on minority power groups in Ukrainian society, most of whom speak Russian, and the population hardly absorbs with pleasure the cult of paramilitary sects (such as the ‘Azov Army’), the fascist Stepan Bandera, who during the German occupation contributed to the genocide of his own people.
The assurances
The US has already done what it said it would never do: give Russia written assurances that its security would not be affected. A (so far) secret document that the Russians rejected because it does not include the main demand: that Ukraine will not join NATO, and that the offensive missile system deployed along the entire Russian border will be dismantled.
Included in the maskirovka game are Putin’s talks with the presidents of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, in which it is not said, but implied, that the possibility of establishing advanced Russian missile systems, operated by Russians, in these countries was discussed. In other words, to surround the United States with the same terror threat that the Russians have on their doorstep today (it is estimated that US missiles stationed in Ukraine could reach Moscow in five minutes).
Russia today has the world’s most advanced hypersonic missiles, which are so far unstoppable. According to artillery specialists, Russia has a 15-year strategic advantage over its US opponents. But these missiles would not be able to respond to a barrage from Ukraine.
“They have to do something!
In the face of so much provocation, “Putin has to do something, he can’t do nothing,” said President Biden, exasperated, falling right into the game of Russian distractions.
Panic is already setting in, and Ukraine could make the mistake of trying to retake Lugansk and Donetsk, the two industrial regions self-declared ‘people’s republics’ in 2014. If so, both are likely to end up incorporated into the Russian Federation, as happened to the Crimean Peninsula after the Ukrainian shelling.
Or it could be that Putin ‘does something’ and Russia secures in one swift stroke the annexation of these republics, which would be greeted with jubilation by their populations.
The tensions are not between Russia and Ukraine, as the media claim. Nor even between Russia and NATO, let alone the European Union. Nor, strictly speaking, is it only between Russia and the United States.
Ukraine is today part of the terrain on which the battle of the global reorganisation of capitalism, which began when Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, is manifesting itself; a clear expression of the decline of the empire at the hands of neoliberal globalisation.
The outcome in Ukraine may well mark a milestone in the global capitalist reorganisation, reinforcing the new axis of power represented by China and Russia, and the so-called Shanghai Group.
