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To see a list of previous articles, enter “Ukraine” in the Search Box on the upper right, on The Trenchant Observer web site, and you will see a list in chronological order.
Dispatches
1) Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean, “La guerre de Poutine contre l’Ukraine est entrée dans une nouvelle phase, encore plus dangereuse; Avec l’organisation, par Moscou, de référendums locaux et de la mobilisation partielle, assortie de menaces nucléaires, Vladimir Poutine poursuit sa fuite en avant, affirme, dans une tribune au « Monde », la chercheuse spécialiste de la Russie Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean,” Le Monde, le 29 septembre 2022 (6h00, mis à jour à 07h57).
Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean est Directrice du Centre Russie-Nouveaux Etats indépendants à l’IFRI.
Analysis
Vladimir Putin must be presumed to be nehind the explosions which caused gas leaks in the Nordstream I and Nordstream II pipelines. Like in the case of the Reichstag Fire in 1933, we may never have proof of who blew them up.
But there can be little doubt about who had a motive to do so. not a rational motive, but an emotional motive. As Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean points out, Vladimir Putin appears to be driven not by a rational calculation of costs and benefits but rather by some kind of emotional compulsion to defeat Ukraine and the West.
One can easily imagine him yelling “Screw Germany! Screw Europe! They want to wean themselves from Russian gas. I’ll do it for them!”
Just as he toyed with the West by firing near and on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, to show everyone he was capable of anything, he may have wanted to show the West he was capable of great destruction. The Nordstream II project alone cost some $10 billion dollars.
Whatever conspiracy theories Kremlin propagandists may weave, no one in the West had any incentive to destroy the pipelines, which may be damaged beyond repair.
We do appear to be in a new and more dangerous phase of the war.
The next crisis point is likely to come when the over 20,000 Russian troops on the west side of the Dnipo river in Kherson province are faced with an imperative choice of whether to surrender or face annihilation. Putin already has reportedly overruled his commanders and ordered them not to withdraw their forces from their positions.
The Trenchant Observer
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