Will the Russians Sink a British Ship the Next
Time Around?
By The Saker
June 30, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - - "UNZ"
To begin, let’s recap what
just happened in the Crimean waters. First, the HMS
Defender deliberately entered the Russian waters
under the pretext that the Brits don’t recognize
what they call the “annexation” of Crimea. The Brits
deny it, but after seeing 4 bombs explode ahead of
the HMS Defender, they altered their course as the
Russians demanded.
Next, before looking into
this deeper, let’s also keep in mind the following
fact: the entire Black Sea is a de facto “Russian
lake” meaning that Russia has the full military
control of the Black Sea. For those alternatively
gifted, let me explain what this means:
The Bal and Bastion coastal defense missiles
can sink any ship in the Black Sea in minutes.
The Black Sea Fleet has seven advanced
diesel-electric attack submarines, arguably the
most advanced on the planet.
The HMS Defender was operating without any
air cover but detected over 20 Russian military
aircraft overflying it.
In other words, the HMS
Defender was a sitting duck with no chance of
survival had the Russians decided to fire in anger.
General Konashenkov, who is in charge of contacts
with the media, had
this to say about the outcome of the
British provocation: (emphasis added)
“The epic fiasco of the
provocation of the British destroyer Defender in
the Black Sea, which abruptly changed course
from Russian territorial waters after the
warning shots of the patrol ship, will remain a
fragrant stain on the reputation
of the Royal Navy for a long time”
(-: Thereby suggesting that
the Brits soiled their pants and ran for their lives
)
Speaking of anger: I have
been parsing the Russian media over the past couple
of days and I will only say that there are A LOT of
commentators who are mad at the Kremlin for NOT
opening fire in earnest and sinking the Defender.
Furthermore, several Russian
officials have now indicated that the next time
around, the intruders would be destroyed.
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Did I mention that the
British Secretary of State for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs, George Eustice declared in an
interview that the Brits plan to repeat such
operations in the future?
This now begs the question:
would the Kremlin really risk WWIII by sinking a
British Navy Ship trying to, to use a British
expression, “poke the Russian bear”?
Interestingly, the Brits deny
that the Russians fired any munitions ahead of the
Defender. Why would they do that? My personal
explanation is that the British government does not
want to freak out the British and European public
opinion. But if they are hiding the truth, it means
that this is a truth which makes them uncomfortable.
What do you think they might be hiding?
Still, the two UK
reporters who were on the Defender (by total
coincidence, I am sure), both reported hearing
explosions and seeing Russian combat aircraft. The
Russian FSB also released video footage taken from
the Russian border patrol ships which were shadowing
the HMS Defender. You can clearly see the Russian
firing their guns ahead of the HMS Defender:
The Russians also have radar
footage from many sources and it has been really
easy for them to prove that the Defender changed
course and left after four bombs exploded ahead on
its course.
The reason for all this? “We
don’t recognize the annexation of Crimea”. Which
makes no sense because EVEN if the UK does not
recognize the Russian “annexation” of Crimea (and,
along with that, the democratic will of the people
of Crimea), they should still recognize the
indisputable fact that Russia is the “occupying
power” which, therefore, has the legal right to deny
any ship “innocent passage” if it believes that this
ship is a threat, collecting intelligence or used
for propaganda purposes (again, read Nat South’s
superb discussion on the applicability of
the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
to this situation). As usual, the Brits are lying
about everything, including what the UNCLOS really
says…
Now let’s look at this from
the Russian point of view.
First, the Russians remember
how the Brits declared a 200 miles zone around the
Malvinas Islands (“Falklands” in UK parlance) and
immediately sunk the cruiser General Belgrano as
soon as it entered this zone. The Russians also
remember how the Turks shot down a Russian SU-24
over Syria because it had penetrated in Turkish air
space for exactly 6 seconds. The HMS Defender spent
about 30 minutes in Russian waters.
Can you really blame them for
feeling that “some are more equal than others”?
The Brits, being the superior
race which only they think they are, declared that
they only changed course because a slower Russian
vessel was ahead of them and they decided to pass it
from the open waters side. In fact, the Brits are so
superior to the mongoloid Russian hordes and their
dictator that they refused to even reply to the
Russian coast guard vessel when it threatened to
open fire if the Brits did not change course.
(I wonder, does anybody still
believe this crap? Does anybody still believe that
Great Britain is, well, great? In Russia the
expression “мелкобритания” is increasingly used.
Translated into English this would be something like
“Tiny Britain”)
Anyways, all of the above
clearly shows one of two things:
The Brits do not believe that Russia could
sink a UK warship
The Brits are willing to risk a major
military incident possibly leading to war in
order to maintain tensions between Russia and
the collective West (aka the AngloZionist
Empire).
This begs the question: are
the Brits correct, or are they delusional?
First, we need to understand
the purpose of this provocation: to disrupt the
planned summit between the EU and Russia which
France and Germany seemed to support, and which the
3B+PU and the Netherlands and the Czech Republic
(iirc) categorically opposed (the Ukraine is not
member of the EU, but they sure acted as if they had
some kind of moral veto power over EU decisions).
Sure, the UK has Brexited and should therefore not
have any say in EU decisions, but the Anglosphere
has enough power over the EU to make this completely
irrelevant. We also know that Boris Johnson
personally gave the order to the HMS Defender to
enter Russian waters. Obviously, that kind of high
level decision could not have been taken without
Uncle Shmuel’s approval, thus we are dealing with a
very deliberately calculated action. If this was the
goal, it has been a total success and the Brits just
screwed over Macron and Merkel.
Second, this is really
largely irrelevant for Russia. If the EU cannot
muster enough political courage to talk to Russia,
then Russia will directly talk with those
countries which want to talk to Russia. To put
it bluntly, Russia does not give a damn about the
3B+PU. As for the Netherlands, they are a big
investor in the Russian economy and Russians don’t
care about what the Dutch might or might not say, as
long as they keep investing (in Euros, by the way!),
which, so far, they still are. Besides, considering
the economic size of Holland, even if they stopped
investing this would only be a minor nuisance for
Russia. In fact, Merkel has even declared that if
the EU cannot agree to have a dialog with Russia,
Germany would seek other venues for this purpose.
Third, what just happened is
yet another clear sign that the EU is profoundly
dysfunctional. After the end of the USSR in 1991,
russophobic Neocons in the West decided to make the
Russians “pay” by incorporating ex WTO and ex Soviet
Republics into NATO. At first, it looked great, but
now it has become clear that the blowback from this
truly idiotic policy has many unexpected benefits
for Russia and major problems for the Empire. They
include:
Russia got rid of all the Soviet periphery
which was bleeding the Soviet Union dry.
None of the newly created states has become
a viable, successful state.
The Empire spent many billions trying to
prop up these newly independent states (ex USSR
and eastern Europe) and tried to turn them into
some anti-Russia showcase. They totally and
comprehensively failed.
Now the UK and, even more so, the 3B+PU have
taken the EU hostage and are preventing the
countries which matter from, well, mattering
anymore.
Countries bordering Russia are now all
demanding NATO troops, which puts the latter in
the worst possible position, right across the
Russian border and, therefore, within range of
too many Russian weapons to list here.
Last, but not least, the stupid and,
frankly, totally irresponsible actions of
countries like the UK and the Ukraine risk
involving all of Europe in a most dangerous and
devastating war.
Bottom line is this: the
leaders of the AngloZionist thought they had scored
big with the expansion of the EU and NATO. Now they
are screwed in a major way and with no solution in
sight.
This all is hardly big news,
but yet another confirmation of the advanced state
of collapse of both NATO and the EU. Conversely, the
more EU countries decide to hold bilateral talks
with Russia, the better for the future of the
European continent.
As for the Brits, they are
clearly suffering from phantom pains for their lost
empire. Think of it, in less than one century the
British Empire went from being the empire upon which
the sun never sets, (Britannia rules the waves,
etc.) to being the USA’s poodle which nobody
respects or takes seriously. Bojo is desperate to
prove that he is a “new Churchill” which will teach
the damn Russians (and Chinese!) to kowtow to the UK
or, failing that, at least kowtow to the Anglosphere.
And, as a typical western politician, Bojo is both
too ignorant and too narcissistic to understand the
risks he is taking.
Sidebar
The Brits
seemed to be combining imperialist
arrogance (and delusion!) with a truly
shocking lack of PR skills. Not only did
they deny that the Russians opened
warning fire ahead of them, only to have
the FSB prove this denial false by
publishing the video of the Russian
coast guard vessel firing ahead of the
Defender, but now they came up with a
truly clumsy piece of nonsense about how
a “super dooper secret” dossier on the
British plans was somehow apparently
found by a passer-by in a heap of trash
behind a bus stop in Kent (you think
I am joking, then see
here). Needless to say, the
Russians openly made fun of the Brits
saying that “007
agents agents aren’t what they used to
be”. Furthermore, it now appears
that some top UK officials were very
much opposed to this move which was
demanded by Johnson personally (see
here and
here).
What about the British
military?
We know that their actual
capabilities are laughable. But what about their
understanding of the situation?
I am not a mind reader and I
don’t know what the British sailors (and their
bosses) were thinking, but there is one thing which
I am sure of: the next time around (and, there will
be a next time according to UK ministers), the
Russians will use force. If possible, they will try
to ram the intruding vessel; if not, they might
strike at the intruding vessel’s engines/props to
disable it and, possibly, tow it. Should the
intruding vessel try to fire back, the Russians
would probably fire a torpedo and disable it. That
is my best guess. I also decided to ask Andrei
Martyanov (a former Soviet Navy officer) what he
thinks will happen the next time around. Here is his
reply:
“Most likely, they will
open fire, but first only with small-caliber
naval artillery (30-mm from the Russian border
patrol ship or even 76-mm), and that fire will
be aimed at the propeller-steering group (i.e.
at the stern) to begin with. At the same time,
the coastal defense batteries will actively
track the intruder with their targeting radar,
plus the Russian will “hang” 15-20 Su-24 and
SU-30SM in immediate readiness to use more
serious means – for example, the supersonic (M =
3.5) anti-radiation X-31 and take out the mast
with its radar. That is just for starters. Next,
the Russians will gage the reaction of the
intruder: if they try to shoot at any Russian
target, they will be sunk. But this would only
happen inside Russian territorial waters.
Outside Russian waters the Russians will only
monitor their moves. Lastly, do not forget –
there are anywhere between 4 and 7 Project 636
submarines at any one time patrolling the Black
Sea, each capable of firing 6 3M54 anti-ship
missiles in one salvo.”
Here is a short video of the
Russian MoD Zvezda channel to give you an idea of
how this all looks (in Russian, but no translation
needed) and which quite openly shows whom the
Russians consider their likely target.
Sidebar
Does anybody
still remember what happened when the
“invincible” British Navy tried to
participate in Trump’s (totally failed)
cruise missile attack on Syria? The
British subs in the Mediterranean were
shadowed by not one, but apparently two
Russian submarines. That convinced the
British sub commander that firing its
missiles would be suicidal. The Brits
gave up and left the area.
There is a pattern here:
western politicians make a lot of very loud
statements; the Russians simply take whatever
actions they deem necessary, which frees them from
the need to make threats of roaring statements in
the first place.
This approach has a problem:
only highly specialized people in the West are fully
aware of what the Russians are doing and even less
people fully understand the implications of the
Russian actions. Add to this a western media which
lies for a living, and this results in a population
in Europe which is almost totally unaware of the
very real risks the reckless actions of their
(supposed) representative governments engage in. How
many Brits will realize that a grinning and
apparently happy Boris Johnson has almost stumbled
into a war with Russia? Very few I bet. If anything,
the common folk in the West are told that (a) their
military is the best and (b) that the Russian
military is much weaker and the Russians understand
that. Ergo: there is no risk.
Then there is the fact that
while the general population is kept in total
ignorance, western political elites are mostly
composed of folks with very strong narcissistic
tendencies combined with a total inability to learn
from mistakes (both theirs and those of others).
Needless to say, history does not inform these
people either. Finally, since these folks can never
admit a mistake, however minor or serious, they
cannot change course; doubling down over and over is
pretty much all they are capable of.
Conclusion:
There is no doubt that the
Biden Administration has taken a very different
course towards Russia (and
Iran, by the way!) than the one favored by
the Trump administration. I attribute this change of
policy to the likely realization by top Pentagon
officials that the US desperately needs to “catch
its breath” and that the US military is in no
condition to take on any other halfway competent
military. Even if this is a ploy to win time for
reorganizing, I welcome this as, by definition,
anything is preferable to war, especially a
full-scale war. However, there are clearly interests
in both the US and Europe which are desperately
opposed to any form of detente with Russia and who
want to maintain an atmosphere of crisis and
tensions just short of war. Of course, I don’t
believe in any meaningful differences between the
various factions competing for power on a strategic
level: they all want to destroy, submit, break up
and otherwise devastate Russia. This 1000 year old
dream of the western ruling elites (pretty much all
of them) still remains the strategic target of the
West. But on a tactical level there appear to be two
factions, one which understands that the Empire
desperately needs a break to regroup and refine its
strategy and another one which still seems to
believe that the Empire is invincible and appears to
be hell-bent on triggering as many conflicts/wars as
it deems necessary to restore Uncle Shmuel’s
worldwide hegemony.
That second group, clearly
strong, has ties with the UK and the 3B+PU gang who
are desperate to remain relevant and who understands
that should there ever be any type detente (or even
a tense modus vivendi) agreed upon between
Russia and the West, that group would become
comprehensively irrelevant to the future of our
planet. While we can disagree with this logic, we
have to remain aware that for countries like the UK
or the 3B+PU this is truly an existential issue and
that they see a continuation of tensions as the only
path to political survival. On this specific point,
I happen to agree with them.
I mentioned that ever since
Dubya, all the US Presidents who came to the White
House were extremely weak, which resulted in the
breakup of any single US foreign policy into many
different, and often contradictory, “mini foreign
policies” by various branches of the government
(Congress vs White House, plus a Pentagon foreign
policy, a CIA foreign policy, a Foggy Bottom policy,
a DoE policy, etc. etc. etc.). Hence, for example,
the
recent seizure by Uncle Shmuel of the PressTV
domain name. (BTW – the domain name
https://www.presstv.ir/ still works!).
This all makes for a very
dangerous brew. Especially since the Russians
clearly and sincerely believe that they cannot
back down any further.
I therefore conclude that a
future military incident, with the use of fire in
anger, and possibly resulting in a real war, remains
not only possible, but even likely, unless the
factions in the West which want a time-out to
regroup manage to get the russophobic nutcases under
control.
Will that happen? I doubt it
very much. Biden is not only weak and senile, his
Administration has been organized with wokeness and
(pseudo) “diversity” as opposed to competence or
expertise. Thus, the collective Biden (which I
designate as “Biden” as opposed to the real Biden)
is probably too weak to get the crazies under
control, even for a short time.
And here is the really scary
thing: from the Russian point of view (and Russians
all understand all of the above), sinking a British
ship might well be the best solution. Why? Because
once this happens, it will be impossible to conceal
from the western public opinion that its so-called
“leaders” are reckless, incompetant, delusional and
simply dangerous narcissists who are now willing to
risk a continental war (possibly nuclear!) just in
order to keep denying the reality of their
irrelevance. If Russia wanted to invade the UK, I
believe that most Brits would be willing to risk it
all to defend their motherland. But I very much
doubt that a majority/plurality of Brits would
support the notion of dying for Crimea even if they
believe that Russia “annexed” the peninsula and is
now “oppressing the Ukrainian people of Crimea”. Nor
would they want to die over MH17, Skripal, Syria,
Navalnyi or the oppressed homos in Chechnia.
There is one more thing I
think Putin could do: make a solemn speech and directly address the people of the West
telling them the truth about what the western
political leaders are doing. He could honestly tell
the people in the West that Russia has retreated as
far as she could. He can tell the people of the West
that Russia did what she so often did in history,
she traded space for time and that the four years
break of the Trump Administration has allowed Russia
to fully rearm, retrain and reorganize her armed
forces which are now quite capable of taking on both
the US and NATO and prevail.
Yes, I know, Saddam Hussein
and Muammar Gaddafi tried to appeal to the people of
the West and, in both cases, the democratic and free
western media completely obfuscated these admittedly
naive and clumsy attempts. But if Putin speaks
directly to the people of the West, and explains to
them what a war (even a conventional one) would mean
for Europe, they would have to listen. Putin could
clearly indicate to the people of the West which
actions of the Empire Russia could never and would
never tolerate. Finally, he could clearly spell out
why the Russian people would prefer war to any
surrender to the Empire. And, just to make sure that
the message gets through, the Russian Navy might
want to have one of its
Yasen-M class SSGN surface somewhere in
the Channel or the Tu-160 practice a cruise missile
release on London (only electronically, of course).
Hussein and Gaddafi did not have such capabilities.
Russia does, and she should make use of them.
Fear, especially existential
fear, might well be the only thing which could break
through the wall of silence and disinformation which
the western media has been feeding the people for
decades.
How much hope do I place in
the Biden Administration taking control of the
nutcases or for Putin to directly address the people
of the West? Not much at all. And the next best
outcome is for Russia to sink a US/UK warship (or
shoot down an aircraft) without triggering a
continental war. Is that even possible? Yes, I think
so. Very dangerous, but possible.
Does Russia have any other
choice? If so, I don’t see it. Do you?
Post scriptum: this
just in – the USS Ross (DDG-71), an Arleigh
Burke-class guided-missile destroyer in the United
States Navy, has just entered to Black Sea on her
way to Odessa where the Ukies are preparing
monoevers if their “mosquito fleet” in the latest
“Sea Breeze” NATO maneuvers (the biggest ones to
date – 30 countries participate!). The Ukies have
also declared that the Ross plans to follow the
exact same course as the Defender did. The Russians?
They announced that the USS Ross is now a “fat
target” on their coastal defense missiles Bal and
Bastion. As for Foreign Minister Lavrov, he just
authored a seminal article entitled “The
Law, the Rights and the Rules” which, still
using diplomatic language, shows the utter disgust
even Russian diplomats feel for the incompetence and
hypocrisy of the West.
“More of the same” seems to
be the trend of the day…
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