Eurasia note #66 - Fabled Attack On Poland Risks Escalation

Media seems to want war; Associated Press retracts anonymous intelligence source

Ukraine leverages missile ‘accident’ to try to provoke allies into broader conflict.
Rocket flew 100 km in wrong direction before killing two farm workers.
Warsaw government clarifies Soviet-era S-300 was fired by Ukraine.

Europe’s politicians talk first, think later; NATO blames Russia anyway.
Kyiv issues 10-point preconditions for negotiations with Moscow.
Trudeau raises topic of ‘interference’ with China’s Xi.

(2,000 words or about 10 minutes of your time.)

Two farmworkers were killed in Lublin province, 100 km northwest of Lviv

Tbilisi, Nov 17, 2022

A missile strike on a village across Ukraine’s border with Poland demonstrated once again that the online war is a parallel narrative that often departs from the facts. You can watch for free and have your favourite team come out the winner, every episode.

This time the propaganda war almost became real as Western politicians responded in knee-jerk fashion, the leaders of France, Germany and the UK all declaring that they “stand by Poland.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had been quick to declare the explosion, which killed two farm workers in Przewodów, a Russian attack on Poland and a “significant escalation.” Foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba resorted to downright smears, accusing Russia of promoting conspiracy theories that it had not fired the rocket.

Associated Press, a news agency reputedly close to the CIA (aren’t they all? — Ed.) repeated Ukraine’s assertions — buttressing them with an “American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity."

Yet a NATO military official told CNN the missile had been tracked by an alliance aircraft flying over Poland so they presumably knew where it came from. Russia said it did not fire missiles close to the Polish border and if Ukraine had been firing at an enemy missile, it had done so in the wrong direction.

Eventually the truth in the aether matched that on the ground: it was at the minimum a Ukrainian self-defence malfunction.

The blast occurred 150 kilometers south of Lublin, the ninth-largest city in Poland. However a quote of the chairman of the city council that it was a Ukrainian provocation was fake — Jarosław Pakuła says the Facebook page on which it appeared is not his. [1]

Agendas advanced

Ukraine’s leadership has asked NATO to supply more effective air cover and on Wednesday Sec-Gen Jens Stoltenberg chaired a meeting of the North Atlantic Council to discuss the missile — which he said was the indirect result of Russian aggression.

President Joe Biden seized the occasion to ask for another $37 billion for Ukraine that would take the total given this year to more than $90 billion.

More significant was Russia’s continued war of attrition, with up to 90 missiles fired at Ukrainian energy facilities on Tuesday Nov 15. Acting head of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Maliuk said it was likely the work of Russia’s 84th Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment. It is a technique of the intelligence service to strive to identify military units and publish personal information of servicemen involved.

On the day of attack, CIA director William Burns was meeting Zelenskiy in Kyiv, continuing a regional tour in which he has met Russian and Turkish counterparts, in parallel with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Trudeau’s ding-dong with Xi

While Ukrainian engineers raced to restore power, politicians from the richest nations were sweating in the 100 per cent humidity and 20 degrees celsius of Bali, “deploring” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but demonstrating their inability to agree on much else beyond outrage.

The surprise was that Canadian premier Justin Trudeau raised “serious concerns” about domestic interference by China in his first talks with President Xi Jinping in over three years. What’s more, the comments were leaked, angering the Chinese.

The previous day Canadian police had arrested a Chinese researcher over the alleged theft of battery technology. Canadian intelligence services say they uncovered Chinese interference in the 2019 general election. Trudeau’s audience with Xi lasted 10 minutes, compare with more than three hours that the Chinese leader accorded to Biden. Relations are strained by Canada’s arrest of a Huawei executive in 2018, followed by China’s arrest of two Canadians.

Trudeau’s legal father Pierre was an admirer of Chairman Mao, whose country he visited as a student. Justin in 2013 said: “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime.” This is precisely the same opinion voiced by the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab, who has also boasted of his control of Canada’s cabinet.

The media continues its technique of hear ye: “G20 Summit: What you need to know now.” (It doesn’t tell the truth so why presume we would want to hear it?)

The media presented the illusion that Schwab addressed the G20 and re-launched The Great Reset — I briefly got taken in by the WEF marketing trick. Schwab did not address the G20... he turned up on the sidelines with a corporate-sponsored workshop called the B20.

The B20 is a private conference launched at the G20 Summit in Seoul in 2010, as the “official business group that leads engagement with G20.”

This is his snake oil technique, as Joaquin Flores of Strategic Culture points out, of mimicking the names of governance bodies, and signing memoranda of understanding with intergovernmental institutions. Thus WEF Agenda 2030 sounds like UN Agenda 2030, etc). “Part of this is to get controlled media to report B20 talking points as if these were the predominant ones at G20.”

Though president Vladimir Putin did not attend — sending foreign minister Sergei Lavrov instead — he issued a statement: “Banks, with all due respect to our financial institutions, drink blood from people right to the grave.”