Whodunit? The Attack on TurkStream

Did Washington plan to blow up another Russian gas pipeline? That’s the question of the month after Ukrainian drones attacked the TurkStream compressor station January 11. It was also a question directly posed in RT January 16. Although this attack differed from Joe Biden’s CIA and navy undersea bombing of the NordStream pipline, in that the TurkStream pipeline per se was not attacked, but instead the target was its compressor station in Russia’s Krasnodar region on the Black Sea coast, it raises the question: did Washington greenlight this assault? The answer is, probably yes, because Biden was then president. But now he’s gone, so maybe this lunatic policy won’t be pursued.

Previously under Biden, the Empire didn’t even need to give the order, because its puppets in Kiev knew exactly what was expected of them in Washington’s ongoing struggle to isolate the European energy market by ruthlessly eliminating competitors, namely Russia. That is what this war was about for the U.S.: severing all economic links between Europe and Russia. Though catastrophic for its member nations, the European Union political class still fanatically supports this suicide; why is a matter for psychiatrists, not journalists.

Meanwhile in the west, projection runs wild. After damage to Baltic seabed energy and communication lines, western fingers all pointed accusingly to Russia. But it turns out, the kremlin was more honorable in this matter than Washington was regarding NordStream. On January 19 came news that, oops, well, Russia had nothing to do with harming the Baltic cables. It was an accident. The hullaballoo over malignant Moscow sabotaging western infrastructure turned out to be as truthful as the original absurdities in re the NordStream explosion, namely that Russia supposedly bombed its own pipeline. How anyone with an IQ above room temperature could have entertained this nitwit notion for two seconds is an open question, but, well, you see, you had to have been there. Where? At the center of NATO’s brainless groupthink, I guess.

If you doubt Washington’s hand in the TurkStream attack, just remember its predecessor, NordStream, Biden publicly thundering that it would be shut down and his henchwoman, Victoria Nuland, doing the same. Also recall that per reporter Seymour Hersh, Biden himself ordered the bombing of the pipeline. After that, and perhaps with an eye to future legal liability, white house denizens wised up. When Kiev halted transit of Russian gas through pipelines that cross Ukraine to Romania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova on January 1, Washington was mum. Biden made no public threats beforehand.

Later, with TurkStream, nine days before Biden at long last gave the American people the relief of leaving office, he had nothing to say. But crushing Moscow’s energy sector was a long-standing white house goal, one Biden was even, evidently, willing to risk nuclear war to achieve. No wonder our hand-picked Ukrainian rulers singled out Russian pipelines on their territory. No wonder they launched drones at Russian energy plants. And no wonder they attacked TurkStream. Why? To curry favor in Washington. Because if they really wanted to assist the cause of the Ukrainian people, they’d have negotiated, instead of engaging in relentless provocations and assaults on European and Russian energy security.

Our western, corporate media somehow mostly missed the TurkStream story, but that’s not surprising. They’re doubtless waiting till they can cook up a “Russia droned its own TurkStream compressor station” angle. Or their gnat-like attention spans have already drifted elsewhere. But Asia Times covered it January 14. “The European countries primarily receiving gas from the TurkStream pipeline are Hungary, Serbia, Greece, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Romania.”

“A key report,” Asia Times continues, “says that ‘In 2024 Russian gas reached Europe via three routes: transit through Ukraine (30 percent), via Turkey and the TurkStream pipeline (31 percent) and as LNG (39 percent)…Neither the U.S. nor Russia can increase LNG deliveries to make up for the cessation of transport through Ukraine. Had the Ukrainian attack on TurkStream been successful, over 60 percent of Europe’s imported natural gas supplies would have been cut off.” Once again Kiev bit the European hand that feeds it – and got a “thank you very much” in return.

So the idiotic point was, simply, to harm Russia. It’s possible though unlikely that maybe Kiev and Washington figured short-term pain for long-term gain – an interregnum in which the U.S. could ramp up LNG supplies, with the benefit of ending a key source of Russian revenue from gas. Whatever the so-called reasoning, it was imbecilic. The U.S. has already achieved its goal – at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainian men and tens of thousands of dead Russian ones – of opening the European market for its overpriced LNG. Under Trump, American money for the war will likely wind down – indeed, January 23, Col. Douglas Macgregor tweeted “Trump has called a halt to all military aid to Ukraine for a complete audit and investigation.” So, hopefully, the shenanigans regarding energy sanctions and infrastructure will also wind down, as will – what’s even more wildly dangerous – Ukrainian assaults on Russian anti-nuclear radar arrays. (The only and quite transparent motive for such assaults could have been to provoke nuclear war, leaving the question of why any sane person in any position of power would continue to support lunatics with such goals.)

Of course, meanwhile, Ukraine is losing on the battlefield, causing European elites to lose their minds. Many actually self-hypnotized with the stupendous, mendacious hallucination that Russia intends, after conquering Ukraine, to roll its tanks into Poland. But Moscow never evinced the slightest interest in such a conquest, or even in assimilating fascist Western Ukraine (I wonder why). Russia aims to protect Russians in the Donbass and to keep its Slavic neighbor out of NATO.

The kremlin also has another goal, expressed in its December 2021 letters to Washington, that is, a new security architecture with the west, one that translates into lasting peace via NATO retraction. Sounds reasonable, no? Especially after four years of panic over whether our often mentally elsewhere president Biden would bumble into a nuclear war and thus render the planet uninhabitable. A real deal with Russia on security would be excellent, would benefit humanity and mean that we could cork the atomic holocaust monster back into its bottle.

Not incidentally, this is the only leverage the west has over a Moscow otherwise victorious on the battlefield. Victors commonly dictate terms, and Russian president Vladimir Putin stated them, or rather the baseline, back in June: no Ukraine in NATO, the Donbass stays in Russia. But the kremlin does not want a frozen conflict, during which Kiev rearms; it wants a lasting peace. So maybe it can be persuaded not to expand the territory it annexes in exchange for a real, honest, negotiated, pan-European security arrangement, signed off on by Washington.

According to Seymour Hersh January 23, intense negotiations between the Trump’s people and Putin’s have been underway for some time. Let’s hope they bear fruit soon, end the atomic sword of Damocles hanging over the globe and stop the slaughter. The tragedy is, if not for four years of Biden misrule, this war would not have happened, because Russia’s big picture goals are currently the same as they were in December 2021. Maybe now, having lost the war, the west will listen.

One can only hope.

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest novel is Booby Prize. She can be reached at her website.