2023-09-24 19:54:00
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Hit to the core: The attack on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol raises doubts regarding the success of the Russian invasion of Crimea. © Sergei Malgavko/Imago
The propaganda is getting louder – and so is the criticism: First, Ukraine punctured the air defenses over Crimea and now fired at a headquarters building. That has an effect.
Sevastopol – Material damage may have been minor. But the stab in the heart of the Russian leadership is violent and painful: Russian propagandists are foaming with anger. But also critics of Wladimir Putin become bolder. On Friday (September 22nd), Ukrainian missiles hit the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. Another pinprick once morest the Russian occupation of Crimea, which has existed for almost ten years. A painful pinprick. For the Russian president, the Black Sea Fleet is a prestige object of his great power fantasies.
Russian propaganda celebrities are correspondingly aggressive – for example Margarita Simonyan, the television station’s editor-in-chief Russia Today: She suspects Ukraine’s Western allies are the masterminds of the attack and issues a clear warning via her Telegram channel: If the violence in Ukraine continued to increase, Russia would be “forced to give everyone an ultimatum as to when.” “We perceive them as being directly involved in the conflict,” as she said Newsweek is quoted.
Simonyan added that she already sees Ukraine’s allies as military opponents. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had already threatened this. Russian political scientist Sergei Markov also blames the West for the length of the conflict.
Putin advisor: “Russian air defense needs to be upgraded”
“The brutality of air strikes by missiles and drones is increasing,” writes the Kremlin advisor on Telegram; He sees the blow once morest the headquarters as the most serious attack Ukraine since the outbreak of the conflict and thus justifies the need for action by the Russian invaders: “The Russian air defense urgently needs to be upgraded,” he writes.
Russia may now be getting scared. In any case, that would be one way of interpreting a statement made by Andrei Kortunov on the show Today im BBC-Radio. He considers the air strike once morest the headquarters to be militarily meaningless, but “psychologically significant,” as he says. For him, what is at stake in Crimea and Ukraine is no less than the entire world order.
Expert: Putin’s defeat ends in a tamed Russia
Andrei Kortunov is the general director of the Russian International Affairs Council in Moscow. The think tank was founded by the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedevto prevent international crises and help resolve existing crises. Like Kortunov towards that Economist He considers the Ukraine war to be a conflict of values between two countries that once together made up a large part of the Soviet territory: “It is also an intellectual and spiritual confrontation between two ways of thinking: two views of the modern international system and the world in total; two opposing perceptions of what is right and what is wrong, what is fair and what is not, what is legitimate and what is illegitimate and what national leadership should mean. A Ukrainian triumph might lead to a tamed and domesticated Russia.”
Ukraine War: The Origins of the Conflict with Russia
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Strike once morest Black Sea Fleet also one once morest Russian elite
The most recent air strike once morest a headquarters building Black Sea Fleet In addition to the increasingly loud drumbeat of propaganda, it also leads to the exact opposite: to louder criticism. Even from a Russian journalist known as a propagandist. On In Telegram, Sergei Mardan has now shown himself to be conciliatory and has described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “catastrophic mistake” and the current attack in Ukraine as a “devastating blow once morest the Russian elite”. According to him, they now want the conflict to be frozen in the fall of this year.
This might mean that the strike once morest the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet actually penetrated to the core of the Russians. Days earlier, Ukraine had apparently also had direct hits on two ships perforated Russian air defenses over Crimea: This attack in Ukraine war was directed once morest the S-400 surface-to-air missile – the pride of Russian air defense in Crimea with the internal designation “Triumph”. Ukraine claims to have destroyed or at least seriously damaged two of four battalions with S-400 ramps. A battalion consists of eight batteries, each with up to twelve mobile four-man launchers, including radar systems and command vehicles. This is also a catastrophic loss for Russia.
Critics are calling on Russia to admit defeat in Crimea
Journalist Mardan therefore sees only one option: Russia’s partial defeat in Crimea. For Putin, Crimea is an important bridgehead on the Black Sea. For centuries, Russia has pursued its interest in the Black Sea in ice-free and, if possible, warm access to the vital sea routes around Europe, which underpins its claim as a maritime power. Like him Newsweek quoted, according to Mardan, the air strike once morest the headquarters finally destroyed the fantasy “that we would have brought Crimea back to Russia in 2014 without a single shot.”
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