hotel bombing
© RTThe aftermath of a bombing raid on a hotel targeted by Kiev in Kherson, Ukraine
No number of missiles will succeed in stopping the exercise of the locals' democratic rights as enshrined in the UN Charter nor in deterring world-class Russian journalists from reporting on this historic event.

Kiev bombarded a hotel in the former Ukrainian city of Kherson with missiles on Sunday morning in what local authorities described as a NATO-backed preplanned terrorist attack. A former Rada official who'd since broken ranks with the US-installed fascist regime was killed as was another person, while two RT journalists who were covering that polity's ongoing referendum on joining Russia miraculously escaped unharmed. Considering the targets and the political context in which this civilian site was attacked, it can be said that it was meant as a strike against democracy and journalism.

Regarding the first, Kiev and its NATO patrons want to intimidate the locals from exercising their political right to self-determination that's enshrined in the UN Charter. They're not content with just attempting to discredit this process in the eyes of the Golden Billion's citizens, but have decided to escalate by carrying out a preplanned terrorist attack to punish anyone who wants to participate in it. Regarding the second target of this strike, there's no doubt that Kiev knew that RT journalists were lodging at that hotel, which means that it wanted to kill members of the press for reporting on the referendum.

The irony is that the West and its proxies claim to be in support of democracy and journalism while simultaneously alleging that their geostrategic foes like Russia are supposedly against them, but Kiev's latest NATO-backed terrorist attack exposes the tragic truth behind this rhetoric. The reality is that it's the first pair that hates democracy and journalism so much whenever they're exercised in ways that go against their interests that they'll carry out a strike against a hotel where journalists are lodging while covering a local referendum.

The so-called "rules-based order" that they never tire of reminding everyone that they support is therefore nothing more than the arbitrary implementation of double standards intended to advance American aims at everyone else's expense. If Kiev and its Western patrons truly stood in defense of democracy and journalism like they claim, then they'd have restricted their attacks to purely military targets instead of deliberating hitting civilian ones, not to mention while journalists were lodging there. The latest terrorist attack thus proves that the ongoing referendum is something that they deeply fear.

The reason for this is self-evident, and it's that the predicable outcome of the locals voting to reunify with their historical Russian Motherland will result in the expansion of that Eurasian Great Power's borders, after which Moscow can protect its newly incorporated territories with nuclear arms if needed. Although intended by the Kremlin as a pragmatic de-escalation measure to freeze the line of control or only expand it up to those regions' pre-reunification administrative borders, America might ignore this olive branch to order Kiev into launching a suicidal invasion across the post-referenda frontier.

While there are arguments for and against the US provoking Russia into employing tactical nukes in self-defense as an absolute last resort from the perspective of its subjective hegemonic interests, Washington is still nevertheless being forced onto the horns of an unprecedented dilemma by Moscow after President Putin's latest judo move in declaring that he'll recognize the votes' result and utilize all means at his disposal to protect his country's people and territory. That's why the US wants so badly to derail the referenda by ordering Kiev's latest attack in a desperate attempt to avert that scenario.

No number of missiles will succeed in stopping the exercise of the locals' democratic rights as enshrined in the UN Charter nor in deterring world-class Russian journalists from reporting on this historic event. All that this terrorist attack achieved is that it further eroded the US and Kiev's own credibility by exposing their "rules-based order" as the deceptive rhetoric that it was earlier described in this analysis as being. The world should take note that neither of those two truly care about democracy or journalism otherwise Sunday morning's terrorist attack would never have happened