The Czech Republic's Petr Pavel went too far by claiming the Nord Stream pipelines were a "legitimate target" for Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said
Czech President Petr Pavel sounded like an international terrorist when he claimed that the Nord Stream gas pipelines were a "legitimate target" for Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
Pavel made the remarks in response to an article in the Wall Street Journal, which reported last week that Kiev had carried out the September 2022 sabotage that ruptured the key infrastructure built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Western Europe.
Comment: From the article: "too much, even for such an eccentric fringe [figure]."
There is probably an element of scathing irony in the characterization, as President Petr Pavel by Western standards hardly belongs to an eccentric fringe. The facts are that Petr Pavel before becoming the President of the Czech Republic served the Czech army for 44 years, was promoted to the rank of general and from 2015-2018 was "Chairman of the NATO Military Committee" ... "The chair is one of the foremost officials of NATO, next to the Secretary General and the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. The CMC is assisted by the deputy chair, who advises the Deputy Secretary General and serves as the principal agent for coordination of nuclear, biological, and chemical matters for the Military Committee." The quotes from the Wiki are included in comments to this article Nord Stream was 'legitimate target' for Ukraine - EU country's president
The Nord Stream was an example of state sponsored terrorism. It is cheap to blame Ukraine, but it is not credible they had the knowledge to carry it out. If Petr Pavel had been more responsible he could have raised this point, but perhaps he did not want to contradict the German Government, or upset the Polish PM, Polish PM wants Nord Stream scandal buried, or reveal his own understanding. Intended as an escalation or not, the statements from Petr Pavel can be interpreted to mean it is now open season on infrastructure which is fully or partly owned by Russian companies, or the Russian state, or more generally on anything which is not to the liking of "Ukraine".
If the Nord Stream sabotage "was aimed at cutting off gas and oil supplies to Europe and [the flow of] money back to Russia, then... it would be a legitimate target," Pavel, who is himself a former NATO general, said.
"Pipelines have always been and will always be targets because they have the potential to influence the conflict in one direction or the other," he added.
In the above case, it is safe to say that the sabotage increased energy prices which affected both EU citizens and businesses. If that is so, civilian concerns do not seem to be a major concern at the moment. Therefore, if what was unthinkable a few years ago now is okay, why should a nuclear power plant, a bridge, a tunnel, a communication cable, be any less if a potential target than a pipeline? See also this article: West could be helping Ukraine with 'dirty nuke' - ex-MEP But will one of the results eventually be: Ukrainians will soon realize the West 'used them' - Lukashenko
Pipelines will always be attacked during conflicts due to their strategic importance, the Czech Republic's Petr Pavel has said
The Nord Stream pipelines were a "legitimate target" for Ukraine during its conflict with Russia, Czech President Petr Pavel has said. However, he stressed that he does not have any data proving that Kiev really was behind the attack on the energy infrastructure.
During his interview with the outlet Novinky.cz on Wednesday, Pavel was asked to comment on an article published in last week's Wall Stall Journal which claimed that the September 2022 explosions which ruptured the key energy infrastructure built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Western Europe had been carried out by Kiev.
According to the US paper's sources, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, who had initially approved the attack, later tried calling it off under pressure from the CIA, but the then-commander-in-chief of the country's military Valery Zaluzhny nonetheless went ahead with the operation.
The Czech president started by stressing that he does not have any "clear incriminating" information that would link Kiev to the attack on Nord Stream.
Comment: 1) The statements from Czech President Petr Pavel are interesting for several reasons. Petr Pavel is not just any former general, he was the Chair of NATO Military Committee.
He served in the Czechoslovak People's Army and joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1985. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and the subsequent dissolution of Czechoslovakia, Pavel served in the newly established Czech Army and participated in the 1993 evacuation of Karin Base during the Croatian War of Independence, which earned him praise and international recognition. Pavel rose through the ranks of the military to become the Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces from 2012 to 2015. He was subsequently selected as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee between 2015 and 2018, becoming the first military officer from the former Eastern Bloc to hold the post. At NATO, he oversaw the Alliance's response and fallout of the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the 2018 Turkish invasion of Afrin, as well as efforts to tackle rising Chinese influence. Pavel retired from the military after 44 years and was discharged with honors after his term expired.
The Chair of the NATO Military Committee (CMC) is the head of the NATO Military Committee, which advises the North Atlantic Council (NAC) on military policy and strategy. The CMC is the senior military spokesperson of the 32-nation alliance and principal advisor to the Secretary General. The chair is one of the foremost officials of NATO, next to the Secretary General and the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. The CMC is assisted by the deputy chair, who advises the Deputy Secretary General and serves as the principal agent for coordination of nuclear, biological, and chemical matters for the Military Committee.[1]
2) From the article the following has consequences:
If the Nord Stream sabotage "was aimed at cutting off gas and oil supplies to Europe and [the flow of] money back to Russia, then... it would be a legitimate target," Pavel, who is himself a former NATO general, said.
"Pipelines have always been and will always be targets because they have the potential to influence the conflict in one direction or the other," he added.
The Czech leader acknowledged that if Ukraine's role in the destruction of Nord Stream 1 and 2 is proven, it may "affect the willingness of countries [in the EU] to provide assistance to Ukraine" in its fight with Russia.
"On the other hand, we have no other option but to support Ukraine at this time. It is not about whether we like Ukraine or not, but about whether we want to live in a world where one country can invade another just because it is bigger and stronger," he claimed.
Using the reasoning of Petr Pavel, there is much infrastructure in Europe including Russia that now can be destroyed. Fukushima like events, with reactor meltdowns are welcome as long as it is "Ukraine" that is letting out steam, or trying to blame Russia for it, because going back to the days following the Nord Stream sabotage, it was Russia, the MSM wanted to blame.
3) If one takes a step back and considers the US as a prime mover on the Nord Stream sabotage project, then some of the arguments Pavel brings up can still be used. The pipeline was not so much a strategic issue for Ukraine, as it was for the US in its struggle to severe ties between the EU and Russia and weaken the companies of the European allies. From this perspective, the last paragraph above could be rewritten to say something like: <we have no other option but to support the Deep State at this time. It is not about whether we like the Deep State or not, but about whether we want to live in a world where the Deep State can lord it over us - and we do.>
4) The statements from Petr Pavel "we have no other option but to support Ukraine at this time" can serve as a reply to the German politicians Alice Weidel from AfdD and Sarah Wagenknecht from BSW who in recent social media posts both have taken up the topic of the Nord Stream sabotage and the expenses for Germany. From Alice Weidel:
Sahra Wagenknecht wrote today on her public FB page, if translated from German:
We demand clarification: What did the federal government know about the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines and when? The Wall Street Journal's research shows that the German and US secret services were informed about the plans from the Netherlands before the explosion. The booming silence of the traffic lights is a scandal! The fact that it rejects an international investigation under UN supervision, as the federal government announced at the request of our Parliamentary Managing Director Jessica Tatti, is a deep insight. Pawn sacrifices and further cover-ups by the actors involved are now even more likely.
We are calling for an investigative committee in the Bundestag to finally clarify, almost two years after the destructive attack on German infrastructure, the extent to which states and their militaries were involved in the sabotage.
5) The observations of Wagenknecht are similar to some of those made by Russia. Monday, 19 Aug 2024 11:03 UTC there was via RT this article:
Germany must provide full disclosure over Nord Stream bombings - Lavrov Later in the day, there was a report about the reply from the office of the German Foreign Ministry:
19 Aug, 2024 18:14
Germany says it's sharing Nord Stream attack information with Russia [...]
Germany does share with Russia some information about the investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, a spokesman for the nation's Foreign Ministry said during a press conference on Monday. Moscow has previously accused Berlin of a lack of transparency in handling the probe.
[...]
"We are [engaged] in information exchange with the Russian authorities," the German Foreign Ministry spokesman said when asked to comment on recent statements by Moscow.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier accused Berlin of concealing facts about the attack and demanded full transparency in the investigation.
Germany must "stop categorically refusing to present the facts that it couldn't have failed to discover," he said in an interview with Izvestia published on Monday. Commenting on the development, the German spokesman insisted that Berlin cannot share any preliminary results of the probe because the investigation is still ongoing.
Information that can be shared without "jeopardizing" the investigation is handed over, the official maintained.
In his interview, Lavrov said that Moscow had already filed an official complaint regarding Berlin's probe and would request a transparent international inquiry into the incident.
[...]
'Information that can be shared without "jeopardizing" the investigation is handed over,' but is very little indeed. The day after, there was this response from Russia Foreign Ministry:
Berlin has not provided Moscow with any actual information about the attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said
The pipelines which ran under the Baltic Sea were used to transport Russian natural gas to Germany and other parts of Western Europe. They were damaged in September 2022 by a series of explosions near the Danish island of Bornholm.
Russia has accused the US of orchestrating the attack, while some media in the West have blamed a "pro-Ukrainian group."
Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Germany of refusing to officially share information about the investigation, suggesting that leaking it to the media instead raises "suspicions that all of this is staged" to deflect blame from the actual culprits.
German Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer responded on Monday that Berlin has engaged "in information exchange" with Moscow. Speaking on Wednesday, Zakharova accused him of lying.
"What Mr. Fischer said does not correspond to reality at all," Zakharova told reporters. "Simply put, it is a lie. For almost two years, the German side has responded to all inquiries from Russian authorities regarding the destruction of the Nord Streams with only empty formalities that contained no factual information."
Fischer's statement "only strengthens our suspicions of Berlin's intention to 'blow up' the investigation, which is being conducted in total secrecy, by not allowing it to identify the true instigators of the attack on the largest trans-European energy infrastructure facility," Zakharova added.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Germany is also persecuting media outlets that are actually trying to discover what happened, which "shows that Berlin has something to hide and is extremely uninterested in conducting a real investigation and having the truth made public."
The original Nord Stream was built after the 2009 gas transit dispute between Kiev and Moscow, enabling Gazprom to supply Western Europe without depending on Ukraine and Poland. The second pipeline was finished in late 2021, despite delays due to US sanctions.
Western media narratives about "Ukrainian saboteurs" being behind the blast, whether acting on orders from Kiev or alone, began appearing only after US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh blamed Washington. Citing sources within the intelligence community, Hersh argued that CIA divers working with the Norwegian Navy planted remotely-triggered bombs on both pipelines, using a NATO exercise in the region as cover.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has maintained that Russia blew up its own pipelines, which Moscow has dismissed as ridiculous.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has condemned Latvia over its decision to send 500 combat drones to Kiev.
Latvia is fueling the Ukraine conflict by supplying Kiev with hundreds of drones, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. The deliveries will nonetheless fail to change the ultimate outcome of the hostilities, she added.
Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds revealed last week that the Baltic nation had readied another shipment of 500 domestically-manufactured UAVs for Ukraine. The announcement came after the Latvian Defense Ministry said in early July that it would provide Kiev with as many as 2,500 combat UAVs worth a total €4 million ($4.4 million) within a month, as part of a Western drone coalition effort.
The official Democratic party platform calls for the passage of the US Citizenship Act - which the Trump campaign on Monday called 'a radical amnesty bill that would give automatic citizenship and social security numbers to the millions of illegal aliens that invaded our country, including criminals, human traffickers, and gang members.'
An Axios reporter rushed to the defense of Vice President Kamala Harris' heavily criticized proposal to control grocery prices on Tuesday, but her article was hit by a community note on X that provided some important context.
Axios Markets Correspondent Emily Peck wrote, "One of Kamala Harris' most controversial policy proposals is a ban on grocery price gouging — critics are conflating the idea with Soviet-style price controls, and calling the plan 'Kamunism.'" Peck added, "If banning price gouging is communist, then the U.S. went Marxist long ago. Most of us live in states that already have bans in place."
Axios also posted a link to the article on X with the caption, "Don't call it price controls: How price gouging bans really work."
Moscow faced a siege Wednesday from nearly a dozen Ukrainian drones, the largest such attack on the Russian capital since the start of the war in 2022.
Why it matters: It's the latest in a series of surprise offensive attacks sprung by Ukraine as Kyiv looks to build on the momentum generated by its surprise incursion into Russian territory earlier this month.
Driving the news: The drone attack on Moscow was part of a broader series of overnight strikes on Russian soil.
Comment: It's telling of the desperation of the Kiev-junta, the West, (and Israel), that they are increasingly resorting to terrorist attacks against civilians. This, in addition to even more diabolical actions, such as attacks against infrastructure that could have devastating consequences for peoples across Europe:
US officials believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "maximalist statements" are hindering ceasefire talks over the war in Gaza, multiple media reports have claimed. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a tour of the Middle East on Tuesday, amid a US push for a ceasefire and hostage deal in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The reported criticism of Netanyahu comes amid claims that the Israeli prime minister has expressed a hardline stance on the continued Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presence in Gaza.
Blinken held three hours of talks with Netanyahu on Monday in West Jerusalem. He later announced to the media that the Israeli leader had accepted a "bridging proposal" intended to bring Israel and Hamas closer to a full ceasefire. The militant group did not attend the negotiations, citing the lack of a clear plan, and had refused a US ceasefire proposal the day before.
Czechia's Petr Pavel has suggested admitting Kiev even with "temporary" borders.
NATO could allow Ukraine to join the bloc without having to recapture territory it has lost to Russia, Czech President Petr Pavel has said.
Kiev formally applied to become a NATO member in September 2022, citing its conflict with Russia. The US-led bloc, however, has ruled out admitting Ukraine until the hostilities with Moscow are resolved. Instead, a series of NATO member states have opted for bilateral security pacts with Kiev. These agreements lack the power of Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which stipulates that an attack on one member must be treated as an attack on the bloc as a whole.
Pavel, who led the NATO Military Committee from 2015 and 2018, argued that Kiev may not need to achieve its stated aim of retaking all of its lost territory from Russia in order to join the bloc.
Pavel told the Novinky.cz news website on Monday:
"I don't think that the full restoration of control over the entire territory is a prerequisite. If there is demarcation, even an administrative border, then we can treat this administrative border as a temporary one, and accept Ukraine into NATO with the territory that it will control at that time. So I think there is a solution both technically and legally to allow Ukraine to join NATO without bringing NATO into a conflict with the Russian Federation."
Comment: How an inch becomes a mile after mile after mile.
Comment:
From the article: "too much, even for such an eccentric fringe [figure]."
There is probably an element of scathing irony in the characterization, as President Petr Pavel by Western standards hardly belongs to an eccentric fringe. The facts are that Petr Pavel before becoming the President of the Czech Republic served the Czech army for 44 years, was promoted to the rank of general and from 2015-2018 was "Chairman of the NATO Military Committee" ... "The chair is one of the foremost officials of NATO, next to the Secretary General and the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. The CMC is assisted by the deputy chair, who advises the Deputy Secretary General and serves as the principal agent for coordination of nuclear, biological, and chemical matters for the Military Committee." The quotes from the Wiki are included in comments to this article Nord Stream was 'legitimate target' for Ukraine - EU country's president
The Nord Stream was an example of state sponsored terrorism. It is cheap to blame Ukraine, but it is not credible they had the knowledge to carry it out. If Petr Pavel had been more responsible he could have raised this point, but perhaps he did not want to contradict the German Government, or upset the Polish PM, Polish PM wants Nord Stream scandal buried, or reveal his own understanding. Intended as an escalation or not, the statements from Petr Pavel can be interpreted to mean it is now open season on infrastructure which is fully or partly owned by Russian companies, or the Russian state, or more generally on anything which is not to the liking of "Ukraine".