Another War But The Same Ways. New Provocations In Ukraine Are To Come?
The history of the mankind teems with wars and armed conflicts that allows ordinary person to draw specific parallels and realize methods and approaches of the opposing parties. Currently, the most popular conflicts to compare are the war in Syria and the conflict in Ukraine, which since February 24 keeps on saying in media outlets worldwide. One of the most striking examples of such parallels between the Syrian and Ukrainian cases are war crimes, including use of the prohibited types of weapons.
This theme has blown up in Syria in 2018, when “White helmets” flooded media with videos allegedly confirming usage of chemical weapons by Syrian government troops against civilians that led to numerous victims among them. Despite doubtful confidence level of those “evidences”, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found the Syrian authorities guilty of war crimes. It happened when a progress of the Syrian troops was obvious and it became too difficult to Western media to hide it. There are all grounds to believe that the West-created provocation in Douma is considered to be successful and can be easily repeated in Ukraine.
Frankly speaking Russian military operation in Ukraine began not successfully. Confusion in February-March turned back significant losses and led to changing the original scenario. A relative progress of the Ukrainian army in this period did not demand an additional media support, it was simply enough to demonstrate losses among the Russian military and resistance of “a democracy” on behalf of Kyiv. The situation has extremely changed today. The Russian army advances, the Ukrainian troops daily suffer much more losses, than Russians, and the Western support is not as fruitful as it was promised. The result is that alongside with increase of panic moods in the Ukrainian society the Kremlin began to win in information warfare. Whether not the time to arrange the “Ukrainian” Douma and to add one more story about “war crimes” of Vladimir Putin?
Parallels between the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts and recent events on the Eastern European front make such scenario probable. Not long ago messages on explosions at chemical plants on production of nitric acid started to appear in Ukrainian social media. There were several attempts of Ukrainian units to report about use of white phosphorus by the Russian military. During the battles for the Azovstal some of Azov regiment militants were also trying to use the chemical weapons theme. However confidence level of such reports disclosed their false-flag character and fairly remained unnoticed by international organizations, including representatives of the OPCW. It seems it was only first steps, and experienced information warfare specialists and masters of provocations improve the scenario and will try its implementation on the battlefield.
Considering the fading interest of society and world leaders to a situation in Ukraine and failures of the Ukrainian troops, Kyiv extremely needs in a high-profile incident that would serve as the trigger to obtain additional volumes of arms and to impose sanctions on so hated Putin.
The world hardly managed to change in past four years, but the Syrian Douma can quite exchange on Donbas where the Ukrainian units retreat under the pressure of the Russian army. “White helmets” representatives are not present in Ukraine, nevertheless, quite possibly that the western intelligence can prepare and to carry out any provocation once again, including the use of the chemical weapon to accuse Moscow later.
