Early this morning assassins from the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service killed Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the commander of the Russian Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces, in Moscow:
Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, commander of the nuclear, biological and chemical forces of the Russian army, died in a blast as he was heading out of a residential block in Moscow, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement.
An explosive device was hidden in an electric scooter parked nearby. Kirillov’s aide also died in the attack, the investigative committee said, announcing a criminal investigation. Video footage obtained by POLITICO corroborates that version of events.
Kirillov lived in a normal apartment block. His aide was picking him up for work. They were observed and someone who was watching (and filming) them pulled the trigger.
Kirillov was well known. He gave several public presentations about secret U.S. bio-warfare experiments in Ukraine:
Writing on Kirillov’s passing, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova said that throughout his career he had repeatedly exposed the crimes of the “Anglo-Americans” such as “NATO provocations with chemical weapons in Syria, Britain’s manipulations with prohibited chemical substances and provocations in Salisbury and Amesbury, the deadly activities of American biolabs in Ukraine, and much more.”
“He worked fearlessly. He did not hide behind people’s backs,” Zakharova wrote.
This is of course a provocation designed by Ukraine to make peace talks with Russia, as president-elect Donald Trump presumably favors, less possible.
The question for Russia is now how to react to it.
Should it hit back with its whole might and destroy the 'decision making centers' in Kiev who are responsible for this incident? (Note: An accurate definition of 'decision centers' would include the embassies of the U.S. and Great Britain in Kiev.)
Or should it hold back and hope that negotiations about Ukraine with Donald Trump will actually achieve some positive, if temporary, results?
It is a difficult question.
The general configuration of the incoming Trump administration is hawkish.
It is thus highly unlikely, James George Jatras writes, that any agreement which could be seen as positive for Russia will be worth the paper it is written on:
[T]he Russians have made it clear that they will accept no temporary truces, no ceasefires, no more promises made to be broken like piecrusts, no pauses as cynical tricks to get the Russians to forgo their current and growing military advantage. (…) No, they insist, there must be either a genuine, definitive, binding settlement that ensures a lasting peace based on mutual security, or Russian forces will press on until their objectives – notably “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine – are achieved militarily. Such an outcome would mean at least replacement of the current regime in Kiev and, more likely, the end of Ukraine’s statehood.
For the West, this would constitute a total debacle of Afghanistan-like proportions effectively signaling the end of US hegemony in Europe, the [Great American Empire’s] crown jewel. What can Trump offer the Russians to avoid that?
…
[T]he real question for the Trump Administration becomes a political one of how much wiggle room there is in the Russians’ stated determination not to rely on more promises of the sort that have been repeatedly broken in the past. Put another way: if Trump-Lucy wants to avoid utter defeat in the European theater of the worldwide confrontation between the GAE and BRICS-Eurasia, so he can get on to mixing it up with Iran and China, can he dupe Putin-Charlie Brown into taking another run at the football?I think he at least has a good shot at it.
Jatras lists several points that the U.S. could temporarily concede to Russia only to later pull the proverbial football on each of those items.
Russia would of course expect this. But the opening question – to fall for the provocation or to find an alternative way – can also be asked within a larger context.
In 2019 RAND, the Defense Department's think-tank, published the main policy paper that led to the war in Ukraine.
Extending Russia – Competing from Advantageous Ground
Its summary says:
This report examines a range of possible means to extend Russia. As the 2018 National Defense Strategy recognized, the United States is currently locked in a great-power competition with Russia. This report seeks to define areas where the United States can compete to its own advantage. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from Western and Russian sources, this report examines Russia's economic, political, and military vulnerabilities and anxieties. It then analyzes potential policy options to exploit them — ideologically, economically, geopolitically, and militarily (including air and space, maritime, land, and multidomain options). After describing each measure, this report assesses the associated benefits, costs, and risks, as well as the likelihood that measure could be successfully implemented and actually extend Russia. Most of the steps covered in this report are in some sense escalatory, and most would likely prompt some Russian counter-escalation.
Arming Ukraine, and pushing it into provoking a Russian intervention, was seen as the most 'profitable' way to weaken the Russian Federation.
By starting the Special Military Operation in Ukraine Russia had actually fallen for the provocation RAND had planned for it. For Russia there was, at that moment, no alternative.
U.S. anti-Russia hawks will try their best to keep Russia bogged down in Ukraine.
But others see the growing danger that a prolonged conflict creates for the West. The economic damage it has caused is already substantial. It is also diverting U.S. capacities from countering China.
Trump's peace allures may thereby become a real alternative for Russia to climb out of the RAND trap.
It is either all in, take Kiev and defeat Ukraine as a state, or take the negotiation route, concede on some issues and agree to an imperfect solution which may (or more likely not) turn out to be permanent.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin, and the circles around him, will have the ponder these difficult questions.