Due to a lack of heavy weapons and offensive power, the Russian “special operation” in Ukraine is in danger of running out of steam. But Putin has a plan B in his pocket: targeted terrorist attacks in Western countries and a new type of disinformation offensive.
While Russia continues its war of annihilation against Ukraine with increased intensity, it is also intensifying its hybrid warfare against Western democracies. The Kremlin is pushing ahead with its destabilization operations on various levels. On the one hand, it is massively expanding its disinformation networks in the West in order to undermine the willingness of Western societies to continue to support Ukraine.
In addition to this practice of mind manipulation, physical attacks in the form of acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks are also becoming more frequent. The murder plot against Rheinmetall boss Armin Papperger is not the only case, although it is the most drastic to date. Across Europe, from Berlin to London to Warsaw, from the Czech Republic to Sweden and Finland to Wales, fires and explosions have recently been recorded in armaments and logistics plants as well as shopping centers. There have also been train derailments and submarine data cables in the Baltic Sea have been severed.
The traces always point to Moscow. According to Western security services, the Kremlin recruits Western sympathizers and criminals on a large scale to carry out such covert acts of war.
Disinformation campaign
There is also a component that could weaken the West’s will to resist Russia’s aggression more than anything else: the Kremlin’s simulation of a desire for peace, which is intended to disorient the Western public and deceive them about its true goals. In addition, rumors are being spread about secret “peace signals” from Moscow, which are supposed to demonstrate a certain willingness to compromise on the part of the aggressor. In some Western media reports, it sounds as if it already represents a “spectacular” concession if the Russian invaders apparently do not want to steal as much land from their victim as they have previously loudly announced.
Large parts of Western societies cling to the idea that the destructive fury of Putinism can be appeased through “negotiations.”
This large-scale disinformation campaign aims to create an association between Putin and a serious willingness to make peace in the minds of the Western public. Viktor Orban, the Hungarian follower of Putin and Xi Jinping, has taken on the main role in this staging within the EU. In the “mission” of a self-appointed “mediator”, he recently travelled first to Kiev, then to Moscow and Beijing – thereby also wanting to boost the supposed “peace plan” that Russia’s war supporter China has put forward in order to mislead the West.
A visit to Donald Trump in Florida completed Orban’s show tour of the major protagonists of the global anti-liberal front. The demonstrably criminal former and possibly future US president boasts time and again that he will end the war in Ukraine “with a phone call” – and emphasizes how well he gets along with the mass murderer Putin.
Trump’s instant peace
Trump’s idea of ”peace” amounts to forcing Ukraine to cede parts of its territory and probably also to renounce NATO membership in order to appease the aggressor regarding further conquests. By appointing J. D. Vance, one of the most radical opponents of further financial aid and arms deliveries to Ukraine among the US Republicans, as his vice presidential candidate, Trump has sent an accordingly unambiguous signal.
The purpose of Orban’s fake “travel diplomacy” is to fool the Western public into believing that it is possible to have a reasonable conversation with Putin – if only one abandons the “maximum demand” that the aggressor must completely withdraw from Ukrainian territory, where it has established a terror regime of murder, torture, abduction and forced Russification of the Ukrainian population.
The idea is to cognitively and morally reverse the perception of the Western public: based on the suggestion that a military victory for Ukraine in its defensive struggle against Russia is impossible anyway, democratic societies are to be accustomed to the idea that only giving in to Putin can lead to an end to the war. In this light, Ukraine and in particular its President Zelensky are to appear as the real disturbers of the peace, who are dragging the West ever deeper into a senseless war.
Orban is pursuing completely different goals than bringing peace to Europe. When he calls on Ukraine to agree to a unilateral ceasefire, as he did recently during his visit to Kiev, he is asking nothing less of it than to surrender itself defenselessly to the whims of the Russian terrorist state. It is reasonable to suspect that the Hungarian head of government is speculating on a defeat and the subsequent dismemberment of Ukraine. This could bring Orban a good deal closer to realizing his dream of restoring Greater Hungary – if Putin were to give him the Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia, which Hungary lost under the Trianon Treaty of 1920.
In fact, the propaganda about a Russian desire for a compromise peace of some kind has nothing to do with reality. In truth, the Putin regime is sticking unabated to its intention, which it has openly proclaimed countless times, to completely wipe out the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian national and cultural identity. It sees a potential ceasefire as an intermediate step towards this ultimate goal at best. Moreover, spokesmen such as Putin confidant and pathological hate preacher Dmitri Medvedev leave no doubt that Russia’s desire for aggression would by no means be satisfied by the destruction of Ukraine. The Kremlin has long been preparing to expand its war of annihilation to the entire West.
Anti-Western war axis
To this end, it has joined forces with the apocalyptic Islamist regime of Iran and the North Korean terror dictatorship to form an anti-Western war axis – which is approved by China. In the meantime, the Russian war machine is concentrating on the total destruction of the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and thus the livelihood of the Ukrainian nation with its terror bombings. Russia’s crimes have a name: genocide.
But the West still does not want to accept these facts in their full extent. Large parts of Western societies prefer to cling to the idea that the destructive fury of Putinism can be appeased through “negotiations”. The peace lies of the Putin regime and its various fifth columns in the West aim to feed this illusion, while the Kremlin is simultaneously stoking fear of war in European democracies with wild threats, not least nuclear ones.
Signs of self-destruction by the Western political elite are fueling Russia’s desire for aggression. French President Macron has weakened the political center and thus his own position considerably with his careless calling of early elections. The painfully long departure of Joe Biden, who recently appeared to be frail as an old man, from his renewed presidential candidacy has also confirmed the Kremlin’s belief that the “decadent” democratic civilization has reached the end of its strength – and the moment has come to deal it the final death blow.
If the Western democracies do not take a much more decisive stand against Russia’s destabilization offensive and do not finally put a stop to the ongoing, most serious crimes against humanity that Russia is committing in Ukraine, they will risk their own existence. Helping Ukraine to defeat the criminal aggressor is and remains the only path to peace.
Richard Herzinger lives as a freelance journalist in Berlin. His own website has recently gone online: «Herzinger – hold these truths».