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Kerch bridge blame game fiasco
Cue the benny hill music
We saw during the apartments bombings in the late 1990s, that Russian intelligence agencies certainly lack imagination when it comes to their cover stories and framing. Here we found “explosives” that were supposed to be a “training exercise” and “contained sugar” in Ryazan. It was clear at the time the whole thing was a frame up to instigate the second Chechen war- and for a rather unknown and unpopular head of the FSB, score a win that would elevate him into the Presidency(Putin).
We saw it with MH17, where Russia quickly produced photos of a Ukrainian plane shooting a missile in frame at the passenger jet- the whole thing so obviously photoshopped that people replaced the aircraft with UFOs, Imperial Star Destroyers and a bunch of other things.
We saw it also with Skripal and the joke of an interview with those operatives accused- where they claimed to have travelled for the day to Salisbury to inspect the marvellous spire of the Cathedral.
Now, in the west, when we want to concoct a story, we put some serious work into it. It might not hold up, but usually requires some investigative journalist or a whistleblower for any holes in the story to emerge. The Russians just don’t even try, it is so obvious, yet it is still so effective that western efforts seem a bit much.
