Thank you sir, may I have another?

Why Putin "allows" Ukrainian drone strikes on Moscow

It may strike you as weird. It definitely strikes me as weird.

Imagine yourself sitting at a tabletop exercise … I dunno … maybe 4 years ago in some DC think tank, and you’re gaming out some Putin attempted takedown and capture of the Ukrainian government. As the game plays out, and everyone around the table evinces shock that Kyiv didn’t collapse on Day X (okay, let’s pretend this is a really SMART think tank and a well designed scenario), out of the blue the Control introduces this “wildcard” insert that sees Ukraine launching this massive wave/swarm attack of explosive-delivering drones that overwhelm Russia’s air defenses and result in dozens of successful strikes all over Moscow —the CAPITAL!

What happens at that point?

If you’re playing the Kremlin, what do you do?

Do you detonate a small nuke here or launch an overwhelming strategic strike there? I mean, you’re the world biggest nuclear power, so it’s not like you’re just going to sit back and take it, are you? A wave of strikes on your capital? How could you possibly brush that off with regard to your public? Wouldn’t you naturally escalate and teach the entire world a scary lesson about what happens when you actually target the Kremlin for kinetic strikes?

If this isn’t go time on some pathway to World War III (didn’t you just accuse NATO of being behind it all?), then what the hell is?

Seriously?

I tell you this, the press release put out by that think tank to trumpet their “edgy” and “insightful” and “downright frightening” wargame … it sure as hell wouldn’t say the Kremlin would satisfy itself with a similar attack on Kyiv and just play through like nothing all that wild happened. Putin wouldn’t just label it “terrorism” designed to “disrupt elections.”

I mean, are you kidding? That would a laughable, implausible, Pollyanna-ish outcome that NOBODY would buy.

This is why nuclear weapons are so dangerous!

This is what it’s like living under Damocles’ sword!

This is why we just moved the Doomsday Clock to 5 seconds til midnight!

And, on a sidenote … Did you actually complete that bomb shelter you were talking about last year? Got any room for me and mine?

So … that’s where we are today.

A non-nuclear nation can launch strikes all over Moscow, following up on previous hits on key infrastructure and energy targets, and the Kremlin does … nothing. Not a God damn thing!

So why is that?

Let’s trot out some theories and observations.

First, there’s the extreme asymmetry?

Hmm.

So you’re saying that these little drone strikes, while scary, are too small to warrant a nuclear response?

Yeah, and that’s why Putin keeps referring to them as terror strikes, because that’s the 9/11 ruleset holding serve: it’s not like you can nuke a nation because of terrorist strikes emanating from its soil. Swap out the regime? Definitely … justifiably! But you can’t just go nuclear off that. Way too out of proportion and God only knows where that leads to.

Okay … but you’re saying that holds even when a nuclear power is backing the launching party in question?

Yeah, I guess I am.

Because then we cross over into proxy way rules, and it’s okay for Nuclear Power 1 to give arms to Non-Nuclear Party 2 to attack NP 3 so long as NP1 and NP2’s militaries don’t directly target each other.

Yep, them’s the rules alright.

But it still seems weird.

You still seem weird!

Let’s do the counterfactual: Washington decides to finally take down the Commie regime in Cuba and we’re just beating the crap out of that island. Moscow’s sending arms and implying all the usual nuclear escalation threats, and so, you’re slugging it out with the locals who are surprisingly resilient and tough.

And THEN they launch hundreds of strike drones on Washington DC, hitting all over the District and actually damaging the Capitol and White House and Pentagon.

What do you do, Mr. or Mme. President?

Do you dare sell it as just “terrorism"? Like it’s a mass shooting at a school and we just have to used to these things because they’re a fact of life?

Now is not the day to bring up politics! Instead, we need to grieve with those families …

Or do you go uptempo … like crazy?

See what I mean?

It doesn’t make sense, unless …

Maybe your Daddy says you can’t. Washington doesn’t have one, but Moscow does, and maybe Beijing already drew that line for Putin.

Hmm. Mebbe, mebbe not. But I’m not finding that a compelling answer.

Well then, maybe you just take it because … it’s a good thing?

Okay, alright, I’m listening …

Stay with me: Putin had his secret police actually plant bombs at Moscow apartment towers back in 1999:

One month after then-President Boris Yeltsin plucked a security agency official named Vladimir Putin from obscurity and made him prime minister, an explosion leveled a nine-story apartment building on Moscow’s outskirts.

The predawn blast on September 9, 1999, reduced the building to a smoking pile of rubble, killing more than 100. A second building, less than 6 kilometers away, was rocked by an explosion on September 13, killing 119.

Days earlier, a car bomb exploded in a small town bordering the war-ravaged region of Chechnya, where reignited fighting was already spilling into neighboring regions. That blast, outside the apartment building in the town of Buynaksk, killed dozens.

It was followed seven days later by a truck bomb that destroyed a nine-story building in another southern city, Volgodonsk, killing 17.

On September 23, Putin asserted terrorists in Chechnya were to blame and ordered a massive air campaign within the North Caucasus region. When asked a day later about the campaign targeting what he called terrorists, Putin responded with the phrase that inaugurated his rise to preeminence.

“We will pursue them everywhere,” he said, using a crude slang expression. “Excuse me for saying so: We’ll catch them in the toilet. We’ll wipe them out in the outhouse.”

The statement became a Putin catchphrase, and set the tone for the 20 years of rule that followed.

“Yes, it’s one of Putin’s original sins,” said Sergei Kovalyov, a former lawmaker and rights activist who headed a commission that investigated the bombings in the early 2000s.

The bombings, and the fear they provoked, “were advantageous,” he told RFE/RL. “At the time, it was advantageous for him to take control of the country, and to introduce force into the Caucasus, in Chechnya in particular.”

Wikipedia puts it more succinctly:

In September 1999, a series of explosions hit four apartment blocks in the Russiancities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading a wave of fear across the country. The bombings, together with the Invasion of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War.^[1][2] The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months.

Terrorism designed to influence a Russian election, get it?

Okay, when you put it like that, I’m starting to get it: Putin welcomes these attacks — the exact sort of attacks that he himself has engineered and inflicted upon his own people.

And yeah, that is so RUSSIAN AUTOCRACY. I mean, it’s in the DNA of that political system that’s never had a democratic stretch last more than the historical blink of an eye.