The Proxy War’s Turning Point: How the Moscow Concert Attack Could Change the Ukraine-Russia Conflict

by Jeff Childers

It’s time to talk about Ukraine again, things are moving fast in the Proxy War. Yesterday, Reuters ran a fascinating story headlined, “US has urged Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, FT reports.”

 
After Ukraine’s terror strikes on civilian polling places last weekend, it attacked dozens of Russian refineries with explosive kamikaze drones, successfully damaging a score of production facilities. But weirdly, according to Reuters, the “United States has urged Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, warning that drone strikes risk provoking retaliation and driving up global oil prices.”

Sadly for Ukraine, the U.S.’s warning came too late. Yesterday, the BBC ran a story headlined, “Ukraine war: Five dead and a million without power after wave of Russian strikes.”

 
In its largest strike in over a year, Russia launched 90 missiles and 60 Shahed drones into Ukraine during a wave of overnight attacks on Thursday. Nearly all the targets were Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Reuters identified the strikes as payback:

Russia’s defence ministry said the assault on Ukraine’s power grid was part of a series of revenge attacks against Kyiv for its earlier incursions into Russian territory.

It will be harder now for Ukraine to recover from those infrastructure attacks, since it isn’t swimming in US taxpayer dollars.

Warbloggers were also very excited yesterday observing what appears to be Russian preparations for a major offensive, as Putin’s spokesman described a change in strategy from “active defense” to something closer to a real war footing. It is starting to look a lot like the Russians have been holding back, and are about to open a can of full-strength butt-kicking on Ukraine.

Then late yesterday, the news cycle erupted again. Reports flowed like the Dnieper river reporting a terror attack on a civilian concert in Moscow. At least five masked terrorists unloaded automatic weapons on innocent concert goers just outside Russia’s capital city, killing at least 100 unarmed noncombatant civilians — including children — and wounding many more.  On their way out, the terrorists used gasoline bombs to start a massive fire that collapsed the concert venue’s roof.

 
The dissembling and denials began immediately. Ukraine immediately denied having anything to do with the attack, just as it promptly denied having anything to do with the terrorist bombing of the Nordstream pipeline. Bizarrely, ISIS popped up like a Jack-in-the-box out of the dustbin of history and claimed responsibility. The U.S. warned Russia not to over-react.

Just wait. Soon they’ll accuse Russia of attacking itself.

But late last night (daytime in Moscow), the Russians reported catching the terrorists just 62 miles from the border as they were fleeing toward Ukraine. (Details vary.)

 
The Russians said that the terrorists’ car contained automatic weapons used in the attack. Since they’ve begun interrogating the captured terrorists, Russian officials have released the names of 37 more people accused of being involved in what increasingly appears to be a Ukrainian operation.

Assuming that after the hot takes and confusion subside, the Russians link the terrorists to Ukraine, the terrorist attack on the Crocus center starts to look a lot like the October 7th attack on Israel. In other words, Russia will have an unassailable moral mandate to begin using scorched earth tactics in Ukraine like the Israelis did in Gaza.

Let’s take a quick historical view. Back nine years ago, on March 10, 2015, three years before the Proxy War started, the New York Times ran a spellbinding article headlined, “Obama Said to Resist Growing Pressure From All Sides to Arm Ukraine.”  In the article, then-Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken warned against NATO mucking about in Ukraine. He predicted it would be a dead loser:

“If you’re playing on the military terrain in Ukraine, you’re playing to Russia’s strength, because Russia is right next door,” Blinken said in a speech in Berlin. “It has a huge amount of military equipment and military force right on the border. Anything we did as [NATO] countries in terms of military support for Ukraine is likely to be matched and then doubled and tripled and quadrupled by Russia.”

Quadrupled. In 2015, Blinken made a great deal of sense. At the time he said that, Blinken served President Obama, and Joe Biden was Vice President. As the headline suggests, in 2015 Obama opposed NATO getting involved in Ukraine. What changed?

No matter. It turns out that 2015 Blinken was right, and 2022 Blinken was wrong. As soon as Biden infested the White House, the “growing pressure to arm Ukraine” — resisted by Obama — got the green light. I smell neocon-ism.

I condemn the terrorist attacks on Russia in the strongest possible terms. For my whole life, over and over I’ve heard the old saying, “don’t poke the Russian bear.” It seems Ukraine will soon find out why.

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