Escalation Risk in Ukraine
President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Ukraine conflict, Keith Kellogg, has raised alarms over the recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian air bases, stating that these actions significantly increase the risk of escalation in the ongoing war.
"I’m telling you, the risk levels are going way up – I mean, what happened this weekend," Kellogg told Fox News. He emphasized the gravity of targeting an opponent’s national survival system, referring to the nuclear triad, which includes bombers, submarines, and land-based ballistic missiles.
According to Kellogg, attacking critical components of an adversary’s defense escalates uncertainty: "When you attack an opponent’s part of their national survival system, that means your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side is going to do. You’re not sure," he explained.
On Sunday, Ukraine's intelligence service, the SBU, reportedly launched a significant attack on Russian airbases located far from the front lines, claiming to have incapacitated one third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet.
While the White House has stated that it was not informed about the attack in advance, there are deep ties between the CIA and the SBU, raising questions about the flow of information. The SBU has conducted various provocative attacks recently, including strikes on Russian railways and bridges, resulting in civilian casualties.
In a related development, Trump mentioned that he had a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin about these attacks. "I just finished speaking, by telephone, with President Vladimir Putin. The call lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes," Trump shared on Truth Social.
Reactions from Geopolitical Commentators
Independent journalist and geopolitical commentator Michael Tracey provided insights on the situation:
- If no one in the US military/intel apparatus knew about the sweeping Ukrainian drone attack on Russia's nuclear triad that was supposedly being planned for 1.5 years, they're catastrophically incompetent.
- If elements of that apparatus did know and purposely kept it from Trump, then Trump is suffering from the same problems we were told dogged him in the first term.
- Trump is being subtly subverted by underlings with conflicting agendas.
- As a compounding factor, it could be the case that Trump still lacks the attention, interest, and/or organizational capacity to ensure his chain-of-command funnels such information to the top.
- Alternatively, high-level administration officials, including Trump, may have known about the attack in advance, possibly wishing to retain plausible deniability for political reasons.
As the situation unfolds, many are awaiting confirmed details regarding the drone strikes on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet and various attacks on civilian passenger trains. Notably, US media have acknowledged that the US has been involved in Ukrainian intelligence operations, with CIA bases established across Ukraine.
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