Military Expert: Pentagon Threats Against Crimea Are Mere Rhetoric, Part of Info Warfare

Washington went so far as to claim on Tuesday that the high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) provided to Kiev can reach Crimea. In response, the Kremlin highlighted that the remarks confirm Washington's involvement in the conflict. What's behind the US' escalatory rhetoric?

Pentagon representative Laura Cooper said that the rockets they supplied to Kiev can reach Crimea for precisely the same reason that Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed he is not against Ukraine using western weapons to strike regions which held referenda to join Russia, according to Scott Ritter, a military analyst and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer.

"I believe these statements are made as part of an overall information warfare effort targeting the Russian people and are designed to demoralize," he said. "I think the goal here is to create an environment of hopelessness for the people of Russia, to show that even though the government has said these new territories are Russian, that Moscow is unable to protect the population from attack (…) So, I think these are statements made primarily for Russian consumption."

The Biden administration earlier claimed that it would not recognize the referenda which saw overwhelming support of the people of the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions for unifying with Russia. Likewise, the US did not recognize the 2014 referendum on the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the local government of Sevastopol. In March 2014, 95.5% of Crimean voters backed joining Russia. The plebiscite followed the US-backed coup d’état in Kiev with ultra-nationalists and neo-Nazi paramilitary groups playing a prominent role in the regime change.

Regardless of what Pentagon official Cooper and Secretary of State Blinken said, Washington's bellicose statements are just rhetoric, according to Ritter. Neither the United States nor NATO want a direct confrontation with Russia, he highlighted.

"And how do we know that? Because the US has not provided Ukraine with the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) system, which would actually put real teeth to the threat of using US-provided weapons against Russian territory," the former Marine Corps intelligence officer explained. "The US is going to leave the bonus up to the Ukrainians to make a decision on how to use these weapons. We know the Ukrainians have used these weapons to attack civilian infrastructure and residential areas, inflicting serious harm on innocent civilians. But I think there is a line between rhetoric and action. And I think behind the scenes, the United States is trying to distance itself from anything that would put it or allow it to be defined as a direct party to the conflict."

'Rhetoric is Ahead of Actual Intent'

Moreover, Russia and the US are now "in the midst of a very critical transition in the nature" of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, according to Ritter. After Vladimir Putin signed a constitutional law on making the regions part of Russia on October 5, the Russo-Ukrainian standoff transformed into a conflict between "a NATO proxy supported by the collective West" and Moscow.

"Now the conflict is being waged on Russian territory, at least Russian territory as the Russian government will use it and will constitutionally protect it," the military expert elaborated. "I think we're in a period where rhetoric may be ahead of actual intent, because that intent hasn't been defined yet."

Ritter went on to project that the West is still struggling to come up with a plan on how to respond to the referenda and Russia's incorporation of new territories "without escalating the conflict into a direct struggle between NATO and Russia."

"I think paying too much attention to what people say at this point in time is risky, because the rhetoric is getting ahead of actual policy (…) the policy is still being formulated," he presumed.

Meanwhile, in the eyes of the West, Russia has gone "all in" by holding the referenda and by carrying out this partial draft mobilization, Ritter continued. According to him, "Russia has raised the stakes and that victory cannot be defined as anything less than total accomplishment of its goals and objectives of de-Nazification and demilitarization." Under these circumstances, the US and its NATO allies will try to prevent Russia from accomplishing either or both goals, which would be seen as Russia's "defeat" by the West, according to Ritter.

"For the West right now, victory against Russia is not defined by Ukraine defeating Russia. It is defined by Ukraine not being defeated by Russia," he explained. "So the goal of the West is to make the costs of Russia's ongoing participation in this special military operation or this military conflict so high that Russia cannot achieve its objectives, and therefore Russia is defeated – not by losing the war, but by failing to win the war."

Why UN Turning Blind Eye to US-Backed Escalation

The United Nations and other international institutions appear to have turned a blind eye to the admission that Washington knowingly provides Ukraine with weapons which can be used against Russian territory. Furthermore, UN Secretary General António Guterres previously expressed concerns regarding the referenda held on former Ukrainian territories as well as what he called "annexation" by Russia. Moscow criticized the UN chief’s statements, highlighting that Guterres had overstepped his powers by declaring non-recognition of the referendums.

"The United Nations is dominated by the United States, the United States has a history of putting pressure on international institutions and the constituent members of these international institutions to do the bidding of the United States," Ritter said. "That's what we're seeing. We're seeing a situation where the world is willing to accept, at face value, any allegation of wrongdoing on the part of Russia in Ukraine, but ignore real, fact-based evidence of Ukrainian atrocities, Ukrainian crimes."

However, at the bottom of this UN hypocrisy is the fact that "Russia is facing a virtual existential conflict between it and the West," according to the military analyst. He underscored that the West is "committed to the destruction of Russia, not necessarily bombing it into oblivion, but to return Russia to the status of the 1990s, where it was a subservient, compliant, defeated nation at the mercy of a ‘benevolent’ West."

"This is the direction that the United States and Europe wants to take and Russia is opposing this," Ritter said. "And as a result, this conflict has gone beyond simply Ukraine. This is a global conflict, and it includes the United States leveraging every resource, every advantage it has. And when it comes to the United Nations and the international community, the United States is seeking to use these institutions to further the impression that it is Russia that is committing war crimes and not Ukraine. Therefore, the United Nations will turn a blind eye to what are clear violations of international law by Ukraine in using western-provided weapons, including those provided by the United States, to attack civilian infrastructure and civilian population centers in violation of international law."