The Wall Street Journal reports that Russia is now trying to bring down American airplanes using incendiary devices hidden in packages:
The devices ignited at DHL logistics hubs in July, one in Leipzig, Germany, and another in Birmingham, England. The explosions set off a multinational race to find the culprits.
....Security officials say the electric massagers, sent to the U.K. from Lithuania, appear to have been a test run to figure out how to get such incendiary devices aboard planes bound for North America.... But the head of Poland’s foreign-intelligence agency, Pawel Szota, said Russian spies were to blame and such an attack, if carried out, would have represented a major escalation in Moscow’s campaign against the West.
....Szota’s comments echo what other Western intelligence officials said, indicating that Russia, and specifically its military-intelligence agency, known as the GRU, was responsible.
If this is true, it's an astonishing and reckless escalation from Vladimir Putin. Does he really have no idea of the shitstorm he'd release if one of these things brought down a US passenger jet?
seems like Vlad is betting on a trump victory where our serial liar Rapist in Chief can lie and blame it on Hamas or the Houthis or some other BS
Good points but an alternative explanation is that he thinks Harris will win and he needs to draw Biden/Harris into a "war" (a useful distraction from helping Ukraine maybe?) because Trump is so "peaceful". Sounds a bit like 12 dimensional chess, I admit.
I doubt Biden or Harris would launch a traditional war against Russia. More likely they’d simply re-establish the Cold War: absolutely no trade or travel to or through Russia or its allies for companies or individuals in the US or any of our allies without express permission from the State Dept.
I'm continually baffled by Putin's actions. Russia is a tiny little Brazil-class nation (but lacking Brazil's capacity for growth), with a GDP 1/13th that of the US. Putin picking fights he cannot win is a surefire way to accelerate Russia diminishing into a mere client state/vassal of China.
I think Putin is playing mind games. Perhaps he only means to be scary? I'm not comfortable with an interpretation that says, "Putin is dumb"
Or maybe he's just testing security measures?
i don't think putin is dumb, but he may be desperate, angry, deluded or knowingly making a very risky decision. the invasion of ukraine comes to mind as a similar ill-fated decision i can't explain but don't attribute to stupidity.
I don't think it's a question of whether Putin is dumb or not, but primarily whether he sits atop a decisionmaking apparatus capable of making smart calls.
Think about a company--if you wanted a corporation's leadership to make smart decisions, you'd need to ensure that that leadership has access to robust and accurate information, proposals that are geared towards the mission-success of the business, objective methods for quantifying the impacts of the business's decisions, and a feedback system that rewards good decisionmaking and discourages bad decisionmaking.
Russia has none of that. Putin is surrounded by sycophants whose personal success depends on keeping Putin happy, not on achieving objectives for Russia, and god knows how awful and corrupt the data available to any minister, general, oligarch, dictatorial "president" like Putin gets fed. How could such a setup ever make good decisions?
true, and i'm sure that's a problem for putin. but as far as whether to bomb western airliners i would think that's kind of an obvious "this is a terrible idea, i don't need to know anything more" decision for putin. and one that wouldn't be made without his direct approval.
Maybe. But he's just one guy, trying to run an entire country with a clenched fist, and who likely himself has a loopy sense of reality because he doesn't have access to any unbiased information.
I could see scenarios whereby some ratfucking group at the dirty tricks division of this-or-that Russian agency develops a project to threaten transatlantic flights because Putin at some dinner somewhere indicated that he thinks that crashing airliners would sow distrust among NATO allies and then later screamed at some general that he wants options.
But Putin has also blown up his own planes to kill his own people, and has also previously exported stupid spy-novel-style assassination techniques like polonium umbrellas to other countries, so maybe his people building sextoy bombs for airplanes is exactly the sort of idiocy that he gets excited hearing about over his evening bowl of beet soup and cancer meds.
yeah, he's a huge geopolitical risk factor and i wish he'd just die already.
The devices don’t seem to be beyond the capability of non-state actors, or even a lone Unabomber — some fanatic(s) who hear the constant Kremlin whining about ‘being at war with NATO’ and decide that it might as well be open warfare, and hey, we could light the fuse …
I think this is exactly the disease of every authoritarian system. It’s what TFG wants for his second term, to be surrounded by ‘advisors’ who will praise every brain fart he emits, and make a show of carrying out his every wish — for punishing his enemies, enriching himself, his family and friends, and just stroking his fragile ego in every way. Although TFG is clearly dumb as well. Frankly, I don’t think much of Putin’s intellect, either, since it never seemed to occur to him that he might not be getting told what he needed to know; that underlings chosen for loyalty rather than competence might be prone to screwing up, that he might not be the only one dipping his hand into the public purse.
Putin was wrong because he thought Ukraine wouldn't fight. He thought Zelensky would run. Turns out, the US and most of NATO thought Zelensky would run and Ukraine wouldn't fight. We were all wrong.
I mean, yes, he probably knew he was rolling the dice.
Putin is clearly not tremendously smart. Russian intelligence has to have known that ever since the Russian occupation of Crimea, Ukraine has been building a formidable army. Russian intelligence must have also have known that there was a very high probability that in the event of a Russian attack on Ukraine, the western powers would support Ukraine.
The decision not to attack Ukraine could have been very easy to make, and the decision to attack Ukraine was not a smart decision.
i won't opine on putin's intelligence, but the ukraine decision could also be largely a product of self-delusion and bad intelligence about both ukraine's military and his own, along with the resolve of the ukrainian gov and people.
I would put self-delusion on that scale under the heading of "not smart". Unawareness of the quality of intelligence he's getting would also be not smart.
yeah, there are lots of ways to define intelligence.
My guess is that Putin is smarter than this. As I see it, devices were found - unsigned, of course - and we say the Russians did it. This is rather like the destruction of the Nordstream gas pipeline. Russia had nothing to gain by this because they made bank selling the gas, but we say the Russians did it.
Maybe Puti is really a nihilist.
Suppose one of these things was successful with a plane over the Atlantic. Would we indeed be able to find enough evidence from the depths to be able to say who done it? We “lucked out” with Pan Am 103 in that the device detonated over land.
If it kept happening, we likely would insist on manual inspection of everything loaded into planes, as well as deeper background checks into people boarding those planes. We simply wouldn’t accept every 20th, 50th, 100th, whatever plane exploding or crashing between Europe and America.
"Does he really have no idea of the shitstorm he'd release if one of these things brought down a US passenger jet?"
Not just a US jet. Any NATO nation jet jet would be enough to create such shitstorm.
One thing we know with absolute certainty. If he loses the election and it happens to a U.S. jet Trump will say it never would have happened if he were President. And if it happens after the election and Trump is trying to overturn the results he will say it is because “our enemies perceive us as weak” and that he and only he can reverse that.
And, of course, it might be true. After all, why muck with the U.S. when we have a President who will do his bidding.
I've generally considered myself on the more pacifist side of the spectrum (for example, I was strongly opposed to the Iraq War).
Putin is bring out the hawk in me.
I find myself fantasizing about the flashes and deafening concussion as the building housing the Russian troll farms detonates, completely incerating all of those fuckers.
Putin is dragged though the streets of Kyiv, and the families of his war crime victims are well-supplied with rocks and dog shit. His ripped-up body is fed to pigs, and the pigs' shit is force-fed to his political and military underlings.
A NATO army marches though the Kremlin, with the streets lined with smiling Russians waving the Ukrainian flag. If the smiles slip, rifle butt meets back of head.
Jesus. You need help. Seriously. A simple execution of Putin and his enablers/helpers should suffice.
If you remember the film The Princess Bride, the concept I like is "to the pain". No, let Putin live long enough to be powerless and watch everything he tried to build fall apart, because of what he did.
Very unlikely, I know.
He has already seen the Russian Navy driven from the western Black Sea, his border with NATO greatly expanded, the Baltic become a ‘NATO lake’, and a foreign army on Russian soil. I’m surprised that he is still in power.
Now, Ukrainian missiles and drones are accurately targeting fuel depots and munitions storage deep inside Russia. Might be some combination of getting better surveillance and intelligence, and degrading and/or defeating Russian air defenses. If these disruptions to logistics and supply can be continued and expanded, Russia may find itself unable to hold all the territory it now occupies
The booby trapped electric massagers resemble similar sabotaged devices manufactured by a Taiwanese company and routed to Hungary before being delivered to buyers in Lebanon. Lithuania is rabidly anti-Russian since becoming a NATO outpost, giving this operation a 'stop the steal' vibe.
You are not alone. I’ll bet a lot of people feel the same way Putin is deliberately promoting violence. As a normally peaceful person this provokes a strong response.
The pagers weren't manufactured by a Taiwanese company. As of the latest reporting I could find, we don't know who made them. A Hungarian front company (BAC) acting as an intermediary for parties unknown licensed a brand name from a Taiwanese company. The public trail stops there.
The pages were built in Hungary by an Israeli secret service front company. Your claims are embarrassingly stupid.
I agree it would be horrible; but as for the shitstorm - what else can we do to Russia short of bombing/military action? Haven't we fully implemented sanctions to their limit? Maybe he's in 'nothing left to lose' mode? And for sure he will deny it and some US electeds will support his BS story...
We haven’t completely cut them off. Americans still are allowed to travel to Russia via stopover in another country. Same with trade. We’d really have to go full Cold War: absolutely nobody doing business with us can do business with them too. Which, for example, would mean telling China “look you can sell to us or you can sell to them, but not both so who provides you more revenue?” I doubt we’ll have the gumption to actually do this, but it’s what will need to happen if we really want Russia to stop fucking with us.
Which, for example, would mean telling China “look you can sell to us or you can sell to them, but not both so who provides you more revenue?
That would never work. The cold reality is we're reliant on China—really reliant—for many critical manufacturing inputs, parts, rare earths, vital supplies, chemicals, pharmaceutical precursors, and so on.
I think what we have to realize, though, is that, while this story if true paints a portrait of a very reckless Putin (to say the least), it also suggests he's growing desperate. Ditto the Korean mercenaries.
There has been lots of reportage suggesting that Russia has gained the upper hand in the Ukraine War. But one suspects the real situation isn't so rosy for Moscow, and the cumulative toll of 2.5 years of horrendous quagmire is gradually beginning to add up for Putin and the Russian people.
There is a lot of hand-wringing about the Russian advances in the Donbas, but one ought to remember that Russia has not taken any city of significant size since the early weeks of the war; and they were forced out of Kherson when their hold on the city was made untenable by Ukrainian advances. I haven’t done a numeric analysis on this, but the ratio of casualties lost to square kilometers gained by Russia is just not sustainable much longer.
The US can't afford to not buy from China. Nor would most of america's allies buy into your plan. You seem to think it is still the 1950s with the level of power the US has. It isn't.
If we can credibly pin it on Russia, it begs for a military response of some kind, because that is killing people, civilians, an act of war in several different ways.
It would have to be limited and relatively hard to escalate from by Russia. I am thinking a fusillade of cruise missiles that would knock out the bridge connecting Russia and Crimea. Not only would it be gratifying to do so but it also would legit hurt the Russian war effort.
Also, I wonder if the publishing of these comments is an effort to:
1) Warn Putin that we know what he is up to and he shouldn't do it, and
2) If he does it anyway to make our claims that he was responsible appear better founded.
Of course, the Ukrainians best course of action here might be to do it themselves and blame Russia...
good lord, no. Not even close.
I can go online right now and buy all sorts of things from Russia, really quite legally, and they can buy things from here. I can employ Russian nationals as well. Many American businesses are still doing billions of dollars in business in Russia. Their citizens can travel here freely.
If a transatlantic flight did blow up, Putin's response will be a blanket denial. Probably ask UN to investigate and stonewall findings, in a bluff about "escalation." So far, just the threat has caused Biden's natsec team to back off for months, until the threat proves empty. In the meantime, Putin can play up blame as America's animosity to Russia (rather than Putin and his actions) in order to stabilize at home.
Presumably, this is something that could only happen once or twice. The US isn’t going to put up with a transatlantic plane being destroyed every day, week, month or even year without either shutting down all travel or insisting on thorough daily inspections of everything on every plane.
Unfortunately, given the deliberate and intentional (and mindboggling stupid) lies from the US government about the nordstream pipelines, the Russians would have a good case for any lies about the bombs.
Putin does this because he can be confident that someone like Donald Trump upon hearing about it will immediately roll over and capitulate because of what an obviously tough and impressive guy he is.
Really buried the lede here:
"Now investigators and spy agencies in Europe have figured out how the devices—electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance—were made and concluded that they were part of a wider Russian plot"
They're sending exploding sex toys.
They wouldn’t do it directly they would share the technique with folks like Al Queda via some intermediary and then boom.
This is an act of war. I don’t know what the response should be and certainly don’t think we should be nuking each other. I guess I would give Ukraine everything it wants and not place any restrictions on the use of the weapons.
The basic problem is that we can't give Ukraine everything it wants. A simple low tech example is artillery and artillery ammunition. First, the barrel life of a 155 mm howitzer barrel is about 1,500 to 2,000 rounds, so at minimum we should be sending Ukraine a new cannon barrel for every 2,00 rounds of artillery ammunition. It's been estimated that the Russians are firing up to 20,000 rounds a day of artillery ammunition; to answer that, the Ukrainians could probably make use of 30,000 rounds per day. US production has recently risen to 30,000 rounds a month. I don't know about barrel production, but I suspect it's also grossly inadequate to the need.
That's one example. NATO has mostly planned wars around overwhelming air superiority, and has allowed production capabilities for prolonged ground war to become sadly inadequate. NATO has a huge advantage on GDP, but converting that GDP into munitions requires first building factories. Factories are being built, but not with the same urgency as if we were at war ourselves. If the Russia/Ukraine war drags on, we may be in a position in a couple of years to "give Ukraine everything it wants".
Low tech is unfortunately dependent on human crews, which puts Ukraine at a disadvantage to far more populous Russia. Ukraine is clearly moving as fast as it can to uncrewed weapons — drones, drone boats, robotic land vehicles, remotely controlled machine guns — anything to put their soldiers at less risk. The Ukraine has easier access to the advanced technologies that enable these systems, while Russia must obtain them through smuggling and black markets. Yet the US and Europe no doubt have even more advanced capabilities that could be transferred to Ukraine. Ukraine needs to be able to fight asymmetrically on land, as they have on the Black Sea.
All these Russian bomb plots will end if Il Duce is reelected. He will hand Ukraine to Putin on a silver platter, and spend the next 4 years dismantling NATO.
Everybody chill. This is WSJ reporting on something that's really hard to believe. 'Nuff said.
+1
Yeah, skepticism is in order.
Biden has done nothing after many provocations. Putin knows correctly that his priority is deescalation. Admin response to DPRK fighters was.... nothing. So push as hard as possible until you get a bloody nose.
As per usual Biden is playing into his hands.
The Russians have well over a million men in their army. Ten thousand North Koreans won't make a noticeable difference, especially since Russia has to equip and supply them. Notice, however, that those 10,000 North Koreans have South Korea re-examining its position on giving Ukraine weapons.
Checks notes...
is that 1M after or before the half-million casualties?
Either one. Apparently, the Russians are recruiting enough new soldiers to approximately replace the casualties, but haven't managed to recruit enough to actually expand their army.
Doesn't sound like they're recruiting fast enough, and that's why they're taking in North Koreans to fight. They have daily casualties averaging 1300 right now while recruiting is said to be 1000 per day.
Less than half the size of the US, they're trying to have a standing army larger than the US, dealing with 3x the total number of casualties (dead + permanently injured) than the US suffered in Vietnam.
In 2004, Russia's population was equal to 49.5% of America's. In 2024, it's down to 41.9%.
Quite an astonishing thing for a country to accelerate the death of its future, no matter the outcome of the war.
"Biden has done nothing after many provocations." What provocations?
I think you're overstating their intentions. Rather than bring down an aircraft, they're looking to start fires that forces planes to land. What's the difference? They want to make the west look bad and destabilize trust in the system.
Can't the west plant bombs into the Moscow sewer system and let the shitstorm rain down on Muscovites?
When is an electric massager a sex toy? Apparently when it's being discussed in Kevin Drum's comment section. But assuming it's true that THE RUSSIANS ARE PUTTING BOMBS IN DILDOES, I wonder if they could have come up with a better idea than inserting them into transatlantic air freight shipping lanes. Don't they have any imagination?
There was a young lady named Alice
Who used a dynamite stick for a phallus
They found her vagina
In South Carolina
And part of her anus in Dallas.
👍👍