This dishonesty advances the US’ escalation control and soft power interests.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the US didn’t know about Ukraine’s plans to invade Russia’s Kursk Region, but that’s unbelievable since there’s no way that its intelligence services didn’t even catch a hint of it, not to mention likely participate in the preparations. Putin even reaffirmed during a meeting on Monday with high-ranking government officials about this crisis that Ukraine is the West’s proxy for waging war on Russia. Here are the five reasons why the US is still playing dumb:
1. Maintain Plausible Deniability For Escalation Control
Admitting complicity in Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s universally recognized territory would make the US a direct participant in these unprecedented hostilities and thus place enormous pressure upon Moscow to respond against it and/or other NATO countries like Poland. The US doesn’t want that to happen, ergo why it also forced Ukraine to call off its reportedly planned assassination of Putin last month as explained here, so dishonestly denying knowledge of its proxy’s plans is par for the course and not unexpected.
2. Avoid Embarrassment & Responsibility Once Ukraine Fails
It’s unlikely that Ukraine will be able to indefinitely hold the territory that it captured inside of Russia so it’s a question of when and not if it fails. Accordingly, the US wants to avoid the embarrassment associated with that once it happens and also reduce the chances that Russia feels pressured to respond against it and/or other NATO countries as written above. The US is basically letting Ukraine hold the bag after everything inevitably fails apart so that Russia’s full fury is directly solely against its proxy.
3. Propagate David-vs.-Goliath Optics For Boosting Morale
By pretending to be caught off guard by what just happened, the US is lending false credence to the optics that the latest phase of the already decade-long Ukrainian Conflict that began almost two and a half years ago is a modern-day David vs. Goliath story. This is meant to boost morale inside of Ukraine amidst its drastic slump caused by the ramping up of forcible conscription there and increase support among the Western public for continuing to fund this proxy war in the face of growing fatigue.
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4. Keep Up The Charade Of A “Gentlemen’s Agreement” Gone Bad
RT’s Sergey Poletaev introduced an intriguing theory into the global information ecosystem earlier this week when he wrote that “The relative calm along the 1,000-kilometer border for two and a half years likely wasn’t coincidental. We can suggest there were agreements between Moscow and Washington, specifically with the administration of US President Joe Biden.” If there’s any truth to that, then lying about not being aware of Kiev’s plans could be an attempt by the US to try to hoodwink Putin yet again.
5. Troll Russia After It Previously Denied Supporting Donbass
Russia always denied militarily supporting Donbass throughout the eight years between “EuroMaidan” and the special operation, but the US insisted that this was a lie and that Russia had “invaded” Ukraine, albeit at a limited scale. Whatever the truth may be, playing dumb about its support for Ukraine’s indisputable invasion of Russia is also an attempt to troll Russia for denying the dubious claim that it “invaded” Donbass before 2022.
There’s no truth to the US’ denial that it knew nothing about Ukraine’s plans to invade Russia, but claiming otherwise advances its escalation control and soft power interests. Those who play along with this are insulting the intelligence of their targeted audience, some of whom might feel pressured not to call them out though due to fear of being aggressively harassed online and “canceled”. All objective observers know the truth, especially those in the Global South, which is all that matters for Russia.
