This week, the ubiquitous Russian FSB quite unexpectedly reclassified last August’s incident in Voronezh, where a city bus exploded at a stop, into an act of terror. Moreover, security officials clam the perpetrators behind the attack are individuals of “Ukrainian origin.”
Wow, what a twist, right? Such a nice addition to the ongoing trend, observed in Russia, of demonizing Ukrainians and their whole country… But here’s another interesting point in this regard.
Let me remind you that the Voronezh accident was immediately reported to be a result of an LPG cylinder explosion – no word of a “terror plot.” Also, the CSI discovered at the site of the tragedy any traces of an explosive. Nothing was ever reported on any new discoveries throughout these 5 months.
It should be obvious that such traces, had there been any, would have been found in the immediate aftermath of the blast, of which Russian law enforcers would have undoubtedly reported to the media.
That is, it took the FSB almost half a year to come up with a “terror act” case… The timing is perfect, indeed. It is now when Moscow desperately needs various pretexts to accuse Ukraine of violent action targeting ordinary Russians.
There’s more to this story though.
The FSB spits out a rather peculiar version, accusing of bombing the bus members of what they claim is a “Ukrainian” nationalist group MKU.
And here comes a round of applause… After all, I covered the trumped-up MKU case quite extensively. In fact, even in Russia, domestic audiences tend not to believe such a group even exists, seeing it merely as an FSB invention. The most ridiculous part about this FSB project to discredit Ukraine, mediocre in many other respects, too, s that there isn’t a single Ukrainian national among the MKU members detained across Russia. They’re all Russian citizens. What’s more, they are part of various Russian neo-Nazi and other radical organizations.
In turn, despite the obvious fictitiousness of the MKU project and its unreasonable attribution to “Ukrainian” groups, in December the FSB carried out a massive raid on “organization members.”
Obviously, the main purpose of the latest spree of arrests was to catalyze anti-Ukrainian sentiments in Russia
And now, a month later, the propaganda puzzle pieces finally came together – it turns out that the bus in Voronezh was “blown up” by “Ukrainian” terrorists.
This leads me to conclude that the FSB’s incompetent hoax effort is just too lame. It’s been this way since the very inception when they manufactured the lie about some ephemeral “Ukrainian” extremist group, and up to the ridiculous claim, delayed by six months, of their alleged involvement in a bus explosion, which in fact was nothing but a tragic accident involving an LPG cylinder failure.
But there is something else that worries me about this story.
In Russia, all kinds of household and technological emergencies occur on a daily basis. Gas blasts destroy apartment blocks, leaks on pipelines also cause explosions, and so do faulty LPG cylinders in motor vehicles. Taking the Voronezh scenario into account, now the FSB could blame Ukraine for any of these episodes, claiming Ukraine has gone rogue, deploying saboteurs to “blow up” Russians!
In Russia, it was Barack Obama who was blamed for all hardships, ranging from low wages to utility issues. Now, it seems, they’ll blame Ukrainians.
But, jokes aside, this situation is just too alarming. No matter how ridiculous these accusations might seem to an outsider, the FSB still hopes it can build up hysteria and dupe Russian audiences into actually starting to hate Ukrainians for the attacks that never happened.
After all, when hysteria reigns, it’s always easier to feed the population even more outrageous fake stories, as well as to justify own aggression against a neighboring country.
And this is what’s most dangerous in this situation, I believe.