Ukrainian Colonel Roman Chervinsky
A hilarious story last week in the Washington Post claiming that a rogue Ukrainian Colonel — one of Zaluzhny’s boys — was the skipper of the SS Minnow that destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline in September 2022. Yep, that guy (pictured above). If you are searching for an image that is the antonym of suave or debonair, this is it — Ukrainian Colonel Roman Chervinsky. Gaunt and crazy ain’t a good look.
The Washington Post reports:
A senior Ukrainian military officer with deep ties to the country’s intelligence services played a central role in the bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last year, according to officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, as well as other people knowledgeable about the details of the covert operation.
The officer’s role provides the most direct evidence to date tying Ukraine’s military and security leadership to a controversial act of sabotage that has spawned multiple criminal investigations and that U.S. and Western officials have called a dangerous attack on Europe’s energy infrastructure.
Roman Chervinsky, a decorated 48-year-old colonel who served in Ukraine’s special operations forces, was the “coordinator” of the Nord Stream operation, people familiar with his role said, managing logistics and support for a six-person team that rented a sailboat under false identities and used deep-sea diving equipment to place explosive charges on the gas pipelines. On Sept. 26, 2022, three explosions caused massive leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which run from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. The attack left only one of the four gas links in the network intact as winter approached.
Chervinsky did not act alone, and he did not plan the operation, according to the people familiar with his role, which has not been previously reported. The officer took orders from more senior Ukrainian officials, who ultimately reported to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, said people familiar with how the operation was carried out. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details about the bombing, which has strained diplomatic relations with Ukraine and drawn objections from U.S. officials.
There you have it. This was General Zaluzhny’s ultimate fault. Describing Chervinsky as “special operations” is just a journalist trick to persuade readers who know nothing of “Ukrainian special operations” that the guy had the skills to pull this off. Last I checked an army Colonel in Ukraine has zero expertise in carrying out underwater demolitions in a frigid ocean. But hey, why worry about gathering those facts to buttress a propaganda piece designed to put the heat on Zaluzhny, who is in the midst of a PR battle with President Zelensky, who reportedly is learning to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata with his penis (okay, I made the piano stuff up, just following the Washington Post’s lead).
If you need some laughs in these grim times I encourage you to watch Alex Christoforou’s masterful sarcasm as he discusses this nonsense.
Speaking of nonsense. Have you read Anne Applebaum’s latest screed in the Atlantic? The lady is the archetype of delusional. I will not bore you with all of her nuttiness, but here are some representative snippets:
Anne Applebaum
They planned to take Kyiv in three days, the rest of Ukraine in six weeks.
More than 21 months later, Russian forces have withdrawn from half the territory they occupied in February of last year. At least 88,000 Russian soldiers are likely dead—a conservative estimate—and at least twice as many have been wounded. Billions of dollars worth of equipment, Russian tanks, planes, artillery, helicopters, armored vehicles, and warships have been destroyed. If you had predicted this outcome before the war—and nobody did—it would have seemed fanciful. No one would have believed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a professional comedian, could lead a country at war, that the democratic world would be united enough to help him, or that Russian President Vladimir Putin would endure such a humiliation.
Wow! Where does one begin? Anne chooses to ignore the current implosion of the Ukrainian Army all along the 1000-kilometer front in eastern Ukraine and the fact that the United State can no longer supply Ukraine with the artillery and air defense systems it is begging for. Russia continues to grind Ukrainian forces into mincemeat while Western analysts with some grasp on reality concede that Ukraine is running out of soldiers. Here’s a piece the Business Insider posted on October 31 (you can watch the video at Simplicius’ SubStack):
Ukrainian soldiers are getting increasingly burned out and worried that they will run out of troops as the brutal war with Russia enters its 21st month.
It will “be very, very long,” a 26-year-old soldier deployed near Bakhmut told The Kyiv Independent. “We’re already running out of people.”
The outlet reported that soldiers are also grappling with the psychological toll of losing their friends fighting alongside them and are desperate to go home as the war rages on with no clear end in sight.
Here we are, twelve days later and the situation on the ground for Ukraine is more dire. Soldiers of the Ukrainian 110th Division just did a video and the message is not pretty:
“We, the soldiers of the 3rd battalion of the 110th separate mechanized brigade, are in Avdiivka and are defending it from invaders.
Our appeal to the President of Ukraine and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Mr. President, we are not traitors or deserters, but in the conditions that have developed in our area, we are not able to carry out our tasks.
Why did it happen so? Let me explain: Every day we are sent to storm the TERRICON (Slag Heap), our commander is not able to provide us with the necessary amount of ammunition.
Every day, dozens of soldiers die in senseless assaults because the assault units do not have adequate artillery support. The entire area around is under fire, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of corpses of our comrades lying all over the area, which no one is evacuating.
The command doesn’t care about this, no one is dealing with this issue, besides this, please explain to us, ordinary guys, how it happened that at night, secretly from the personnel, the entire composition of our command was evacuated from the city. We ask you to intervene in this situation.”
Rather than deal with facts, Anne Applebaum opts for ad hominem and McCarthyite smears of American politicians who are trying to keep America’s foreign policy ship from colliding with a Russian iceberg.
Right now, Putin’s bets are on the Republicans who repeat Russian propaganda—Senator J. D. Vance, for example, echoes Russian language about the Ukraine war leading to “global disorder” and “escalation”; Representative Matt Gaetz cited a Chinese state-media source as evidence while asking about alleged Ukrainian neo-Nazis at a congressional hearing; Vivek Ramaswamy, a GOP presidential candidate, has also called Zelensky, who is Jewish, a Nazi. Putin will have been cheered by the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, who is knowingly delaying the military and financial aid that Ukraine needs to keep fighting. The supplemental bill that he refuses to pass includes money that will keep Ukrainians supplied with the air-defense systems they need to protect their cities, as well as the fiscal support they need to sustain their economy and crucial infrastructure in the coming months.
The U.S. is supplying about a third of Ukraine’s financial needs—the rest comes from the European Union, global institutions, and the taxes paid and bonds purchased by the Ukrainians themselves—but without that help Ukraine will have trouble surviving the winter.
Try to follow the logic — Ukraine is winning under the incredible leadership of Ukraine’s Cocaine King, Russia is on the ropes militarily and economically and, unless the United States coughs up another $60 billion dollars, Ukraine won’t survive the winter. This is like tying to follow a meandering cow that has imbibed a trough of vodka. Stagger to the right, weave to the left.
Some women of Anne Applebaum’s age might indulge a secret sexual fantasy. Not Anne. Her erotic dream is World War III. She concludes her bizarre rambling plea for more cow bell with this:
But some of our money is needed too. Spending it now will produce savings down the line, and not just because we can prevent a catastrophe in Ukraine. By learning how to fight Russia, a sophisticated autocracy with global ambitions, we will be better prepared for later, larger conflicts, if there is ever a broader struggle with China or Iran. More important, by defeating Russia we might be able to stop those larger conflicts before they begin. The goal in Ukraine should be to end Russia’s brutish invasion—and to deter others from launching another one somewhere else.
Did you catch that? We must be prepared for “later, larger conflicts, if there is ever a broader struggle with China or Iran.” She is not content that Ukraine’s casualties — KIA and wounded combined — exceed 1 million souls. She fails to grasp that U.S. military supremacy and its ability to crank out artillery shells and effective battlefield weapons is a chimera. But hey, we have got to gear up for bigger battles that the United States cannot win. Yeah, that makes sense. We just need more war.
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