Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Agency (SVR) warned that the Brits and Ukrainians are preparing two false flag scenarios in the Baltic Sea. The first one would see Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian torpedoes explode near a US ship there and a supposedly malfunctioning one will then be found to implicate Russia in the alleged attack. The second, meanwhile, will involve Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian mines fished out of the Baltic Sea and presented as proof of a Kremlin plot to sabotage international shipping.
These perfidious provocations are being employed to manipulate Trump into escalating against Russia after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in mid-February that the US won’t extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to NATO countries’ troops that might deploy to Ukraine. That scenario was the initial one that was planned for getting him to pull out of talks with Putin and then double down on support for Ukraine, but his team preemptively scuttled it through Hegseth’s announcement.
That’s why efforts are now underway to organize a false flag attack against a US ship in the Baltic and/or frame Russia as a threat to international shipping through the fishing out of its mines there. The Baltic has already been a so-called “NATO lake” since even before Finland and Sweden’s joined NATO given their prior shadow membership in the bloc, however, so it’s unrealistic that Russia could really carry out either of these two operations undetected even if it wanted to. Here are some background briefings:
* 11 March: “Russian Spies Warn That The UK Is Trying To Sabotage Trump’s Envisaged ‘New Détente’”
* 24 March: “Putin’s Senior Aide Patrushev Shared Some Updates About The Arctic & Baltic Fronts”
* 22 April: “Estonia Might Become Europe’s Next Trouble Spot”
* 1 June: “Russia’s Military Build-Up Along The Finnish Border Will Likely Be The New Normal”
* 3 June: “The Russian-Ukrainian Talks Are At An Impasse That Only The US Or Brute Force Can Break”
To summarize, they detail the contextual evolution of this scenario from SVR’s prior warnings of the UK’s intent to sabotage the Russian-US talks on Ukraine to the motives of regional actors (Estonia and Finland) in going along with this, ending with the diplomatic impasse that defines today’s state of affairs. About that, if the US doesn’t coerce Ukraine into the concessions that Russia demands for peace but also doesn’t wash its hands of this conflict, then it might very well double down on its involvement instead.
The reasonable speculation that Trump knew about Ukraine’s strategic drone strikes against Russia in advance coupled with the latest speculation that he deceived Iran with duplicitous diplomacy doesn’t do much to inspire confidence in him personally since he could possibly be in on these false flag plots too. Despite Putin’s bonhomie with Trump, which was recently expressed through their most recent call, some in Russia are beginning to suspect Trump of double-dealing.
It’s therefore imperative that he preemptively commit to not escalating against Russia if either of these two false flag scenarios transpire just like Hegseth preemptively averted the deployment of NATO countries’ troops to Ukraine (at least for now) by declaring that Article 5 won’t extend to them. It’s unclear whether Trump read SVR’s warning or if he can rely on his advisors to inform him (unless Putin told already him), however, so he might not even be aware of this and could thus be manipulated.
