Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that the authorities discovered two bombs planted along the TurkStream gas pipeline transiting through his country. Their location in close proximity to the Hungarian border suggests that it was the target of this attempted terrorist attack. Hungary receives 60% of its gas through this Russian-originating pipeline so a sudden disruption would be disastrous for its economy. It could also throw the population into panic ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
On that topic, the EU and Ukraine have been meddling in the democratic process in order to help the opposition that’s under their influence depose incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who they each despise due to him being a conservative-nationalist that prioritizes Hungarian interests. Neither like that he refused to arm Ukraine and continues openly buying energy from Russia. If he wins despite their meddling efforts, however, then they plan to delegitimize his victory through the latest Russiagate plot.
That’s Plan B, while Plan A is of course for him to lose, to which end the attempted terrorist attack on TurkStream could have furthered that goal had it not been thwarted by Serbia. As was touched upon in the introduction, the population could have been thrown into panic, thus possibly inclining more of them to vote for the pro-EU opposition upon thinking that Hungary would then need the EU more than ever. Even if Orban still won, the economy would still crash, thus falsely legitimizing preplanned protests.
About that, even though RT downplayed the scenario of “a Maidan on steroids” if the opposition loses, the combination of the latest Russiagate plot and a crashing economy could still serve as the “publicly plausible” triggers for giving this a shot out of desperation to topple Orban even if it ultimately fails. At the very least, the security services’ dispersal of the rioters could be exploited as the pretext for EU sanctions, including radical measures for de facto freezing Hungary out of the bloc.
Circling back to the attempted terrorist attack that was just thwarted, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto noted that this “fits into a series of incidents in which Ukraine is constantly trying to obstruct the transportation of Russian gas and oil to Europe.” He also reminded everyone about how “dozens of drones have been constantly attacking the TurkStream pipeline, which supplies gas to Hungary, on Russian territory, and now the terrorist attack foiled by Serbia appears to be part of these attacks.”
Ukraine predictably denied any involvement and its Foreign Ministry spokesman retorted by speculating that this was a Russian false flag provocation, which opposition leader Peter Magyar implied was the case. Nevertheless, this analysis here from last December warned that Ukrainian intelligence agents likely already infiltrated Europe under the cover of refugees and that some refugees could also work with such agents due to their difficult situations, thus spiking the risk of politically motivated terrorist attacks.
That’s what appears to have happened with the thwarted bombing of TurkStream: Ukrainian agents relied either on their own nationals or others to plant those bombs as part of a politically motivated terrorist attack against Hungary to meddle in its elections and preemptively punish it if Orban wins. With this explanation of events in mind, any other country like Slovakia that emulates his policy of cutting off arms to Ukraine and continuing to openly buy energy from Russia could be Ukraine’s next target.
