Russia will search for a Ukrainian link, play down importance of Crimean bridge attack, says expert
A fire broke out on the Crimean Bridge on October 8 (Photo:REUTERS/Stringer)
Petro Burkovskyi, an analyst from the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, in an interview with Radio NV on Oct. 8, shared his thoughts on how the Russian authorities might react to the explosion and fireon the Crimean Bridge.
“In any country, road accidents happen, as do train wrecks,” Burkovsky said. “Before Russia started its war against Ukraine, it's not that there were fewer of these accidents – there always were (a lot of them) in Russia – but now (when one happens) they start going into a cold sweat and look for links to Ukraine everywhere.”
Without having all of the facts about what happened on the Crimean Bridge, the expert believes there is no basis to claim that Ukraine was involved.
“There are two positions,” he said. “The first – it would be Russian authorities’ primary choice to blame any trouble on Ukraine in order to increase the hatred of the Russian population for Ukraine.”
“But this would also indicate the weakness or incompetence of the Russian army and authorities, and that the decision to start a war against Ukraine was wrong. In order not to create this impression, all bad news will either be hushed up, or its importance will be downplayed.”
The expert said he believes the Russian authorities do not want the Russian public to associate the war with a continuous flow of negative news.
“When you speak of the dead, you must say either good things or nothing.”
“The same goes for the war.”
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