Here’s Why The US Is Playing Dumb About Ukraine’s Plans To Invade Kursk, by Andrew Korybko

Generally the Biden administration doesn’t have to “play” dumb; it comes naturally. From Andrew Korybko at korybko.substack.com:

This dishonesty advances the US’ escalation control and soft power interests.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that the US didn’t know about Ukraine’s plans to invade Russia’s Kursk Region, but that’s unbelievable since there’s no way that its intelligence services didn’t even catch a hint of it, not to mention likely participate in the preparations. Putin even reaffirmed during a meeting on Monday with high-ranking government officials about this crisis that Ukraine is the West’s proxy for waging war on Russia. Here are the five reasons why the US is still playing dumb:

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1. Maintain Plausible Deniability For Escalation Control

Admitting complicity in Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s universally recognized territory would make the US a direct participant in these unprecedented hostilities and thus place enormous pressure upon Moscow to respond against it and/or other NATO countries like Poland. The US doesn’t want that to happen, ergo why it also forced Ukraine to call off its reportedly planned assassination of Putin last month as explained here, so dishonestly denying knowledge of its proxy’s plans is par for the course and not unexpected.

2. Avoid Embarrassment & Responsibility Once Ukraine Fails

It’s unlikely that Ukraine will be able to indefinitely hold the territory that it captured inside of Russia so it’s a question of when and not if it fails. Accordingly, the US wants to avoid the embarrassment associated with that once it happens and also reduce the chances that Russia feels pressured to respond against it and/or other NATO countries as written above. The US is basically letting Ukraine hold the bag after everything inevitably fails apart so that Russia’s full fury is directly solely against its proxy.

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