On August 20, 2022, a car bomb killed Russian
far-right political commentator Darya Dugina on this street in the suburbs of Moscow. Obviously, assassinations are not good for
the stability of your country. And while we don’t yet know who is responsible
for the attack—or whether the actual intended target was her father Alexander Dugin, who is also a
far-right political commentator and just happened to switched cars at the last minute— the situation is likely even worse for Moscow
than it seems. With that in mind, let’s discuss the four
most likely explanations for the attack and what it means for the broader war in Ukraine. #1 False Flag Operation Let’s start with the tin foil hat theory. This appears to be an unlikely option, but
it may also be the most interesting. Under this explanation, Russian intelligence
orchestrated the hit to rally support for the war. Both Alexander and Darya were hardliners that
believed Russia had been too soft in Ukraine. They advocated for a broader imperial Russia,
stretching all the way from Central Europe to the Pacific Ocean. However, neither was personally close to Putin. That made them the “right” target for
such an operation. World powers have been involved in false flag
operations like this before. The most famous instance is the Mukden Incident, in which Japanese officers
faked a Chinese bombing of a rail line to create a pretext to invade Manchuria. The best part of false flag operations is
that it is always easy to find your own “proof” of the origin of the attack, because you are making it all up anyway. If this is a Russian false flag, it signals
two underlying problems that Moscow faces. First, it indicates that Russia’s military
intelligence officials estimate that the current status quo in Ukraine is untenable and that eventually Ukraine will push the
expected outcome of the war back eastward. Kyiv has stalled Russia’s advances, and
HIMARS strikes have perhaps softened up Russia for a counterattack. Maybe Moscow realizes the only way to stop
Ukraine from retaking some or all of its lost land is to raise a larger army. Failing to do so could be backbreaking for Putin’s regime. Finishing a costly war without securing any
tangible benefits is an invitation for political competitors to overthrow him. It also hints at a second Russian weakness: Putin cannot mobilize those troops under the
current political conditions. It has become a joke in the West, but Russia
still classifies the invasion as a “special military operation.” Legally, Putin cannot shift to a widespread
military mobilization without declaring a war. A false flag attack would indicate that Putin
does not believe such an act would be politically popular under current conditions and therefore
needs something to move public sentiment. Pointing the finger at someone else is the
solution. We may be observing the first step of this:
five days after the attack, Putin ordered an increase of about 137,000 troops beginning
in January 2023. #2 Ukrainian Attack Straight from the FSB, this is the official
explanation Russia has given. A Ukrainian operative originally from the
Azov Regiment— the East Ukrainian military group originally
from Mariupol that is the basis for Putin’s nebulous argument that the invasion is intended
to “de-Nazify” Ukraine— entered Russia on July 23 along with her daughter. She then moved into the same Moscow apartment
complex as Dugina’s, and spent the next month meticulously planning
the attack. Upon its completion, she drove to Estonia
and is now somewhere in the European Union. This explanation raises more questions than
it answers. There is a consensus that Ukraine has been
hitting targets across its borders into Russia. This includes the Millerovo airbase at the
start of the war. Ukraine has also hit Russian-annexed Crimea,
including the Saky airbase. But those places have been close to the theatre
of operations with an obvious military application. Moscow is much, much more distant, and Dugina
was a civilian. Combined with the vector of attack, this should
concern Putin. Imagine that Ukraine indeed has the ability
to project unconventional power that far and has plans to continue doing it. Then Russia will have to invest heavily in
domestic countermeasures. But then the “special military operation”
will start feeling like a much broader conflict. Moreover, unlike a false flag operation, Putin
would not be in control of the targets. The potential for domestic discontent could
grow and threaten his regime. Nevertheless, Dugina would be a strange target
for the Ukrainian government to go after. She was a journalist and television celebrity,
so this should not strike fear into the average Russian citizen. And she did not work for the government, so
the attack did not directly target any pertinent decision makers. If Ukraine had the ability to extend so far
into Russia, there seem to be better political or military targets— things that might actually make progress toward
ending the war, rather than just occupy news headlines for a week. Russia also has a strong incentive to lie
about the origins of the attack. This is especially true if it was a false
flag operation, but is also the case for any other origin. The attack may just be a politically convenient
way to drum up Russian support for the war—or special military operation. And all of the evidence to go along with it
has been conveniently fabricated to fit the narrative. Beyond that, Russia has another incentive
to lie that connects to the third explanation. This is #3 an attack by Russian resistance Russia has made substantial territorial gains
during the war, and now controls about 20% of Ukraine’s land. For perspective, that would be as if the United
States lost California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, and Montana. But the initial push toward Kyiv was a disaster. And six months into the war, Russian casualties
likely far exceed what the Soviet Union experienced in the entirety
of the Afghanistan War from the 1980s. Putin has held onto power and maintained relative
popularity because disproportionately few of these casualties are coming from Moscow
or Saint Petersburg—the power centers of Russian politics. It is reasonable to think that partisan groups
may be forming and hiding in plain sight within Russia, aiming to create domestic instability
and overthrow Putin’s regime. Ilya Ponomarev, the only member of Russia’s
parliament to vote against the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and who now lives in exile
in Ukraine, made the claim that the attack was the work of the “National Republican Army”,
an up-until-then unheard-of militant group. There is very little to corroborate that claim,
but it is consistent with how militant groups operate. [] It may seem strange that an organization would
want to reveal its identity. Finding them then becomes easier, and so Russian
security forces are more likely to strike back. However, both the violence and credit claiming
are standard behaviors due to an incentive political scientists call “outbidding”. To survive, such organizations need funding
and manpower from a more general audience. They use attacks as a bizarre form of advertisement
to achieve those ends. Credit claiming is a natural extension to
that. This would also help make sense of the target:
a celebrity keeps the story in the news for longer and keeps the group’s name circulating while still not drawing the full wrath of
the Russian government that might arise if the target had been a political power player. The deeper concern for Putin here is that
an attack by such a group signals larger underlying resentment for his regime than we would expect
otherwise. A group would not accept the risks that come
along with an assassination plot if they did not think there would be large-scale rewards
for doing so. That means the group anticipates that there
is a large pool of potential supporters that will come to them with both money and to volunteer
their services. It is also consistent with Russia’s claim
that the attack came from Ukraine. As we have discussed before, the strength
of an autocratic ruler depends on citizens expecting other citizens not to resist. That’s because any individual citizen would
not want to go out and protest if they knew no one else was. Doing so is a one-way ticket to jail. But there is safety in numbers, and individuals
might not want to miss out on the revolutionary party. Gotta get those pics for the socials after
all. Acknowledging that the attack came from within
signals that there is growing anti-regime support. That can create a self-fulfilling prophecy
of anti-regime protests, and that is something that Putin wants to avoid at all costs. This takes us to the final possibility: #4
a Random Act of Violence Of all the options, this one is the least
interesting from a strategic perspective. It could be that this was an act without a
deeper meaning, or perhaps a personal vendetta unconnected to the current war. Car bombings were somewhat commonplace in
Boris Yeltsin’s Russia during the 1990s. Ironically, one of the reasons for Putin’s
popularity within the country is because there has been relative domestic peace during the
Putin era. It still looks bad that Russian police forces
did not stop the attack, but this kind of thing happens in countries
that are not otherwise embroiled in war at all. And those are four interpretations of what
happened. Which do you think is most likely? Let me know in the comments. If this topic interests you, you’ll love
my book on the causes of the war in Ukraine. Check the below for more information on that. And if you have already read it, please leave
a review. It really helps out. And if you enjoyed this video, please like,
share, and subscribe, and I will see you next time. Take care.
