Ukraine carried out a large-scale drone strike against the partially US-owned Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s (CPC) pumping station in Russia’s Krasnodar region early Monday (February 17) morning.
Few were hitherto aware of this project, let alone that it continued operating without any problems amidst the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine and the West’s anti-Russian sanctions, but it’s one of America’s most significant regional investments. This audacious attack, therefore, risks incurring Donald Trump’s wrath.
Former Russian President and Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev published a lengthy Telegram post on Tuesday (February 18) where he argued that Zelensky knew about the US connection to the CPC but still went through with the large-scale drone strike regardless.
According to Medvedev, it was meant to be “a triple blow to American companies, the oil market and Trump personally”, which was done in response to fears that the US leader will force Ukraine into making peace with Russia.
The Telegraph revealed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is angry at Trump’s attempt to impose demands onto Ukraine that “would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty” if it agrees to Trump’s proposed US ownership of its critical mineral resources.
Russian MP Dmitry Belik speculated the day before Medvedev’s post that adversarial elements within the US “deep state” might have also cooked this provocation up with the UK to “get under (Trump’s) skin.”
Either way, the attack’s orchestrators likely also didn’t know that the CPC is integral to the energy security of America’s top ally, Israel, which received a significant amount of oil from the megaproject over the course of its last regional war against the Iran-led Resistance Axis.
Readers can learn more about that here, which analyzed data about Kazakhstan’s and even Russia’s oil exports to Israel during that 15-month-long conflict, which few were also hitherto aware of.
Seeing as how a Continuation War with Hamas and/or Hezbollah could erupt at any time given the fragility of Israel’s ceasefires with both, there’s little doubt that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu will do whatever is needed to get Trump to ensure the CPC’s security in case the region spirals back into conflict.
This could take the form of Trump, at the very least, threatening behind the scenes to withhold financial and/or military aid to Ukraine unless it unilaterally abandons its policy of attacking Russian oil infrastructure.
The larger context of ongoing Russian-US peace talks over Ukraine could even lead to Moscow following suit by eschewing its own such attacks against that country’s energy infrastructure as the first step toward a possible ceasefire for facilitating the elections that could then lead to Zelensky’s replacement.
It, of course, remains to be seen exactly how Trump responds to Zelensky’s provocation, but it’s extremely unlikely that he’ll ignore it, especially considering how this also indirectly harms Israel.
Ukraine’s large-scale drone attack against the partially US-owned CPC will, therefore, probably end up being something it comes to regret. It would be premature to describe it as a game-changer, but it couldn’t have occurred at a worse time for Ukraine given the ongoing Russian-US talks over its future.
Whoever orchestrated and approved the attack might even lose their jobs or worse, considering how detrimental it will foreseeably end up being for Ukraine’s interests at this pivotal moment in the conflict.
This article was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber here.
