Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the Rossiya 1 TV channel that the US heeded his country’s demand last month to force Ukraine to call off a major provocation that his country believed had American backing and which would have dramatically escalated tensions if it happened. He strongly hinted that this was supposed to be an assassination attempt against Putin and new Defense Minister Andrey Belousov at St. Petersburg’s Naval Day Parade on 28 July in order to generate a “media effect”.
Ryabkov’s remarks follow Belousov’s call to his American counterpart Lloyd Austin on 12 July, the content of which was first reported by the New York Times (NYT) on 26 July, where he conveyed Russia’s demand for the US to force Ukraine to call off its plans. One day later on 13 July, which was coincidentally the same day that an assassination attempt was made against Trump, Ukrainian military-intelligence chief Kirill Budanov confirmed that his country had indeed tried to kill Putin in the past but obviously failed.
His candid admission prompted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova to accuse the US of funding such attempts and allege that Western countries had also directly participated in them. This scandalous development wasn’t given the attention that it deserved due to the fallout from Trump’s attempted assassination, which took priority in the global media cycle, hence why most observers weren’t even aware of Budanov’s admission and Zakharova’s response.
The NYT also didn’t mention any of the details of the plot that Ukraine planned against Russia and which the US ultimately forced it to cancel so it remained the realm of speculation up until Ryabkov’s remarks. Seeing as how Kiev complied with its patron’s demands, this goes to show that it’s indisputably an American puppet no matter what the Mainstream Media claims, but it also shows that the US doesn’t want a serious escalation either despite what many in the Alt-Media Community claim.
To be clear, there’s indeed an ideologically driven warmongering faction of American policymakers that doesn’t fear the consequences of escalating tensions with Russia, but Rybakov’s remarks show that comparatively more moderate forces prevailed and prevented this particular provocation. This insight suggests that the US’ internal policymaking dynamics have shifted since the start of Russia’s special operation, thus raising cautious hopes that Washington might be warming up to peace in Ukraine.
It was explained here over the weekend that Bloomberg’s hit piece against Zelensky’s chief of staff Andrey Yermak can be interpreted as the beginning of a pressure campaign aimed at dividing those two so that the first doesn’t listen to the second’s advice about refusing to resume negotiations with Russia. Considering what Ryabkov revealed around the same time, there are reasons to believe that comparatively more moderate forces are now calling the shots in Washington, not radical warmongers.
If that’s truly the case, then it means that peace might be possible, even though it of course can’t be taken for granted. That said, the ideologically driven warmongering faction could always stage a false flag or some other provocation to ruin whatever progress might be made on this, but it might not happen or generate the desired results. Nevertheless, the importance of Ryabkov’s remarks is that they provide proof that the US’ internal policymaking dynamics are shifting, and they’re moving in the right direction.
