Kiev hitting civilian targets in Russia to provoke mirror response – ex-Pentagon analyst (VIDEO)
Kiev is targeting civilian infrastructure in Russia in an attempt to provoke Moscow into responding in kind so that Ukraine can “play the victim,” knowing Western media will largely ignore attacks on Russian civilians, former Pentagon senior security policy analyst Michael Maloof has told RT.
Thursday marked the third Ukrainian strike on warehouses belonging to Russia’s largest e-commerce retailer, Wildberries in an escalation of Kiev’s campaign against Russian civilian infrastructure. Ukraine has claimed the company supports Russian military logistics, an allegation denied by both Moscow and Wildberries itself. In a separate attack the same day, Ukrainian forces also struck storage facilities at a poultry farm near St. Petersburg.
Speaking to RT on Friday, Maloof described the attacks as a deliberate “terrorist” strategy.
“They’re doing it purposely in order to lure Russia to start hitting civilian targets… thereby knowing that the Western press will take that information and run with it,” he said.
“And that’s all that you’ll ever hear. You never hear about the attacks in Russia on civilian targets… And so I think the Ukrainians are just trying to play victim once again.”
Maloof dismissed Kiev’s assertion that Wildberries – an online marketplace comparable to Amazon – is a legitimate military target.
“It’s ridiculous. It’s absurd in the extreme.”
He argued that Ukraine expects most Western media outlets not to scrutinize its claims or “see the fraud” behind the justification for attacking the company.
According to Maloof, the broader campaign against Russian energy, food and other civilian infrastructure is aimed primarily at shaping public opinion abroad and securing continued Western financial support.
“It’s propagandistic purposes” designed to win “billions of euros” to continue the conflict, he said.
Maloof added that Ukraine’s European backers are fully aware that civilian sites are being targeted but choose to overlook it.
“They’re using Ukraine for their purposes: ultimately to attack Russia themselves,” he said. “All of this is instigated by the Europeans.”
Watch the full interview below:
