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Worth noting that the incident to which you are referring was a case of non-military Russians employed by Assad as mercenaries, who attempted to attack US force
by lawnchair_larry 8y ago
Worth noting that the incident to which you are referring was a case of non-military Russians employed by Assad as mercenaries, who attempted to attack US forces in Syria. The Russian military and the US military in Syria are in fairly close communication, and both are taking pains not to strike each other. The Russian government likely does not care much about the rogue mercenaries who made a dumb decision to attack Americans, and certainly are not going to retaliate by attacking other Americans in other countries. Considering that the attack on the Americans is the kind of thing that could kickstart a war, I’d almost guess that the Russian government would retaliate against the private security contractor for nearly destabilizing the situation and almost provoking a US counter attack against Russian military forces.
- facetube 8y agoThat's why you'd use a cut-out: plausible deniability. Russia has attempted and/or carried out multiple hits on NATO soil in this exact manner, including one with a novel nerve agent.
- sgnelson 8y agoThe Wagner Group (the mercenaries you speak of) are considered by some experts to simply be a group controlled by the Russian Government for "plausible" (nothing plausible about it though) deniability. Also see: Little Green Men in Ukraine.
- lawnchair_larry 8y agoI don’t think any qualified experts would make that claim, but happy to be proven wrong if there is any real information about how the group works. Unfortunately it’s hard to learn anything about this because the discourse is nothing but pundits with an agenda. Even if that’s the case though, the events in question make no sense strategically, so it makes no difference.