Posted on 11/06/2022 2:50:13 AM PST by Cathi
The secret British intelligence plot to blow up Crimea’s Kerch Bridge is revealed in internal documents and correspondence obtained exclusively by The Grayzone. The Grayzone has obtained an April 2022 presentation drawn up for senior British intelligence officers hashing out an elaborate scheme to blow up Crimea’s Kerch Bridge with the involvement of specially trained Ukrainian soldiers. Almost six months after the plan was circulated, Kerch Bridge was attacked in an October 8th suicide bombing apparently overseen by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence services.
Detailed proposals for providing “audacious” support to Kiev’s “maritime raiding operations” were drafted at the request of Chris Donnelly, a senior British Army intelligence operative and veteran high ranking NATO advisor. The wide-ranging plan’s core component was “destruction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait.”
Documents and correspondence plotting the operation were provided to The Grayzone by an anonymous source.
The truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge differed operationally from the plot sketched therein. Yet, Britain’s evident interest in planning such an attack underscores the deep involvement of NATO powers in the Ukraine proxy war. At almost precisely the time that London reportedly sabotaged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow in April this year, British military intelligence operatives were drawing up blueprints to destroy a major Russian bridge crossed by thousands of civilians per day.
The roadmap was produced by Hugh Ward, a British military veteran. A number of strategies for helping Ukraine “pose a threat to Russian naval forces” in the Black Sea are outlined. The overriding objectives are stated as aiming to “degrade” Russia’s ability to blockade Kiev, “erode” Moscow’s “warfighting capability”, and isolate Russian land and maritime forces in Crimea by “denying resupply by sea and overland via Kerch bridge.”
Read the complete blueprint: Support for Maritime Raiding Operations – Proposal
In an email, Ward asked Donnelly to “please protect this document,” and it’s easy to see why. Of these assorted plans, only the “Kerch Bridge Raid CONOPS [concept of operation]” is subject to a dedicated annex at the conclusion of Ward’s report, underlining its significance.
The content amounts to direct, detailed advocacy for the commission of what could constitute a grave war crime. Markedly, in plotting ways to destroy a major passenger bridge, there is no reference to avoiding civilian casualties.
Across three separate pages, alongside diagrams, the author spells out the terms of the “mission” – “[disabling] the Kerch Bridge in a way that is audacious, disrupts road and rail access to Crimea and maritime access to the Sea of Azov.”
Ward suggests that destroying the bridge “would require a cruise missile battery to hit the two concrete pillars either side of the central steel arch, which will cause a complete structural failure,” and “prevent any road re-supply from the Russian mainland to Crimea and temporally [sic] disrupt the shipping lane.”
An alternative “scheme” entails a “team of attack divers or UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] equipped with limpet mines and linear cutting charges” targeting a “key weakness” and “design flaw” in the bridge’s pillars.
This “flaw” is “several thin pylons used to support the main span,” which were intended to allow strong currents to flow underneath the Bridge with minimal friction. Ward pinpoints a particular area in which the depth of water around a set of pillars was just 10 meters, making it the “weakest part” of the structure.
In related emails obtained by The Grayzone, Chris Donnelly, the senior British army intelligence operative and former NATO advisor, declared the proposals to be “very impressive indeed.”
Reached by phone, Hugh Ward did not deny that he had prepared the Kerch Bridge destruction blueprint for Chris Donnelly.
“I’m going to have a chat with Chris [Donnelly] and confirm with him what he’s prepared for me to release,” Ward told The Grayzone, when asked directly if he drafted the “audacious” plan.
Asked again to confirm his role in the blueprint, Ward paused, then said: “I can not confirm that. I’ll have a chat with Chris first.”
A suicide attack on a $4 billion transportation artery At dawn on October 8th, an incendiary attack damaged the Kerch Bridge. A truck exploded, setting two oil tankers ablaze, causing two Crimea-bound spans of the roadway to collapse into the sea below, and killing three.
While the affected section was quickly repaired and traffic resumed the next day, Western media has celebrated the incident as the latest Russian embarrassment and failure in the conflict with Ukraine. In some cases, journalists openly cheered and joked about what could plausibly be categorized as a war crime that claimed civilian lives.
The suicide strike targeted a connecting structure between Crimea and mainland Russia constructed at a cost of $4 billion, and whose opening provided a major public relations victory for the Kremlin, reinforcing Moscow’s renewed control of the majority Russian-speaking territory.
Upon its unveiling in May 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked:
“In different historical epochs, even under the tsar priests, people dreamed of building this bridge. Then they returned to this in the 1930s, the 40s, the 50s. And finally, thanks to your work and your talent, the miracle has happened.”
The Bridge has been heavily defended since February 24th, not least because it serves as a major transport route for military equipment to Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Russia has previously promised major reprisals in response to any strike on the structure.
Following the attack, widespread euphoria erupted among Ukrainians, Ukrainian authorities, and Ukraine supporters on social media. Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, posted a video of the burning bridge alongside a black-and-white clip of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday, Mr. President — a reference to Putin turning 70 the same day.
Furthermore, Ukrainian media has reported via an anonymous source “in law enforcement agencies” that the attack was carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine. Yet, high-ranking Ukrainian officials, including chief presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, are now backtracking, claiming instead that the incident was a Russian false flag.
Such allegations have become commonplace in the wake of incidents in which Ukrainian – or Western – culpability seems likely or indeed certain, such as the Nord Stream pipeline explosions.
Lithuanian ex-Minister of Defense Audrius Butkevičius was involved in secret British intelligence plans to destroy Kerch Bridge.
Laying the foundations of World War III
While the attack on Kerch Bridge did not involve specialist divers, underwater drones or cruise missiles, there are indications that Ward’s plans were shared with the Ukrainian government at the highest levels. In fact, Chris Donnelly forwarded them to former Lithuanian Minister of Defense Audrius Butkevičius, before introducing the pair by email.
A leading figure in Lithuania’s anti-Communist movement, Butkevičius has admitted to deliberately leading pro-independence fighters into Soviet snipers’ line of fire on January 13th 1991. This incident is sometimes referred to as Vilnius’ “Bloody Sunday,” and is officially observed as the Day of the Defenders of Freedom. Butkevičius and his confederates knew the maneuver would provoke mass casualties, further inflaming the local population against Soviet leadership and encourage regime change, which is why they orchestrated it.
More recently, Butkevičius co-owned Bulcommerce KS, a company that served as “the main intermediary in the supply of Bulgarian weapons and ammunition to Ukraine through third countries,” for use in the civil war in Donbas.
Butkevičius has been credibly accused of working for British intelligence. Email exchanges with Donnelly confirm he is in contact with Guy Spindler, a long-time MI6 officer who was posted in London’s Moscow Embassy concurrently with the infamous Trump-Russia “dossier” author Christopher Steele.
Reached by phone and asked if he reviewed the “Audacious” plan to destroy Kerch Bridge, Spindler told The Grayzone: “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Contemporary accounts suggest Spindler directly coordinated with Boris Yeltsin at the time of a failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991.
Butkevičius was also for many years a “senior fellow” at the Institute for Statecraft, a shadowy “charity” founded by Donnelly that manages a number of arm’s length military and intelligence operations on behalf of the British state and NATO, including the now notorious Foreign Office black propaganda unit, the Integrity Initiative.
Leaked Initiative files name Butkevičius as the organization’s key contact in Ukraine at the time of the country’s 2019 election. Three years earlier, he was one of the “escorting personnel” for five Ukrainian intelligence operatives whisked to London by the Institute for Statecraft in order to brief the British military on Russian “hybrid warfare” techniques. Alongside him was Vidmantas Eitutis, who at the time trained Ukraine’s army to conduct “active counterintelligence operations” in Luhansk.
In the Kerch Bridge sabotage proposal commissioned by Donnelly, Ward asks whether the Russian military knew how vulnerable the bridge supposedly was, and “what countermeasures could be expected” in response to its destruction (see image above).
The blitz of retaliatory missile strikes on Ukraine on October 10th provides a likely answer. It is also probable that if Ward’s outline was followed, Moscow’s reprisal would have been even more deadly, putting the lives of countless Ukrainians – and Russians – at significant risk.
Donnelly was clearly unmoved by such concerns, declaring the plans to be “very impressive indeed.”
A similar disregard for catastrophic consequences was evident in a private memo authored by Donnelly in March 2014, outlining “military measures” that Ukraine should take following Moscow’s seizure of Crimea.
Stating that, “if I were in charge I would get the following implemented,” Donnelly advocated mining Sevastopol harbor using a “car ferry,” destroying fighter jets on Crimean airfields “as a gesture that they are serious,” using a “big microwave anti-satellite weapon” to take down Russian space installations, and turning to the West for oil and gas supplies.
“I am trying to get this message across,” he concluded. These prescriptions have yet to be implemented, perhaps because they risk triggering an apocalyptic situation. Indeed, such “gestures” would amount to brazen provocations against a nuclear power, from which Ukraine’s oil and gas network was and remains exclusively designed to receive energy.
Yet it appears Donnelly and those around him would be content to see World War III erupt over Crimea. In fact, as the leaked documents obtained by The Grayzone will continue to demonstrate, provoking conflict between the West and Russia has long-been one of his ultimate objectives.
KIT KLARENBERG
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
You seem very pleased.
Good Lord. What a panty easy soy boy
His a Brit “journalis” who specializes in leaked documents
So blowing up a bridge is considered a war crime??? Since when you little simp
Bright boy published to what end? Does he really want WW III?
My first thought too
🚨🚨🚨Russia has indirect reasons to believe that the SMS message “all is done” sent by former British Prime Minister Liz Truss to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken concerned the attack on Nord Stream, - Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation Sergey Naryshkin⚡️⚡️⚡️
“The truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge differed operationally from the plot sketched therein.” In other words, move along, nothing to see here.
Russia Ministry of Defence:
In addition, in the area of the settlement of Krasny Liman of the Donetsk People’s Republic, as a result of a high-precision strike by the Russian Aerospace Forces , up to a hundred militants of national formations and foreign mercenaries were destroyed, including about forty mercenaries from the USA, Great Britain and Poland, as well as 10 armored fighting vehicles.
“The truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge differed operationally from the plot sketched therein.” In other words, move along, nothing to see here.
Bkmk
Gonna be a lovely winter in England I say.
Yeah I got a kick out of that one. Send weapons for several months and then decide to send weapons inspectors? Because this admin is all about accountability. LOL
If ya believe that, I got a bridge in Crimea to sell you.
The Brits are painting a bullseye on their country. Keep it up until the Ruskies have had enough. The country will be toast if it does not collapse again first.
Think about it, the Ruskies can wipe out London, which will test the resolve of the dreaded Article V. Then we will get to see just how solid the alliance is. Right?
Ruskies roll the dice that no one will “nuke back” in fear of everyone being wiped off the face of the planet. ‘Cause, that is what the next step would be.
Putin don’t bluff.
This insanity needs to stop and NOW.
Typical russian chauvinism. Ukrainians are simple country bumpkins who don’t understand technology, or the blessings of being dominated by their russian big brother. Simply too much for you to wrap your head around the idea that your side is getting its ass kicked on many fronts by people that you view as subhuman.
They are more like the kid that pulls the fire alarm and runs leaving the people nearby to take the blame.
The Brits only hope to wear big boy pants in the NWO scheme of things is to be the consigliare to the head demons hence the rise of Rishi Sunak. He has the WEF label printed on his butt.
I believe it is the other way around according to the NYT. Butthurt hurts.
I found this report shortly after it came out. After reading it, I am not sure if it this is a hoax, deliberate disinformation from either side, real, or after receiving it and sending thank you emails, filed and forgotten. As far as I can tell about the purported authors, both Chris Donnelly Hugh Ward retired from the British Army in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Neither the UK, nor Ukraine, nor any military needs officers approaching 20 years retired to tell them what they already know and can get from Google or Wikipedia in a few minutes.
This report was allegedly written in April as Russia was being driven away from Kyiv and Ukraine's army was pushing east. Most of the report is about special operations in support of naval objectives. Given what was happening at the time and predictable future, Ukraine's special operations teams had higher priorities around the front, not the the coast. The report completely Russian countermeasures, such as Crimea is a island fortress under heavy security and electronic surveillance.
Since April, most of what was discussed, is not known to happen or did not happen as described. Autonomous ASW operation are so new no navy has used them operationally. How is Ukraine going to use a ability no navy has operational? Which leads me to question how much the authors really knew about what was happening on either side in the Black Sea. So for these reasons and others, this report is has a lot of questions for me.
URGENTLY!!!
DIFFICULT SITUATION IN PAVLOVKA (DPR). MARINES OF OUR 155th Brigade APPEALED TO THE GOVERNOR OF PRIMORYE OLEG KOZHEMIAKO.
I am not sending a letter. Its essence was transferred to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Original in Primorye. It has been said: great losses, the inability to convey to the top management information about our high useless losses in people and technology. I have the numbers, but then it's up to the Prosecutor General's Office.
The marines are asking Oleg Kozhemyako to contact the Defense Ministry to send a commission to urgently analyze the situation. There are three loud names in the letter, I know, but I don't quote. However, I am publishing the post myself, because they have been talking upstairs about the situation in Pavlovka for several days, and the blood is pouring and pouring.
The above was from yesterday
Ukrainian defenders suppressed Russian advance in Pavlivka and destroyed tanks of invaders. Video is taken reportedly couple of days ago
https://twitter.com/revishvilig/status/1589553422533001216
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