“ The response should worry sane people. Especially if it seems like NATO did this in reality and called it a Ukrainian action. This could get nasty.”
The Ukrainians said, months ago, they were building cruise missiles that would be ready by April.
Maybe true, maybe months old disinformation, either way plausible deniability for NATO.
Maybe plausible, maybe not. The targeting, the tactics, and perhaps even supervision of the launch very easily could have been us. Remember the “British” PBY Catalina that found the Bismark. It was being flown by a US Navy aviator who was there to “train” the British crews. Total sheep dip, he was operational and they sent a Brit along to make it “British”. But America was not in the war yet.
Guess we’ll see how angry they are, and what proof they have or don’t have. Really about anything could still be possible.
Could be Ukes with a homegrown missile, could be Brits “training” Ukes on a Harpoon. Could be us helping the Ukes. OR, it could even be a poorly maintained 40 year old ship running at high tempo with a barely trained crew had a devastating accident. And even if that was the case, the Russians might decide to use that as an excise to escalate.
Anything is still possible. Spooky stuff.