Do you know what distinguishes sabotage from a terrorist act? Outwardly, they may be absolutely identical actions, but they differ in their goals.
Sabotage is an auxiliary move in an attempt to achieve victory by military means. For example, you blow up the railway to disrupt military logistics or exhaust the economy.
A terrorist act is not aimed at the economy, logistics, or military structures. The main goal of a terrorist act is fear in the minds of decision-makers. In democratic countries, these are the heads of voters and politicians who are afraid of their voters’ fears.
A terrorist act is carried out using political bluff, when you commit an act of violence and seemingly hint that you might multiply it next time. That’s exactly what Moskovia does.
After the recent massive shelling of Kyiv, they were trying hard: “If we hit with something like that now, scatter.” They even hinted at a nuclear strike, warned embassies, and spread rumors that the entire elite had left Kyiv and taken their families… That is a terrorist act and a threat of even stronger terrorism, including nuclear terror. Especially the latter. It’s not for nothing that those strange exercises took place in Belarus, and Medvedev threatened to hit a nuclear power plant.
However, the bluff did not work. There was no mass exodus from major cities, the panic was moderate, except for those who almost fought for spots on the metro floor. Monday comes, and the terrorist act and bluff did not work. They then justify that it was a Trinity truce. Sure, a truce.
This weekend I was working on an expedition. So, we constantly worked under the pressure of electronic warfare, which made some navigators relocate us to beaches in Laos. Also, air battles were constantly waged overhead. In our small research area, there were five hits in one day, including debris falling. Not a single strike on military infrastructure. In one village, an old brick water tower, not functioning since the last millennium, was destroyed by a drone. The only thing achieved, besides of course infrastructural losses, was a slight panic spike. We, for instance, knew about the alarm only from the work of the Air Force overhead—the mobile network and internet disappeared after a few hours when their batteries were drained. Also, our relatives, who had internet, saw the air raid alert map and couldn’t contact us.
That’s why on Monday they realized the bluff failed and decided to launch a new strike. Most likely, they will continue to do this for a long time, repeating strikes every one and a half to two weeks until the end of the year. They will try to take advantage of the cumulative effect. But this is a misguided decision because, besides accumulating fear, there is also habituation to it. So that’s that…
Illustration: Ramses Morales Izquierdo
