I did a news round-up a few days ago and included a story about a supposed Kiev plot to blow up church parishioners with bombs hidden in icons that would be smuggled into Russia. I notice jokes about it being made on the Russian internet now, indicating that it wasn’t taken seriously by ordinary Russians. Then, a follow-up report came in, where the criminal case against one of the plotters was dropped for lack of evidence. Here:
The court terminated the proceedings on one defendant in the case of the import of icons with explosives
The Pskov Regional Court terminated the trial of Khochbar Jamalov, one of the defendants in the case of importing explosives into Russia in Orthodox icons. According to the FSB, the cargo followed the route Ukraine — Romania — Hungary — Slovakia — Poland — Lithuania — Latvia — Russia.
(…)
On the suppression of the import of explosives of the FSB reported April 2. A total of 27 improvised explosive devices camouflaged into icons, 70 kg of hexogen, 91 electric detonators and parts of a shot to RPG-7 were recovered. How clarified in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the mass of seized explosives is sufficient to undermine a five-story house. Presumably explosives were transported to Moscow.
The FSB initially reported one detainee, his name was not called. As « RIA Novosti » transmit, in addition to Khochbar Jamalov, the court considers Dmitry Gratiya as a suspect. Presumably, both have the second citizenship of Moldova. According to the agency, Mr. Grati was detained on January 31.
I described the supposed plot as “Looney Tunes tier” and said it was clearly a spook psyop on the gullible. You can see why I’d say that, right? Just using common sense, here are some questions that are raised:
Why do this attack though?
Isn’t it counterproductive in terms of propaganda?
Terror plots are carried out with specific goals in mind so …
… what could be the goal of this exploding icons scheme other than to make the Kiev cause look bad?
Many Ukrainians are Orthodox as well, in fact by some statistics, Ukrainians as a whole take Christianity more seriously (as a proportion of the population), especially in the Galician West, where Christianity has been a rallying point against the Soviet identity of the East for decades.
Actually, when I lived in the West, the Western Ukrainians went to Church, the Kievans and Easterners didn’t. This used to be a point of mockery of the Westerners (country bumpkins) and not a controversial point at all because the whole “muh Russia Orthodox savior” meme hadn’t been formulated by Surkov yet.
The initial Ukrainianian territorial defense unit volunteers were disproportionately Christian because the religious are always the first to volunteer to fight in any war because the same gullibility that gets them to obey the priest makes them believe government propaganda …
… and because they see Moscow as the AntiChrist, as well as the Moscow Patriarchate, which they call the KGB Church, which it definitely is to be fair …
… but then their own Churches are run by spooks as well so, glass houses and all that.
There is also no proof for any of this other than the FSB’s word and the timing is suspicious because …
… they just allowed a massacre to be carried out in Moscow and did nothing to prevent it so it would make sense to …
… cook up a hoax story to remind the public of how they are absolutely necessary for ordinary people to stay safe in Russia and not start asking questions.
In other words, the entire narrative around the “icon bomb plot” was totally insane.
Kiev, for all its faults, usually chooses targets that make sense. They bomb factories, warehouses, Russian soldiers standing in parade formation in open fields to please their non-Russian commanders, transportation infrastructure, populist personalities and so on.
The only explanation for why they would want to blow up random elderly parishioners is that they’re just so damn morally evil or whatever. And by now, we should all understand that whenever the moral of a story is based on morality, you know that you’re doing with a psyop propaganda hoax. Yes, morally appalling stuff, I know!
I graciously waited until >onday to drop this sacrilegious Sunday screed on my readers at least!
…
You know, I recall writing that anyone who fell for this hoax was clearly retarded. I made sure to stress this point and I even brought up Downs Syndrome as a comparison to really highlight how stupid it all was. And then, to my total shock and surprise, I found out just today that even my fellow high-IQ, morally-superior Substackers had fallen for the hoax, which I never would have seen coming.
Can you guess the blogger who fell for this hoax?