10/06/2023
Turkiye just threw the US and Ukraine into a dilemma since going along with the investigation risks revealing incontrovertible evidence that Kiev blew up the Kakhovka Dam while declining to participate makes them look guilty in the court of public opinion.
Turkish President Erdogan proposed the creation of a multilateral committee for investigating the Kakhovka Dam explosion during a call with President Putin on Wednesday. He suggested that it could comprise the two conflicting parties, the UN, and members of the international community such as his country, which has experience mediating between Moscow and Kiev during their grain deal talks. This was a genius soft power move that’ll powerfully shape global perceptions about this incident.
Russia and Ukraine blame one another for this terrorist attack, and while many might have predicted that the US would take its proxy’s side, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday that “we cannot say conclusively what happened at this point.” This stance is almost certainly attributable to the fact that Ukrainian Major General Andrey Kovalchuk boasted to the Washington Post in December about how Kiev tested blowing up the dam with US-supplied HIMARS missiles late last year.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made sure that the entire world knew about this too by bringing it up during a press briefing the day after. She rhetorically asked US officials “Were you aware of how American weapons, the weapons that are being supplied to Ukraine, are used? That trial tests of a terrorist attack against civilian infrastructure in third countries are being made? These are the questions that we directly pose in the public space before the White House; you must answer them.”
Considering that the US officially regards the dam’s destruction as a war crime, which its Alternative Representative to the UN for Special Political Affairs Robert Wood emphasized during Tuesday’s Security Council meeting about this, it has every reason to support the investigation that Turkiye just proposed. As for Kiev, it insists that Russia was to blame, so refusing to participate in a truly neutral multilateral investigation would come off as incredibly suspicious by suggesting that it has something to hide.
The US and Ukraine, which are the principal antagonists in the NATO-Russian proxy war, are therefore pressured to go along with this initiative from their mutual Turkish partner lest they risk stoking speculation that they’re afraid of a dark truth emerging. Neither can credibly imply that Ankara has any ulterior motives in proposing this investigation either since it’s a NATO ally that’s consistently voted against Russia at the UNGA and has even armed Kiev with drones for use against Moscow’s troops.
Therein lies the reason why President Erdogan’s proposal was such a genius soft power move since it puts those two in a dilemma. Going along with the investigation risks revealing incontrovertible evidence that Kiev blew up the Kakhovka Dam while declining to participate makes them look guilty in the court of public opinion. Regardless of whatever they choose to do, Turkiye comes off as responsible member of the international community, which boosts its global prestige and especially that of its multipolar leader.
Source: the author’s blog
Emma Olive 