Larry On Bear-poking.

With one caveat, though. Ivan Khurs calmly returned to Sevastopol (in Russian), no damage or anything which was claimed by Ukie propaganda. 

None of these attacks are “game changers” in terms of the strategic picture, they are fueling a rising tide of anger in Russia that is likely to ratchet up pressure for a stronger military response. The maritime attack on the Russian ship guarding the Turkstream pipeline is especially puzzling because it is indirectly an attack on a member of NATO (i.e., Turkiye). Just what NATO needs, alienating the NATO member with the second largest army in NATO. The media is discounting the possibility that was sanctioned by the U.S. or the U.K. and suggesting it was carried out by Ukraine without consulting its NATO partners. However, my new friend, Steve Bryen, has an excellent piece posted at the Asia Times on the Turkstream pipeline incident that explains why this was not a unilateral Ukrainian operation:

Today, Russian Foreign Ministry issued a protest to the United States because of... nobody believing BS emanating from Washington.

Старшим дипломатам американской дипмиссии в Москве, вызванным в МИД России в пятницу, заявлен решительный протест по поводу неприемлемых высказываний помощника президента США Джо Байдена по вопросам национальной безопасности Джейка Салливана, который фактически одобрил удары ВСУ по российской территории, сообщило внешнеполитическое ведомство. В заявлении МИД России, опубликованном в Telegram, говорится, что уверения американских официальных лиц о том, что США якобы не поощряют подобные атаки на Россию, являются лживыми и лицемерными, особенно с учетом поставок Украине вооружений от Пентагона, которое впоследствии используется украинскими боевиками для терактов на территории нашей страны. Россия акцентировала, что США давно стали стороной украинского конфликта, их враждебные действия ввергли двусторонние отношения в глубокий и опасный кризис.

Translation: Senior diplomats of the American diplomatic mission in Moscow, summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday, were strongly protested over the unacceptable statements of US national security adviser to Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, who actually approved the UAF strikes on Russian territory, the Foreign Ministry said. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a Telegram statement that U.S. officials’ assurances that the U.S. does not encourage such attacks on Russia are false and hypocritical, especially given the supply of weapons from the Pentagon to Ukraine, which is subsequently used by Ukrainian militants for terrorist attacks. on the territory of our country. Russia emphasized that the United States had long been a party to the Ukrainian conflict, their hostile actions plunged bilateral relations into a deep and dangerous crisis.  

As some in Russia state nowadays, US has no guts to declare war on Russia and hides behind its largely destroyed proxy, because it will repeat the fate of this proxy, just on even larger scale. I agree, but even in PR field, the only "war" the US ever conducted with some success, the gathering of the clouds cannot be ignored, hence the murky stream of BS pouring out of Kiev and Washington, especially US "military experts" whose psychobabble is a good symptom of the illness which brought the US to disaster across the board. Here is a good idea--how about having competent military person as a National Security Adviser, and I am talking about people of scale, not some pseudo "scholar" such as H.R. McMaster. Nah, I am too unreasonable.