In an action that is more symbolic than effective from a military point of view, NATO (Western military alliance) announced the reinforcement of defenses in Eastern Europe against what it considers an imminent threat of an invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
In a statement on Monday (24), the general secretary of the 30-nation club, the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, listed the measures and said that “we will always respond to any deterioration in our security environment”.
The Kremlin responded by saying that the West is hysterical and exacerbating the situation. “On specific actions, we see reinforcement on the eastern flank. All this leads to the fact that tensions are growing,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.
Denmark has sent a frigate to the Baltic Sea and four F-16 fighter jets to Lithuania to bolster multinational patrols over the region’s three former Soviet republics — an action that began after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Spain will send an undisclosed number of ships to the Mediterranean and fighter jets to Bulgaria. The Netherlands will send two advanced F-35 fighter jets to Bulgaria and put a naval base on standby. Finally and most importantly, France said it was ready to deploy troops in Romania and the US “has made it clear that it considers increasing its presence in the eastern portion of the alliance”.
Beating and straining, it doesn’t even give half a glass of military might before the massive deployment of 100,000 men, equipment and supply lines laid around Ukraine’s eastern borders by Vladimir Putin, a mobilization that began in November after being tested in a brief crisis in April 2021.
But it is a political response to the growing division of NATO, an alliance created in 1949 to contain Soviet expansion in Europe. Until then, the sending of reinforcements was foreseen only in case of Russian military action against the Ukrainians. As the crisis worsened, the internal split became evident.
Germany, not by chance the main customer of Russian natural gas in Europe, came under fire for insisting on diplomatic solutions to the crisis and with ambiguous speech by officials, as well as France. US President Joe Biden made matters worse last week by publicly saying that there were doubts among NATO members whether a “minor incursion” should have a proportionate response.
The White House tried to fix it later, but Biden eventually portrayed the reality. With the excision of Crimea and the domination of two parts of eastern Ukraine by pro-Russian rebels since the now frozen 2014 civil war, Kiev’s desire to be part of Western structures is met with vetoes provided for in conflict rules by NATO members. and the European Union.
European impotence was also evident when Putin decided to negotiate directly with the United States, in two virtual talks with Biden and with a series of meetings between delegations from the two countries – which always precede expanded meetings with NATO.
In any case, this Monday there will be a meeting between the European Union and the USA to try to better coordinate efforts in the crisis.
This week, the Americans will respond in writing to Russian demands to recreate a buffer zone between its forces and those of NATO. The core demands are impractical: withdrawal of countries that joined NATO after 1997, that is, the entire ex-Communist bloc, and a promise that Ukraine, Georgia and others will never be part of the alliance.
On the other hand, there are negotiable points about monitoring military exercises and controlling intermediate-range missiles. “There is a possibility that there will be an informal guarantee that Ukraine will stay where it is and will still open a final negotiation on the status of the rebel areas to take place,” Moscow political analyst Konstantin Frolov said in a message.
“This did not happen, but I believe it will happen. There will be no war,” wrote former Putin adviser Sergei Markov on social media.
Meanwhile, tensions only grow and NATO members most exposed to Russia, such as the Baltic countries, reaffirm requests for support. “We need appropriate countermeasures” to counter Russian and Belarusian escalation, said the Latvian Chancellor, Edgars Rinkevics, no Twitter.
The Belarusian dictatorship is carrying out military maneuvers with Russian forces along northern Ukraine, raising fears of a combined attack.
On Monday, the UK followed the US and asked family members of diplomats and embassy staff in Kiev to leave the country, given the risk of confrontation with Russia. Washington also advised all its citizens to prepare to leave.
After taking the lead among Europeans in the crisis, accusing Moscow of planning a coup in Kiev, London lowered its tone on Monday. The government says it does not provide military support with troops to Ukraine in the event of war.
Putin, in turn, is in a moment of stabilization of his regional arrangements of power. After helping Kazakhstan’s autocrat defeat a rebellion earlier this year by deploying troops from the military alliance he commands, the Russian is now championing a change in Armenia.
A former ally, home to a massive Kremlin military base, the Caucasus nation has been under pressure since it lost a border war to Azerbaijan in 2020. Its president has now resigned, making room for his rival Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to concentrate power.
Pashinyan was hated in Moscow for having acceded to the government in the midst of an uprising that had toppled the previous pro-Russian government. Many Armenians to this day consider that the Russians have not engaged in anything other than pacification with the Azeris as retaliation, but the fact is that the prime minister has returned to align himself with the Kremlin.
“He did what Putin asked in the Kazakh crisis, supporting the Russian initiative with troops,” Markov wrote. “Apparently, it will now reap the rewards,” he said.
Even on a distant front, the forgotten civil war in Syria, Russia decided to give a rare show of force, carrying out an unprecedented military exercise with the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, which was saved by Putin with the 2015 intervention.
On Monday, Russian Su-34 tactical bombers and Su-35 fighter jets were escorted by Syrian MiG-29 and MiG-23 fighter jets along the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights during attacks on ground targets.
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