Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused the West of “slightly treating all our red line warnings” when escalating military activity in neighboring Ukraine.
The speech, delivered at the Foreign Ministry, is a direct response to the American accusation that the Russians are massing around 100,000 men in areas close to the Ukrainian borders.
“Our Western partners are escalating the situation by supplying Kiev with modern lethal weapons and conducting provocative maneuvers in the Black Sea,” said Putin, who accused NATO (Western Military Alliance) bombers of flying “20 km from our borders”.
The president complained that he has “constantly raised concerns about this” to no avail.
The statements come at a time of multifaceted crisis between Russian and Western interests in the long strip of friction that runs from the Black Sea to the Baltic, from north to south in Eastern Europe.
Satellite images show that, since the beginning of November, Russian forces have been concentrated in points relatively close to Ukraine and territories dominated by pro-Kremlin rebels since 2014 in the neighboring country.
Civil war in the region has already killed 13,000 people and came in the wake of Putin’s annexation of Crimea, a response to the coup that toppled Moscow’s Moscow-friendly government earlier that year. Unlike what happened on the peninsula, even due to the lesser ethnic Russian homogeneity in eastern Ukraine and the military reaction in Kiev, the conflict there ended up frozen.
This year, Putin carried out similar military rallies and exercises, scaring the West, to dissuade the Ukrainian government from retaking rebel areas. From its geopolitical point of view, Ukraine must remain at least neutral, which internal division allows, separating Russia from NATO forces.
This time, however, Russian soldiers and armor are much further away, some 300 km, which has led the Ukrainian Border Guard itself to deny the imminent risk of invasion trumpeted last week by the Americans.
For his part, Putin had already complained on Monday (15) to French President Emmanuel Macron about the maneuvers in the Black Sea — which hosts a Russian fleet in Crimea and is the country’s exit to the Mediterranean.
In June, Russia fired warning shots at a British warship near waters it considers its own at sea. Diplomatic relations with NATO are severed. This week, Ukraine conducts military maneuvers near Crimea.
Speaking of the arms supply, Putin spoke not only of a package sold by the US to Ukraine, but mainly of the arrival of the deadly Bayraktar TB2 drones supplied by NATO member Turkey to Kiev.
These weapons made a difference in favor of the Azeris against the Armenians, allies of Putin, in the war in the Caucasus last year. The Kremlin fears a shift in balance in the Donbass game, as eastern Ukraine is called.
The Turks are Russia’s partners and rivals, with Black Sea control interests.
“Brussels [sede da União Europeia e da Otan] it needs to understand that reducing the political-military tension is not just in the Russian interest but of everyone in Europe, even in the world,” Putin said.
The speech is rhetorical, but 2014 is there to prove that the risk of direct clashes is real, something enhanced by the ongoing crisis.
Russia is allied with Belarus, whose dictatorship is in direct confrontation with Poland and other NATO members over the refugee crisis. Both sides signaled that they had military support in the clash.
In addition to this issue, which showed signs of some ebb on Thursday, there was the surprising German decision to suspend certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline — the second branch of the connection between Russia and Germany, completed in September.
Berlin points out bureaucratic issues to be overcome by the consortium, and the Kremlin tried to normalize the matter, saying that everything would be resolved.
But the fact is that Putin is increasingly seen as an actor who uses the energy weapon against the Europeans, and the pipeline will extend its powers in a market 40% of its own — as well as harm Ukraine as the product will be diverted from its path across the country. , a transit that generates $2 billion in annual revenue.
The Kremlin denies such a reading, but the alarmist British press is already talking of a European winter with blackouts for possible retaliation by Putin.
The whole situation especially unnerves Europeans, especially those in the East, aware that the US is focused on its Cold War 2.0 with China, in addition to the domestic problems of the Joe Biden government.
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