FLASH
Shkruar nga Godfrey Buccini
This time, the intimidation comes not from ardent local propagandists but from more serious sources...
Is Moscow really threatened by three small states that together make up half of its population? Have Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania seriously been turned into secret platforms for Ukrainian drone attacks against Russia? And by what suicidal instinct? You might have thought, we are stuck with the same old story of the wolf and the lamb, often used by various autocrats and tyrants to reverse the roles in the historical scenario.
However, in a darker rereading of Aesop's fable, this is precisely the dangerous thesis spread by the Kremlin and, in our region, by its diligent Western collaborators who masquerade as thoughtful analysts, aggressive politicians, or helpful diplomats.
This time, the scaremongering comes not from fiery domestic propagandists but from more serious sources. Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s representative to the United Nations, warned that NATO membership “will not protect” the Baltic states from possible retaliation. And Sergey Naryshkin, the intelligence chief who, at a Security Council meeting on February 21, 2022, tried unsuccessfully to stop Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, added that in a scenario of open confrontation with the Atlantic Alliance, Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius would be “the first to suffer.” While still assuming that the aforementioned Alliance will still exist in the near future and will resist Donald Trump's harsh sabotage, the European Council on Foreign Relations recently recalled how Moscow is exerting pressure on the entire Baltic region with a mix of military and hybrid threats: all contributing to the destabilization of Europe's eastern front, an early obsession of Putin.
The terrorist bombings in Kiev and the warning to Western embassies to evacuate their personnel from the Ukrainian capital are part of the same powerful scenario. The drone attack in Romania the other night shows how this plot can spiral out of control in an instant, turning tragic.
But perhaps there is a purely internal reason that is pushing the Russian dictator to build the Baltic Gogol. And that is that the Federation is losing the war. Let's be clear, no one imagines the Azov Battalion roaming Red Square: losing the war, for Putin, simply means not winning it; having spent almost four and a half years without even occupying all of Donbass; risking dragging on like this for another two or three years with a dying economy; being ridiculed by a comedian like Volodymyr Zelensky, who has become a global icon; and, above all, having a shortage of manpower.
British intelligence estimates Russian casualties at nearly half a million. The figure rises to 1.3 million casualties if the wounded, who could no longer recover for the front, are included: the social impact is easy to imagine. Think tanks and researchers also argue that the Ukrainians have bucked the trend; freed from past warnings, they are striking deep with drones, the technology of which is so effective that, in an ironic paradox, the Americans have even sought it against Iran. The Institute for the Study of War notes that more Russian soldiers are dying each month than can be recruited.
And here we come to the heart of the matter. Putin could hold out, still counting on Trump’s cooperation to sink Zelensky in a negotiation entirely biased in Moscow’s favor, but the path is getting narrower as the American president weakens, stranded in the Persian Gulf. Or he could stop, as he has done every time his position has wavered. But he needs more men and more war: that is why he must launch a general mobilization, as Nona Mikhelidze, research director at the Institute of International Affairs, rightly argues.
The question, then, is elementary: can he justify such an unpopular initiative simply to gain a foothold in eastern Ukraine, which he promised to conquer in a week of “special operations” with fanfare? Of course not. He needs a new enemy. A new “existential” threat. Someone who still barks at Russia’s sacred borders. And here it is, the new enemy, which is also a bit old: those Baltic states that, in addition to Zelensky’s covert support, have long oppressed the Russian-speaking part of their population. Just as Hitler did with the Germans in the Sudetenland before the 1938 invasion, Russia uses the protection of its minorities, once in Ukraine and now in the Baltics, as a political pretext. On May 13, the Duma passed a disturbing law that gives the Kremlin tyrant the power to deploy troops abroad to protect compatriots from foreign jurisdictions. More than one analyst sees the Kaliningrad enclave as the next casus belli.
But if this is the situation, time is running out. Without falling prey to the supposed willingness to engage in dialogue, which has always turned out to be tactical tools, Europe must make some decisions regarding Ukraine, which, with a million men trained for combat, is now its real defense on its eastern flank. A close relationship between Kiev and the Union will be necessary, perhaps with the intermediate step of an association formula, as Chancellor Merz proposed. Or within the framework of a broader European defense that extends beyond the EU, once a ceasefire is reached, as Minister Guido Crosetto argued in an interview with our Paola Di Caro. Systemic corruption in Ukraine is certainly a serious obstacle: revealed by internal investigations, it has cost Zelensky's closest associates and trusted friends their jobs. The president, a national hero and the object of a kind of "cult of loyalty", enjoys a well-deserved positive prejudice without which he himself would be overwhelmed, at least by culpa in eligendo. But, if he understands that it is an obstacle, he will surely make the right decision at the right time: for the devotion that, at the risk of his life, he has always shown to his homeland./ Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "Corriere della Sera"
Po I mbështetet tek inteligjenca britanike...e keni të humbur davanë.Britanikët kanë 73 vjet që ëndërrojnë me sy hapur të marrin Ukrainën dhe prandaj ebështetën fort Hrushovin...por pa sukses.Tani që portat vrasëse të Ukrainës i ka hapur tradhtari i popullit ukrainas:Zelenski,ky që nuk ka gjak ukrainas por është një çifut që është vënë nga krimi për t'a shkatërruar Ukrainën bashkë me liderët kriminelë europianë,që në vend të mendojnë për paqen,mendojnë të bëjnë luftë me çdo kusht me Rusinë...por pasojat bien mbi popullsinë e pambrojtur...sepse krimi i fsheh duart vrastare.????????????