Missile troops switched to a special mode of service
Supreme Commander–in-Chief - President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. A message about this was published on the Kremlin's website on the same day. According to the president, "senior officials of the leading NATO countries also allow aggressive statements against" Russia. The commander-in-chief ordered "to transfer the deterrence forces of the Russian army to a special mode of combat duty." The basis of these forces are the Russian Strategic Forces (RVSN). Both commanders saluted and replied: "Yes."
HYSTERIA OF EUROPE AND AMERICA
The military actions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the DPR and the LPR, the purpose of which is to protect the citizens of these self-proclaimed and recognized by Russia republics, the cessation of genocide, denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine caused a huge wave of unfounded statements and deliberately false reports in the world media. In a recent article, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen gave his explanations of what prompted the Russian president to "invade" Ukraine. In his opinion, Vladimir Putin's long-term indignation at the behavior of the United States has grown into a firm conviction that "American lawlessness" reigns in the world, which must be put an end to. He writes that "the Russian leader is seized with revanchist rage and is convinced of the ruthless conspiracy of the West against Moscow."
President Vladimir Putin, Cohen writes, ordered Russian troops into Ukraine, but made it clear that his true goal goes beyond his neighbor. His main goal is the American "empire of lies". The head of the Kremlin said that "anyone who tries to interfere" with Russia will face "consequences that the West has never faced in its history." In another rambling speech full of festering historical grievances and accusations of a ruthless Western conspiracy against his country, Mr. Putin reminded the world on Thursday that Russia "remains one of the most powerful nuclear states" with "a certain advantage in several advanced weapons," the author of the article stated.
The transfer of Putin's efforts to Ukraine and his thinly veiled nuclear threat have destroyed Europe's perceptions of security and understanding of the presumption of peace with which it has lived for several generations. The post-war European project, which brought so much stability and prosperity to the countries of this continent, has entered a new, uncertain and confrontational stage, Cohen announced. On the eve of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the author noted, some Western leaders made a pilgrimage to Moscow to try to convince the Russian president not to take such a step. Washington offered to return to arms control, and French President Emmanuel Macron was ready to look for a new international security architecture if Putin disagreed with the current one.
The sincere, perhaps naive faith of Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the possibility of bringing the Russian leader to reason suggests the gulf between the worlds they inhabit. Putin was "not interested in taking a thin scalpel for the European security order, but rather in a blunt knife to cut out in the style of the Cold War" what belongs to Russia and separate what belongs to the West, Cohen explained.
Europe has once again realized its vulnerability. Emmanuel Macron said that Vladimir Putin "decided to commit the most serious violation of peace and stability in Europe in recent decades." And about Ukrainians, he said: "Their freedom is our freedom."
Cohen is convinced that neither the United States nor any European country will risk the lives of its citizens for the sake of this freedom. The question is how they can draw a line under the actions of President Putin.
After a brief war in Georgia, the entry of Crimea into Russia and participation in the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, which led to the creation of two separatist regions, and military intervention in Syria, Putin clearly came to the conclusion that the willingness to use armed forces to achieve their strategic goals will remain unanswered by the United States or its European allies.
"Russia wants security in Europe, because strength is its trump card. She never wanted a new security order, whatever the European illusions. Putin decided some time ago that confrontation with the West was his best option," said Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador to Damascus. He also suggested that Putin's goal may well be to establish a puppet Russian government in Kiev and that if he succeeds, "he will want the same in the Baltic States."
Specialist in the field of international relations, Professor at the Harvard School. Kennedy Stephen Walt said that talk of a nuclear conflict is "alarming." "But I find it hard to believe that any world leader, including Mr. Putin, would seriously consider using nuclear weapons in any of the scenarios that we have here, for the simple reason that they understand the consequences," the scientist said. Nevertheless, history has shown that European wars involving a major world power can get out of control. A protracted war in Ukraine may eventually spill over into Poland, Hungary or Slovakia.
Central Europe and the Baltic States, which are actually NATO's line of defense against Russia, will live with the feeling of a real threat for some time. Putin, who demanded that NATO return from countries previously controlled by the Soviet Union to its positions before expanding in 1997, will eventually turn his attention to Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.
He concludes his concoctions as follows: "Mr. Putin's steadily growing anger over the past two decades has focused on the perceived humiliation of Russia by the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union 31 years ago and on the subsequent expansion of NATO to the east to protect countries such as Poland, which suffered during the Cold War under the totalitarian rule of Moscow.
But the Russian leader has obviously developed his indignation into an all-consuming worldview about American lawlessness. What this will mean militarily in the coming years remains to be seen."
AMERICA'S MISTAKES
David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline American University, on the pages of the CounterPunch political magazine published in the USA every 2 months, the style of which its editors define as "revealing journalism from radical positions," told readers about Washington's foreign policy mistakes, which today, together with Europe, is on the verge of war with Russia, but American leaders do not know what to do next.
In the article "What the US does not understand in Russia," Schultz wrote: "The war has started in Ukraine, and it is unknown where it will go next." He noted that on the eve of Russia's recognition of the breakaway regions of Ukraine, US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have repeatedly stated that diplomacy is still possible. This statement was based on a false set of beliefs or assumptions of the American leadership about Europe and the world, which they assume Russia understands, but does not accept.
He claims that there are a lot of things in the world that the United States believes in and that their leaders simply do not understand. Almost 50 years ago, the American writer and historian David Halberstram and journalist Frances Fitzgerald in their books on the Vietnam War described the myopic view of federal leaders on Washington's foreign policy. In their opinion, it was a vision built on a set of assumptions about the world that began to take shape in 1945.
Since 1945, the United States has led the democratic free world. But they are also a leader in supporting the body of international laws and norms that define the worldview of their leaders. The UN also adheres to this point of view. Several principles are laid down in the framework of international law, which is accepted by all countries. First, since the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, the use of force to resolve international disputes has been illegal. Secondly, it is necessary to respect sovereign State borders. Thirdly, international institutions such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice are instruments for resolving disputes of any kind. Finally, it is assumed that States should be honest and sincere, recognize the above principles, and make efforts in good faith to shape their behavior as members of the international community.
These are the principles to which the United States is theoretically committed and which, in their opinion, are shared by all other states. This is a point of view that rejects selfish realism, personal interests and government policy as factors motivating the behavior of the state. This worldview was created by America, and it defended it throughout the Cold War with the Soviet Union, which fundamentally did not comply with these principles, as shown by the events in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Afghanistan in 1980.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US thought it had won the Cold War, but the USSR had lost. Washington believed that the only reliable worldview was his own and that ultimately Russia's expansionist tendencies ended only with world communism. America lulled itself into believing that the end of the cold war meant that eventually Russia would join Europe and become a stable liberal democracy.
The mistake of the USA was that they believed in the fiction that their worldview had won and that they could turn other nations into democracies. However, the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq should have convinced American leaders that this is a stupid assumption. In addition, another naive assumption was that non-communist Russia would accept the new world order and recognize the rules of normal behavior that meet the interests of America and Europe. In fact, the United States was so confident in its foreign policy settings that during the reign of Barack Obama, the "turn to Asia" was carried out on the assumption that Russia no longer poses a threat to Europe and that it is just a "regional power".
Russia did not accept the unipolar world that America tried to build after 1991. Putin hinted at this long ago when he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century. The United States confused Soviet ideology with Russian history and its power interests, believing that the latter no longer matter. The whole point here, as Schultz writes, is that the United States failed to understand that their vision and understanding of the world does not correspond to how Russia sees and understands it.
Vladimir Ivanov
Columnist of the Independent Military Review
