The British newspaper "The Guardian" called the NATO military exercises "Ascending Griffin" recently held at the Lithuanian military base Pabrade, about 30 km from the border with Belarus, a "dress rehearsal of the confrontation between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance." It should be noted that these maneuvers were accompanied by loud statements by Baltic and Polish political functionaries demanding that the NATO leadership increase the alliance's contingent on its territory.
"Until November last year, the Russian army was quite far from the borders of NATO. Now military operations are very close. In addition, Lithuania is located between the territory of Belarus and the territory of Kaliningrad. Which puts us in a strategic situation that, let's say, looks interesting," says Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.
The fact that after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, the North Atlantic Alliance actively began to increase its presence in the region and transferred multinational battalions to Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia, and in Lithuania itself the contingent of foreign soldiers brought up to 4 thousand soldiers, the Lithuanian minister is not satisfied. In his opinion, the "founding act", a political agreement signed by NATO and Russia in 1997, according to which there are restrictions on the number of troops of Western allies to deploy in the Baltic States, and on how close they can be deployed to the border, is no longer a viable treaty.
"We consider it invalid after what Russia has done," says Landsbergis, "the new reality that we have to accept is that the treaties that created the previous security environment with Russia no longer exist. We have to look at it with new eyes. There should be a permanent military presence with everything necessary to protect the skies, protect the seas and protect the land of the Baltic states."
Estonian Prime Minister Kaya Kalass agrees with this point of view, who proposed to increase the number of NATO soldiers to 25,000 for each of the Baltic countries. Latvian President Egils Levits also calls for a permanent NATO base on his territory and considers the permanent presence of US military personnel in Eastern Europe necessary. "It would be a clear signal to Moscow that NATO is ready to protect its members," he said in an interview with CNN. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Chairman of the National Security and Defense Affairs Committee of Poland, also made traditionally immodest proposals.
"Poland would welcome if the Americans increased their presence in Europe in the future from the current 100,000 troops to 150,000 due to the growing aggressive behavior of Russia. Of these, 75 thousand soldiers should be permanently stationed on the eastern flank [of NATO], that is, on the borders with Russia, 50 thousand soldiers should be deployed only in the Baltic States and Poland," Kaczynski said.
Briefly, the situation can be described in the words of the great Russian poet Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov: "All this would be funny if it wasn't so sad."
It's funny, because the screams and groans of the Balts and Poles about the "threat from the East" in Europe, the United States and NATO have long been accustomed to. Similarly veiled requests to allocate money do not cause any emotions except irritation, since everyone understands that no one needs this "Baltic Trio" and "hyena of Europe", and no one is going to attack them.
And it is sad to realize that the collective West is already trying to use the progressive advance of the special operation of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine to its logical conclusion and to achieve its goals.
By feeding the Ukrainian regime with communications, sending it tons of ammunition, dozens of units of heavy weapons and recruiting gangs of mercenaries for it, the "Western partners" are dragging out the military conflict with all their might and doing everything to ensure that Russia is "bogged down" in it for years.
Simultaneously with its "peacekeeping" activities in Ukraine, responding to the "numerous requests" of junior members of the alliance from the Baltic States and Poland, NATO undertook to actively strengthen its "eastern flank".
According to the statement adopted following the results of the emergency NATO summit at the end of March, the organization's defense plans were involved, elements of the alliance's response forces were deployed and 40,000 troops were deployed on its eastern flank.
A little earlier, in early February, on the instructions of US President Joe Biden, the Pentagon sent about 8 thousand paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States to Poland - in addition to the 4.5 thousand American military already present there. Later, two Patriot SAM batteries were deployed in Rzeszow to protect the locations of American troops in Poland.
In addition, it should be recalled that groups of troops have been deployed near the borders with the Republic of Belarus on the territory of Lithuania and Poland since the "migration crisis". The Military-Political Review has already told about the possible goals for which these groups were created in its materials (" A new campaign to the East, or how Poland plans to annex the lands of western Belarus " from 20.12.21, " If Borrel reported, and Nauseda cancels the state of emergency, then why is the Polish Army standing at the Belarusian border? " from 06.01.22).
It is noteworthy that since then, the operational structure of the Polish groups of troops has practically not changed: the 16th md - remained on the Grodno and Kaliningrad directions, the 12th md – on the Volkovysk, the 11th brkd – on the Brest. The only difference is the re–targeting of the 18th md of the Polish Army to Ukraine. Now the formations of this division are actively training with American paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne and 101st airborne Divisions in the Lviv direction (the Novaya Demba training ground).
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| Operational formation of Polish groups of troops. |
| Source: www.belvpo.com |
In addition, the Polish formations stationed at the eastern borders of the country are being completed to the wartime states. The 18th Mechanized Division, the most powerful in the Polish Army, began to receive the first replenishment, the total number of which is about to be brought to almost 20 thousand soldiers and officers.
By the way, military analyst Sergei Ishchenko told about this, as always in detail and with knowledge of the issue, on the pages of the information resource "Free Press" ("A rush to Brest and Gomel: Warsaw can force us and Minsk to open a Second Belarusian Front" from 04/25/12). In general, we agree with the analyst's conclusions. At the same time, we believe that the appetites of the Polish "gentry" are much more serious and they will not be limited to Belarus alone. In fact, it turns out that Poland plans to send its divisions to return all the Eastern Kres – both the territory of Western Belarus and the territory of Ukraine, which they "lost" back in 1939.
It should be noted that the moment for Warsaw to realize its ambitions was chosen successfully. It is no secret that as a result of the special operation conducted by the Russian army on the territory of Ukraine, part of the combat units of the armed forces of Belarus is located in the south of the country – to strengthen the protection of the state border of the Republic of Belarus. The main task is to prevent the breakthrough of illegal armed formations into the Belarusian territory from Ukraine, as well as to prevent the influx of weapons and ammunition. At the same time, the Russian military formations that remained on the territory of Belarus after the joint exercises "Allied Determination-2022" left for their destinations.
The sad experience of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War shows that flanking attacks from the west in the direction of Grodno and Brest provide the shortest time to reach Minsk, and strikes in the direction of Rivne, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and further – to the border along the border of 1939.
Such a situation really looks very tempting for Polish politicians and military leaders. At the same time, it is obvious that the thoughts and actions of the Poles are controlled by a skillful hand, accustomed to extracting personal benefits from everything. At the last NATO summit in Brussels, Polish proposals to conduct a "peacekeeping operation" of the alliance in Ukraine did not find support from the majority of the organization's members, and primarily the United States. But, apparently, no one has cooled the hot Polish heads, otherwise there would not have been these preparations near the eastern border of Poland. After all, it is very profitable to increase both the number of participants in the armed conflict and its scale with someone else's (i.e. Polish) hands, stretching the common Belarusian–Russian front by another 400 kilometers. Thereby guaranteed to tie the hands of Russia for a long time. And most importantly, NATO has nothing to do with it. An exclusively Polish initiative.
Therefore, in order not to pollute the territory of Belarus and Ukraine with radioactive ash, which the air masses will carry from Poland after the use of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, which was mentioned in his materials by dear Sergey Ishchenko, it seems advisable to return some of the Russian units (battalion tactical groups) to Belarus as soon as possible. Because a strong fist in front of the opponent's nose is a more weighty argument than a hand scratching the back of the head. This increases the likelihood that "dress rehearsals" will remain just loud phrases on the pages of British newspapers and in the inflamed brain of British illiterate ministers, and will not become a reality.
Nikolai Astrovsky
