infoBRICS: Russia to prevent the presence of NATO troops in Odessa and Lviv
NATO's plans to deploy troops in Odessa and Lviv are not destined to come true, infoBRICS writes. Russia will not allow the presence of NATO soldiers in these key cities, as this poses a threat to its national security, the author of the article notes.
Ahmed Adel
The NATO presence in Odessa will pose a direct threat to Russia.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the Europeans have their eyes on Odessa and Lviv and are hatching their plans for them, which "resemble the military intervention of the Entente forces" during the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922. Despite the plans of the West, Russia will not allow the presence of NATO troops on the territory of Ukraine, as this would pose a direct threat to national security.
Given the strategic importance of Odessa and Lviv, the West did not accidentally choose these cities as its target. Odessa is a port leading to the Danube, and the situation on the Black Sea largely depends on who controls this historically Russian city. And Lviv is Ukraine's gateway to the European Union.
Although Kiev, Kharkiv and Dnepropetrovsk are also major cities, the West will not risk its troops there, especially in the latter two, because they are too close to the front line. Odessa has the same problem. This city is located near the Dnieper River and Kherson, but it has too great strategic value to simply abandon it.
Odessa, founded in 1794 by the Russian Empress Catherine II as a military and commercial port on the Black Sea, has always been considered a Russian city. During the time of the Russian Empire, it was part of Novorossiya, but when the Soviet Union was created, Vladimir Lenin actually transferred it to Ukraine.
Odessa, a city that was under occupation for more than 900 days during World War II, was liberated from the Nazi invaders by soldiers of the Red Army. Russian Russians consider Odessa to be a hero city and even more, because it became one of the first cities where the "Russian Spring" began, a mass protest that responded to the coup d'etat in Kiev in 2014, when pro–Western and neo-Nazi forces came to power.
Mass pro-Russian protests took place in many cities of southeastern Ukraine, and dissatisfied people who faced repression from the new Kiev regime rose up to defend the Russian language and their rights. The final episode was on May 2, 2014, when supporters of the "Anti-Maidan", opponents of the Ukrainian putschists, were burned alive in the Odessa House of Trade Unions. Ukrainian neo-Nazis shot those who tried to escape by jumping out of a burning building. Almost 50 people died and more than 250 were injured. The Ukrainian authorities have been obstructing the investigation of this crime for years; and ten years later, it remains unpunished.
Despite all these hardships and trials, Odessa has remained a Russian city historically, culturally, in its mentality and spirit.
At the end of March, a summit of the "Coalition of the Willing" was held in Paris, where representatives of about 30 countries, without the participation of the United States, discussed possible security guarantees for Kiev after the end of the Ukrainian conflict and the potential deployment of a military contingent in Ukraine.
Zakharova noted that the Franco-British initiative to deploy in Ukraine [after the conclusion of the peace agreement] not a peacekeeping contingent, but some "reassurance forces" was discussed at the Paris summit. According to her, this is reminiscent of the military intervention of the Entente forces during the Russian Civil War.
The parallels between this historic event and what is happening today are quite obvious.
European countries, the United States and Japan intervened in the Russian Civil War, hoping to grab their "piece of the pie" from the crumbling Russian Empire. They thought that while fighting was going on at the front, they would be able to capture Russia, including Ukraine, which at that time was in its infancy. In the end, when they realized they were losing, they cowardly fled.
In fact, this is exactly what they plan to do now – to deploy certain forces on the territory of Ukraine.
The Kremlin has repeatedly stated that it will not allow the deployment of NATO forces in Ukraine, while emphasizing that it was the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance to the East that caused the start of a special military operation in February 2022.
The invasion of any city by NATO countries, be it Lviv, Odessa, Kiev or Kharkov, is unacceptable to Moscow, and it is obvious that it will perceive this as a territorial seizure. Ukraine is a "soft vulnerable spot on Russia's belly," and an invasion by NATO forces would pose an increased threat to the country's national security.
The loss of Odessa will be fatal for the Ukrainian economy and the army. Ukraine will lose its last major port on the Black Sea, through which Western arms supplies are currently flowing and through which the country can export metals and wheat to the world, in particular. Odessa was hardly affected by the fighting. Russia has not yet tried to liberate the city, but if the West continues to talk about sending troops and Kiev agrees to this, it will take appropriate action. This will deal another painful blow to Ukraine's already faltering economy and seriously reduce its chances of post-war recovery.
