Voice of Russia
April 10, 2014
US and NATO military presence along Russia’s borders is precarious and formidable – Stop NATO activist
Miguel Francis
Ukraine’s interim President Alexander Turchinov has ordered the local administration headquarters held by protesters in Donetsk to be taken under “state protection”.
Meanwhile, special forces and armored vehicles from other regions are reportedly moving into the east and south of the country. The buildup of the US and allied NATO military personnel and hardware along Russia’s western borders is already precarious and is becoming formidable, Rick Rozoff, an international affairs commentator and a manager of Stop NATO, told the Voice of Russia.
According to a decree signed by Turchinov, the local administration building in Donetsk and surrounding territory is an ‘important government facility’, which is subject to state protection.
Turchinov has already given Ukraine’s state security service appropriate directions, Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency reports.
Ukraine’s acting interior minister Arsen Avakov confirmed on Wednesday that special police force had already arrived in the eastern cities of Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov from the Ukraine’s western regions.
He said an anti-terrorist operation was underway, adding that the situation would be resolved ‘within 24 hours’ by either political settlement through talks or the use of force.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry have urged all sides to refrain from violence in eastern and southern Ukraine.
The administrative buildings in Donetsk and Lugansk remain under the control of protesters. Activists continued to building barricades on Wednesday, preparing for possible attacks by government forces.
Protesters in Donetsk adopted an address in support of Crimea’s reintegration into Russia and expressed hope that Crimea would recognize the independence of self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic.
Does Mr. Breedlove’s statement attest to NATO’s readiness to deploy troops in Eastern Europe?
He would not have made this statement unless it was at least on the drawing board. And this is an indication of how severely the manufactured crisis, I would argue, over Ukraine, manufactured by the West, has escalated to the point where the top military commander of NATO, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe who is simultaneously, by the way, the top commander of the US European Command of the US military forces on and around the European continent, to have made such an abrasive and threatening statement.
He said, in fact, that NATO troops, including US contingents, could enter several Eastern European countries ostensibly to protect Ukraine or protect its neighbours, those who are NATO members. That’s a ludicrous assertion, of course. I mean, Ukraine is under no threat. Certainly, the Baltic state, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, who are presumably the countries about which Gen. Breedlove spoke, are under no threat. Quite the opposite, the buildup of the US and allied NATO military personnel and hardware along Russia’s western borders is already precarious and is becoming formidable.
Is deploying troops just a possibility now or a guide to action?
We have to keep in mind that the US has been incrementally and, I’m afraid, for the most part imperceptibly for most of the world’s news media building up steadily the presence of military personnel in the very countries we are talking about, Poland in the first place. Four years ago the US deployed a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Interceptor missile battery to the Polish city of Morag, which is only some 35 to 42 km from the Russian territory of Kaliningrad. There are US personnel assigned to that battery, perhaps 100 soldiers.
The US is currently performing a paratroop operation with Polish forces outside the Polish air base at Powidz. The today’s news indicate that 18 US F-16 advanced jet fighters are flying into the Polish air base at Lask. And the words of government officiala and of the US and the Polish military are that the US will maintain presence in the area for years or decades, that’s a quote. And this has been building up incrementally also in Bulgaria and Romania, across the Black Sea from Ukraine, where in 2008-2009 the US signed agreements respectively with Romania and Bulgaria for securingthe use of 8 military bases, which it has used in the interim. It used them, for example, for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
And these include bases outside Constanta in Romania and Burgas in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. They include major air bases and naval facilities. So, the US already has presence in the new NATO members in Eastern Europe. In fact, the NATO expansion from 1999 to 2009, during this period NATO expanded from 16 members to 28 (that is a 75% increase in membership), all of those 12 new members in Eastern Europe, it has been the mechanism by which US built up military presence along Russia’s western borders and it could not have been done without NATO.
This is interesting, because it contradicts the opinion that people still have, that the US is not an aggressively imperialistic superpower with so many invasions since 1776. And I think what you just mentioned attests to the opposite, that perhaps it is. Now, over to the Donald Cook warship that is due to enter the Black Sea today. What are the aims of this motion – to reassure Washington’s regional partners, as Pentagon’s officials say, or to issue a warning to Russia over its actions in Crimea? I mean, Russia is not Kosovo, Russia is a nuclear missile-capable nation, what is NATO and the West really trying to do here?
I’m glad you threw NATO into the equation, because, in fact, not only the USS Donald Cook – which is by the way an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer of the sort that is being used to install antiballistic missiles or what they call interceptor missiles under the European Phased Adaptive Approach program of the Obama administration, which was adopted by NATO. So, now it is throughout the European continent, excluding Russia and Belarus presumably.
And the US will ultimately, they have five such warships deployed at the Rota Naval Station in Spain to patrol the Mediterranean, but also, as clearly is the case with the Donald Cook, moving into the Black Sea, which could have been predicted. The Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, Norwegian Sea are the locations where these warships will later go. And the purpose of the so-called interceptor missiles is, in my estimate, to withstand a retaliatory strike by Russia should the US and its NATO allies launch a first strike against Russia. That’s the only conceivable explanation I have for the so-called missile defense system.
So, it is dangerous that this is the third such American guided missile warship that has entered the Black Sea since the Sochi Winter Olympics, in which point there were two, one of which incidentally ran aground off the coast of Turkey. Those two came out, the Donald Cook is coming in, but it’s being accompanied by a French surveillance ship; military, of course.
So, this once again indicates that it is a joint NATO endeavor and not simply a unilateral American one. And it is comparable, evocative, in fact, of what the US and NATO did immediately after the five-day war in the South Caucasus in the August of 2008 when Georgia invaded South Ossetia and provoked a war with Russia. The US had similarly sent the flagship of the Sixth Fleet, the USS Mount Whitney, to Georgia.
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