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Again the tension between Russia and Ukraine is increasing dramatically. While Brussels, Washington and NATO watch with concern a possible reactivation of the war in eastern Ukraine if Russia decides to attack, Moscow says that NATO’s expansion plans by wanting to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance are a direct threat . We analyze the situation in this edition of El Debate.
Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, is one of the poorest countries in Europe that is committed to joining NATO and getting closer to the European Union, both decisions have cost it military pressure from Russia, a sister country with which it shares a millenary history since the founding of the Kievan Rus, the starting point of the Slavic peoples in that European area.
The Donestk and Lugansk regions have a high ethnically Russian population and are the point where the fighting took place when the war began in 2014. Along the border of these two regions with Russia is where the Kremlin has deployed its troops . To the north is the city of Kharkov, Ukraine’s second city with just over 1.4 million inhabitants, and to the south is Mariupol, a Ukrainian port on the Sea of Azov, also the target of attacks and military incursions in the past.
Nerves and uncertainty increased as a result of the presentation in the United States of an intelligence report in which it evidenced the apparent mobilization of Russian troops towards the border with Ukraine. Russia has been very active doing military exercises at its bases in the south of the country near the Sea of Azov and the coasts of the Black Sea and the Baltic.
Approximately 175,000 Russian soldiers were deployed along the Russian-Ukrainian border, about the 145 kilometers long that the battlefront has been open since 2014.
An estimated 100 battalion tactical groups were deployed to launch a military raid, double the number of battalions used previously. Thousands of tanks, weapons and military equipment were located in this area. Even the necessary equipment was arranged to establish supply lines from the Russian side to the front line.
Just five days after the meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, US President Joe Biden held a video conference with his Russian counterpart. , Vladimir Putin.
Washington did not skimp on warnings of a possible imposition of heavy economic sanctions if Russia attacks Ukraine. From the Kremlin they affirm that NATO is extremely aggressive and with expansive ideas in wanting to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia, a perspective that Russia does not like and therefore seeks a “security pact” in the face of this possible scenario of expansion of the alliance Atlantic.
We analyze this topic with our guests:
– Pilar Bonet, international analyst and journalist, was a correspondent for the newspaper El País during the times of the Soviet Union and later in Russia and the rest of the post-Soviet space for about 30 years.
– Alberto Hutschenreuter, doctor in International Relations, professor at the National Foreign Service Institute and at the Inter-American Open University.
– And in the study of France 24 I am accompanied by Eric Tremolada, doctor in Law and director of the Jean Monnet Chair in International Law and Integration at the Externado de Colombia University.
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