NATO Escalates War Provocations Versus Russia

The NATO war against Russia has escalated dramatically, both inside Ukraine and along other border states to Russia. Stratfor’s George Friedman reported Tuesday that the US is deploying military equipment to forward positions in the three Baltic states, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, with accompanying American troops. Friedman described the deployments as a return to Cold War programs, but with the added factor of forward basing lethal American military hardware in Eastern European countries bordering or close to Russia that were formerly either Warsaw Pact states or part of the Soviet Union. He described this as the “Intermarium Region,” using the term for Winston Churchill’s 20th-Century interwar proposed confederation of nations located between the Baltic, Black, Aegean, and Adriatic seas. The details of this deployment were provided over the weekend by Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of US Army forces in Europe, in an interview with Stars and Stripes.

NATO officials on Tuesday continued to accuse Putin and Russia of being behind the shelling of Mariupol over the weekend. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg denied reports of Western mercenaries fighting inside Ukraine, and Putin’s charge that the Ukrainian nationalist battalions are themselves “a NATO foreign legion,” telling reporters,

“There is no NATO legion. The foreign forces in Ukraine are Russian. We condemn the sharp escalation of violence along the ceasefire line in eastern Ukraine by Russian-backed separatists… The attack was launched from territory controlled by separatists backed by Russia… In recent weeks, Russia has supplied hundreds of pieces of advanced equipment, including rocket systems, heavy artillery, tanks, armored vehicles and electronic warfare systems.”

The Russian ambassador to the OSCE, Andrey Kelin, strongly denied the Stoltenberg allegations, saying that the fighters are using old Soviet-era equipment that was captured from Ukrainian Army units. Indeed, OSCE monitors reported last week that the rebels were using T-80 tanks in Donetsk, which have been in production since 1976 and are manufactured in Ukraine.

Hardliners in Europe, including Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, are pressing for new sanctions against Russia, based on the unsubstantiated assertion that Russia was behind the Mariupol shelling. Even opponents of new sanctions, including German Foreign Minister Steinmeier, conceded that “proof” of the Russian role in Mariupol “would be a qualitative change in the situation.” European foreign ministers will be meeting on Thursday to discuss new sanctions.

In Kiev, the Supreme Rada Tuesday adopted a resolution dubbing Russia “an aggressor state.”