A Splintered Europe Must Restore Ties with Russia —Italian Military Analyst

Gianandrea Gaiani, an Italian military expert and the editor-in-chief of the magazine Analisi Difesa, in an interview with Sputnik, said that “There is no unified Europe,” pointing to wide differences over the Greek crisis, Ukraine, Russian sanctions, and the refugee disaster.

“There are many Europes,” Gaiani said. “There are the countries of the former Warsaw pact, which are concerned about the Russian threat due to their historic analogies with the clashes between Russia and Germany. There is Western Europe: France, Germany and Italy, which are dreaming of restoring their important relations with Russia without any embargos or sanctions.

“But these countries don’t have any political will to stand against the U.S…. Each European country is trying to play its own game, pretending to be a friend to the U.S., but pursuing its own interests with Russia.” He calls for Europe to unite with Russia and ignore U.S. objections.

In regard to the war on the Islamic State, Gaiani said: “I don’t see any desire from the U.S. to fight against IS. It’s ridiculous that they deploy their F-22s to Europe to fight against some Russian aircraft which flew somewhere above Lithuania and play Cold War. Instead, they would be better off sending more of those aircraft to the Middle East to fight against IS…. I don’t see any will, neither among Americans, nor Europeans. They are eager to convince us that our enemy is Russia. Thus I don’t see any capability of fighting IS, as there is no desire to do that. Now they are talking about the peacekeeping mission—the Blue Helmets in Libya. Nobody is going to bomb those terrorists who have already settled only 400 km away from our borders and threaten Italy directly.

“I think that Russia is an ideal partner in this conflict and its role in the coalition in the fight against IS is a serious one. Unlike the West, Russia wants to bring those countries which really fight IS into this—the governments of Syria and Iraq. Russians would have been ideal partners not because they are better than Americans, but because Russia fully acknowledges that the IS won’t stop in the Middle East, it would feed jihadists in the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Russian republics in the Caucasus. Russia, like us, is at the forefront of the fight against IS and it is in our common interest to stop it.”