Personalities and ideologies that drive the conflict between NATO and Russia and their semi-proxy war in Ukraine

Yesterday, the New York Times revealed that the “Anti-Kremlin Group Involved in Border Raid Is Led by a Neo-Nazi”. The paper reported that the leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps, one of the two insurgent groups responsible for an armed incursion into Russia this week, is a far-right extremist, German officials and humanitarian groups say.

Russia has stated since the start of the conflict in Ukraine in 2014 that neo-Nazis are behind the campaign to kill and displace ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine; Russian leaders have stated that denazification is a goal of its military operation in Ukraine.

On the same day, the German DER SPIEGEL reported that the “evidence confirms Ukraine's involvement in the Nord Stream bombing.” The newspaper confirmed, Friday, that there is new evidence in the investigation indicating Ukraine's involvement in sabotage operations targeting the "Nord Stream" gas pipelines.

And the newspaper reported that the metadata of e-mail messages, which were sent during the charter of the boat, indicate the involvement of Ukraine, pointing to the finding in the yacht of traces of the explosive “HMX” substance, which is very widespread in the west as in the previous block in the east.

"Der Spiegel" stated that all the evidence "consistent with the assessments of several intelligence services, according to which the perpetrators will be searched for in Ukraine."

And the German newspaper continued: "We now wonder whether what happened could have been carried out by unsupervised commandos, or the Ukrainian intelligence services, and to what extent certain elements of the Ukrainian government apparatus were aware of this."

This comes at a time when police investigations are focusing, in particular, on the "Andromeda" yacht, which is likely to be used to transport explosives, which led to the detonation of the pipelines in September 2022, in the Baltic Sea, according to what was reported by "Agence France Presse".

It is likely that the yacht set off from the port of Rostock, in northern Germany, on September 6, with 6 people on board, including divers and a doctor.

It turned out that one of the passengers on the boat holds a Romanian passport, and he is also a "Ukrainian citizen who previously served in an infantry unit."

And at the beginning of this week, other German media traced the file of the boat rental by a Polish company owned, in fact, by Ukrainians.

Investigators are looking into the evidence of "Ukrainian military services," according to Sudeutsche, RND and VDR TV.

Meanwhile, a German analyst suggested that the transferring the Ukrainian war to Russia is a strategic mistake for which the world will pay.

During the past few days, the Russian-Ukrainian war witnessed a remarkable development when Russia revealed that armed elements had entered its territory through the Ukrainian borders, which means that Ukraine may have begun to transfer the war into Russia.

 

And whether you do or plan to do so, the question posed by German writer and analyst Andreas Kluth in an analysis published by Bloomberg News is: Will this development be a good thing?

 

Russia said that "Ukrainian terrorists" and "fascists" attacked Russian territory. Of course, according to the German analyst, such statements and everything issued by the Russian government can be ignored. It has been said that the armed groups that claimed responsibility for the attacks inside Russian territory consist of Russians who defected from President Vladimir Putin's army and are fighting against him for Ukraine now.

 

One of these groups calls itself the "Russian Freedom Corps", and the other is called the "Russian Volunteer Corps", and includes elements of ultra-nationalists.

 

According to Cloth, there is limited information available about these anti-Putin paramilitary forces, especially as to whether they take orders from Ukraine or operate independently.

 

In the context of the conflict with Russia, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said - in a statement - that the Ukrainian army needs about 48 F-16 combat aircraft to liberate the territories occupied by Russia, according to the ministry's statement.

 

On the other hand, the ministry announced that Canada will complete in the coming weeks the delivery of thousands of small arms and live ammunition that it donated to Ukraine.

 

The Ukrainian National News Agency quoted the Ministry of Defense as saying that the delivery of small arms and ammunition had already begun last April, including machine guns and assault rifles.

 

The ministry stated that in the coming weeks, one million bullets and about 5,000 assault rifles will be delivered.

 

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the German Defense Ministry said that the ministry had received a request from Ukraine in the past few days to hand over Taurus cruise missiles. The spokeswoman did not give any other details about the letter, such as the number of missiles that Kiev is requesting.

All these developments suggest that if Ukraine accumulates enough weapons, it will be able to use them anyway it sees fit without any consideration of the limits demanded by the Western nations that donated the weapons. This would take things out of control and can result in catastrophic events unless the conflict is recalibrated. Sensing the urgency to act now before it is late, and the to build on the Chines, Brazilian, and African initiatives to settle the conflict, German leaders decided to reopen a direct line of communication with Russia. Schultz intends to reconnect with Putin at the appropriate time

German Chancellor Olaf Schultz announced today, Friday, that he is ready to return to contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin "at the appropriate time," in light of the interruption of talks between them since last December.

 

Schultz said in an interview published by the newspaper "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger" on Friday that his last phone call with Putin was a long time ago, but he intends to talk to him again at the appropriate time.

 

Regarding his vision for resolving the conflict, Schultz said that Russia "must understand that the war cannot end with some kind of cold peace that would turn the current front line into a new border between Russia and Ukraine, that would only serve to legitimize Putin's campaign."

 

On the contrary, he added, a just peace must be achieved through the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine.

 

But Schultz refused to say whether this withdrawal should also include Crimea, occupied since 2014, and the German chancellor believed that it was up to Ukraine to determine what it wanted.

Commenting on all these developments, and speaking on behalf of Putin, Dmitry Peskov said that “the degree of involvement of the West in the conflict in Ukraine is growing every day.”

 Peskov noted that the involvement of the West can stretch the conflict in time, but will not change the situation radically. "Russia will continue the special operation and one way or another will ensure its interests," the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation stated.