NATO Must Remain Warry to Zelensky’s Motives
Zelensky, the comedian president of Ukraine is not satisfied with the destruction of his country alone. He wants more and that has been perceptible in all speeches that he has been rendering at different fora. Till now he has been dictating over the European Union and NATO for both direct and indirect actions against Russia. However, the listeners in those nations have been applying their own wisdom as to how much of weightage they can render to his speeches. Europe stands battered today with rampaging inflation, shortages of gas and fuel and hardship & poverty inflicted on to their own nationals.
On 15 November 2022, Zelensky created a major crisis following a missile that struck Polish territory by claiming it to be a Russian attack. He further claimed that he had been warning NATO on it. He further tried to create a crisis by suggesting that NATO must retaliate against Russia for this direct attack.
Some of the major NATO stakeholders (the G-7) who were at Bali on the day in a G-20 summit went into emergency huddle to take stock of the situation arising thereof, contemplating actions against Russia. Poland itself succumbed to Zelensky’s incite and suggested invoking an emergency article-4 of the NATO charter. Smaller players in NATO like those of Estonia and Latvia went a step further to suggest immediate action against Russia. Zelensky must have been the happiest person on Earth to sense the turn of events in the initial hours of the incident that he incited. Following the G-7 discussion at Bali, President Biden was bit cautious in his brief statement. By that time there were inputs from the incident site that the part of the missile could have been part of an S-300 possessed by Ukraine Air Defence too.
Experts and analysts in defence tried to put the various events of those moments together and expressed that there were many possibilities. It was clear immediately that the parts of the missile wreckage had inscriptions in Russian. Hence, it could have been either a Russian missile attack or Russia made S-300 supplied to Ukraine. Poland is beyond the range of S-300 if fired from Russian territories. Hence, it must have been fired by Ukraine either in response to an incoming Russian Missile attack or fired deliberately in Polish territory to mislead and incite the NATO. The possibility of Ukraine firing S-300 missile to shoot a Russian Cruise/Ballistic missile seems unlikely because those missiles would have come from Eastward (from Russia/Donbas) or Southward (from Crimea/Black Sea) as shown below. If Ukrainian action was to shoot down the incoming Russian missile, the direction of firing would have been Eastward or South-eastward. However, Ukraine seems to have fired the S-300 missile North-Northwest from Lviv or West-Southwest from Tutsk/Rivne. This is a highly suspicious course of fired a missile that could not have been to intercept the incoming Russian attack. The distance of Przewodow (where the missile hit in Poland) from either Lviv or Tutsk is rather far away if a part of S-300 had to fly-off after hitting the incoming Russian attacks.
The above are the expected predictions. However, under war conditions esp when there are hidden players involved, the expectations and predictions could be wrong too. Till now, both Russia and NATO have tried to show themselves of not transgressing their unseen lines for the fear of an unprecedented flare-up against each other. Neither NATO has shown their military aggression towards Russia nor has Russia crossed the NATO lines. BUT…they have not been sitting quiet as well. NATO weapons have transgressed Russian boundary towards Belgorod by attacking their oil refinery and some other installations. Could the Nov 15 attack on Poland be a Russian handiwork by their forces in Belarus close to the international border with Poland (say Breste or Tamasouka) just to explore the NATO response? It is possible. The initial NATO response was aggressive but will they like to get embroiled in NATO-Russia war in the Russian backyard? Very doubtful because the outcome may be devastating. It will no longer be a conventional weapon in use. Russia cannot afford a conventional war on many fronts. It will get nuclear in all probability. Then the smaller NATO countries in Europe may get debilitated by a single strike. Russia too will get hit but it is too vast a territory to melt down but NATO members like Estonia, Latvia, Britain and some others will surely do. It is that fear of NATO that they will avoid getting embroiled directly with Russia. The indirect war in Ukraine suits them best that is gradually weakening Russia at largely the Ukrainian cost (of men and infra) that Zelensky is unable to visualise. Although the possibilities of such Russian misadventures are remote but it is possible though.
Both Russia and Ukraine are trekking a dangerous path. Russia lacks military strategies to limit own losses and Ukraine has been inciting Russia to inflict the type of damages that they have been. If international communities or the mediators are unable to get a ceasefire in the near future, there is a strong possibility of Kiev/Lviv/Odesa to become another Hiroshima/Nagasaki (read ‘Kiev destruction a clear possibility”, https://articles.thecounterviews.com/articles/kiev-destruction-clear-possibility/). The turn of events is almost exactly as those preceding Hiroshima nuclear attack by USA. If such attacks do take place in Ukraine, it will solely be their losses as NATO will not get embroiled in the nuclear war. It is up to Zelensky to be wiser than he has been and also NATO has to be warry of Zelensky’s nefarious design against of inciting a NATO-Russia war.