The military maneuvers of the Atlantic Alliance in Ukraine irritate Russia

Military exercises between Ukraine, the United States and the Atlantic Alliance risk jeopardizing the period of calm, albeit unstable, between Moscow and Washington. The détente that followed the Putin-Biden summit, which was held last month, is beginning to be just a memory. The Kremlin, in fact, perceives joint military maneuvers as an affront and a threat precisely because they are carried out in an area that Russia considers to be its exclusive influence. Of course this also implies reasons of international politics, which concern the expansionist attitude of the United States in Ukraine: the fundamental reason is that Moscow refuses to have troops of the Atlantic Alliance on its borders, which is also the reason why it has always rejected the possibility of the entry of Kiev both in the European Union and in the Atlantic Alliance itself. If in the opposition to an agreement with Brussels there are also economic reasons, the aversion to joining the Atlantic Alliance is justified by the fear of no longer having a physical space between the western garrisons and those of Moscow, with obvious potential close threats, especially of the missile type, which would expose the Russian country to a constant threat from the United States; this vision is of the medium term, while in the short term the functional need for Russian interests is that there are no allies of the Ukrainian country in the disputed territories with Moscow, where the fighting continues, capable of reversing the fate of the conflict. The numbers used say that Moscow is not wrong to fear these military maneuvers and also to interpret them as a threat towards Russia: in fact in 2019, the last exercises carried out before the pandemic, the participating countries were 19 against the current 32 and the ships soldiers employed went from 32 to 40. Undoubtedly this increase is due to Biden’s ability to aggregate allied countries and to have been able to focus Ukraine as a point of general interest for the Atlantic Alliance; in this Moscow was right to prefer Trump as a tenant of the White House and to commit himself to getting him re-elected. Beyond the political implications, the real objective of these exercises is to provide adequate training to the Ukrainian military regarding the methods and methods of combat of the Atlantic Alliance and this seems preparatory to an entry into the Western alliance more or less. official, but in any case with the intention of integrating the Ukrainian armed forces with those of the Atlantic Alliance, even if, in fact, these exercises have been held since 1997, but have acquired greater importance after the annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea to the Russia, in a manner condemned by a large part of the international community. The fact that the United States is the major financier of military maneuvers must be associated with the willingness that Ukraine provides to use its territory as a logistical base and the possibility of access to foreign forces within it. The Russian grievances were of a military and geopolitical nature and close to clash when an English ship was accused of having violated the border of the territorial waters of Crimea and therefore of Russia, with the forces of Moscow opening fire on the ship of the Atlantic Alliance, first episode of its kind since the end of the Cold War. It is understood how this state of affairs can favor accidents that can degenerate into much heavier situations; paradoxically, the possible scenarios, in this historical phase, seem to be much more dangerous than when the cold war was underway which was based on the balance of terror and where each of the two contenders had well-defined fields, which could never have been surpassed. On the contrary, the strong precariousness of the current equilibrium seems to favor a series of conflicts with low potential intensity, but which can trigger much worse situations. One of the dangers is that Russia appears isolated, especially from Beijing, which could provide aid only if functional to its interests and in any case not in an equal way, but in such a way as to put Moscow in a subordinate role, this aspect of Russian isolation risks increasing in Moscow military actions that are not classic, but which have now entered modern practice: the activism of Russian hackers constitutes, in fact, a further unconventional battleground, which, however, risks involving classic weapons: an additional danger from a cornered nation that can no longer exercise its role as the first power which it has not renounced.