Estonia’s President Alar Karis has spurred Ukraine to further use weapons supplied by Western sponsors to attack deep into Russian territory.
sputnikglobe.com
10 hours ago (Updated: 10 hours ago)
Estonia’s President Alar Karis has spurred Ukraine to further use weapons supplied by Western sponsors to attack deep into Russian territory.
Estonian President
Alar Karis suggested that Kiev would inevitably wield Western weapons against Russian regions during a recent meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
Karis went on to argue that military aid provided by NATO should be used to “strike at military targets.”
Ironically, Karis made this statement shortly after Ukrainian forces used
NATO-supplied weaponry to indiscriminately
attack the Russian city of Belgorod, failing to hit any military targets but instead killing at least 24 civilians and injuring at least 109 more.
During an interview with Sputnik, Russian political scientist and professor at the Higher School of Economics
Dmitry Evstafiev argued that just like Ukraine, the Baltic States (except for, possibly, Lithuania) seek to
draw NATO into the conflict with Russia by any means necessary because it is the only way for these countries to “feel confident.”
“This is the only way they could justify to their people the drastic deterioration of the social-economic situation,” said Evstafiev. “This is the only way for them to have a serious say in the NATO affairs. So it would be natural for Estonia, Latvia and possibly Lithuania to support the idea of using NATO weapons for striking at the territories that have been under Russia’s jurisdiction before 2014.”
He also noted that the aforementioned countries will also urge other NATO members – “at least the European NATO states" – to station permanent military contingents on their territory.
“The logic of strikes into Russia’s territory, especially if these missile and air strikes would involve the use of infrastructure located in NATO member states such as Poland or Romania, it would, one way or another, lead to NATO’s involvement in the conflict, which is exactly what these countries [the Baltic States] aim for,” Evstafiev said. “Their entire raison d’etre is to be the frontline states because no one would need them otherwise.”
According to him, the Baltic states’ biggest fear is becoming worthless to the United States and Europe after Ukraine’s defeat.
“They would be left outside of NATO’s defensive perimeter. That is, they would be within NATO’s political organization but not within that organization in terms of military-political infrastructure, because this is what the so-called ‘Lavrov’s ultimatum' from December 2021 was about,” Evstafiev said, referring to Russia’s concerns voiced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about NATO military infrastructure being brought right up to Russia’s doorstep.
The Baltic states fear that Ukraine’s defeat would lead to the West agreeing to at least some provisions of 'Lavrov’s ultimatum,' which would drastically alter these countries’ geopolitical status, he reasoned.
“Because they (the Baltic states) have already said and done too much against Russia and realize that they won’t be able to continue existing in their previous format if said ultimatum were to be accepted,” Evstafiev said.
Having already displayed eagerness to attack Russia's economy through sanctions and to kill Russian soldiers and civilians with its Ukrainian proxy, the United States now seems poised to try and destabilize the situation in Russia with the help of local sympathizers.
Mere weeks ahead of the 2024 presidential election in Russia, the United States intends to ramp up efforts to recruit Russian graduates of US exchange programs in order to form a
“fifth column” in Russia and to meddle in Russia’s internal affairs, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin has said.
Commenting on this development, retired US Air Force Lt. Col and former Pentagon analyst
Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik that “all participants and graduates of military and state department exchange programs have always been targets for this kind of recruitment.”
According to her, the expansion of this recruitment approach to a “wider range of high school student exchanges, academic scholarships to ostensibly private universities, and civilian travel speaks to three things.”
“One, the return to human intelligence (HUMINT) within the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Two, expected available future funding for HUMINT, which has been weak for years in the US and is less costly and more easily hidden within the larger budget,” Kwiatkowski said. “And three, the expanded and pervasive nature of the US surveillance state, and its ability to not only track and identify but surreptitiously engage these young people among Americans (who are surveilled usually without FISA warrants).”
The former DoD analyst argued that these recruitment efforts do not aim to influence the 2024 presidential election in Russia but rather the next election after that, pointing out that “
human intelligence takes time to develop.”
“Of course, in our technical age, any person known to the US in any place around the world using a cell phone can be an instant target or an immediate asset,” she conceded. “International social media and gaming, along with instant translation capabilities means that hundreds of thousands of people today have and can maintain international friendships and associations, and all of these may be monitored and targeted by various government agencies.”
Seeing how most US exchange programs in other countries receive US federal government money, it would be safe to assume that the US government is “interested in outcomes long after the exchange period is over,” Kwiatkowski said.
“Most of the people who participate in exchanges are already bi- or trilingual, academically smart and have excellent social IQs and are comfortable with and can perform well under higher than normal stress,” she observed. “Because these people are already destined to be successful and rise up in leadership roles in their home countries, connecting with them (via social alliance and/or blackmail) serves the US intelligence agencies well, in any era.”
Regarding the SVR reports that US intelligence officers intend to conduct training in Latvia this February on methods to incite ethnic and social hatred in Russia, Kwiatkowski pointed at the US government’s sordid history of conducting and facilitating “coups and political changeovers in many places using both State Department and military assets,” as well as tolerance and support of “various types of European Naziism.”
“Ideally, we will be able to hear from participants in these training sessions, either as whistleblowers or as blowhards, and find out more. It certainly speaks to the US intent to continue war in any and every way it can in the region,” Kwiatkowski added.
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