Turkey

This was not Europe’s war, but now it is going to be

Germany’s, France’s and Italys’ participation in the war declared by the Eurocrats against the inhuman Russian operations in Ukraine can be described as lacking in vitality and conviction, at best. They seem uninspired and they are not inspiring their citizens, who are faced with a bleak future and a freezing winter. To keep them on this lackluster track against himself, Russian President Vladimir Putin turned the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off on the pretext of gas leaks from some time ago.

Now that somebody has blown the Russian gas pipeline up altogether, the future of ordinary European citizens looks dim indeed. Their governments should either join the war against Russia enthusiastically, that is implementing drastic sanctions and helping the Ukrainians in the U.S.’ proxy war against Russia, forcing a regime change in Moscow.


I am not using the term “regime change” lightly. Dismembering the Russian Federation requires someone else at the helm of it and removing Putin from power could only be possible if Russia was put under new management rules. Perhaps, the ordinary Russian citizen is not very concerned about how the elected officials get elected, but they had overwhelmingly (78% “yes” vote) backed a referendum on constitutional changes two years ago that would allow Putin to remain in power until 2036. Despite the fact that the turnout was only 65% of eligible voters – a very low rate according to Russian standards – it is literally impossible to have any constitutional movement against Putin now unless he is shamefully defeated in Ukraine and the once-mighty Russian army is repelled scandalously not only from areas they tried to occupy after Sept. 15 but also from the Donbass area that it had been holding under the pretext of safeguarding the ethnic Russians who want to be separated from Ukraine.

Why does the Russian Federation need to be crippled and crumbled? To open the route to China, of course! Figuratively and literally. Because, the largest country in the world and the second largest source of energy, Russia is the only real ally of China when – or if – it gets into the eventual altercation with the U.S. This brawl will happen, sooner or later, and the U.S. prefers it happening without that huge Russia sitting on the way to or behind China. If one can break the Russian Federation up into 26 (with Crimea and four new Donbass areas) countries it would create a very small and weak nation and sow a seeds of independence in 20-odd nations’ proverbial minds. (American magazine Atlantic years ago tallied those people in an article titled “The Nine Nations of China” as Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong, Hainan, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan.)

Then, and only then, the Globalist neocons of the U.S. will have a free hand to declare the American century; they will freely redraw the world map, correcting the “mistakes” of the French and the British after the two world wars. How then, could Putin, the wizard of staying in power in the largest country in the world (23 years under his belt and two more six-year terms coming up), have started this ruinous war and put all those contrivances in motion? In his speech at a ceremony for the signing of treaties on the inclusion of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics as well as the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia into Russia, Putin said he knew that the “West was preparing for the invasion of our land, including Crimea.” He said, “We’re witnessing sheer satanism in the West.” He proudly added that Russia would “defend our land with all our strength and all our means.”

So, the resulting question would be why on earth did you walk into that satanist trap?

Since 2014, Putin has been threatening military action against Ukraine but never seemed to intend to really make a move, giving diplomacy a chance instead. I was one of those who thought (and opined!) Western provocations would not work because Putin was an astute leader and a crafty diplomat to drive the Ukrainians back to the Minsk table.

He had many nations of Europe on his corner. Macron, despite all his cockiness and clumsy approach to Russia, was trying to disprove the U.S. claims that Putin was going to start the occupation. Macron even said that Putin was not obsessed with Ukraine. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she did not believe that Putin was up to “recapture the glory days of the Soviet era.”

Apparently, everyone was mistaken! Putin who was dreaming of a quick invasion by his mighty military would not be stopped by a smaller and weak neighbor. The EU was fractured and would not support the U.S. in another world war! As a matter of fact, for almost two months, Europeans tried to convince Putin that they could do nothing to stop the U.S. from provoking Ukrainians not to return to the Minsk process. And one night, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, and what we, the citizens of the 21st century, thought impossible happened: Those tanks fired on the city blocks in which mothers, grandparents and kids lived. Hospitals, pharmacies and nurseries were being destroyed. More than 12 million people, that is one out of every four people, have fled their homes.

I have difficulty believing the words coming out of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, which keeps spreading misinformation about the ongoing military operations on both sides, but Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the loss of entire tank brigades and an incredibly high number of perished Russian soldiers (more than the number of American troops killed over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined). In summary, Putin’s dream of an easy victory became a nightmare.

Despite that protracted war situation, Ukrainians were exporting their grain and Russia its fertilizers. All they needed was to get together after a harsh-but-careful word or two to each other’s face and stop this nonsensical war. As the mediator of the grain deal and prisoner exchange between the two armies, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been having the two sides inch toward that meeting. But two related but seemingly separate events occurred: The Nord Stream 2 was sabotaged, and Putin annexed 15% of Ukraine into Russia!

As Russian security chief Nikolay Patrushev put it, the “obvious beneficiary of the pipeline rupture,” the U.S. wins most from disabling the Russian gas pipeline: Putin has lost the major bargaining chip that he was hoping to use in manipulating the Europeans against the U.S. The European governments are now at the mercy of the EU bureaucrats, namely Charles Michel, president of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, chief of the European Commission. These two Belgians are not going to accept the annexation of four regions into Russia, nor try to find a common ground between the sanctions and freezing Europeans.

On top of that, Putin signed treaties with the representatives of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, and the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to annex them. In the sham referenda, the ethnic Russians living in those areas endorsed the proposal of independence from Ukraine and joining Russia.

If one reads between the lines of Putin’s speech carefully, it is possible to see that Putin is still inviting the Kyiv regime to return to the negotiation table. What is left to negotiate one may ask. Well… four representatives and Putin signed some papers but the annexation of other countries into Russia is not something you do all the time. Actually, Putin is doing it fairly often nowadays, but still, there are no fixed procedures and rituals for it. If a face-saving way to end this shameful Russian operation in Ukraine and Ukrainians’ hope against hope that they can beat Russia with the bread crumbs from the U.S. table and German helmets occurs, Europe can be saved from a punishing winter.

Now let me dwell on the other punishment that the EU sanctions would wreak on Russia. The Russian ruble keeps rising, hitting a seven-year high. Well, what kind of punishment is that?

Source: Daily Sabah

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About the author

Hakki Ocal

Hakki Ocal

Hakkı Öcal is a columnist at both Daily Sabah and Milliyet newspapers, which are based in Istanbul. He is also an advisor to the President of Ibn Haldun University.

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