Three states for international mediation between Russia and Ukraine: Turkey and a NATO member, Israel is affected by the weight of Moscow in the Middle East, China does not want to compromise its economic strategy. The analysis by Alberto Negri, former foreign correspondent to the Sole 24 Ore
Who can talk to Putin
The world is not all going in the same direction as the European Union and the US want to believe by delivering weapons to Ukraine and isolating Putin.
Turkey, a NATO member, does not impose any sanctions on Moscow and Israel, with its million Russians and Ukrainians at home, runs on the edge so as not to antagonize the Kremlin leader who has been allowing Tel Aviv in Syria for years – where Israel is Golan annexed with US approval – to bomb Iranian Pasdarans whenever they want.
Turkey, guardian of the Straits, the Black Sea and the southeastern flank of NATO, in turn occupies a piece of Northern Syria – where it massacred the Kurdish allies of the US against ISIS – and which it does not intend to give up. But where are the sanctions threatened in Ankara by Europeans in 2019
You can see that everyone wants to tear apart someone else’s lives and territories.
This does not justify the horror of the Russians in Ukraine against civilians but only describes what the current balance of power is. Wars, in general, do not restore rights but redefine powers, said Hannah Arendt.
Now someone is starting to wonder how to get out of it. Efraim Halevy, former head of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002, tries on Haaretz. Halevy tells us three things: 1) Putin shook the nuclear weapon because the invasion is going badly while the Russian military expected a rapid surrender of the Ukrainian forces 2 ) Xi Jinping was informed by Putin of the invasion even before the Olympics, given that the Chinese have bought the Kiev stock exchange in recent weeks. The Chinese leader asked him to step back but Putin refused. 3) According to Halevy, the time has come for the Americans, with international mediation – perhaps Israeli, Turkish and Chinese – to find a way out of Russia and save Putin’s face. Not because it deserves to be saved but because the conflict threatens to spread: the supplies of European and Italian weapons are a hostile act also in view of a future guerrilla warfare. Turn around and be hypocrites or stupid.
With sieges on cities and civilians targeted by raids, the war is taking a “Syrian turn”, warns Michel Goya, former Marine Colonel and military historian on Grand Continent. In the medium term, according to Goya, Ukraine could become the terrain of a guerrilla with a rear in Moldova (where Blinken is going), in conflict with Moscow for Transnistria, where there are already three thousand Russian soldiers and is a candidate to become the next Putin’s goal. We are on the side of the old and forgotten Bessarabia, a vestige of frozen conflicts, which was independent as a Soviet republic with Odessa as its capital, then ended up in Romania and finally in the USSR.
Much like the Israelis also think the Turks who have reconnected with the Jewish state. Without Russia – and even less against Russia – no security is possible in Europe, Eurasia and the “enlarged” Middle East: this is the common idea of ​​Turkey and Israel, which obviously in non-hostility to Moscow defend their territorial conquests .
Turkey’s position is significant because once again Ankara detaches itself from the Europeans and the United States: its abstention is relevant on sanctions because we are talking about the second largest army of the Atlantic Alliance. Above all, Ankara hosts the large NATO base in Incirlik and 60 American nuclear warheads. Since 2016, with the attempted coup against Erdogan, attributed to a Gulenist plot and to the Americans, Turkey has held the Atlantic Alliance hostage. Then I cut the light in Incirlik and Istanbul, the NATO base was surrounded by forces loyal to Erdogan. Never seen such a thing in NATO.
The Turks were clear: “We are not willing to be involved in sanctions against Russia,” said Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu. Although Turkey and Russia are competing in different theaters of crisis – Syria, Libya, Azerbaijan and also in Ukraine where Ankara has supplied weapons and drones to Zelensky – Erdogan and Putin have a personal relationship that has led to cooperation in different areas. The most important is that of gas, given that Russia is the first supplier to Turkey and Azerbaijan the second with the Tap gas pipeline which arrives in Puglia. Russian gas arrives with two submarine gas pipelines in the Black Sea (Blue Stream, built by Eni in 2003 and TurkStream, operational in 2020). Supplies never interrupted, not even with the October 2015 crisis following the shooting down of a Russian jet in Syria by Turkish forces. The United States, NATO and Europe cannot intervene to sanction Turkey, otherwise everything is lost.
Beyond gas, cooperation has also extended to nuclear power, with the Russian company Rosatom which is developing the first Turkish nuclear power plant. The defense sector was added to the energy. In 2019 Ankara bought the Russian S-400 missile system, for which Turkey, a member of NATO, was expelled from the F-35 program. Russia is therefore Turkey’s third largest trading partner, after Germany and China, with an exchange of 34.7 billion dollars in 2021.
Although Turkey did not recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the weapons supplied to Kiev, Ankara is careful not to compromise its interests with Russia. In the face of NATO and Europeans.
(The post was published on Alberto Negri’s Facebook profile)
