Yoselina Guevara López
This Tuesday, October 11, the Russian Federation carried out a new massive attack against energy and military targets in Ukraine. According to information issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Russian Armed Forces used in the operation long-range precision weapons, both air and sea, against military installations and pre-selected targets of the Ukrainian energy system.
There is no doubt that we are in the presence of an escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in which Moscow has tried to be as restrained as possible, if this definition fits within a confrontation. We can affirm what has been said above given that the Russian response has been reasoned to an offensive from Ukraine which includes forceful facts: sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, the murder of Daria Dugina, the attack on the Crimean bridge, not to mention the attempts of incursion from the Ukrainian ranks towards the Russian border.
The Kremlin’s red line
The Crimean bridge had been singled out by President Vladimir Putin as an impassable “red line”, hence the attack on Saturday, October 8, is provoking a harsh response from Moscow. The missile barrage is not sparing any Ukrainian region: from the capital, Kiev, the cradle of Russia, to the port city of Odessa, the “Russian” pearl of the Black Sea, from the Russophone Kharkiv to the more nationalistic and central European Leopoli.
The extent of the Russian retaliation is underlined by the fact that at least three cruise missiles flew over the sky of neutral Moldova, which provoked the indignation of the Chișinau government, which immediately summoned the Russian Federation’s ambassador to Bessarabia Oleg Vasnecov. The fact that the high-explosive shells flew over the Cobasna ammunition depot, the largest in Central and Eastern Europe, with more than 20 thousand tons of war material, is a cause for concern for the Moldovan authorities, who fear irreparable accidents.
Breakdown of negotiation channels
The explosion of a Russian missile near an SBU (Ukrainian intelligence) center in Kiev reveals Moscow’s growing propensity to physically liquidate Ukraine’s politico-military leaders. For the time being, government departments and presidential palaces have not been touched by Russian offensives, but this could change at any moment. Not attacking civilian and administrative buildings where negotiators were supposed to be was one way of trying to keep a dialogue channel active. But there was a fracture from the moment Zelensky signed Presidential Decree 679/2022 to expressly prohibit any negotiations with Russia for a cease-fire, thus scuttling any truce or even a hint of peace from Ukraine.
General Winter and collapse of Europe
The Russian missile offensive is hitting Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure at the gates of the winter season. Turning off the lights all over the Ukrainian territory is a way of announcing the arrival of “General Winter”; this operation is mainly affecting the civilian population. With the pressure at the energy level, Russia seems to be trying to bring Zelensky to capitulation, who flatly refuses to be the loser, even though he is dragging entire countries to the hecatomb, because it is not only Ukraine but Europe.
In addition to this stubbornness to continue feeding the Russia-Ukraine conflict from the West, European governments are making it clear that they care little about the lives that perish in Ukraine and even the economic collapse to which they are leading all EU countries without energy supplies from Russia. The only objective in sight is the continuity and submission of Europe to the designs of the United States in its drive against Russia with the help of its allies and NATO.
The predictions are clear, the inhabitants of the European countries will continue to rebel forcefully against the governments in power that sustain the Ukrainian adventure. It is precisely the populations of the Western nations who are the economic victims of the constant fighting in Ukraine, who send, from their pockets and tax payments, billions of euros and dollars in cash and weapons. The budgets of these states, being indirect participants in the conflicts, which already had huge deficits, are sinking into the abyss. The double-digit inflation is painfully affecting millions of families who will have no heating during the winter, and even at the most critical levels, not even enough to eat. Hundreds of large and small companies are closing, in countries with a manufacturing tradition such as Italy and Germany, therefore, unemployment will increase, which is a breeding ground for a generalized social outburst. A cold winter is approaching, but certainly one of protests in the old continent, we will see if its historical revolutionary tradition makes its presence felt.
Yoselina Guevara López: social communicator, political analyst, columnist in different international media, whose work has been translated into English, Italian, Greek and Swedish. Winner of the Simón Bolívar 2022 National Journalism Award (Venezuela), special mention Opinion; Aníbal Nazoa 2021 National Journalism Award (Venezuela); I Historical Memory Contest Comandante Feliciano 2022 (El Salvador) Third place.
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INTERNATIONALIST 360° 