by Eric Zuesse, The Duran:
On June 20th, the Russian Government’s RT News issued an English-language translation, titled “Russia fears a NATO attack. Here’s why.”, of a June 19th Russian-language article by Professor Igor Istomin, who is the acting head of the Department of Applied Analysis of International Problems, at MGIMO University, which is a part of Russia’s Foreign Ministry. This article would not be so published if it did not express accurately the views and policies of Russia’s Government.
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It stated that there are three things which would spark a Russian response to eliminate “the notorious ‘decision centers’” within NATO. 1: Russia’s decision that in order to complete its win in Ukraine, the increase of NATO’s involvement had become so large that conquering all of NATO will be needed in order to protect Russia’s national security against the threat from NATO; 2: NATO’s “restricting Moscow’s access to the Baltic Sea, which ignores the inevitable response to threats to Kaliningrad.”; or 3: (in a poorly written passage): anything that would threaten Russia’s most important naval base, which is in the Black Sea (at Sevastopol in Crimea).
Publishing in The West this article, as coming from Professor Istomin instead of from Putin or even Lavrov (the Foreign Minister), is unofficially giving notice to all heads-of-state and legislatures in the U.S. empire, that in any of those three conditions, Russia will immediately eliminate them. However, elsewhere in the article, Istomin says that within NATO itself, the belief is instead that NATO “still needs to work to prepare for a protracted confrontation that could lead to a clash with Russia” rather than to prepare for that sudden “clash with Russia.” He is, in other words, saying that NATO is falsely assuming that in terms of the nuclear phase of WW3, NATO instead of Russia will be the first to strike. However, Istomin makes clear that “Moscow doesn’t countenance losing in any way” the war in Ukraine. If it will need to resort to the nuclear phase in order to eliminate the threat that NATO is posing to Russia’s inviolable national security — Russia’s sovereignty over its own land (which is the threat that the U.S. team has been presenting by expanding NATO ever-closer to Moscow (despite repeated promises never to do that)) — it will do so (and it will do so promptly — without any “protracted confrontation”).
So: in Russia’s priorities, the worst possible outcome would be if Russia’s central command becomes beheaded (such as by a blitz nuclear U.S. missile-strike from Ukraine only 317 miles away from The Kremlin, or by one from Finland only 507 miles away) and so Russia loses its sovereignty over its own territory. The second-worst is if Russia is forced to strike first in order to prevent that. And the best is if the U.S. and its colonies halt and permanently end their effort ever since 1945 to conquer Russia (originally using the ‘anti-communist’ excuse for doing that).
