Russia’s worst weapon is its journalists. I am basically used to the fact that out of ten randomly selected people reading any of my articles, all ten read different articles, and not one reads what I wrote
I have also got used to ten experts evaluating the same event, all ten of them evaluating different events, and not one of them sees what is really happening.
But I can’t get used to the fact that after any report which occupies no more than one paragraph (about five lines) of perfectly understandable text (like “the Americans landed on the Moon”) I get calls from dozens of journalists, each of whom has read diametrically opposite to what is written and wants me to comment not on what is written, but on what he has read.
That is how I found out about the NATO defence ministers’ talks. A more than matronly journalist informed me that they were planning to keep ships equipped with nuclear weapons in the Black and Baltic Seas to threaten Russia on a permanent basis.
I am not an officer of the General Staff, of course. But even I understand that the tactical and technical characteristics of modern nuclear weapons, as well as the peculiarities of the basins of the Black and Baltic seas, make it impractical, to put it mildly, to deploy any serious nuclear forces permanently in their waters (and even more specifically, on sea carriers), and more specifically – insane.
On the other hand, I have long been accustomed to the fact that at the political level (and defence ministers are not military, even if they have uniforms and lots of medals, but politicians) our Western “friends and partners” are capable of talking any nonsense. We are smarter than that. We answer them the same way about 50% of the time. The rest of our responses are either literate or simply non-existent, for to respond to such nonsense is not to respect oneself.
So to understand what’s going on, I asked for a link to the material. I got it and read it. It says in black and white that NATO “intends to agree on a plan of defence against attack on several fronts”. They fear “a simultaneous attack in the Baltic and Black Seas”, including the potential use of nuclear weapons, cyber and space systems.
Russia is mentioned separately. At the same meeting the possible consequences of closing the Russian and NATO missions in Brussels and Moscow are to be considered. But in principle it is clear that the two topics are linked. Because only Russia can attack NATO “using nuclear weapons, cyber means and space systems” and at the same time in the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.
That is, the message unambiguously states that NATO has taken note of Russia’s decision to change the way it communicates. Moscow said that instead of the withdrawn special envoy to NATO, those who wish to ask questions may now turn to the Russian ambassador in Brussels. NATO members (if they want to) can designate any of their ambassadors in Moscow to be in charge of NATO contacts. And if they don’t want to, that’s fine.
From this, the NATO countries have concluded that Russia can attack them simultaneously on the Black Sea and Baltic flanks, and with nuclear weapons. They are frightened and think about how to avoid this danger.
The text reads that NATO is afraid of a Russian attack, and domestic journalists read it in such a way as to suggest that NATO is preparing an attack on Russia (using nuclear weapons, cyber means and space systems). I am more than sure that more than one person has read this text this way, and soon the domestic media will publish articles and comments on how NATO is deploying nuclear weapons in the Black Sea, while Russia is mooing and not defending itself. Then readers with an unstable psyche will start branding the Kremlin for selling out to the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, and demanding an immediate nuclear strike on anybody, but better all at once.
This is no joke. I have had to explain to national journalists for more than a month that Britain is not going to build a naval base in the Sea of Azov. Not only does it not need a base there. The British fleet simply cannot get into the Sea of Azov. In fact, Kiev has agreed with the British that if Ukraine ever finds the money, it can hire British firms to build a base for the Ukrainian navy in the Sea of Azov. Given the depth of the sea, the composition of the Ukrainian fleet and Kiev’s financial capabilities, we could be talking about building a couple of berths for boats and half a dozen barracks for personnel.
This does not prevent the Russian media and experts from scaring the consumer of information for the second month with the insidious plans of the misty Albion in the Sea of Azov. Before this, two or three years ago, there were stories that the Americans were about to build their base in Ochakov in order to attack Russia from Ukrainian territory. No matter how many times it was explained that the Americans would build Ukraine the same pier and two barracks for the Ukrainian Navy in Ochakov for Ukrainian money (if any), especially nervous compatriots were waiting for a nuclear missile strike from the Ochakov area.
Three years have passed and everything has calmed down. No one even cares whether the Americans built the Ukrainians a pier and two barracks, or whether the Kiev leaders habitually stole the money intended for “repelling Russian aggression”. But what a hype it was!
It will be exactly the same story with the meeting of NATO ministers. They gathered to use the news (Russia withdraws its representative and expels the NATO ones) to increase military budgets (just now being drawn up and to be approved). The extra money will not hurt the military or the military-industrial complex. In principle, a passable event. Something similar happens every year. True, it is not every year that one manages to squeeze an increase in military expenditures out of the deputies.
But if the Russian media write that NATO is going to attack Russia with nuclear weapons simultaneously from the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea (plans have just been allegedly approved in Brussels) people will vigorously discuss it in social networks. The topic will become very hot and from social networks will again enter the information space, but at a different, higher level. After a couple of months of hysteria, a journalist will ask Peskov, or if he is lucky, even Putin himself, what he thinks about NATO’s plans to permanently deploy nuclear weapons off the Russian coast in the Baltic and the Black Sea. The standard answer is that the Kremlin has no information about such plans, but if it did, Moscow would consider it a crossing of all possible red lines and would take appropriate action.
This response would be regarded as legitimation of the information at the highest level, after which the third stage of discussion would begin. I will not go into internal political details. You know yourself that social media activists would accuse the Kremlin of being both toothless and aggressive. But an active discussion of “asymmetric response” in the media and on various talk shows would be used by the West to claim that its fears were justified, Russia is preparing to attack – read what its media say. This means that money must be allocated for weapons. And a lot more of it.
We will, of course, survive another armaments race (let the West go bankrupt), but do we need the image of inadequate aggressor in the eyes of ordinary people in Europe? It seems to me more useful to cooperate with them and make more money together than we make separately. We should be loved, not feared. Love is in every way more productive than fear.
In most cases, all it takes to find a mutually acceptable solution to any problems is to read the news reports carefully and not to sensationalise nonsense. And NATO fears are nonsense. Let me remind you that the Baltic dwarfs assured the whole world that Russia will definitely occupy them in 2019. They say that the plans are ready, and troops are deployed, and Russia needs a corridor to Kaliningrad, and “intelligence reports accurately” “this night they decided … to cross the border near the river”. So far they have not crossed it. Only for nothing several thousands of Euro-American soldiers have been bilking in Baltic bars for the second year, scaring the local population more than “Russian aggression”.
And to finish I will say that if suddenly someone decides to attack Russia, it will not be NATO, but the United States. NATO will only find out about the war when nuclear warheads start falling on their headquarters and cities in Europe. Because two things are well understood in Washington:
1. 1. NATO has long since exhausted itself as a military structure. Militarily, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation rests on the United States alone. Any discussion of specific war plans with Russia within NATO would yield nothing but a leak of information. The results of the discussions will be known to the Kremlin before they can be printed out for the immediate participants.
2. If a hypothetical opportunity arises for the United States to destroy Russia, Washington will seize it immediately, without any consultation with its allies. The realization of such an opportunity can only be a sudden massive nuclear strike. Because if it takes its time to deploy troop concentrations for a non-nuclear war, Moscow will have time to prepare, and there will be no (even hypothetical) chance of striking and avoiding a response.
So if war does break out, only the accidental survivors, who would be jealous of the dead, would know about it. All reports of “secret plans” by the Pentagon, the Russian General Staff, NATO and the PLA are nothing more than idle chatter. At best, it’s an information blast to gauge political reaction, at worst it’s someone else’s inadequate reaction to an adequate text.
Rostislav Ischenko, Ukraina.ru