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Almost a joke of history, this coincidence, the entry of Finland into NATO, an episode of enormous significance that reshapes world geopolitics, has been overshadowed by the echoes of the Telenovela about the brief arrest of Donald Trumpsitting on the bench the same day the Helsinki flag was hoisted at the headquarters of the Atlantic Alliance.

Finland became the 31st member of the club, but the most important fact is this double the land border of the Western Mutual Defense Device and not only against the Russian map. It is a novelty that will be swallowed with disgust even at the top of Chinese power.

With Sweden’s almost certain entry postponed until after the Turkish elections in May, these passages discuss the assumptions of Western decadence that fill the discourses of the autocrats of the global East. It’s not about praising in front of each other. It’s a fact. A datum of strength that was practically mounted on the strategic blindness of the Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

With your membership, now there is seven countries of baltic sea area in front of russian map, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Norway and Finland. What the Finns bring is an additional border of 1,340km.

The country, with highly trained military and elite troops to operate in sub-zero temperatures, is a only 160 km from St. Petersburg, the most important economic and political center of Russia, where Putin was born and the Russian Empire controlled the Baltic Sea three centuries ago.

Facing Finland to the east is the Kola Peninsula, which borders the Barents Sea and where Russia is located they pile up their military airfields.

Together with Sevastopol in the Crimea, it is a crucial point for the Moscow military fleet and also for the submarines that complete the so-called nuclear trident, the ability to attack with atomic weapons simultaneously by sea, land and air. Capabilities that the United States has long had and China has recently added.

This strategic position of Finland is consolidated with the control of the vital sea lanes for Russia and, now with greater support, allows it to stretch out his arm towards the Arctic, the region that Moscow sees as its space of direct influence.

It is an authentic wall erected in front of the Faithration, an offensive fact for the Kremlin this would not have been possible before the war against the Ukraine, which upset assumptions considered immutable.

Trump’s fantasy

Just before the war that has become dramatically against the interests of the Kremlin, NATO has been considered bankrupt, with mental paralysis, according to the implacable description of the French Emmanuel Macron, one of the battering rams in the vision that Europe must equip itself with its own defense system and alliances.

Trump, to demonstrate that this Tuesday’s coincidence has advantages, he wanted get rid of this military organization which would have confirmed the Western debacle postulated by the Asian powers.

Therefore, the possible strengthening of the former president for his current centrality alerts Europeans in view of the 2024 North American elections, but excites his old ally Putin and the Chinese nomenklatura. They assume a return of the populist tycoon will put Ukraine into Russian hands, as Crimea did under Obama.

The risk inherent in the possibility of Trump’s return to power explains why Macron defends the strategic independence of Europe and the need for a common vision to undo the drama of this war and its economic consequences.

The landscape now aggravated by the step taken by Finland, lays bare the Weakness of Russia and Putin’s project to relaunch the Federation as the power it was at the time of the Soviet Union.

And for this decay that Turkey and Hungary, autocracies close to Moscow and which have blocked the entry of new partners into the Alliance, have turned around these days and given their support. NATO requires the unanimous vote of its partners.

Russia had already emerged from a significant humiliation by accepting in the documents that sealed the visit to Moscow by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who the war is stalledIn other words, the military plans failed, not only at the beginning of the conflict, but also during its evolution.

This situation was actually made possible by the Russian leader. US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken, while welcoming Finland into the Atlantic alliance, allowed himself a biting comment on the Kremlin’s misstep, maintaining that “I am tempted to say that Finland’s entry is perhaps the only thing we can thank President Putin”.

The vision of the swamp that is Putin’s nightmare sends remarkable signals. The Chinese ambassador to the EU, Fu Cong, has just pointed out to the New York Times that it is not as everyone thought, the truth is that”China is not on Russia’s side in the war.”.

And he explains that the expression “unlimited friendship” that the leaders of the two countries proclaimed in Beijing before the conflict “is nothing more than rhetoric”. This statement is also rhetorical, but without a doubt That would not have been possible a few months ago.

This harsh scenario is combined for Russia with the slow decline of its economy. A “long-term return”, as you recently described for the Wall Street Journal Alexandra Prokopenko, a former senior official of the Russian Central Bank, now in exile.

Russian economy in trouble

Russia’s finance ministry reported this week that revenues from oil and gas, the jewel in the federation’s commodity chest, it fell 43% in March compared to the same month of the previous year. The same publication quoted the influential and opaque Russian aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska as acknowledging that “next year the money will run out, we need foreign investors.”

What he is asking for is a radical change of direction. But in the middle is Putin who has just proclaimed an update of the national security doctrine that fixes in Asia the historical place of Russia.

Thus ended the old debate on a “European Russia” that comes from the empire of Peter the Great, and which had also been promoted by former president Boris Yeltsin, the political godfather of the current Moscow autocrat. The gaze towards Europe is that of the establishment which arose after the fall of the communist camp and which saw the Federation as a new Germany after the second war. How can this conflict be managed? Hard to tell.

A few hours ago an alleged guerrilla commando, the National Republican Army, claimed responsibility for the sensational attack in St. Petersburg which killed military blogger Vladien Tatarski, a famous fan of the war against Ukraine.

The very complex coup was carried out in a cafe which, according to this organization, belongs to the head of mercenary group Wagner, Yevgueni Prigozhin, who has not denied that relationship so far.

If so, the attack was against the entire line the enemies of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the commander of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, in charge since last January of the direct strategy in the war compared publicly with that autonomous and contracted command.

Soon after that incident, Russian security services arrested a young woman, Daria Trépova, whom they accuse of handing over Tatarski. a figurine containing the explosive activated remotely. But all we know about her is that she was a militant of the nationalist opposition leader Alexey Navalni, currently in prison.

Any conclusions may be premature, but the operation in Russia of a subversive group with this challenging profile. The Federation’s internal intelligence system is a sophisticated network on which the security and agglomeration in power of Putin himself, a former KGB agent, depended.

It is advisable to follow this episode carefully and not to forget it attack that killed Daria Dugina in Moscow in Augustdaughter of the ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin and of whom so far little is known, except that the same group has attributed it to her.

It is legitimate to ask to what extent these episodes can constitute due internal emergencies the insurmountable contradictions that trap the country consequence of Putin’s individual strategy which led the country to war and to these abysses. Might be a good question.
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