Daniele DiMario March 21, 2022
Russian missiles fall twenty kilometers from Poland, the eastern border of the Atlantic Alliance. In this way, NATO covers its flanks and strengthens its presence in the allied countries on the border with Russia. The first military units of the Atlantic Alliance have arrived in Slovakia and deployed the Patriot missile defense system, and deployment will continue in the coming days. This was announced by Slovak Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad.
Operated by German and Dutch forces, the system will initially be deployed at Sliac Airport in central Slovakia to bolster defenses of NATO’s eastern flank. In the past few days, the Slovakian parliament gave the goahead for the stationing of 2,100 allies in the country. Britain has also pledged to deploy the British Army’s Sky Saber antiaircraft missile system in Poland, along with 100 troops to protect Polish airspace.
Meanwhile, Poland insists on sending a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine. The Polish ambassador to the United States made it clear that the Warsaw government’s proposal for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine involving NATO forces is not aimed at provoking a direct conflict with Russia. The plan, proposed on the eve of the NATO summit, is “understandably a preliminary concept” and the diplomat interviewed by CNN made no mention of timing. “I believe that we must explore every option and every way to stop this aggression and this unprovoked war as soon as possible, of course without involving Russia in a direct military confrontation, because that is not the intention,” said Marek Magierowski . The Ambassador acknowledged that peacekeepers could be attacked in a war zone, but “in any case,” he stressed, “this is a proposal that should be discussed.” “We are not talking about a possible escalation and the deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine,” but we have to examine all possible options, “no matter how radical they seem.”
The proposal has been branded “demagogic” by Russia and also displeases the US, which has already opposed the “nofly zone” in Ukraine’s skies and fears a further escalation of the conflict. US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda ThomasGreenfield has ruled out US military involvement in a hypothetical NATO peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, adding that a mission by US President Joe Biden to Kyiv is currently on the fringes of his trip to Brussels on Thursday that he was not “on the table”. “The President has made it very clear that we will not station American troops in Ukraine,” the diplomat said. “We don’t want it to degenerate into a war with the United States.”
ThomasGreenfield added that other NATO countries “may decide to deploy troops to Ukraine.” “It will be a decision they have to make.” “The European Union and NATO have never threatened Russia and have never yielded to aggressive policies, on the contrary, they have proposed regular dialogue to Russia,” said EU Council President Charles Michel, for his part, in an interview with Lucia Annunziata in “In mezz’ora”, in which she denounces Moscow’s “nostalgia for the Tsarist and Soviet empire”. “Putin wanted to return to the Cold War, so it’s not a conflict between Russia and NATO or the European Union, but a conflict between Russia and the rest of the world,” he stresses. “We want to defend international law. We are on the brink of a world war and Russia has nuclear weapons. We must use all means to end the conflict as soon as possible and to support the fighting Ukrainians,” he adds, explaining that “we must keep the door open for Putin.”