The NATO summit in Vilnius “will go down in history as Vladimir Putin’s sensational own goal”. This is Federico Rampini’s interpretation of the results of the Atlantic Alliance Summit in Lithuania. Before the invasion of Ukraine, “no one would have dreamed of expanding NATO to include two neutral countries like Finland and Sweden, now it’s practically a done deal, because Hungary’s yes is near,” comments the Corriere della Sera editorial connection on Tuesday, July 11. with Rainev’s 24. “For someone like Putin, who has always theorized that NATO’s encirclement of Russia is the fulfillment of his own prophecy,” Rampini comments, “however, this is tremendous damage done by Alone.”
Also read: NATO Summit Fast Track for Ukraine, but Not Enough for Zelenskyy
Had it not been for its terror of pacifist and historically neutral countries like the Nordic countries, they would be no step away from joining the Atlantic Alliance today. Double the damage, explains the journalist, because it’s “two first-class armies. Even when they were neutral, unlike other western countries, they never underestimated the Russian threat.” In short, now in NATO Putin finds himself in two neighboring countries – Finland by land, Sweden in the Baltic – with powerful armies. “It is a geopolitical catastrophe” for the Russian president, concludes the editorial writer, who wrote in an article published in Corriere: “Putin confirms the opposite of what his many admirers have always said: he is not a geopolitical genius but a statesman without any influence.” Clarity doing enormous damage to his own country in the name of a pathological nationalism-imperialism.