Can the Joint Expeditionary Force help Ukraine?
Andrei Illarionov’s conversation with Lyudmila Nemirya explores the Russia-Ukraine war and whether or not the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) can help Ukraine.
A full transcript of the conversation can be read below:
Lyudmila Nemirya:
Hello, this is Ukrlife with Lyudmila Nemirya. We are continuing our streams. Sponsor of our today channel is trademark Hetman. We’re glad to have Andrei Illarionov attending our channel today, our stream today. Very glad to have you.
Andrei Illarionov:
Likewise, Lyudmila.
Lyudmila Nemirya:
All right, so let’s start. Recently, we are just taking stock where we are in this war. Two years of big war and 10 years of war of Russia against Ukraine. I heard a lot of statements that if the war doesn’t finish in the first year, it lasts eight to 10 years. Different analogies were mentioned, Iran-Iraq war, but regardless.
Right now we have 10 years of war of Russia against Ukraine. What is happening now? Is it 10 years or two?
Andrei Illarionov:
All right, so to start with, two or 10? Neither two nor 10. It is 21.
Lyudmila Nemirya:
Whoa.
Andrei Illarionov:
The length of Putin’s War against Ukraine is 21 years. Why? Because its beginning was rather firmly noted, at least publicly, on September 17, 2003. On that date, Vladimir Putin publicly announced his territorial claims to Ukraine in the Kerch Strait and Azov and Black Sea basins. He announced this in front of the military political leadership of Russia.
These documents were published back then. They’re still on the Kremlin site, for September 17, 2003. And it’s surprising to me that my Ukrainian colleagues and friends have never paid attention to the fact when the public part of this conflict started.
Lyudmila Nemirya:
What was it? Was it his statement? What was the event?
Andrei Illarionov:
It was a special session of Russia’s highest military political leadership in the city of Yeisk in Krasnodar region. There is an air base there, a branch of Gagarin Academy in that area. It is a rather remarkable location. It’s the place of the oldest Aviation Detachments rooted in the history of the Russian Imperial Air Forces. First it started near St. Petersburg in 1915, and then moved to Yeisk. There’s been a big training school there for almost 100 years. It was created during the Tsar’s Empire during the first World War.
Putin selected this place on purpose. Not Moscow, not Sochi, but Yeisk — a place that is in the shadow or in the glory of battle traditions. The session itself was closed, but there were a lot of publications on the outcome of it. A lot was published. Before conducting this event on September 17th in Yeisk, Putin took a boat trip alongside the Black Sea coast of Caucasus and in the Azov Sea. During the daytime of September 17th, he met with then president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, on the island of Biryuchy, not far from the shore, I think it’s Kherson region of Ukraine. There is a natural preserve there.
There was, and probably still is, the country house and the resort of the Communist party leaders of Soviet Union, and there are facilities for receptions in that place. So that’s where the negotiations happened between Kuchma and Putin. Putin, I suspect, was trying to get some feedback from Kuchma on what would happen if Putin started his aggression. The meeting was not successful and not friendly for both parts. The pictures from this meeting show rather grim faces of both negotiators. After this meeting, Putin flew to Yeisk to conduct this event, this session. During this session and after it, Putin made public statements that there is a territorial problems between Russia and Ukraine.
Kuchma told me later how this meeting went and what happened after. If you remember, or you can look it up in the documents, after the meeting in Yeisk, Putin flew to the airport Belbek, near Sevastopol. Then there was a meeting, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus announced a new economic cooperation project. After the documents were signed, everybody departed. After that happened, huge trucks loaded with granite, with stones, started to create a dam to the Ukrainian island of Tuzla in the Kerch Strait. It became known as the Tuzla conflict or the Kerch Strait conflict.
That lasted from about September 20, 2003, until the middle of October of the same year. During the last days of this issue, the speed of that dam building was rather fast, almost a 100 yards per day. The dam originated on the Russian shore and was approaching the internationally recognized border in the Kerch Strait between Russia and Ukraine. When it approached the Ukrainian border, President Kuchma had just landed in Brazil to conduct the first Ukrainian President’s Latin American visit. A long trip was planned, if I remember right, I think five countries were planned for his visit.
The first one to be visited by Ukrainian president was Brazil. Ukrainian industry was getting ready to supply certain products to Latin America. Latin America was promising to send important supplies to Ukraine that Ukraine was looking to purchase there. This was a very important visit – there wasn’t anything like that in Ukrainian history between Ukraine and Latin America and nothing after. Kuchma told me later that during his conversation at Biryuchy Island with Vladimir Putin, he told Putin that he’s going to fly to Latin America and when, and exactly when Kuchma’s plane touched the tarmac in the capital of Brazil, the dam in Tuzla reached the demarcation border between the waters of Ukraine and Russia.
At that moment, Kuchma, as he told me, tried to reach Putin by phone. The phone was not working. It was not working neither then, nor later, in an hour nor in two hours. Nobody was picking up the phone. The day in Brazil was the first day of the trip that was planned to last for about a week, of course, it’s a long flight to the other part of the world. But after a day, Kuchma had to interrupt his visit, neither finishing even his Brazil part, nor visiting other countries. Since there were no communications with Moscow, Kuchma decided to return from Brazil to Ukraine. And he flew not into Kyiv, but directly to Crimea.
I don’t know which specific airport he landed at, but he went to Kerch right after. From there, he took a boat, reached the Tuzla Island. At that time, by his orders, they were already creating some barbed wire lines. They were placing new border guard detachments with heavy arms. There were some border guard boats present, but the dam was continued to be built and Moscow refused to pick up the phone. Kuchma ordered the guards to open fire if the dam crossed the demarcation line.
Lyudmila Nemirya:
This is amazing, by the way, for Kuchma, who was always known for being a politician who could talk to anybody and that he had a rather good channel of communication with Putin. We actually do remember that story about open fire if they cross. Do you think he understood what that meant?
Andrei Illarionov:
From what I know and what was told to me, he gave an order. After that order was given, 30 minutes passed and suddenly the president of Russia called back and asked in a disturbed voice, “What is happening there? Do you have any problems?” Putin pretended that he didn’t know anything. He pretended that it probably was the Governor of Krasnodar District who is doing something on his own and he said he will figure out the problem, and everything will be all right.
Before this phone call, there were different statements from Russian Duma, Russian Parliament. Such a fellow named widely known later, Rogozin, who was Roscosmos head later, was also making a bunch of statements. There were a lot of political statements on both sides. Ukrainians and Russians were asking what Moscow was doing. There was no answer. But after this all happened, suddenly all questions disappeared and that was no reference for a while.
To conclude my long-winded answer to your big question first, what kind of war is it? Today, this war is almost 21 years old. There are three significant periods in this war: September 17, 2003, – February 19, 2014, is the period that we can call hybrid war. Some milestones can be mentioned – Tuzla, and what we saw on July 27, 2013, during the celebrations of 1,025 years of baptizing of Russia in Kyiv, where Vladimir Putin flew with leaders of his Orthodox religion, Sergey Glazyev, Viktor Medvedchuk and other important people were present. They talked about the unity of the Ukrainian and Russian people. Same day the sanctions were implemented, by the way, against a lot of types of Ukrainian produce and industrial production that were being exported to Russia. That’s when they started the propaganda and financial campaign against Ukraine. That all started on the 27th of July 2013. So that’s another mile marker in the framework of that hybrid warfare.
November 9, 2013, is also an important marker – then president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was invited to Russia. President Yanukovych disappeared for the whole day after landing in Russia, and nobody knew where he was. He was at one of the military bases near Moscow, where Putin psychologically terrorized him, explaining to him what would happen if he signed the economic agreement with Europe joining a free trade association. We remember all that because these were the events that led to the beginning of Maidan Movement and Revolution of Dignity. These are important markers, but it was still the stage of a hybrid warfare.
From February 20, 2014, to February 23, 2022, was the second stage of this war, with annexation of Crimea. It was what military experts often call low intensity warfare given the number of military assets engaged and the numbers of losses. There were different stages. Of course, there were some very hot episodes there. Not only Crimea, but Donbas also was set ablaze in April of 2014, when Igor Girkin with his band occupied the town of Sloviansk. And the events that followed are rather well-known.
The third stage started February 24, 2022. This can be described as a medium intensity war. That’s what’s happening now. It has been two years of the medium intensity war, and we can also subdivide that into two periods. The first stage was slightly under a year, from February 24, 2022, to January 14, 2023. That was the stage of war of medium intensity. Since January 15, 2023, until today the war has become big war, one is of higher intensity.
During the first period of the war that lasted about a year, the size of the Russian Army on the front changed from 200,000 to about 120,000 – 150,000 participants. During the last year, its size according to most resources is somewhere between 600,000 to 650,000 participants. So, the forces grew about three times since the February of 2022.
As for the size of losses, during the first segment, the Russian losses were about 200 men per day. That number includes everybody – killed, wounded, missing in action. During the latest segment, in the last month, they’re losing on average about 800-1000 troops per day. So, the intensity of warfare has grown four to five times. Despite this growth, according to military experts, this war is still considered to be a medium intensity warfare. Some other wars in recent human history, like the First World War, Second World War, Soviet-Finnish War, or Winter War, were wars of high intensity, because more resources, people and equipment were used as well as the daily losses were much higher.
So, what are we dealing with? We’re dealing with a prolonged war that has already lasted almost 21 years. Over time, the intensity increases. What some of our Anglo-Saxon friends are most afraid of – escalation – is exactly happening in front of our eyes.
But everything started with Putin’s public announcement of territorial problems. It was not neither identified nor being reflected upon by the world media. Then there was a Russian attempt to capture the Ukrainian island of Tuzla, and there was no West’s proper response to it. Then there was a much bigger operation to capture and annex Crimea. Since Putin didn’t face any pushback, then there was even bigger operation to capture Donbas. Since there was no adequate pushback on this, he started a much bigger operation that is now being carried out against Ukraine, an operation to capture the whole territory of Ukraine and liquidate the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian society, and Ukrainian culture.
In criminology, there is a “broken glass” theory. If a broken window is left without response, then crime increases in the area because there is an assumption by criminals that no one cares, therefore criminals can escalate until the level when they can do whatever they want.
Similar situations have unfolded numerous times throughout world history. In the 1930s, when small aggressions were not addressed properly, it grew into the World War II. Likewise, the inadequate response to Russian aggression led to escalation of violence. The numbers of victims, and the consequences of that violence, are rising for Ukraine, Europe, and the whole world.
Lyudmila Nemirya:
Andrei Nikolayevich, do you think Russia’s current actions are being interpreted well?
Some people are saying that Russia now has been rebuilding its military industrial complex and it’s more powerful in this aspect. Other experts are saying that it’s on a plateau, and if the West awakens, then perhaps the West will win in that struggle. How would you explain the murder of Navalny? Do you think it falls into some political trend in Russia and what’s happening there? How do you estimate as a person, who for the most part is rather well aware of the situation in Russia? I understand you have not been there for a while, but I understand that your focus of research is on Russia.
Andrei Illarionov:
All right, let’s separate what has already happened from what may happen in the future. Second, I think we want to separate different spheres of what was happening economically, politically, militarily, et cetera.
First, economically, without a doubt, Russia became stronger. Statements from our Western colleagues and partners, like those made at Davos and in Munich, that Russia is crippled, are what they want to believe themselves and what they think Ukrainians want to hear. Many Ukrainians want to hear that the enemy is almost gone. But life is more complex, and one needs to have enough bravery to look in the face of real situation and actual threats.
From February until May 2022, the Russian economy received a notable blow. We can discuss how notable it was, but statistically, we saw the decline in economic output. We saw jumps and volatility in the ruble exchange rate.
We saw the dwindling of currency reserves. We saw a sharp growth in negative reaction towards the war by some part of Russian population. There were protests, however limited they were, and wherever they were happening, it only occurred for a maximum span of about two weeks. By June of 2022, the situation was stabilized and from then until today, all the parameters that are used to describe the health of Russian economy have been climbing. Industrial production is growing. GDP grew in 2023 by 3.6%. Putin really enjoys quoting that number and saying that not a single country of the G7 had such growth in 2023, which is unfortunately true. We’ll not go deeper into how that percentage was calculated.
Putin, Shoigu and others in Russia are giving different numbers about the growth of military industrial complex, of course, they are to be taken skeptically. But even if we do not trust fully these numbers, they’re also independent estimations. Almost every Western intel service is publishing some data on Russia. They have annual summaries and special publications about state of the Russian economy and military production. They’re giving numbers rather close to what Russian side stated.
The number of artillery shells being produced has grown, the production of APCs has increased, output of tanks has increased. There are some problems that Russian economy is facing, especially in microchip sphere and in some special materials. But despite of all these issues, they still confirm what is happening with Russian economy. In English, there is a special term that is called ‘resilience’. This is basically an ability to sustain a blow and to recover after it.
The experts are stating that they’re surprised and shocked. It’s an important thing to mention that even before this last stage of this war, we heard a lot of statements why Russia would not want to take on the West. The West is huge. The combined GDP of the West, at least the ones that are united under NATO is, if I’m not mistaken, $46 trillion. The Russian economy is maybe a little over $2 trillion. How can you compare who’s going to win? It’s obvious and it’s just incomparable, the economic potentials and military production potentials. My colleagues, I think, made a very big mistake. War is a very harsh teacher that forces to pay attention to important features.
What is mostly important is the balance of pure military potentials. How many resources are being used to amp up the military by both sides? The volume of resources, however you measure them – either by number of human lives or by size of expenses dedicated to military production, is a very important parameter to be used to prognosticate where this all goes. So military potential being used by the aggressor in this war exceeds the combined military potential of Ukraine and their partners, allies and friends of Ukraine to conduct this war.
You also asked, what is the situation with Russia? Russia is increasing its military capability. It is slowly growing the numbers of their armed forces. Do you remember how in spring of 2022 many experts claimed Russia was running out of steam, and was collecting the last recruits that they can? That only shows the professional incompetence of people who made those statements back then.
Russian Armed Forces participating in this war have grown from about 200,000 in February of 2022 to about 600,000 – 650,000 participating in it now. And they continue to grow. That was due to mobilization in September of 2022 and ongoing mobilization since then.
What will happen in Russia after the 17th of March, after so-called “elections of Putin”? Will he announce a new increase in mobilization? Or will he continue to just get by on the volunteers who sign up to fight in this war? It doesn’t quite matter. The Kremlin already has issued orders to increase the size of army to reach about two and a half million people. There are no signs that this order won’t be fulfilled. Of course, not all this army will be thrown into Ukraine. But given the proportions that we were observing, given the training that they’re undergoing, to give some rough estimate, we can say that at least half of that army after some time might be used on the front against Ukraine.
If we are talking about political component of the regime, it became way harsher and more terroristic compared to what it was before February 2022. Repressions now became not only targeted, but also blanketed. According to some data coming out of Russia, there are hundreds of thousands of people who were punished in different ways for putting likes on social media. Right now, repressions are targeting those people who are bringing flowers to memorials and monuments, for example, to the Navalny’s ones. Those people who left their signatures to support Nadezhdin, all those names of his supporters were given to FSB. And people who have signed for that are now getting their conscription writs to be mobilized into army to be sent on the front against Ukraine where their fate is waiting for them.
Those who are going to participate in any public appearances at the voting polls or are near voting polls midday on March 17th to protest, which is what Navalny was suggesting, are facing their identification, detention, arrest, and possible conscription. The modern technology allows to record these people, identify and find them. They are risking to get their conscription notices to be sent to fight on the front lines of this war.
Putin’s regime is no longer just authoritarian, it is now a totalitarian regime that has no signs of getting softer, only getting harder. The whole western border of Russia is locked. On all borders, they’re controlling everybody who is coming in, who’s coming out not only by documents, but by asking questions where you were, whom you visited, whom you contacted, what is on your computer, what is on your cell phone. It is a proper totalitarian regime with almost zero ability for people to resist. The only resistance that is possible both inside or outside of Russia, is resistance by force. No other realistic options to resist this regime do exist.
This is a serious problem both for Russian opposition, and for Western partners and friends of Ukraine. The official position of the Western leadership now is to not let Putin’s regime fall. That’s another big topic. We can talk about that if you’d like me to.
Putin’s regime is strengthening. What allows it to become more totalitarian and more terroristic? First of all, colossal financial resources that Western countries are sending to Putin’s regime by purchasing Russia’s oil and gas.
Lyudmila Nemirya:
Do you have at least an approximate number perhaps, Andrei Nikolayevich, what Putin is getting from that?
Andrei Illarionov:
In 2023, he received for all Russian exports more than $400 billion. It decreased a bit compare to 2022. In 2022, export was record-breaking, almost $600 billion. Never in all history of Russia has value been that large. Now it went down a bit, because oil prices went down on the world market, but more than 400 billion is what Putin’s regime got in 2023 from export. Of course, those resources to a large degree is being used for the war against Ukraine. Some of that is used against Russian opposition to continue repressions in the country.
So let’s compare, what is the size of aid that was delivered to Ukraine by the United States in 2023? That number is just $12.1 billion.
Lyudmila Nemirya:
We’re now talking about military aid, right?
Andrei Illarionov:
Ok. As for European countries, we don’t have an exact number, but we can have an estimate. The real military aid supplied to Ukraine from all other countries, not only Europe, but all other countries, Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, South Korea, will be roughly comparable with American. According to the available data it might be actually a little over American aid, slightly more than what US donated.
The Ukraine ministry of finance regularly releases data for total economic aid from all partners and friends of Ukraine, which is $43 billion. $25 billion from the international organizations, like International Monetary Fund and European bank, and $18 billion from partners on bilateral basis. Altogether is $45 billion. This is how the external world helps Ukraine non-militarily. Also, approximately $24 billion of military aid. Altogether is $69 billion.
How did the world at large help Putin? More than $400 billion. Yes, these are not grants. They are payments for the resources that Russia offered for sale on the global market. These resources were paid in currencies, convertible currencies, less convertible currencies. But still, these are resources they got. And those resources that need to be compared.
Lyudmila Nemirya:
As a known economist, the fact that Russia expanded its industrial production by adding military production, does it matter for economy? Are there any limits there? In other words, if Russia is wasting all its resources to produce tanks, shells, et cetera, that go to the front and get destroyed there. Does it matter in a long term or short-term perspective?
I understand that perhaps in the long-term perspective it’s a different story. So, in the short term, is there any effect that we can monitor or not, if we talk about economy and the structure?
Andrei Illarionov:
If we’re taking official data for the military expenses, of course, they include money paid for salaries, but also money assigned to purchasing materials. Very often the number that is used for Russia is 6% of Russian GDP. If you calculate it more accurately, if you include other things that are not included in the official numbers, what goes by other channels, that would be about 8%. Even if you recalculate it in other prices the spending still don’t reach 10% of Russian GDP, while the official number is 6% of GDP.
What was the share of military expenses for Soviet Union during the Second World War? It was almost 40%. Great Britain had 40%, 50%, up to 60% during the WWII. United States had 38% GDP. In Germany, at the end of that war, the numbers reached 60-70%. That was a total war.
In the first phase of Israel’s existence, for the first several decades, when it was surrounded by enemies, ready to annihilate the Jewish state, the level of their military expense was for several decades held at 50-60%. And as we see, Israel did not disappear anywhere and was growing economically very rapidly.
Why am I quoting these numbers? It is for our audience, to give some feeling what level of military expenditure might be and what level it can reach if this escalation continues, if the world does not stop today’s crimes and does not provide an adequate pushback. Instead of that, world is actually giving more money to the perpetrator. If we are talking about Ukraine, in 2024 they expect their military expenses to be $52 billion. This was the number revealed a couple of days ago at the YES conference in Kyiv by the head of the Budget Committee of Ukrainian parliament. The GDP this year will likely be about $180 billion. Military expenses are about a third of the economy. If Ukraine does it, who can say that Putin cannot do that, especially if he is getting significant monetary support from outside.
So far, nothing similar is happening yet with Putin’s Russia. But a couple years ago Western generals and so-called economic experts and the White House officials could not predict what happened today. They were saying, “This is impossible. This cannot happen.” Now they’re coming out surprised. They did not expect Russian economy to be so resilient.
This outlines their own professional incompetence. People who were predicting all this staff early on in this war either didn’t know much or they had a very lackadaisical approach to their predictions.
Even in Ukraine, there is a significant part of the population that likes listening to fairy tales, but not to reality. Just not to throw stones into your windows, Lyudmila, but some other channels and audiences are very prone to supporting that peachy and rainbowy, beautiful picture that doesn’t exist.
For now, all existing vectors are still indicating an upward trend of escalation, that likely will be resulted in escalation not only in the military output, but also on the battlefield.
Lyudmila Nemirya:
Andrei Nikolayevich, before the interview with you, I did skim a lot of titles, a lot headlines of different publications in Europe and some things actually I think are good. They’re changing. On the backdrop of what’s happening in America, Europe decided to get their stuff together and especially in the last couple of weeks we hear a lot of statements from Europe about aid that will be coming in the next few weeks, maybe months. And even at the conference in Paris, they discussed not only helping Ukraine, but Macron even brought up the issue of probably sending troops of the Western countries, of NATO countries into Ukraine, but the parties present have not reached agreement, according to Macron.
And understandably, that was expected that they will not reach agreement. It’s a big matter, big question. But the fact that they’re discussing it, this is very peculiar, very interesting. And then we also can see that from the leaders of European countries there is a lot of attempts to start looking for different military equipment, especially long-range reaching systems. Polish foreign minister Sikorsky from the Atlantic Council also appealed to America to provide more military systems to Ukraine, more arms to Ukraine. And these are just me sampling some of the publications. Looking at that, I am under impression that European leaders start to play a bigger role and understand their role in this war to be much bigger than they initially thought of.
And they are even bringing the possibility of bringing European troops to Ukrainian war theater, people are saying it’s just conversations, just talk, but Patriot systems were also just talk back then. So, Andrei Nikolayevich, do you think we can rely on Europe? Do you think they’re becoming a stronger partner, and what is happening in the United States?
Andrei Illarionov:
First, let’s talk on possible use of European armed forces on the territory of Ukraine and their participation in this war – not volunteers, not individuals, not contractors, but regular troops from other countries, from European countries, from non-European countries, from NATO countries. From the day one of this wide-scale stage of the war, I said that Ukraine would not be able to win this war alone. Not only in terms of getting additional material supplies, but also in terms foreign boots on the battlefield.
In my opinion, armed forces of other countries must be participating. Many Ukrainian officials have maintained throughout the war that they will do it on their own. To me, this is evidence of utter incompetence. They’re not taking full responsibility for their own country and their own citizens. They should be using all opportunities to add additional resources. They might and should negotiate how to do it and in what format, but to neglect this chance and to push it back on the suggestions about bringing other armies of other countries to the front to Ukraine, this is just unacceptable.
I was making statements about that early on when I was alone then. Now I can say that at the Munich conference on the February 19, 2022, five days before the Russian invasion into Ukraine, at all sessions where I was present with Ukrainian colleagues and Western and participants, I brought up this issue. I was saying that in order to stop the threat of Putin’s invasion into Ukraine, Ukraine with West need to immediately place regular troops of the United States in Ukraine. I even suggested certain locations where they should have been placed. Certainly, it was not a guarantee, but the risk of the large scale invasion would be substantially reduced.
Unfortunately, not a single person, either from the West or from Ukrainian delegation at this summit, supported my suggestion. Back then I was proposed to use JEF, the Joint Expeditionary Force, that includes 10 countries. Eight of them back then were members of NATO. Two were not members of NATO. Now all of them are in NATO. This organization is led by the United Kingdom and includes North European countries.
By its status, it doesn’t have NATO as its umbrella, so it can act independently of NATO. So formally, it means they are nor subordinated to NATO authorities.
That issue was discussed back then. Nobody took it seriously. Now we know the results. I am sure, sooner or later, we will have to return to that.
For Ukrainian civil society and Ukrainian leadership to resist these possibilities is next to criminal. Because, in my view, without their participation, Ukraine will not be able neither to get to the victory, nor even achieve a breakthrough in this war.
Second part of this question, why Europe is so concerned? Why have they started to discuss these issues? Why did they start discussing matters of military expenses, military production, forming the single defense strategy, forming single intel strategy? All of that indeed happened in the last few weeks. Do we know – why? We know the answer. There is one person responsible for that, and he’s not a president, at least for now. Donald Trump dropped one phrase at a campaign event in far remote location in South Carolina. He told about his conversation when he was US president.
For the first time he mentioned it two years ago, but it flew under the radar. People did not pay much attention to it because they thought he would not be back in the office.
He told about his private conversation with the leader of one big European country, which appears to be Germany. In that conversation, Trump said that he would not be protecting that country if it did not fulfill its obligations within the NATO. The leader of the country reportedly asked, “So if we’re not paying the necessary dues into NATO, you will not be defending us in case of war?” He said, “Yes, indeed. I will not be defending you.”
He’s mentioned this on a few occasions, but lately it has been amplified and distorted. Everybody heard that, and suddenly it started to dawn on the Europeans that Trump might be serious. It doesn’t mean that Trump will actually do that, but they made their conclusions.
This drew Europe to conclude that they need to be serious and to rely upon themselves. During last decades they got used to the US security umbrella, both nuclear and non-nuclear. Essentially, the German Armed Forces were destroyed by Merkel, who during her lengthy stay in power, basically annihilated Bundeswehr. Putin could not even have dreamt about it.
She even managed to liquidate the pride, the earned pride of Germany, the General Staff of Germany. Germany was the first country in the world that ever created General Staff. That idea that was named later ‘army’s brain’ and was copied by countless nations after Germany. It was created in Prussia during military reforms at the beginning of the 19th century by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and their colleauges after the Prussia’s defeat in Auerstedt and Jena.
The French president mentioned recently that the brain of NATO is corrupted. Frau Merkel extracted the brain from her own army. After all that, how do you think that Putin feels himself? Of course, elated. So, in the years preceding this stage of war, especially during President Obama, there was a horrible, catastrophic dwindling of military expenses and military production, the size of military armed forces degradation and destruction of the whole military infrastructure of European continent. A while ago we’ve discussed with you that the Baltic countries cannot defend themselves in the case of the aggression from the East. But if you look at the real situation of armed forces in Europe, Europe now is not capable of defending itself either, because many key military institutions there were dismantled.
