by Manlio Dinucci

The Aviano base US F-16 fighters are engaged in “air operations” in Greece, where the Iniochos 21 exercise began yesterday. They belong to the 510th Fighter Squadron stationed in Aviano, whose role is indicated in its emblem: the atom symbol with three lightning strikes the earth, flanked by the imperial eagle. Nuclear attack aircraft are therefore those engaged by the US Air Force in Greece. Greece granted the United States the use of all its military bases in 2020. F-16 and F-15 fighter-bombers from Israel and  United Arab Emirates also participate in Iniochos 21. The exercise takes place on the Aegean-sea near  an area including the Black Sea and Ukraine, where the US Army’s Defender-Europe 21 maxi exercise is concentrated.

These and other military maneuvers are focused on Ukraine making Europe a great parade ground, and create a growing tension with Russia. After having disrupted the Yugoslav Federation by inserting the wedge of war into its internal fractures, now NATO stands as a champion of the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The President of the NATO Military Committee the British Stuart Perch, who is head of the Royal Air Force, meeting in Kyiv with President Zelenskyy and  Chief of Staff Khomchak declared that “the NATO allies are united in condemning the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia and its aggressive actions in Eastern Ukraine ”. He thus repeated the usual version according to which Russia would have forcibly annexed Crimea, ignoring that it was the Crimean Russians who decided in a referendum to break away from Ukraine and re-enter Russia to avoid being attacked by the neo-Nazi battalions of Kyiv like the Donbas Russians. In 2014, the same neo-Nazis were used as an assault force in the Maidan square putsch, triggered by Georgian snipers who fired on demonstrators and policemen, and in subsequent actions: they set villages on fire, burned activists alive in the Odesa Chamber of Labor, massacred unarmed civilians in Mariupol, bombing Donetsk and Lugansk with white phosphorus. A bloody coup d’état under the US / NATO direction  with the strategic aim of provoking a new cold war in Europe to isolate Russia and at the same time strengthen the influence and military presence of the United States in Europe.

The conflict in Donbas – where populations have organized with their own popular militias in  Donetsk and Lugansk Republics – went through a period of relative truce with the opening of the Minsk talks for a peaceful solution. But now the Ukrainian government  withdrew from the talks on the pretext that it refused to go to Minsk since Belarus is not a democratic country. At the same time, the Kyiv forces resumed their armed attacks in Donbas.  Stuart Perch praised Chief of Staff Khomchak on behalf of NATO for his “commitment to finding a peaceful solution to the conflict”, Khomchak declared that the Kyiv army “is preparing for the offensive in Eastern Ukraine “and ” the participation of NATO allies is expected ” in this operation.

It is no coincidence that the conflict in Donbas was reignited when Antony Blinken took over the post of Secretary of State in the Biden Administration. Antony Blinken has Ukrainian origin, he was the principal director of the Maidan Square putsch as Deputy National Security Adviser in the Obama-Biden Administration. As Deputy Secretary of State Biden appointed Victoria Nuland – who in 2014  was the assistant director for the US operation that  cost  more than $ 5 billion –  to establish a “good governance” in Ukraine (as she declared). It is not excluded that at this point they have a plan to promote an offensive by  Kyiv forces in  Donbas supported in fact by NATO. It would confront Moscow with a choice that would still be to Washington’s advantage: either to let the Russian populations of Donbas be massacred, or militarily intervene in their support. They play with fire – not figuratively – by lighting the fuse of a bomb in the heart of Europe.

(il manifesto, April 13, 2021)