Password in the Kremlin? Reinforce the western side. By the end of the year, over two thousand new weapons will be deployed in the western regions with 20 new warships. NATO is expanding and Moscow's response to the "growing military threats" from the West is not diplomacy but continuous and progressive armament.
What worries Putin, and not a little, is the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO. "Tensions continue to increase in the western military district ", said the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, sounding the alarm for the future entry of the two Nordic countries into the Alliance.
Shoigu argues that the US together with allied countries are moving over 40.000 soldiers to the borders. Over the past eight years, Shoigu insisted, the US has increased "15 times the flights of their strategic bombers in Europe"And only since the beginning of this year have US ships conducted missions in the Baltic approaching the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
Retaliation is around the corner and today Moscow has decided to cut off the gas supply to Finland. Moscow thus interrupts gas supplies to Finland, on the grounds that Helsinki has not accepted the new payment system which provides for the conversion into rubles of the sums paid in dollars or euros to Gazprom.
The same measure adopted against Bulgaria and Poland on 27 April last. "We have carefully prepared for this situation and will be able to supply gas to all our customers in the coming months“, Said the CEO of the Finnish company Gasum, Mika Wiljanen. Missed Russian supplies should be replaced with those arriving through the pipeline Baltic Connector, entered into service in 2020, which connects the Finnish network with the Estonian one and through this with the other EU countries.
On arms to Ukraine, the spokesman for the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov said Moscow is closely monitoring, and reserves the right to adopt "preventive measures“, Also for the possible delivery from the USA to Kiev of Harpoon anti-ship missiles, speculated by government sources and the US Congress in statements to Reuters.
Cyberwar. Putin accused Western states of being behind a "cyber aggression against Russia", which, however' "it basically failed because we were prepared".
Moscow launches another accusation directly at the Americans, guilty of having ignited the conflict for commercial interests linked to the war industry. Alexander Mikheyev, CEO of Rosoboronexport, the company that manages Russian military exports, accused the US of spreading "fake news”On the low reliability of the weapons used by the Moscow army in Ukraine with the aim of boycotting Russian sales on the international market.
Moscow reiterates that it has a world share of 20%, compared to 39% for the United States. However, Washington's disinformation work, added Mikheyev, has not worked so far, so much so that Russia has kept an order book equal to 50 billion dollars.