El Pais he revealed the sanctions that European countries would be discussing in the event of an invasion of Ukraine by Moscow. The plan will be dealt with in full tomorrow in Brussels at the meeting of EU foreign ministers. We are talking about the complete closure of European capital markets for Russian companies and financial institutions, and the restrictions on the export of essential materials or services for key sectors of the Russian economy, such as energy, mining or heavy industry. A strong way to leave Russia isolated in the world financial market.
The United States is the most intransigent and would also be willing to exclude Russia from Swift, a fast and secure payment system that regulates financial transactions between more than 1.100 banks in 200 countries. Biden, meanwhile, is seeking deals with Qatar to mitigate Europe's dependence on Russian gas.
The marinas, on the other hand, line up in the Mediterranean. Moscow has announced, writes Di Feo in Repubblica, that an unprecedented fleet will concentrate in the Mediterranean. Six ships are arriving from the Baltic for landing operations: they can carry 60 tanks and 1.800 infantry to the beach, protecting them with cannons and rockets. If they reached the Black Sea, they could offer the Russians the ability to assault the Ukrainian coast, thus completing the encirclement on the coast as well. By doing so, the military grip would tighten all the borders of Kiev, except the western ones. There are four Kremlin units: the Grigorivich fighter and three 9 Burya-class frigates, equipped with Kalibr long-range hypersonic missiles.
While there are three Russian attack submarines employed, the Kilo, with extremely quiet engines capable of easily evading NATO's sonar.
The Pentagon, on the other hand, sent the aircraft carrier Truman to the Mediterranean to support the XNUMXth Fleet, escorted by a cruiser, four fighters and a Norwegian frigate. The fully autonomous US forces are capable of supporting attacks in Ukraine with seventy planes, with a simple order from the White House without the support or advice of the Allies.
Washington then advertised on a Twitter profile one of its nuclear submarines off the coast of Cyprus, the USS Georgia with 154 cruise missiles on board. Two massive exercises between Greece and Lebanon are therefore planned in the coming days. On the one hand there will be Russian ships on the other ships engaged in the NATO exercise "Neptune Strike". Another one will follow: the "Mission Clemenceau 22"French-led, always in the Eastern Mediterranean and with even three aircraft carriers: the Truman, the De Gaulle and the Italian Cavour.
La Cavour represents one of the many flagships of our armed forces, capable of deploying ultra-modern fifth generation aircraft on its deck F35-B, in an inter-force group, consisting of aircraft of the Navy and the Air Force.