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Ukraine war begins to spill into neighboring countries

The war in Ukraine is beginning to spill over the country’s borders, threatening to light the entire region on fire. The US and NATO are funneling ungodly amounts of arms to Kiev, as more than 12 million flee the violence, with masses of people pouring into the neighboring states of Poland, Romania, Hungary, Belarus, Moldova, Slovakia and Russia.

Smoke rises from the Metallurgical Combine Azovstal in Mariupol, in territory under the government of the Donetsk People's Republic, eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, May 4, 2022. [AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov]

On Tuesday, officials in Transnistria, a Russian-controlled breakaway enclave in Moldova, which borders Ukraine to the southwest, reported intercepting an unmanned vehicular drone loaded with a bomb at a radio tower. On April 26, two explosions at this and another radio transmission station in the Grigoripol district left significant damage.

Also on May 3, representatives of the region, whose independence neither Moldova nor international institutions recognize, said they foiled a planned terrorist attack on Transnistrian soil. They did not provide details, but in this and all other attacks they have blamed Ukraine. Kiev insists these are Russian false flag operations. Its military just declared that Moscow is evacuating the families of Russian servicemen and officials from Transnistria, a claim that the Kremlin has not confirmed.

The Moldovan government, which in March officially applied for EU membership, passed a law on Tuesday that authorizes the European border police and coast guard to patrol its borders. This creates conditions in which, depending on the course of the Ukraine war, EU security personnel could end up stationed directly across from Russian troops.

Charles Michel, president of the European Council, declared Wednesday following a visit to the capital city Chisinau that the EU will “significantly increase [its] support to Moldova by providing its armed forces with additional military equipment.” It will also help to beef up its logistics, cyberdefense and “military-building capacities.” In short, the EU aims to turn the tiny country of 2.6 million, which competes with Ukraine for being the continent’s poorest state, into an armed camp.

In addition, tensions are rising along Ukraine’s northern border. On Wednesday, Belarus announced it is conducting a previously unplanned review of its military readiness. It is checking both its ground and air defenses, as well as its combat plans and ability to respond to crises. Minsk, an ally of Moscow, said in February that Russian troops with which it had been conducting joint exercises would remain on its territory indefinitely.

The situation along Belarus’ western frontier is also strained, with reports of Polish border guards harassing their counterparts with floodlights and slingshots. Last year, a massive conflict erupted between the governments of Minsk and Warsaw, when refugees from the Middle East, who were attempting to cross into the EU via the Belarusian-Polish border, were beaten back with water cannons.

The most significant cross-border conflict is happening in Russia. In late April, there was a series of eruptions at military sites in three regions just to the east of Ukraine—Voronezh, Belgorod and Kursk. There have been unexplained fires at ammunitions and oil depots, as well as mid-air explosions near a military base, which the Russian government says were from their air defense systems responding to an attack. Residents of the region reported hearing fighter jets take off just after the blasts. A Ukrainian drone has also allegedly been shot down 140 miles into Russian territory.

The Zelensky government has said that it neither denies nor confirms launching attacks on Russian territory, which is simply an underhanded way of acknowledging that it is behind these events while attempting to shield itself and its backers in Washington and Brussels from their grave implications.

The weaponry, intelligence and training enabling Kiev to strike across the border all come from the United States and NATO. If Ukraine is lobbing bombs on Russia, then the American and European governments are waging an undeclared war on Moscow.

On April 30, just days after these events took place, the UK’s minister of armed forces, James Heappey, declared it was “completely legitimate” for Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia.

In response, Maria Zakharova, press secretary for Russia’s foreign ministry, said, “Do we understand correctly that for the sake of ‘disrupting the logistics of military supplies’ Russia can strike at military targets on the territory of those NATO countries that supply weapons to the Kiev regime? After all, this directly leads to death and bloodshed on the territory of Ukraine. As far as I understand, Britain is one of these countries.”

The US and the EU are consciously preparing the groundwork for a European-wide war, which will rapidly spiral into a global conflict driven by Washington’s desire to crush Russia and, above all, China.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appealed to Kosovo to resolve its tensions with Serbia in order that “all the western Balkans” can join the EU—in other words, be completely drawn into the anti-Russian war campaign. The region, which straddles the Adriatic, Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas, is of major geostrategic significance.

The same day, US Admiral and Chair of the NATO Military Committee Rob Bauer said that the alliance no longer considers itself limited by the 1997 Russian-NATO Founding Act. One of the central stipulations of that agreement is that NATO cannot station atomic weapons or build nuclear arms storage facilities on the territory of countries entering the alliance after it was signed. It also prohibits both sides from deploying large numbers of nuclear weapons on their borders.

All of this is now being scrapped.

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