Eve is here. This sighting by Andrew Korybko describes one of the many ways Russia is positioning itself politically and militarily in case NATO or the EU reorients its military and emerges from its underwear and poses a real threat. Russia remembers well how a seemingly prostrate Germany was able to rise again after World War I.
Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst specializing in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the new Cold War. He holds a doctorate from MGIMO, which is affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Originally published on his website
Representatives from the Presidential Administration, the Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have recently addressed these threats, but without pre-emptive warning, there is a risk of a three-front proxy war against Russia in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia.
The announcement of the Trump Line for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) last August completely surprised Russia. Before the megaproject was announced, Russia assumed that Armenia and Azerbaijan would abide by the endpoints of a Moscow-brokered ceasefire in November 2020 to open a regional connectivity corridor protected by the FSB. Instead, Russia’s role has been replaced by the United States, and the route now has a dual function as a NATO military logistics corridor to Central Asia.
Britain quickly lifted arms embargoes on Armenia and Azerbaijan, and then strengthened military ties with the latter separately. In between these two moves, Azerbaijan announced that it had completed years of efforts to bring its military into compliance with NATO standards. Kazakhstan also signed an important mineral agreement with the United States before announcing it would start producing NATO-standard artillery shells. Vance then visited Armenia and Azerbaijan in February. All of this amounts to a NATO encirclement of Russia.
Russia has only recently overcome this military-strategic shock. Ahead of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s visit to Moscow in early April, seen here as a watershed moment in bilateral relations, Russia’s tripartite coalition (Russia’s three main policy-making bodies: the presidential administration, the Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) was silent. But after that fateful meeting, their representatives finally began to warn of the NATO threat emanating from the south.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk told TASS news agency shortly after that TRIPP had “destroyed the regional balance that existed since 1828.” By late April, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belosov informed South African countries that they were “closely monitoring attempts by extra-regional states to secure military presence and logistics operations in Central Asia.” By that time, Azerbaijan had just entered into a de facto military alliance with Ukraine, which complemented its close military ties with the United States, Turkiye, and Britain.
Just this week, the last part of the Russian triad chimed in on the issue after the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Third Director of the CIS Alexander Stelnik told TASS:[EU countries] Has not hidden their intention to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia in the West and is cooperating with our partners [in Central Asia] Toward roughly the same, slightly veiled goal. They do this using vague terms like “economic diversification” and “protection from external threats.” ”
It is self-evident to all honest officials observing NATO’s TRIPP-led encirclement of Russia that, without anyone’s aid, Turkiye’s Organization of Turkish States (OTS), which is strengthening as an integrated military and security bloc, poses an alternative threat to the CSTO for its co-members Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The aim is to “extract” the two, just as NATO and the EU are in the process of “extracting” Armenia from the CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Union, respectively. If that were to happen, it would be catastrophic for Russia’s security.
Azerbaijan’s location gives it an irreplaceable role in NATO’s TRIPP-led and OTS-led encirclement of Russia. If this process is not stopped immediately, but rather accelerates uncontrollably, Azerbaijan, a shadow NATO member, and neighboring Kazakhstan, which is trying to follow in its footsteps, could orchestrate a three-front proxy war against Ukraine and Russia. Now that the Russian triads are finally aware of these threats, the Kremlin may soon try to strike first, but it is unclear how.
