Sardinia, a large Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea, which has nearly 2,000 km of coastline, was the scene of large-scale military exercises supervised by NATO from May 5 to 27. Training maneuvers that revive the controversy of military tests on this territory, Sardinia has not wanted them for years, as already reported in 2014 an article in Courrier international, and which are causing concern in Italy by the warmongering message they are sending to the rest of the world.
The press in France and abroad remained silent on these events. As reported by the Italian daily L’Unione Sarda, in which the former Italian deputy Mauro Pili reported on the conduct of the operations which he followed in real time, the military maneuvers which took place in Sardinia from 5 to 27 May are however unprecedented, since they mobilized between 4,000 and 5,000 men from seven different nations. If the Italian island is accustomed to military exercises, it had never before experienced such a deployment, the joint maneuvers of NATO forces and Italian forces having so far never exceeded two or three thousand men.
Training maneuvers that take place in a particular geopolitical context. As Liberation reported, a training campaign was held across Eastern Europe during the month of May. In Finland, a country which shares 1,340 km of common border with Russia, a contingent of British soldiers has been deployed as part of joint exercises. Same scheme on the border between Estonia and Latvia for the Hedgehog (“hedgehog”) exercise with the participation of 15,000 NATO soldiers, in Poland, a country bordering Ukraine at war, for the operation Defender, involving troops from twelve partner countries, and in North Macedonia for the Swift Response exercise, which mobilized 4,500 soldiers, including 2,500 British.
If the United Kingdom considers that these operations are carried out in anticipation of a potential direct conflict with Russia, NATO had chosen to adopt a more cautious discourse, wrote the newspaper. On the NATO website, it is specified that these exercises were planned for a long time “in order to improve the state of readiness and the interoperability of the forces of the Alliance”. At the time of the “Cold Response” exercise, which took place in Norway between March and April, the transatlantic organization also declared that it “is not linked to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia “. Really ? In a tweet of April 22, NATO nevertheless declared that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has re-emphasized the need for competent, combat-ready forces”.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia underlined again that you need to have capable forces, combat-ready#NATO and partner troops explain why it’s critical to continue training and exercising pic.twitter.com/9GgzpIf6iU
– NATO (@NATO) April 22, 2022
In the meantime, the tone of these exercises has taken on a more assertive aggressive turn. By carrying out its “Neptune Shield 2022” operation from May 17 to 31, a demonstration of force in the eastern Mediterranean with the American aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman at the beachhead, NATO sent a “message clearly intended for Russia,” said AFP.
See also: Ukraine: NATO demonstrates force in the Mediterranean
Course of operations in Sardinia
It all starts on May 5, 2022 with Operation Mare Aperto (Open Sea) and Ordinance number 76 of the Captaincy of Sardinia “with immediate effect” signed by the hand of the Superintendent of the Sea of Sardinia Mario Valente. The latter specifies that the military zones concern the Adriatic, the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Sea, and the Channel of Sicily “as well as the bordering coastal lands thanks to the projection capacity on land which will be expressed by the on-board amphibious capacity… »
On reading the ordinance, the population of the island discovers that all activity at sea is prohibited. For three weeks, tourist activities such as swimming or boating, but also commercial fishing, are banned in 16 maritime zones whose maritime coordinates are clearly listed in the ordinance. To this must be added a 17th prohibition zone (in front of Capo Frasca), decided by the Captaincy of Oristano, as reported by the Italian daily newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano.
Italian citizens have been informed that these military exercises carried out by NATO are carried out “at the invitation” of the Italian Ministry of Defense and that they have no connection with the conflict in Ukraine.
A speech that did not convince the National Association of Italian Partisans (ANPI), an association founded in Rome in 1944 against the Nazi occupation. In a May 15 statement, the ANPI satellite in Sardinia denounced “a secret operation without notice”. “The imposing military deployment in the port of Cagliari (capital of Sardinia) constitutes an obvious demonstration of force, a ‘warmongering’ message in the heart of this city sent to the world and to Europe, a threatening message which contradicts the words of Draghi,” she says. Mario Draghi, the head of the Italian government, had, in fact, made known his intention to “think about the establishment of a ceasefire and to start credible negotiations”, during a meeting on 10 May with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, reported the magazine Challenges.
“This attracts the eyes of the world to Sardinia and makes it a target in the event of an escalation of this madness going to war”, is moved by the association. And to conclude: “The ANPI of Sardinia reiterates its firm opposition to the sending of arms to Ukraine, to the general rearmament in progress, to the policy of the government and to the silence of the Region, which contrast with the will of the large majority of Sardinians and that of the Italian population. »
In a statement dated May 18, the ANPI said it “fully associates itself with the concerns expressed by ANPI Sardinia at the sudden military maneuvers taking place in the region and which put the population in conditions where they have to endure a intolerable climate of war”. She also specifies that she has requested “urgent explanations” from the President of the Council of Ministers and the Minister of Defense.
See also: Pope Francis says ‘NATO barking’ may have prompted Russian offensive in Ukraine
Intensified military operations
To ensure the smooth running of this large-scale operation, a “Notice to Air Missions” or NOTAM has been issued. This is an alarm emitted from the Sardinian sky from where the aeronautical authorities warn all pilots of the potential dangers in the few authorized corridors, inside the prohibition perimeters, which cover practically all the sky in the south of the island.
On May 13, a Boeing E-3A Airborne Warning and Control System, similar to the one that controls the airspace between Ukraine and Western Europe, flies over the province of Nuoro for six hours. Departing from the Greek port of Preveza, it carries wide-range radars and passive sensors capable of detecting an aerial presence over long distances. Its presence in Sardinia raises questions.
On the same day, the Unione Sarda, basing itself on “reserved information arriving directly from military radars”, claims that there would have been a deployment of fighter planes, Eurofighter Typhoons fighter planes and state-of-the-art models of the F-35 aircraft. Submarines, anti-submarine warfare vessels, aircraft carriers, amphibious vessels…everywhere was deployed in the port of Cagliari, military equipment to carry out land, air and naval operations.
“The Minister of Defense confused Sardinia with a theater of war”
For Mauro Pili, naval surface warfare is a practice from another time. Re-enacting a simulacrum of the Normandy landings, while the loss of the Russian flagship the Moskva on April 14 demonstrates the vulnerability of surface buildings to modern methods of fire guidance, has no real military utility for him and only responds to the imperatives of the arms industry, now out of control.
Operations of this scale could, according to him, represent a danger for Sardinia, which would become a target in the event of conflict. An area of permanent maneuvers for years, the lands of the Italian island are, moreover, very damaged. As Courrier international pointed out, NATO and various armies around the world have been conducting military tests in Sardinia… since the 1950s, which in 2014 led a group of Sardinian pacifist or separatist associations and organizations to declare: “The military occupation of Sardinia is an abuse that has lasted for more than sixty years and that we can no longer tolerate. »
See also: “NATO uses the Ukrainians to make the Russians bleed” Emmanuel Leroy
In the Italian parliament, the opposition comes from the parliamentary group L’Alternativa C’è of deputy Pino Cabras who does not hesitate, like Jean Jaurès in his time, to assume a pacifist position, multiplying articles and passages in the media, without forgetting regular attendance at events.
Speaking to Italian Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini on May 16, MPs Pino Cabras, Emanuela Corda and Andrea Vallascas, all members of Alternativa, did not mince words, reports the Italian newspaper Quotidiano Nazionale. “The Minister of Defense confused Sardinia with a theater of war (…) They are preparing a nightmare for us; however, we are not at war and war, we do not want it. Sardinia is a paradise. There is no longer any question of using it for military exercises for which we have given far too much, ”they asserted.
Words that did not carry. It is clear that throughout the duration of the military exercise conducted by NATO, the response to the concerns and worries of the Sardinians will have remained… a dead letter.