War in Ukraine, Putin asks for reinforcements from Lukashenko and Assad
Vladimir Putin is about to have reinforcements. Two dictators backed by Russia, or rather saved and held in their respective seats by Russia, seem intent on helping the Kremlin in its war in Ukraine. As reported by Il Foglio, “the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, declared that sixteen thousand fighters from the Middle East and above all from the Syria will come in support of Russian soldiers. “And” a few hours later the Ukrainian government warned that the Belarus controlled by President Aljaksandr Lukashenko would have declared war and invaded Ukraine alongside Russian soldiers “.
He spoke Bashir Assad he remained in the saddle only thanks to the intervention of Moscow which in 2015 saved him from an unsaddling that now seemed certain. “Many Syrians after the civil war do not know how to feed their families and agree to go to fight in other people’s wars. It happened in Libya, where in 2019 Turkey sent many Syrians enlisted among Assad’s opponents, and it happens now in Ukraine, where however the Syrians used as cannon fodder are enrolled among Assad’s militiamen “, explains Il Foglio.
Likewise, the Belarusian president too Lukashenko he owes his survival to Putin, “because two years ago the Russian helped him resist the riots in the streets that aimed to oust him from power after yet another sham elections altered by fraud”. Minsk is now a de facto semi-sovereign satellite and vassal of Moscow. It is no coincidence that the front has shifted north and south of Lviv: Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk. “A city a few kilometers from Belarus, whose attacks open a new scenario, unfortunately not unexpected”, explains Il Messaggero.
According to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, Russian forces are about to fire on Belarus from the territory of Ukraine to drag Moscow’s ally into war. And according to the Ukrainian media, the bombing has already started. “The missiles on Ivano-Frankivsk could have departed from Transnistria, a small pro-Russian enclave not recognized by the UN which, like Belarus, has offered its territory as a ballistic launch base. And so while Putin shows willingness to negotiate, he hits hard in the whole country, so as to be able to reach a possible negotiation with greater bargaining power “, writes Il Messaggero.
War in Ukraine, Putin finds the scapegoat: the secret services
In the meantime, however, something is moving on the domestic front in Russia. In particular on the secret services. “On the seventeenth day of the war, the first rumors of the dissatisfaction of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, with the wrong calculations of Russia begin to circulate. Andrei Soldatov, an expert of the Russian security services, said that according to some sources the anger of the Russian president is turning against the FSB and in particular against the Fifth Service, a special department of the FSB that deals with foreign intelligence: his boss, Sergei Besedawho has been directing operations in Ukraine for years, and his deputy would be under house arrest “, writes Il Foglio.
Putin is looking for the scapegoat and in this sense the services would be guilty of having misinformed the president, “for having underestimated the ability to Volodymyr Zelensky, the resistance of the Ukrainians, including Russian speakers in the east of the country. Whether the error originated from the FSB leader or from the president himself does not matter: Putin will never take responsibility for it and must think about his own survival “.