In Ukraine, Russia has been struggling for almost three years in a war where it has been unable to achieve its initial objectives.
A war in which Russia lost an enormous number of soldiers and equipment. In fact, Moscow’s armed forces have not been this ravaged since World War II. And since then, it hasn’t been invaded by a foreign army and lost hundreds of square kilometers of territory.
A historical achievement is also the fact that, in the Black Sea, kidnappers chase down Russian warships_ a country without a functionally active maritime war fleet_ like anchovies (a Black Sea native fish). Russian warships no longer enjoy peace even in their home ports. And as of yesterday, they no longer have peace in Syrian maritime base.
As a result of the bankrupt war in Ukraine, Russia has become addicted like a drug addict to China, North Korea, once despised by Moscow.
And the boomerang continues to spectacularly hit the Kremlin’s forehead: the helplessness in Ukraine has made the Russians powerless in Syria. A decade of insane investment in rescuing the criminal regime of Bashar al Assad has gone down the Volga in two weeks.
The Assad regime had been kept alive for 10 years by interventions from Russia and Iran. Now, once Russia has had enough of Ukraine, and Iran has been depleted by Israel, Turkey speculated on the moment and brutally advanced its pawns on Syrian territory. Whata ‘wonderful’ Russian-Turkish friendship!
Erdogan correctly calculated that neither Putin nor the ayatollah have any way to intervene in Syria if Turkey is offering massive support to a lightning operation carried out at the right time, by the jihadists he has courted and armed for years.
Inevitably, the new Syrian context will also affect Russia’s position at possible peace negotiations for Ukraine.
Overnight, many of Moscow’s key calculations have been reassessed downward- and we have yet to see how this will play out.
The scenario is both clear and intuitive:
- Russia can lose if it is opposed by a carefully prepared, fierce, tenacious resistance always open to optimizations that real-time developments on the ground inevitably impose.
- Russia is not capable of successfully fighting several wars at the same time and this inability is accentuated even more when the conflicts are distant and spread out.
- The essence of this was validated even in the Republic of Moldova, where Moscow’s intervention was massive, but the resistance put up by Chisinau (supported by the allies) was tenacious, tough and smart.
Romania must pay attention to all this: to Ukraine, to the situation in Syria, to what happened in the Republic of Moldova.
Romania must pay attention to these three astonishing and humiliating failures suffered by Russia. On the one hand, to strengthen themselves mentally and raise their morale, and on the other hand, to understand what needs to be done concretely to counter the current interference of the Kremlin and to diminish future threats.
Romania has no choice but to do this as today it is in the midst of a hybrid war unleashed by the Russians on Romanian territory-culminating in the parliamentary and presidential elections.
On Friday, when the Constitutional Court annulled the presidential election, Bucharest won an essential battle, but the war unleashed by Moscow did not end there. And the stake, in the end, is to win the war, not just isolated battles.
The main conclusion that emerges from the current epic of Russian intervention in the Romanian elections is that our country was on the verge of being captured by the Kremlin mainly because of the mess in our own backyard: indolence, incompetence, corruption. Possibly also because of some domestic complicity we still don’t know about.
Romania was on the verge of being captured by Russia because corruption in various institutional spheres, de-professionalization caused by politicizing institutes and playing with a lighter next to the gas cylinder of democracy had become for years a national sport for the leaders of parties, the justice system and secret services.
It is now clearer than ever that the rule of law, transparency and institutional reform are not abstract concepts, but concrete elements. They are the vital wheels in the proper functioning of the state apparatus.
To deal with Russia, you don’t just need solid foreign partners who are ready to help you, but you first need a state and a society protected major breaches.
In Romania’s case, it has become urgent and an imperative for national security to fix these breaches. Decisive action will have to be from the top, not just the bottom upwards!
In order to propel Calin Georgescu to theCotroceni Presidential Palace, the Russians operated in our country both step by step and in turbo mode; in plain sight and underground.
But their action could not have had the huge success we witnessed in the first round of elections if Romania – the state and society – had not been a fertile ground for Moscow’s interference.
Why are there prosecutors’ offices and courts of law if the thugs enjoy the freedom to fill themselves with money, to strengthen their networks and political influence, if the thugs become influencers on social networks and serve a foreign power and interests alien to the national interest?
Why are there prosecutors’ offices and courts of law if on Romanian territory, groups of neo-legionnaires, anti-Semitic speeches and manifestations have proliferated for years while their proponents walk freely, grow, form parties and, finally, at the right time, serve a a foreign power and foreign interests?
Why do prosecutors’ offices and courts still exist if groups of mercenaries trained in conflict zones in Africa end up acting in plain sight, and in the end perform services for a foreign power, and interests which are contrary to the national interest?
How can parties remain credible and not be blamed for the fact that their defiant and irresponsible behavior has forced large segments of the population to seek alternatives in an even more cancerous segment of the political spectrum, out of frustration that has reached boiling point and transformed into blind rage?
How can the Romanian Orthodox Church – first and foremost it, because it is the largest and most influential church in Romania – claim that it acts in the service of the people and the nation, when it allows itself to be drawn into petty political and financial games of a sinful world? When the people and church hierarchy promote figures with a neo-legionary discourse and tendencies whose interests are do not match those of the Romanian people and nation, but of a foreign power which is hostile to the people, the nation and the national interest? Monasteries and parishes have become comfortable nests that offer a mind-boggling immunity for numerous pro-Russian and anti-Romanian actors. Is the complicity of the Church in such a thing out of the ordinary, is it completely indecent to finance such an institution from taxpayers’ money as long as it does nothing but increase the work of forces that until yesterday were “only” visibly hostile to us, and today, we see very well, they were part of the hybrid war that Putin’s Russia declared on us?
Why do you have intelligence services if information gathered is not converted into competent, mature, appropriate analysis and if the information fails to translate into an appropriate strategic decision?
Romania pumps royal sums of money into justice, political parties, the Church and the intelligence services.
It was clear in these elections that neither the fat salaries, nor the generous maintenance and financing of small, medium, large and pharaonic church projects, nor inflated ‘special pensions’ nor the plethora of collateral financial benefits allocated to these four areas prevented us from stumbling.
The big problem is that when you invest in something it isn’t just about spending a lot of money. The big problem arises when you notice that you have obtained too little or nothing at all from your investment. Or that you came out at a loss!
Therefore the core of the problem with the judiciary, the parties, the Church and the services lies in their performance, and not in how much was invested, as the recent last-minute decision to annul the elections exposed.
If the Romanian state becomes efficient, and society is constantly cleansed of subversive elements, Russia doesn’t have the opportunity to divide us, capture us, do once again what it wants with us.
Look at the Ukrainians, at least look at them. They are fighting two wars, not just one: an external war, with Russia; and an internal war, with themselves, with the misery I mentioned above which wasn’t removed in time, but now poses an existential risk.
Ukraine has endemic corruption, ridiculous political parties, a pro-Russian faction of its Church, years of entrenched Russian propaganda, traitors and incompetent people in civil society, ecclesiastical and military institutions. These were the factors that made Ukraine excessively vulnerable to Russia, the factors that led to unjustified territorial losses in the first hours, days and weeks of the war.
These were the factors that made Ukraine’s war with the Russia harder than it could have been.
These were the factors on which, from the start, in an emergency regime and from an existential interest, mobilized the Ukrainians to start weeding their own garden. This second war is not going too well either, it is true, but the essential thing is that they started it and it is essential that it remains open even when the military hostilities are over.
If the Ukrainians were overwhelmed by the classic war declared on them by the Russians, it would be good for us to come together at least for the hybrid war declared on us by the Russians.
Any fresh postponement of the general cleaning, any new attempt to sweep the dirt back under the rug (because that’s what we’ve been doing so far) will come back to haunt is much more cruelly than what happened in these elections.
