Brussels, 10 Feb. 2023 – Though EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola and EU Council President Charles Michel mentioned explicitly “missiles” and “long range systems” in their speeches, in the final official document on Conclusions of Thursday 9th February EU Council there’s no trace of the word ‘missiles’, the scary word we all are looking for over the the last weeks, after Biden announced USA will send GLSDB missiles to Ukraine.
In this video Michel mentions ‘missiles’ (speaking in French), though the English subtitles fatally missed the key word…
“Il y a des besoins militaires pour vous soutenir, pour aider à protéger, à défendre l’intégrité de l’Ukraine: des munitions, de l’artillerie, des missiles, des véhicules, des systèmes de défense. C’est de cela très concrètement qu’il s’agit maintenant. C’est de cela qu’il s’agit maintenant. Premier élément”, Said Charles Michel
While Metsola went for the ‘long-range systems’ definition watch video
“And now states must consider quickly as next step providing long-range systems and the jets that you need to protect the liberty too many have taken for granted. Our response must be proportional to the threat and the threat is existential.
There are many ways to keep people awareness at bay when it comes to the dramatic escalation of the war; enough avoiding scary words…
Metsola said yesterday during Zelensky’s visit to the European Parliament, that Russian invasion of Ukraine is an existential threat”; to whom? To Ukraine for sure; did she implied this war is an existential threat for the EU? So far this war is a threat to our values, but not an existential one. Are they hiding something to us or they are simply trying to justify an imminent shipment of long-range missiles, maybe already planned with the rest of NATO allies? The fact that EU Parliament president referred to Member States calling them on to “consider” sending long range missiles is mainly a message to the wider public: we have to get used and accept the idea to send them, supporting the decision in our parliaments at level of public opinion with silent assent.
In that case this means we count nothing. If such a decision has been de facto already made without transparent information and a consequent vote in our parliaments reflecting that awareness, it means we are no longer democracies.
But why the issue arises with long-range missiles and not with tanks or other weapons?Because long-range missiles can cross or hit neighbouring European countries and expand the conflict in the Russia’s and Belarus territory.
Today’s incident in Moldova, whether intentional or not on the side of Russia, is the prove for this highly likely cross-border risk. It might be that it’s intentional as Zelensky warned. Meanwhile right today Moldova’s Prime Minister Gavrilita stepped down and government in Chișinău summoned Russian ambassador; important to mention that in the first hours of the airspace violation, also EU and NATO member Romania launched an alarm, then withdrawn, the Russian missile might have crossed its skies as well.
If Ukraine fired a long-range missile crossing the border with Russia or Belarus what are we supposed to do at that point? We would enter WW3, at least under the current international law. Only in a similar case this conflict will become an existential threat to the European population, so why anticipating that stage? Entering a war (which furthermore can turn into is a global nuclear conflict) must be decided by democratic parliaments at national level. There’s no evidence EU populations are willing to enter a direct conflict against Russia.
It’s not easy though to get trustable data as pollster carefully avoid to ask direct questions as to what percentage of people are willing to send long-range missiles and F-16 to Ukraine. What instead the tricky polls asked so far is simply whether one wants to send support and weapons to Ukraine, without specifying in the question which weapons: this is the way this cross-border European establishment (included the British one) is making fouls of us all, taking advantage of the average low educational levels.
But that’s not enough: on top of that there’s the criminalisation of those who ask for peace in Ukraine and negotiations asap as weapons are fueling the war. Under the new ‘cultural trend’ all those who speak and write to push for negotiations or campaign for the abolition of the veto power in the UN Security Council (which is one of the main causes of this conflict) are labelled as Putin’s supporters and therefore criminalised.
Throwing discredit at those who want to see peace and push for negotiations is the denial of the democracy and system of values we all built on the ruins of WW2.
Talkeurope.org 