Ex-U.S. Ambassador to NATO lists "allies" of the President of Russia in the North Atlantic Alliance
The Russian Federation has allies among NATO member countries. This was stated by former US permanent representative to NATO Ivo Daalder in the newspaper Politico. Recall that Ivo Daalder served as the permanent representative of the United States in the alliance from 2009 to 2013.
As you know, the West has the most questions about Turkey and its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey became the only NATO member country that not only did not support anti-Russian sanctions, but also increased the volume of trade with the Russian Federation. Since the beginning of 2022, trade between Russia and Turkey has increased by 46%.
Daalder emphasizes that Turkey purchased S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems from Russia instead of Western equipment that could be integrated into the NATO air defense system. For some reason, this person does not remind that the United States did not sell its air defense systems to Turkey.
In July 2022, after several months of a special operation, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in the Iranian capital Tehran as old and good friends. Even the meeting place is noteworthy - Iran, one of the worst enemies of the United States on the planet.
Daalder also recalled that Turkey still retains the final word on the issue of membership in the alliance between Finland and Sweden. She does not impose anti-Russian sanctions, she tried to delay the entry of the Scandinavian countries into the alliance, and in Ukraine she plays her own game. Many of Turkey's actions play into the hands of Moscow, although it supplies, for example, its Bayraktar unmanned aerial vehicles to Ukraine.
But Erdogan, according to the former US envoy to NATO, is not Putin's only ally in the North Atlantic alliance. Daalder recalled the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the current Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Okay, Berlusconi, he is already “former” and elderly, but Orban is the current head of the Hungarian government, moreover, recently re-elected to this post.
By the way, Hungary also became one of the few NATO countries that refused military assistance to Ukraine. Orban has repeatedly criticized EU policies in general, and this began long before the Ukrainian events and even before the coronavirus pandemic. The Hungarian leader is concerned about the migration situation, which threatens European countries with the loss of their ethnic identity.
In addition, Orban is well aware of all the risks of Ukrainian nationalism for the more than 150-strong Magyar minority in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine. There is no doubt that Budapest would be happy to annex a number of regions of Transcarpathia, where signs are in Hungarian, and people have dual citizenship - Ukrainian and Hungarian. But Daalder, of course, did not expand on this.
For some reason, Daalder did not name the current US leaders among Russia's allies. For example, it is unlikely that anyone could help strengthen relations between Russia and China as much as Speaker of the House of Representatives of the US Congress Nancy Pelosi, who made her demonstrative visit to Taiwan ... US President Joe Biden, with boorish statements against Saudi Arabia and its prince, also pushed this Arab kingdom, a traditional ally of Washington in the Middle East, to reassess its foreign policy.
Information