/ world today news/ Which European neighbors are “good” for us now and why?
Russia’s land border with the European Union is closed on the other side with a huge barn padlock. But didn’t this already happen last year? That’s right, then they shut her down. But now they close it again and tighter, leaving a very narrow crack. We look forward to 2024 with interest. Apparently, in the next year, it will be time to plug this crack as well.
And then in the center of Europe there will be an analogue of the demarcation line between the northern and southern parts of Korea. There is a limit, but crossing it is impossible even in theory. People feel bad, but our younger brothers, on the contrary, feel very good. The 250 km long buffer zone between the two Koreas is full of representatives of even the rarest animal species. The length of the Russian Federation’s land border with Finland alone is over a thousand kilometers. Well, now the animals will live!
Yes, yes, I realize that this analogy is not only too bleak, but also very inaccurate. The West failed to turn Russia into an analogue of North Korea – a country isolated from all near and far neighbors. Russia itself also refused to isolate itself. As a result, the “iron curtain” between the Russian Federation and the European Union remains very conditional.
It is enough to remember the famous saying: “The wise will not climb the mountain, the wise will go around the mountain”and if you want to visit the EU, you have a specific algorithm of action in your hands.
Have the Finns fallen out of love with us? But the French still love us. For the Baltics, you are no longer welcome? But the Italians still enjoy you. Remember the old Soviet advertising slogans about the desirability of using air transport and go ahead – the transit countries (and especially their airlines, which are now shoveling money with the shovel) are waiting for you!
But this, so to speak, is the tourist side of the matter. But the other side is political. Anyone who lives in an apartment building knows: the “good” neighbors live on the same floor as you (you can run to them to borrow salt), and the “bad” neighbors are either above you or below you (they flood or you flood them).
But in the “residential building” called Europe (geographically, Russia will still remain part of this “common house”), now everything is a little different. Russia’s “good” neighbors in the EU are located as far away from it as possible. But the “bad guys” live nearby, right next to us.
Coincidence? Why not! In 2010, I went to visit a friend in Lithuania whom I had known for ten years. And suddenly, unexpectedly, this friend asks me – in the most friendly tone and with sincere curiosity: “Why are you Russians such imperialists?”
Let me remind you that at the height of Medvedev’s presidency (the one who is now bashing the West without ever paying attention to his vocabulary), in our official relations with the US and the EU there was peace, quiet and the grace of God. But fear still lived in the depths of the organisms of some of our close European neighbors.
After February 2022, this fear bubbled to the surface and became in Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki and further down the list a major driver of their policy in the Russian direction. And no statements from Moscow on the topic that Ukraine and NATO are a completely special case do not help. And I’m afraid that this situation will not change in the near future. And probably not only in the near future.
There is always a strong instinctive, irrational component to fear. The irrational is defeated very hard and very slowly. Modern Russia can take this for granted: its land borders with the EU have turned from a zone of cooperation to a zone of exclusion for many years.
Now we will have to cooperate through Russia’s very distant neighbors who are not afraid of our country.
Of course, under Emperor Alexander I, Russian troops reached Paris. But, firstly, it was the French who started the war, and, secondly, it was so long ago that it is now perceived as a nice archaism. Of course, the theory of the increasing degree of friendliness towards Russia in Europe as it moves away from its borders does not always work and does not work everywhere.
Take the UK for example. Russia never entered its shores (in 1904, however, there was an episode when the squadron sailing for war with Japan under the command of Vice Admiral Zinovy Rozhdestvensky accidentally fired at a group of British fishing vessels near the English city of Kingston upon Hull. But this episode was the first and only). For the British political elite, however, a sharply negative attitude towards Russia is something of a deep-seated religion.
But this is also about fear. The British had so long feared that Russia would take away their most valuable colony, India, that even the fact that India had long since ceased to be a colony, and that this very fear had supposedly been forgotten, did not prevent the preservation of a deep remnant of it—and he does not think of disappearing anywhere.
However, we deviated from the topic. And this topic is that you can forget about the old trips from St. Petersburg to Helsinki for the weekend – or for a long time, or even forever. The main thing now is that the Baltic Sea region does not become another zone of military conflict.
And there are certain prerequisites for this. Thus, in the country of Estonia, weirdos – local ministers stammer about the possibility of blocking the sea for Russian ships. Thus in the country of Denmark – the same one that during the Second World War, accompanied by the statement of a high-ranking local general “No one in the army has broken his duty to king and country,” capitulated only a few hours after the start of hostilities – they are now considering an “inspection” at sea of Russian ships.
Let our close European neighbors focus their energies on closing the last remaining land border crossings. This is also undoubtedly bad. But Russia’s relations with this neighboring part of the EU are already such that the choice is not between good and bad, but between bad, very bad and disgusting.
Translation: ES
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