Prague - Three top intelligence officers, former military diplomats, who have been operating for many years in Ukraine and Russia, are frustrated by the naivety and clumsiness of the Western countries towards Moscow. They have decided to waive their anonymity for once. Their names are Vlastimil Pávek, Miroslav Poláček and Vladimír Suchodolinský.
Pávek has been for many years deputy military attaché in Moscow. Poláček did the same in Ukraine. Slovak diplomat Suchodolinský has been operating in both countries and later he became deputy director of the Slovak Military Intelligence.
“The talk about Russia’s weakness is unsettling me,“ Pávek said. “On the contrary, Russia is rich, it has enough raw materials and a good armament. I don‘t know where the idea comes from that it will be easy to bring Russia to its knees. And what about the sanctions? Everything that won’t be delivered by Europe, Russia will easily gain from China or Brasil.“
Slovak secret services have been warning for many years against widespread corruption in Ukraine which will, in his opinion, bring polarization and disintegration to the country sooner or later.
“Nobody has not been interested in warnings and analyses of our intelligence officers, many of these warnings being several years old,” Suchodolinský stressed. “That’s why nothing has been happening for a long time.”
He has some doubts that the world leaders had really no information about massive military spending in Russia and extensive maneuvers of the Russian army.
Pávek says it unequivocally: NATO and EU don’t understand the situation on the eastern frontier of Europe properly. In his opinion, Russia will never allow to Ukraine to become member of NATO.
“It was the promise to enter the West European security and economic structures given to Ukraine that started the Russian occupation of Crimea and later also the Moscow help to the pro-Russian separatist in Eastern Ukraine,” Pávek added.
“Fanaticism and hatred is spreading among the people very quickly,” Poláček warned. “The West didn’t want to see the roots of such a manifestation of violence. More important was the trade with Russia. The Western alliance have dreamed a dream about eternal peace and started dangerous cuts in military spending.”
All three intelligence officers agree that Russia is strong as never before and that Putin will punish every manifestation of weakness. And a strong Putin impresses most Russians. On the other side, Pávek and Suchodolinský warn against new NATO bases and military deployment near the frontier with Russia.
“It would be a great risk with unpredictable consequences,” Pávek warned. “It will start a hardly manageable escalation.”
“Putin only understands force,” Suchodolinský said. “Lets him learn our force, but not the confrontational one.”
All three intelligence officers warn that the EU has not the necessary information about Russia and Ukraine and uses mostly information from media and other available sources. On the contrary, Putin, as an ex-KGB officer works with information from other sources and analyses them carefully.
“And if the secret service delivers such information to the Western governments, they don’t want to hear them because of the trade contracts with Russian,” Suchodolinský pointed out.
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