"To me, statements like this, as well as the media hysteria of the Western media, look like the moves of the desperate," said Dragana Trifkovic, director of the Centre for Geostrategic Studies in Belgrade, commenting on the emerging calls for strikes against the Crimean Bridge.
"It is obvious that the situation on the field is not in favor of NATO's plans, and that now that they are losing positions, they are also losing self-control."
On 7 July, General Philip Breedlove, who served as NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, told The Times that the bridge connecting Crimea with the Taman Peninsula of Krasnodar Krai in mainland Russia could be destroyed by Kiev with Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
“The Kerch Bridge is a legitimate target,” General Breedlove claimed. “Now that the West has supplied Ukraine with Harpoon missiles, I think the Russians have every reason to worry about Ukraine launching an attack on the bridge."
At a press briefing held on 8 July, The War Zone asked a senior US official whether or not there were any "preclusions" about the use of the M142 HIMARS - provided to Kiev by the Biden administration - to attack the Crimean Bridge.
"As I said, there aren't any preclusions that I'm aware of on Ukrainians fighting on their sovereign territory against Russia," insisted the official while speaking on condition of anonymity.
The provocative rhetoric employed by the former NATO commander and some US officials clearly indicates that "a war is being waged between Russia and NATO on the territory of Ukraine," according to Trifkovic.
"The escalation of the conflict was caused by the expansion of NATO to the east, although now NATO accuses Russia of being the alleged aggressor," the Serbian geopolitical analyst explained. "A logical question arises: How can Russia, which after the fall of the Berlin Wall voluntarily retreated two thousand kilometers to the east, without firing a shot, be called an aggressive state? The answer lies in the fact that the West promised not to expand NATO to the east, but obviously did not plan to keep that promise."
Trifkovic argued that, "NATO should have been disbanded the moment the USSR and the Warsaw Pact collapsed, because there was no longer any danger from Communism which justified the existence of this alliance."
Given that the alliance's expansion got its second breath after the collapse of the USSR, there is little, if any, doubt that NATO was formed "not for the purpose of defense, but with the idea of offensive action towards the east, where the main target has always been Russia," according to the analyst.
"Although the Russian president has repeated many times in recent years that the further expansion of NATO is a red line for Russia, and that the entry of Ukraine into NATO would threaten the national security of the Russian Federation, the West ignored these words," said Trifkovic. "Unfortunately, Russia is left with no other choice but to launch a military operation and solve the problem of threatening militaristic nationalism in Ukraine, which the West has been encouraging for decades."
Prior to the launch of the Russian special operation to de-militarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, the Kremlin handed draft security proposals to the US and NATO in mid-December 2021. The draft agreements envisaged NATO's non-expansion, Ukraine's non admission to the military bloc, non-deployment of offensive weapons systems near Russia's borders, and the return of NATO's European capabilities and infrastructure to 1997 levels. Moscow warned western states that if its proposals were dismissed, Russia would resort to a military-technical option. However, Russia's core proposals were disregarded by the US and NATO, as well as the EU.