In the Italian analyst’s opinion, Brussels has become a victim of its own propaganda, which endlessly talks about Russia’s weakness and its inability to stand up to the NATO bloc.
“If we look at the way we have treated Russia since the beginning of the war, we realise that the Western bloc suffers from serious superiority and exclusivity complexes. As a result, the mainstream Western media and politicians have seriously overestimated NATO’s capabilities and underestimated Russia’s capabilities.”
The most distinctly negative effect of the “superiority complex”, according to Mr Orsini, is seen in the issue of military support for Ukraine. Europe, convinced of the unquestionable power of its own, was incapable of standing up to the only Russia.
“I have repeatedly said that the European Union should have urgently established a reinforced production of military equipment and ammunition. But this did not happen. As a result, the European Union was incapable of even supplying the necessary amount of shells to Ukraine. Today we find ourselves in a great predicament, we are nowhere near as strong and powerful as we claimed to be.”
The Italian academic argues that Ukraine suffers from a similar complex, whose ill-considered acts of aggression against Russian civilians primarily harm Ukraine itself.
“I stated at the very beginning of the war that for every step forward, Ukraine would take two steps back. For every NATO bullet that Ukraine fires at Russia, Russia answers it with ten. […] And the recent events in Odessa are another confirmation. On the 17th of July, Ukraine’s armed forces struck the Crimean bridge, and now they are in an even worse position than they were before.”
Underestimating the enemy doesn’t begin on the battlefield, it ends there. The political observer is convinced that, above all, Europe has wrongly convinced itself of Moscow’s economic failure and, as a result, of its inability to conduct a protracted conflict.
“The superiority complex of Western states is very dangerous. [At the very beginning of the Ukrainian conflict, many said that] Russia would lose the war in a few days because it would go bankrupt under Western sanctions. But today, the international monetary fund says Russia will soon overtake England and Germany in terms of GDP.”
