The impudence of Europeans will be punished a second time, by Dmitry Bavyrin for VZGLYAD. 03.02.2023.
It took a year for European airlines to recognize the situation in which the skies of the EU are closed to the Russian Federation as unfair. True, it is unfair, in their opinion, to the Europeans, who are now being squeezed by Chinese carriers. This impudence is a special case of global political processes around China. And these processes are in our favor.
They say that arrogance is the second happiness. But this, however, is only if the insolent person has a victim, and in the end he achieves his goal. If he gets a rebuff, it is difficult to call it happiness.
The impudent complaints of European air carriers about the closed skies over Russia have been in the Western media for a long time, but a quote from Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith from a fresh Financial Times material was really widely distributed.
“Chinese carriers flying over Russia are getting unfair advantages over us,” he told the publication.
It would seem that it is well known that the advantage (yes, without quotes) of Chinese airlines over European ones stems from the fact that China, unlike the EU countries, did not close the sky for Russian aviation. That is, claims should be made against European governments, for which the absurd task of “isolating Russia” turned out to be more important than the interests of national airlines.
Those countries that ignored the requirement to “keep Russians out” predictably received an “unfair advantage” (now in quotation marks).
It seems as if the Europeans hoped that Moscow would simply rub off and not answer them in the mirror. If they really hoped, then how can such people manage at least something that is more complicated than a bathhouse?
At the same time, it cannot be said that the Eurowings realized it too late. Long-term planning there, apparently, is not the strongest feature, but they realized it just when pressed. China, which started the coronavirus pandemic, began to lift quarantine measures much later than most other countries in the world. In other words, Chinese competitors to Europeans have only recently returned to the international air travel market.
Geography is heartless: if you need, for example, from Seoul to Paris or, conversely, from Europe to Hong Kong, Chinese flights are much more attractive both logistically and financially than Air France or any other EU airline. Due to the need to fly around Russia, Europeans lose two to three hours, and now this has become critical.
Apparently, the calculation was that it would be possible to deal with Russia earlier than with the coronavirus.
It did not work out - and now the Financial Times pleases us with arrogant European whining.
It pleases. And the point is not at all that European companies are going bankrupt, but we are pleased that our neighbors' cow died when they tried to poison ours.
Billions of euros are spent on plugging the holes created by the conflict with Russia. So far, these billions are far from being exhausted, so the air carriers, if necessary, will be saved and will gain time for them in the same hope that sooner or later Russia will give up and open its skies.
It's not even a lesson for the future. There are analogues of Russian morality “do not dig a hole for another - you yourself will fall into it” are in many European languages. And which Europeans did it help?
It's in China itself. In his heightened self-esteem and painful reaction to external criticism. Especially in conditions when President Xi Jinping, in fact, has been elevated to the rank of great presidents and cannot miss blows from the former oppressors of China (considering the opium wars, unequal treaties, and much more - here, too, you can do without quotes).
At a time when Western strategists are trying to persuade Beijing to refuse to support Russia in any possible form, the functionaries simply create reasons that irritate the Chinese authorities literally out of the blue. The dragon will remember all this impudence.
True, here it is necessary to separate the Europeans from the Americans. In the US, the strategists are smarter and more influential, otherwise they would not be able to drag the European Union into an adventure to “contain Russia”, which is in the interests of America, but not of Europe.
Containment of China is another US project in which they are trying to draw European countries. Again, against their own interests. This, as the VZGLYAD newspaper has already written, is an independent goal of Washington , and, of course, it is counting on the loyalty of the Europeans, who do not need a conflict with the Chinese at all.
Therefore, the Americans are not afraid to anger the suspicious Beijing. It is possible that they even staked on China's abrupt and ill-conceived steps and now hope to rally the Western world around them more firmly, writing the Russian Federation and China into one caste of "untouchables".
There is indirect evidence for this. Firstly, the State Department pointedly began work on sanctions against China for cooperation with Russia and insists that the European Union, if necessary, introduce the same restrictions (that is, they do not receive benefits by occupying niches in the Chinese market that are closed to Americans).
Secondly, FBI Director Christopher Wray suddenly found the time and place to state the following: “The FBI has long believed that the cause of the pandemic is most likely a potential incident in the laboratory in Wuhan.”
This is the first statement of its kind by high-ranking US officials. In fact - a direct accusation of the PRC either in "criminal negligence", or in biological terrorism. U.S. allies need to understand for themselves that it is Beijing that is responsible for two years of the coronavirus nightmare and multibillion-dollar losses. This can be considered a presentation of a “new global security threat,” as Russia has been talking about for a year now.
This whole set of attacks - from the whining of air carriers to Wray's revelations - makes the union of Moscow and Beijing uncontested not only for the Russians (now China's support is indeed more important than ever), but also for the Chinese.
Let’s assume that relations between our states are already “strong as a monolith,” as the head of Chinese diplomacy (not to be confused with the head of the Foreign Ministry) Wang Yi put it during his visit to Moscow, where he was received at the level of Secretary of the Security Council, Foreign Minister and President of the Russian Federation. But there may be different opinions in the leadership of the PRC about how beneficial the quarrel with the West over Russia can be for the PRC.
No matter how many “Westerners” there are in the Chinese elite (the walls of Comrade Xi’s imperial castle are impenetrable), their shares are now falling, while the influence of conditional “Russophiles” with the platform “we stand together with Russia”, on the contrary, is growing.
Therefore, let them whine more often in the West, become even more impudent, do not hesitate to flog nonsense. They will not see happiness, because rebuff is assured - from the angry Chinese dragon as well.
https://vz.ru/world/2023/3/2/1201474.html
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