General Pavel Macko’s Security Radar 126 #360#Alaska Summit#Fog of War#Macko#peace talks#Putin#Russia#stategic bombing#strategic backgroung#Trump#USA#War in Ukraine#Zelenský
All eyes are on Alaska for the meeting of Presidents Trump and Putin. Meanwhile, an intense war is raging in Ukraine. Israel has been hit by a wave of heat, and preparations for the occupation of Gaza continue. And tensions are rising again in Congo and its surroundings.
#360 #Alaska Summit #Fog of War #Macko #peace talks #Putin #Russia #stategic bombing #strategic backgroung #Trump #USA #War in Ukraine #Zelensky
Full transcript of the popular podcast in weekly .týždeň . Originally released Aug 15, 2025 (in Slovak).
Welcome to listening to the 126th edition of General Pavel Macko’s security radar, whom I welcome here.
Pavel Macko: Thank you, have a nice day.
Fog of War
Moderator: Trump and Putin’s meeting will begin literally in a few hours. We’ll return to the preparation and expectations in the background. On the battlefield, or even in the rear, nothing indicates that the war should end. So, Pali, what’s the development?
Pavel Macko: Exactly. We see that both sides are trying to achieve the maximum until the last moment. That means, no slackening of troop activity, that they are preparing to take some advantageous defensive positions, but intense fighting is taking place.
Moderator: I’ll start with strategic bombing. I just read that Ukrainians attacked some cargo ship with weapons.
Pavel Macko: I just caught this from you, that it’s an Iranian cargo ship in a port in the Caspian Sea, where they were transporting Shahed drones. This is a sign that both sides are going all out until the last moment. When we look at Russian strategic attacks, it has quieted down a bit in terms of cities. Nevertheless, the Russians attacked Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro on the 8th. On 10.08, they attacked in the Dnipropetrovsk region and claim to have destroyed 4 Patriot launchers and a radar, which should probably affect air defense. On the 14th, they attacked in Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk.
Russian intelligence says they focused on Sapsan or Grim-2 missile systems. They claim to have eliminated Ukraine’s capability in the area of these deep strikes.
I’ll comment on this a bit. The destruction of Patriots wouldn’t be something exceptional; we’ve seen it before. 4 launchers, that’s about half of a fire battery. It’s a serious loss because they’re looking for every single launcher. Here’s just my note, because even before, when they destroyed some part of a Patriot near Kyiv more than a year ago, it turned out that it had been sitting in one place for too long.
This is a mobile device. It is, of course, used for strategic defense in the case of Ukraine, but it needs to be moved. That means moving and implementing measures that the Iranians experienced – that we must have these devices protected. Not only against those large missiles that shoot it down but also against drones and other devices that its radar doesn’t normally see. That means, multi-layered defense must be done.
We’ll see if this is confirmed or not. Of course, it would be unpleasant, but again, this is a big war where neither side can remain without losses.
As for the destruction of Sapsan, I’m not sure if they really managed to liquidate these factories. Whether they tried to do it, whether it wasn’t just about the launchers somewhere in Sumy, but that there are those military armories in Dnipropetrovsk.
Here, I would say that sometimes silence is golden. I understand that President Zelensky needs to boost morale and that he talks about „we have already tested those rockets, we are ready,“ but when he presents it too publicly, he draws a lot of attention, because the other side will evaluate it as a real threat and will do everything to destroy it. It would be more sensible to produce a few hundred and then announce it and the next day make a flurry. But whether they really destroyed it or not, we will see by whether the Ukrainians will use them.
Moderator: Well, and what about the Ukrainians then, how are they doing?
Pavel Macko: The Ukrainians were also extremely active. You already mentioned that last event now, which I haven’t studied in depth yet, but when we look, they attacked virtually every day:
▪️August 9 in the Volgograd region – a refinery in Volgograd, by the way, the smoke can still be seen even now
▪️August 10 in the Belgorod region – ammunition depot
▪️August 11 in the Bryansk region – a railway junction used for military logistics (by the way, this was also part of that Kursk operation, that there was a possibility to eliminate several of those directions)
▪️August 12 in the Krasnodar Territory – they attack there often, but now they attacked fuel storage tanks, and not with air drones, but with naval drones
That means, they actually sailed across the entire Black Sea and hit with naval drones, which are in the Sea of Azov and hit coastal storage tanks. So it wasn’t quite the eastern Black Sea coast, but it was in the Sea of Azov. That means, they had to get to it or pass by Kerch unobserved under the Kerch Bridge.
Moderator: So that definitely caught my interest. I’m just waiting for when that Kerch Bridge will come up.
Pavel Macko: I think that at the moment it’s not such a priority that they would invest too much in it. The Russians are guarding it, and it wouldn’t give any operational advantage to the Ukrainians at the moment.
Moderator: And what about Pokrovsk? Is it really such a serious breakthrough as they say?
Pavel Macko: Well, now let’s look at those battlefields. The situation on that Donetsk front is, of course, tense. It’s like a tightly stretched string, where you just wait for it to snap.
I’ve been saying for a long time that the Russians are increasing that pressure, they have numerical superiority, they’re trying different tactics. And they managed a breakthrough with smaller units, they seeped through inconspicuously. And actually, under normal circumstances, if I looked at a 10-kilometer shift – well, that’s not like from Lužná to Bratislava. And I’ll say that in such a big war, it’s nothing.
Of course, but given that despite that enormous effort, enormous losses, we see those Russian advances – step by step, house by house, trench by trench, and it took them a year and a half – they actually made about a 10-kilometer advance over the course of this week.
Towards Dobropilia. I’ll just explain it, we don’t have a map, so it’s like:
▪️They’re fighting at Kupiansk. The fighting still persists there, nothing fundamental is changing. They’re trying to capture Kupiansk through that bridgehead, across the Oskil River.
▪️They’re fighting at Chasiv Yar, where they’ve already gotten behind that area, behind Chasiv Yar, but the Ukrainians are still holding in the northwestern part of Chasiv Yar.
▪️Kostiantynivka is free, but they’re kind of bypassing it.
▪️Battles similar to those in Chasiv Yar are also in Toretsk.
And to that, there’s also the area that is Pokrovsk. At Pokrovsk, they got from the south to Dachne, that’s southwest, that they bypassed Pokrovsk. But to Dobropilia, when they got further, there’s actually that road that goes from Pokrovsk and then goes north between Dobropilia and Kramatorsk. It’s such an important road that the Russians are trying to reach, because that would significantly affect logistics.
Despite the fact that terrain vehicles and the like are also used – the Russians at the beginning of the invasion, and the Ukrainians now need paved communications for large logistics. So it’s serious, mainly because they caught the Ukrainians being careless. Despite knowing that there’s huge pressure there, they allowed the Russians to make such a wedge with which they penetrated 10 kilometers. In this case, it’s quite a lot.
Because it allows, if it were to fall, for example, that Kostiantynivka, it would allow the Russians to open a gate for a larger attack or for the siege of Pokrovsk. But it’s not something that would mean that everything will collapse now and they’ll start advancing tens of kilometers. But the Russians will increase that pressure there.
We’re still talking about them looking for a place to push. Of course, the Russians don’t control 30% of the Donetsk region. And even if they didn’t encompass it, they want to have the most advantageous position, so that if by chance in the future, even after some ceasefire, the fighting is renewed, they would get as far as possible.
Moderator: We might talk about this tomorrow morning together, after the Trump-Putin meeting. You’ll be wiser, I probably won’t be, but you will be. Alright, let’s go to the criticism of Syrskyi.
Criticism of Syrskyi
Pavel Macko: Well, and this is related to precisely these battles. When we were talking here about him replacing Zaluzhnyi, we said, well, it’s a legitimate thing for President Zelensky, but by doing so, he’s also putting his hands more into those operations.
Syrskyi is exactly the person who has that long screwdriver and actually tries to manage, even micromanage, every unit. And here I would say that the criticism is partly justified, partly not.
Simply, no one changes. Zelensky took Syrskyi because he was the less rebellious one and asked less than Zaluzhnyi. On the other hand, it was known about Syrskyi that he’s that Soviet soldier. That he’s simply that unyielding one, that he commands. When he defended Bakhmut, he held Soledar for a long time, I criticized it, because they sacrificed three brigades in Soledar.
So the criticism is partly justified, but of course, you have to fight with what you have. You won’t have better ones. Here’s a different trend. When I was doing that study with those German colleagues from that first phase of the war, Ukraine still had those experienced soldiers from Donbas. And they really used mission command, or command through objective, they were independent.
But many of them also fell, many of them were rotated. And actually what happened is that we’ve now reached the stage that they had to mobilize and they’re using those officers who have those old Soviet habits. And really it’s as the Wall Street Journal wrote, that „a big Soviet army is destroying a small one.“
But that’s the worst thing the Ukrainians could have done. I’ve been criticizing it for at least a year and a half, that they must not adapt to Russian tactics, because Russian tactics are based on massive artillery strikes, aviation, and quantity.
It’s not true, as Tomáš Forró was writing now, that the Ukrainians are also lacking personnel, which is true, but that therefore they have no chance of winning and will lose sooner or later. That’s not true, because in history, rarely has pure quantity alone won. But of course, it’s a complex situation, the Ukrainians have to deal with it.
Middle East
Moderator: So, the Middle East. What’s new there? How is it developing?
Pavel Macko: The situation is influenced by the Israeli cabinet’s decision to occupy and clear Gaza. Currently, it’s such that preparatory work is underway. The General Staff is still planning the parameters of that operation. As we said in the introduction, a massive heat wave has hit not only Slovakia but also Israel. There, of course, it means something completely different.
At the moment, the order has already been issued for the evacuation of those people from the Gaza Strip. But the conditions or camp in the southern part of the Gaza Strip are not yet prepared.
Intense military operations were taking place. Israel again bombed several Hamas positions. There were also higher casualties. Thus, the humanitarian crisis is deepening. Although in one day, the Israelis released more, but significantly more trucks are prepared than they can let through continuously into that area.
What definitely caught the attention of all media were the protests and the killing of journalists. Up to six of them. Of course, Israel immediately said that the journalist, one from Al Jazeera, is or was… I saw photographs where he was photographed with those terrorists. That he was the head of a Hamas cell. That means, at that moment, he became a legitimate target, because that’s exactly the controversy, like when an unnamed „woodpecker“ in Slovakia infiltrated the media as a member of SIS [Slovak Intelligence Service].
Well, Peter Tóth.
Moderator: I was thinking, who is the woodpecker. Peter Tóth.
Pavel Macko: Well, that’s exactly where the boundaries end in a democratic society. Here we’re talking about when someone cooperates with terrorists, they can’t hide behind a microphone.
Of course, controversy was also caused by the statement of Bezalel Smotrich, a minister from those radicals, who again is considering expanding settlements in the West Bank. That’s not really the best time and the best topic to be opening now.
Moderator: Last time, last week, you mentioned that Israel wants to evacuate as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza City down south, by October 7 at the latest. And yesterday I read that they are also negotiating with some African country.
Pavel Macko: Well, and that’s interesting, because Sudan was divided, there’s also South Sudan, and actually Israel is also negotiating with South Sudan about potentially relocating parts of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to South Sudan.
Moderator: Permanently?
Pavel Macko: As soon as they come there temporarily and stay there for more than a year, it will be permanent, because these conditions are worsening in the Gaza Strip.
The city if it will be… because there was a conflict between Israeli forces, the Chief of General Staff says let’s besiege, they’re going to combine siege tactics directly through entry into the city or so-called „clearing operations.“ That’s why the evacuation orders were issued.
The problem is that conditions in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, in that open space where some tent city for 600,000 and more people is supposed to arise, don’t exist yet. I can’t imagine it, it’s also humanitarianly complex.
But on the other hand, these people will be pushed out of that area because of those operations, because otherwise there are huge losses threatened on both sides. And there’s also another risk, exactly the opposite, that Hamas, on the contrary, will try to forcibly keep those people in the Gaza Strip and in Gaza City. They will persuade some to stay, and some will be held there by force.
Moderator: I was completely shocked by the air supply and the fact that one of those packages hit a young Palestinian and killed him. How is it with that supply?
Pavel Macko: Overall, there have already been 23 such incidents. What’s the context? Gaza would need about 600 trucks daily to have such a smooth flow. There are several thousand trucks that are de facto already on the way, and now there are several problems.
The Israelis don’t recognize some unknown NGOs that help, because they don’t consider them partners. Part is stuck on some security checks and suspiciousness, so Israel wants to control each cargo, which delays it, but technically they could probably do it by putting more personnel there, making several control checkpoints, and getting a larger number of trucks into circulation.
To this comes an airlift, in which countries participate. Canada is extremely active, but also Spain and other European countries, which actually drop this aid. But that pallet has about one ton, that’s really the most crisis aid. There I would rather understand if some medical aid, medicines, and such things were dropped to get them as quickly as possible.
Israel allowed it because it trusts those partners that they won’t be dropping weapons and explosives there. But of course, those people are desperate. We’ve experienced this in Africa, we experience it in various conflict zones, that those people desperately lunge for that aid until the last moment. But that pallet is not a parachute with a person, it falls relatively quickly, which means, unfortunately, that accident happened, and there are several problems.
Strategic Background
Moderator: Strategic background. So in a few hours, what will happen?
Pavel Macko: Well, a meeting between Donald Trump and President Putin.
Moderator: And what do you expect from it? Are you optimistic?
Pavel Macko: Well, I have mixed feelings, to be honest. But Trump in his recent statements sounded quite reasonable, he was sending indirect signals to Putin, in my opinion.
But the risk is that he wants to meet one-on-one. This last happened, I think, in Helsinki in 2018, and nobody was enthusiastic about it, because he actually came with such very accommodating steps in favor of Putin.
Moderator: So one former colleague wrote that she wanted to faint to interrupt that negotiation.
Pavel Macko: Yes, I read that somewhere too. Well, what’s the risk? It needs to be said that Trump is not a professional diplomat and he’s up against a KGB agent, who has actually led the state all his life, has these Machiavellian methods under his skin, commands the world map, commands all these nooks and crannies.
It turned out that even with Kim Jong-un, that Trump is… I don’t want to disparage, he’s a president elected by 77 million Americans, so I’d prefer not to comment on him, but simply, he’s a person who is naive in this. Simply, he doesn’t have it studied, that’s the difference compared to Biden, because Biden was a long-time diplomat, a long-time politician. Trump was a real estate agent.
Well, and the problem is that he sometimes nods to something in good faith. It’s not that he’s bad, or too accommodating to Putin, but he simply nods in good faith to something that he thinks is fine, and then finds out that it’s completely different or off, because he sometimes has such childish…
Moderator: Maybe he doesn’t even realize.
Pavel Macko: Well, take for example, he was signing after being elected and after inauguration, he was signing some decrees and some orders, even with Spain, and he asked if it’s a country in BRICS. So Spain, that’s one of the bigger partners in NATO. A schoolboy here would probably know that, but again I say, this is the risk that simply the charm of personality, and we don’t know yet, of course, I wouldn’t go into these conspiracies, what all they have prepared for Trump.
From his statements, I saw a sincere effort that he won’t give it so easily to Putin. But Putin will try to use this situation, because he delayed everything, fulfilled nothing, and still demanded a meeting. Trump said he would mainly listen to him. Let’s hope it will be so.
But actually, it will all be about Putin wanting to open several questions and give that lollipop on which he wants to lure him, because we know that Trump, even in the election campaign, said that he would like to reduce armaments, that he would like simply… Because the INF treaty on those short and medium-range missiles. This strategic agreement fell. The last START is falling. And thereby there’s no replacement for those disarmament treaties from the times of the deep Cold War, and there’s a threat that a new round of the arms race will really be unleashed. Well, and the Russians are offering him that they could negotiate about this.
Moderator: Exactly. And that’s why the signaling needs to be seen in this context as well, because this is called diplomatic signaling. There will be the Zapad [West] exercise, and among other things, the Russians are communicating that in mid-September, they will practice with the Belarusians the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the use of „oreshniki“ [nut-crackers].
Pavel Macko: All this is supposed to make a bait and atmosphere. This is reflexive control. That’s exactly what influences the actions of the other side.
So let’s wait for the results. It’s a few hours. I’m curious myself, because it can go awry in all directions, but one thing is certain. We also discussed this with Martin Svárovský, that in the end, it won’t work without Ukraine. Ukraine has been at war for too long, has been defending itself for too long, and is too big to just accept a new Munich Dictate with the blink of an eye.
Moderator: In connection with tomorrow’s meeting, Chancellor Merz initiated a whole series of meetings of European leaders. How do you evaluate those activities?
Pavel Macko: I think it was necessary. I actually spoke on this topic, I think, on Czech Television last week, that this is exactly what they should be doing, that diplomacy should now be taking place behind the scenes.
Of course, there was something for the cameras, some of it was signals towards Putin, some towards Trump, so that it was also said publicly where some „red lines“ are in quotation marks, so that Trump would also be in the situation that he has to perceive it and can’t then subsequently say that he didn’t know about it.
But I would just pick out two aspects from it. First, what is actually like a prerequisite, on which the partners agreed. Because the atmosphere was good, everyone evaluated it positively. We know that behind the scenes it was probably ugly, as they say in English, so it’s less nice, but there was no discord in advance.
That means, what they at least agreed on was that the format of the negotiations should be such that any final agreement must be with the participation of Ukraine, perhaps other partners as well. Trump also promised that if they agree now, they could quickly proceed next week to trilateral negotiations, and perhaps there would be other partners there as well.
The second thing is that a ceasefire is an absolutely basic condition, that there must be some security guarantees, and the United States indicated that they could be engaged in this, we don’t know yet how, well, and that Russia will not have a veto, even though Trump said that he won’t let Ukraine into NATO anyway.
Moderator: Alright, and what if Putin doesn’t back down?
Pavel Macko: Well, if he doesn’t back down, then we’re in a situation where Trump has lost his pants and image, because in that case, he will look like a very weak negotiator, because he gave an ultimatum, which he even shortened. The ultimatum expired, but he didn’t actually implement anything. Meanwhile, of course, to avoid this stress, he sent Witkoff to persuade Putin. I think it’s on a good path, but I don’t trust Putin too much.
So I caught such a statement, from Trump’s first administration was Marshall Billingslea. He’s such an expert, a plenipotentiary precisely for sanctions, and he’s actually saying what would need to be done. Complete blocking, that simply those sanctions must come. And that would mean complete blocking against all financial institutions, completely cutting off the Russians from the SWIFT system, but also sanctioning secondarily all foreign banks that would try to produce some secondary, some parallel settlement system that the Russians could use.
Furthermore, immediately impose sanctions on several Chinese banks that have, for example, financed exports to Russia and to the aviation and defense sector. Because that machinery for the aviation defense sector went there.
Another thing is to announce sectoral sanctions on all Russian energy transactions, including secondary sanctions, that means, for the time being, there could also be those 25% sanctions that were announced, or tariffs on India, on China. This could be done immediately, and then that law could also come, which is actually in the American Congress. That’s Senator Graham and also Blumenthal. They have 84 co-submitters, so there’s strong pressure there.
And one important thing is that they could also add and expand sanctions on the Russian grey fleet. The United Kingdom did something, the European Union did. In total, there are more than 500 ships that are leased in Russia in all sorts of ways. They would be able to block them in some way.
Of course, if these measures were done, they would be able to throttle Putin by 600 million dollars a day and at the same time, those interests from these frozen parts or from those frozen assets that are there could be given to buy American weapons for Ukraine for the time being. So this would certainly help.
But these are things that we’ve known for, let’s say, three years. And with those sanctions, progress is so terribly slow that the Russians always manage to avoid parts of those sanctions in some way.
VAT on Arms Production
Moderator: Alright, let’s go to Slovakia. Some government politicians, and even the Slovakia movement, have an idea that they want to increase VAT on arms production and maximize the tax and license fees on arms companies, because they allegedly make extreme profits. That seems fine at first glance, you’re making money on weapons. What do you think about it?
Pavel Macko: Well, it has several problems. I would say it bluntly, that it’s dangerous stupid populism and in the end, it would harm Slovakia. Also our defense capability and it would prolong the modernization of the army. And it could drive those manufacturers out of Slovakia.
I’ll try to break it down a bit in two minutes.
First, increasing VAT doesn’t make sense. Those weapons and ammunition are sold primarily abroad, and VAT is applied at the final consumption in our territory. That means, when we increase VAT, on one hand, we’ve increased the defense budget, and right away we take it, because actually, the state pays that VAT to itself. That means, you just recycle your money, which would mean a significant increase in the cost of modernizing our army, which is probably not the best thing we could do in this situation.
As for those licenses and tax increases, well, we have some tax laws, as generally from the point of view of the rule of law. Making up special taxes, that’s like when they invented a special pension for Prime Minister FICO and wanted a special pension for the Attorney General, but not every one, but precisely that Žilinka. This is simply nonsense. This simply isn’t done, because it’s legally non-standard. There should be clear rules.
But quite essential is that good arms factories have always been a lucrative business. But this would actually make the sale of these weapons and ammunition to Ukraine even more expensive. That means, I’m surprised at the Slovakia movement, that apart from that lack of knowledge of economic principles, that we’re actually increasing VAT at home for our own army and making our modernization more expensive, that we’re going to penalize even the Ukrainians, because we’ve caught on to some statement by Robert Fico that „not even a bullet to Ukraine.“ Now we criticize him that he exports more there, that’s okay that we criticize him, but we don’t criticize him for the fact that those arms factories, those weapons are exported there. We criticize him for the hypocrisy that Robert Fico is actually presenting with this.
But now imagine, it’s supposed to be up to 5% of defense expenditure. And so, do we want to buy everything from abroad? Or will we sink our arms factories, or create an environment for them. I would, on the contrary, reduce income taxes precisely to motivate increased production and development of the sector and reduce taxes, or for example, give some state support.
Let’s take, in Vlkanová we have a Slovak arms factory, which grew on a green meadow, which built a quad – a combat vehicle, but the main thing is what’s on it. It’s actually one of the main tools for example for fighting against drones, which are becoming dominant on that battlefield, and they can export it, and we’re actually going to burden them with taxes now and punish them for success.
Simply, this is exactly wrong, when we look at the economy having just 0.2% growth now, one of the smallest in the entire European Union and in the eurozone. That curve of growth decline is horrible when we look at the last year and a half, and that’s not even fully reflecting all those consolidation measures, which are literally suffocating the economy. Let’s not rake and poke into what works.
World War II – Balkans
Moderator: So let’s go to the continuation of the cycle about World War II. Last time we analyzed the Battle of Britain here, and today we’re moving to the Balkans. What was happening there?
Pavel Macko: So briefly, there was the battle for the Balkans, for Greece. Albania was annexed by Italy already in 1939, but Mussolini was looking at Greece. Now he was frustrated by how the Germans were advancing everywhere with blitzkrieg. So he decided without coordination with the Germans to attack Greece. And it didn’t end well. It ended well for the Greeks, but only temporarily, unfortunately.
When we talk, these are battles in the Balkans, which eventually includes the occupation of Yugoslavia and ended with the battle for Crete. So I’ll briefly just first say those events:
On October 28, 1940, Italy attacked Greece from Albania with about 70,000 soldiers. It started with the Italians giving an ultimatum to the Greeks to allow them to advance at sea and to essentially surrender, submit, and subordinate themselves to Italian interests. But the war didn’t develop according to Italian expectations. The Greeks, first of all, stood their ground and said they wouldn’t back down and started fighting.
And subsequently, they even pushed those Italians back into Albania in early November. In December to January, in winter, Greek units advanced deep into southern Albania, to key cities, key mountain passes.
And in February, Britain got involved in it. I remind you that at that time, Cyprus was part of the British Empire. The British had interests in the eastern Mediterranean, and of course, Italian expansion into the Aegean Sea would have threatened their interests. So the British began helping the Greeks with the help of the Royal Air Force and their commando soldiers.
And the Italians got a thrashing. Then the Germans launched Operation Marita in April 1941, and on April 27, the Germans finally conquered Athens. Greece came under Axis occupation. And finally, on June 1, 1941, the resistance on Crete also ended.
Moderator: Well, you already mentioned at the beginning that the main cause of the Italian-Greek war was Mussolini’s imperial megalomania. And what was going on in Yugoslavia?
Pavel Macko: Well, I would still go back a bit to that Mussolini and maybe to those parameters, that when we look, Italy deployed 6 divisions and later increased it to 29 divisions and 400,000 soldiers. But they were poorly equipped, had very low morale, simply it wasn’t going well for them.
Greece started with 4 divisions and 50,000 soldiers, expanded it to 13, but they had strong defensive tactics, high morale, it was in the mountains. The United Kingdom then got involved, and finally Germany attacked in April with 24 divisions, led by Field Marshal List.
When I return to those causes, Mussolini imagined a new Roman Empire. He wanted to achieve all this in the Mediterranean, he wanted to expand Italy’s influence to Greece, to Yugoslavia, to the Balkans. And it was also such frustration, he was jealous of the Germans, that in that Axis, where he was together with Germany and Japan, he played second fiddle.
With Greece, there was of course long-term tension. By the way, October 28 is a very significant, memorial day in Greece. It’s called „Oxi“ day. Oxi was „no,“ because the Italians gave an ultimatum to the Greeks, and the Greek prime minister said that they shouldn’t submit, that simply they would defend themselves. Literally, that was the statement, „so there will be war then.“
And actually, when I now return to Yugoslavia, that’s an interesting development. Because Yugoslavia at the beginning was forced by the Axis countries to sign an agreement with these Axis countries and was like an ally, but that lasted only a few days. In March 1941, it reluctantly signed that tripartite pact under pressure from Germany and Italy.
Two days later, on March 27, there was a coup d’état in Yugoslavia led by pro-British officers. Yugoslavia became a monarchy, they installed King Peter II as the ruling monarch. This angered Hitler, because he counted on using Yugoslavia for his goals. Suddenly it was unreliable for him and a threat to his Balkan strategy.
The Italians also disappointed him, so he decided to solve things himself and directly. On April 6, 1941, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria launched a coordinated invasion of Yugoslavia. It fell in 11 days, Belgrade was heavily bombed. They divided that Yugoslavia. Germany occupied Central Serbia, Italy annexed parts of Slovenia, Kosovo, and Dalmatia. Hungary and Bulgaria also took a part, the Hungarians the north. And the Independent State of Croatia was established in that territory.
But a resistance movement emerged in Yugoslavia, and the country became a focal point of partisan warfare. This then had an impact on the entire course of World War II and further courses of battles in the Balkans, but even on the Cold War.
If we look at it, that resistance had two parts. One were the Chetniks. That was led by General Draža Mihailović. Later, however, those Western allies opposed him, because they suspected him of helping the Nazis in the fight against partisans. And the partisans, led by Josip Broz Tito, they fought in the mountains. They then received great support from the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the USA, and eventually gradually liberated that Yugoslavia.
The significance was that the March coup (1941) in Yugoslavia diverted German troops. They had to delay the operation for the invasion of Greece. Thereby, however, the Barbarossa plan was also delayed. The Germans didn’t manage to get to Moscow after the invasion of the Soviet Union before winter, and actually, it all broke for them. So that was probably the most important thing. And of course, Mussolini’s collapse.
360°
Moderator: 360° Pali, what’s on your radar?
Pavel Macko: Well, again, the situation in Congo, in western Africa, and in the Sahel region is becoming more complicated. The UN is paying increased attention to this. And the problem is that the Security Council holds such regular briefings. So they did such a briefing. It actually got like to the top. It also lit up red on my radar, because the Security Council was discussing it.
There’s a quite difficult humanitarian situation there. There are large such inter-tribal attacks. Well, and actually this something, if you remember that conflict between Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, that was a very bloody conflict, so this is actually still about the same thing. That this area is such a hot cauldron, where it boils and at the moment it’s bubbling and boiling over again.
Moderator: Alright, and what kind of conflict is it? Where does it have its roots?
Pavel Macko: Well, that conflict, it’s a long-term conflict. It goes actually back to the colonial era, because there are several groups there, actually large numbers of inhabitants were relocated there.
And when I look, there was always some war there. Actually, this current situation is that in the Kivu area, there’s such an M23 movement – rebels, who have actually been fighting for a long time for some self-determination. There’s a big escalation of violence, they’re dragging Rwanda, Uganda into it.
But when I take it that those roots go really back to the fact that actually during Belgian colonial rule, large numbers of those Hutus and Tutsis were forcibly relocated from Rwanda to eastern Congo. And that of course caused long-term ethnic tension. Those ethnicities compete or vie for survival, for their living space, for access to food, to resources.
And there was a whole series of wars there. The Masisi War in 1993, then there was an uprising in 1996, which was led by Tutsis in Kivu and it grew into further regional wars, which drew in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi. There was the so-called Second Congo War. And that is sometimes called the African World War. It was in the years 1998 to 2003.
Europe tried to intervene there, as did the UN. And actually, what happened then was that 9 countries and dozens of armed groups actually fought each other, everyone against everyone. So it’s very complex there, it will continue to be complex, there are those cycles of violence and various militias, and there are of course also geopolitical factors. Simply, there are long-term fights and unrest in the Congo area. It’s actually a country rich in gold, tin. But also other minerals that are mined there, some, for example, important for the electronics industry. There’s 80% of the world’s reserves of coltan, where there are two types of such elements, which are actually used in the electronics industry.
Moderator: You mentioned regional influences. How does it affect neighboring countries?
Pavel Macko: At the moment, it’s such that the whole surroundings are destabilized, and we have just in North Kivu 2.5 million people who have been displaced. And thousands more people are hiding in individual areas. There’s a total collapse of healthcare. Well, and there’s a lack of access to basic food.
This potentially threatens that if it doesn’t manage to be dampened, and the world’s largest UN mission is operating there between them, then we have a huge conflict, which can again change to the fact that more of these countries will actually get involved with each other. And that will also mean huge pressure on already broken countries, like Mali, Niger, and those others. And those refugees will simply move somewhere, presumably only northward.
Moderator: Last week we were talking here about Cambodia and Thailand. Those two countries were also filling world media. It’s somehow quieted down. Is there anything new there?
Pavel Macko: Positive, because so far the ceasefire is being observed. There was also some diplomatic development. Cambodia and Thailand held a meeting of that General Border Committee, or what we would call, that demarcation commission, in Kuala Lumpur on August 7. They agreed in detail on a 13-point ceasefire plan. The movement of troops was frozen. There’s a ban on attacks on civilians. ASEAN observer teams are being deployed there. So it’s a fortunately good development so far.
But even that short conflict has its humanitarian and economic impact. When I look at my notes, 130,000 evacuated in Cambodia, they report injured children. GDP in Cambodia will decrease by 3% this year and as a result of a 20% decline in tourism. And there’s a problem that they have rotating, migrating workers there. That movement will also be restricted. So here you can see that even such a very short conflict can have quite strong consequences.
Final Quote
Moderator: So let’s go to the quote.
Pavel Macko: This week I was thinking that we all have such great expectations. In the end, we’ll probably be disappointed. I would give one from Samuel Huntington, the author of the book about the clash of civilizations, very famous, popular, which came out in the 90s. And he says that „expectations should not be taken for granted, because you never know when you will be disappointed.“
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