Fatal Strike: Mercenary Road of Gunfire Ranger-Chapter 973 - 908: Regional Situation

Mountain Eagle and his team of 20 people, were riding three assault boats, led by several Northern Brigade veterans, along a river, heading south into the Kosovo region.

The winter river flow was not very large, and the terrain on both sides of the river just entering the Kosovo area was relatively flat. If it were daytime, the assault boats would be immediately exposed to the border area scout personnel's surveillance.

This area is not under the control of local Kosovo armed forces but rather NATO troops...

Mountain Eagle sat on the assault boat, steering it while listening to his boss Du Shang's introduction...

"There is a contingent of about 800 NATO peacekeeping troops stationed in this area. Crossing eastward from here will enter the territory controlled by the Kosovo Liberation Organization. They dominate a large area in the eastern part of Kosovo, controlling most of the remote rural areas.

The Kosovo Liberation Organization has nearly 4000 mature armed personnel, and the entire organization has almost twelve thousand members. Besides those armed personnel, most of the others engage in drug and human trafficking.

They have their own military bases, armored vehicles, armed helicopters, and even anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons.

Due to their harassment, the Serbian people in the northeastern border areas of Kosovo have had to abandon their land and concentrate in northern cities, or return to Serbia.

Thus, on the Kosovo side of the northeastern border area, large swathes of no-man's land have emerged, allowing them to produce and store drugs without restraint, while it also serves as a transit center for human trading."

As Du Shang spoke, he fondly fiddled with his newly acquired infrared telescope. After explaining the basic situation, he glanced at Mountain Eagle who was steering the boat and hesitated before saying, "I checked the firearms you prepared. In my experience, if it's a raid assassination, with accurate intelligence support, completing the task shouldn't be difficult.

But if you want to capture a live target and also wish to smoothly bring him out of Kosovo, the difficulty becomes different.

We can enter eastern Kosovo along the river path, but taking someone out via the river is extremely difficult.

With a fixed route, once the enemy's helicopter takes off, we won't even have a chance to escape.

Most importantly, even if we manage to take down the enemy's helicopter with Stinger missiles, we won't be able to cross the NATO troops' defense area without alarming the other party..."

Mountain Eagle frowned, curiously saying, "According to your words, the Kosovo Liberation Organization is a ruthless Albanian gang warlord, and the NATO peacekeeping troops' existence is to suppress them.

Could it be that they are completely indifferent to these gang warlords?"

Du Shang listened, his expression somewhat somber, and said, "Because they don't believe that a nation and ethnicity that they bombed into fragmentation would genuinely lean towards them.

They merely want to reduce the Serbian population within Kosovo as much as possible and continually create turmoil, forcing Serbia to endlessly compromise, compromise, and compromise again..."

Mountain Eagle listened and sighed slightly, saying, "Politics has no conscience...

The pro-Russian Serbia makes the European Union feel as if a bone is stuck in its throat. The reason Kosovo keeps seeking independence is because it is a key point in the game between the European Union and Russia, and it is also a buffer between Serbia and Albania.

Serbia being forced into its current plight, Russia actually needs to bear part of the responsibility; being a big brother to them might be really difficult.

European integration seems to be continually advancing, and Serbia has been included in it, but if Serbia ever reclaims Kosovo, you could threaten the energy pipeline passage from Albania to Italy at any time by moving south.

You should know, the EU's southern natural gas corridor...

This is a large energy pipeline running from Azerbaijan (Caspian Sea Shah Deniz Oil Field) → Georgia → Turkey → Greece → Albania → Italy.

Before I came, I checked, among the NATO peacekeeping troops stationed in Kosovo, Italians are the most numerous.

For the European Union, Kosovo is a strategic buffer because once the natural gas pipeline in Albania is cut off, several countries around Italy will fall into a natural gas shortage.

You might say you don't want to fight, but that's not how international politics and finance are calculated...

Because once you reclaim Kosovo, as long as you make an aggressive posture south, or even just have some conflict with Albania, the international natural gas prices would soar, and the EU wouldn't hand such a critical bargaining chip over to Serbia.

You know, this natural gas corridor can only deliver 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe annually, but even Italy alone needs to consume 70 billion cubic meters annually, and the total demand of Europe reaches 4,000~5,000 billion cubic meters.

This pipeline is critical because it can always connect with Iran's natural gas pipeline using Azerbaijan's pipeline...

The Iran nuclear issue has been repeatedly fluctuating. Iranian President Ahmadinejad is anti-American and pro-European. Europe is ambiguously positioned between the US and Iran. Turkey is arrogant, the hatred between Albanians and Serbs is irreconcilable, all these various situations owe thanks to this pipeline.

Not just here, the pipeline's origin, Azerbaijan, is also a powder keg. Their conflict with neighboring Armenia could erupt at any moment, and the ones holding the fuse of the powder keg are the US and Russia.