Also the Muslim refugees flooding Europe crisis has largely been a result of the Syrian civil war, with Russia being the main and mostly only ally of Bashar al-Assad. Supposedly, motivation there was Putin not wanting to lose his only ally in the region left after Gaddafi was murdered, not so much an intentional effort to destabilize Europe, but hey, it worked out, I guess.
Before that there was the drawn out conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The amount of refugees was staggering.
Do take the time to check the facts sometime where those refugees ended up. How many did Germany accept? How many did Sweden take? How many did the US accept?
It does put the recent claims that Europe should pay up for its protection into perspective.
Didn't the disintegration of Libya also not play a big part to start the refugee crisis? Someone explained to me once that once Gaddafi was gone and Libya became a fractured state, that it essentially became a refugee gateway into the Mediterranean as previously that "band" of North African countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt) where acting as a buffer preventing refugees from African countries to move Northwards.
Russia had both a navy base and an air base in Syria. They used the navy base to project power into the Mediterranean Sea and the air base to protect power into Africa (Wagner Group logistics, and air cargo transport of cash bribes and conflict minerals).
