Bloomberg: Even if he wanted to, Putin would not have planned the weakening of NATO better

If Russian President Vladimir Putin was thinking of a way to weaken NATO, he could not do it much better than what is already happening right now, according to the American agency Bloomberg.

Bloomberg, in fact, states that the candidate of the Republican Party for the president of the USA, Donald Trump, is questioning the basic principles of NATO and hints that he might recognize Crimea as part of Russia.

In Turkey, at the same time, officials led by the chief adviser to the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accuse the US of a failed military coup attempt in the Alliance's second-largest military, fueling a rise in anti-Americanism that Putin is "rushing to exploit."

"Unexpectedly, with little effort, the KGB veteran reaps the sudden fruits of internal political circumstances in the two pillars of the European joint defense structure," the American agency assesses.

Putin is "devilishly lucky", according to guest associate at the European Council for Foreign Affairs Mark Galeotti.

The Russian president, he says, can only sit back and watch as this, as he states, "richer, more powerful and based on legitimate values" bloc falls apart.

Putin is using events to his advantage, including Europe's biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II, which has strengthened political parties of the left and right friendly to him across the continent and influenced Britain's historic vote in June to leave the EU. EU, concludes Bloomberg.