Lol all talk and no actions since forever
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Europe lacks coordination as Russia ‘prepares for war with NATO’: Experts
Last week’s European Union summit was a case in point. Belgium obstructed a plan to use Russian money to finance Ukraine’s defence and turbocharge Europe’s defence industry. Russia’s “shadow fleet“, suspected of espionage and sabotage operations, was not mentioned in the summit conclusions.
“Europe is no more ready today to face Russia’s military advances than it was in 1939 as Nazi troops were at the door,” said Joseph Fitsanakis, assistant director at the Center for Applied Intelligence in Coastal Carolina University, one of a handful of US institutions teaching intelligence and national security.
“Front-line states like Finland, Poland and the Baltics have no illusions about what is coming,” he told Al Jazeera. “However, I fear that, plagued by internal divisions and victimised by relentless Russian disinformation operations, Western European populations are not even moderately awake to the dangers that threaten their security.”
Since 2022, Russian intelligence has been accused of sabotage and disinformation campaigns designed to disorient and divide.
“The hybrid warfare is about making us stressed, making us feel that in peacetime we are vulnerable … and, I think, in a way, exhausting us towards being more recipient towards the final goal that Russia has for Europe, which is a division again into spheres of interest,” Anna Wieslander, Northern Europe director for the Atlantic Council, a US think tank, told Al Jazeera.
‘Period of emergency’
Those alleged Russian activities appeared in a more overt phase on September 10 when two dozen Russian Geran-2 drones strayed into NATO airspace, testing Polish air defences.
During the preceding three and a half years of war in Ukraine, only three drones had strayed into Poland.
European alarm was confirmed nine days later when three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered Estonian airspace over the Gulf of Finland for 12 minutes. Italian F-35s stationed in Estonia scrambled to intercept them.
Then on September 21, Germany scrambled two Eurofighters to intercept a Russian Ilyushin 20-M reconnaissance aircraft flying without a flight plan or radio contact in its Baltic Sea airspace.
Four days after that, NATO command said two Hungarian Gripen fighters took off from Siaulai in Lithuania to intercept a Su-30, a Su-35 and a MiG-31 “flying close to Latvian airspace”.
“Historically, Russia has initiated ‘special activities’ during what Russian planners refer to as the ‘special period’, also known as ‘period of emergency’. This term denotes a time of rising tensions just prior to the outbreak of an all-out war,” Fitsanakis said.
‘Russian military is actively preparing for war with NATO’
Western intelligence services have been issuing warnings since January 2024 that a NATO-Russia war could become a reality in five to eight years.
Martin Jager, head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, told the Bundestag this month that this could come sooner.
“We must not sit back and assume that a possible Russian attack will not come until 2029 at the earliest,” he told lawmakers, saying Europe faced “a new quality of confrontation”.
Europeans call the “period of emergency” by another name – “phase zero” – defined as “testing responses, gathering intel and blurring civilian-military lines”, said Demetries Andrew Grimes, a decorated veteran US special forces commander.
“Like the Russian intelligence community, the Russian military is actively preparing for war with NATO,” Fitsanakis said.
In recent weeks, the Kremlin has rejected accusations that Russia is behind drone incursions while accusing Europe of stoking hysteria.
On Saturday, Rodion Miroshnik, a Russian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs official, told the Tass news agency that European countries have “unfortunately assumed a hawkish position”.
He accused European politicians of trying to “prevent direct bilateral contact between Russia and Ukraine, between Moscow and Washington, precisely for settling the issues of confrontation”.
Source: Al Jazeera
