TASS – 2015-04-28 00:47:11
http://tass.ru/en/russia/791533
Russian Military General Says US, West
Wage First Phase of ‘Hybrid War’ on Russia
TASS
MOSCOW (April 24, 2015) — The United States and its allies in the West are waging the first phase of hybrid warfare against Russia, the commander of Russia’s Western Military District, Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov said on Friday. In doing this they use political and economic methods with the aim of destabilizing the situation in the country, he explained.
“The United States is using greater intensity of the Russian Armed Forces’ operative and combat training in the Western ‘strategic direction’, and also Crimea’s reunification with Russia in attempts to form the image of our country as an aggressor against European countries,” Sidorov said.
He recalled NATO had considerably stepped up its military presence in Eastern Europe.
“The anti-Russian policies of the Baltic countries’ political leadership have allowed for the forward deployment of 1,000 troops from the 3rd US infantry division in the territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,” he said.
“Besides, the situation in the region is keynoted by a brainwashing campaign with the aim to foment steady anti-Russian sentiment in society,” Sidorov said.
Hybrid wars are main type of modern military conflicts
The general noted that hybrid wars are the main type of international conflicts these days, with the emphasis placed not on combat operations, but large-scale propaganda campaigns inside the potential enemy country.
“Central to modern wars are ever more often unconventional, hybrid types of operations, incorporating both military operations and activities without the use of military force,” he said. As an example of countries conducting the so-called hybrid wars Kartapolov mentioned the United States, which was trying “to shake loose the Russian economy with the blows of economic sanctions and to impair greater independence of the European Union and its main engines — Germany and France.”
In part, Kartapolov said, this is seen in the US Ukraine Freedom Support Act, adopted on December 19 last year, which called for using non-commercial political organizations in Russia “for the sake of attaining the US aims of disorganizing Russia’s national development,” Kartapolov said.
Lavrov: Russia Became Target of
Unprecedented Confrontation Campaign
TASS
MOSCOW (April 27, 2015) — Attempts to achieve Russia’s isolation have failed, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. “We have become a target of an unprecedented confrontation campaign aimed to pressure Russia,” Lavrov told the Rossiya 24 channel.
He said the campaign was “not only economic and financial but also informational and propagandist. Its purpose to isolate Russian was openly proclaimed. But it failed,” the minister said.
He said he saw Russia’s great achievement in “our patience, self-confidence, rejection of attempts to punish us for the truth, striving for justice and refusal to leave our compatriots in the lurch.”
Speaking about the recent successes of the Russian diplomacy, Lavrov said that Russia had succeeded in “drawing attention to the necessity to respect principles of the international law,” including people’ s right to self-determination.
NATO Expansion Is Major
US Miscalculation — Russian Envoy
http://tass.ru/en/world/789860″>TASS
(MOSCOW (April 16, 2015) — NATO expansion is a major US policy miscalculation, which has failed to resolve the issue of security in Europe, Russia’s Ambassador to NATO Alexander Grushko said on Thursday.
“The project of the NATO expansion has exhausted itself,” Grushko told reporters.
“Many renowned politicians directly state today that after the end of the cold war the US major blunder was a decision on resuming the so-called ‘open door’ policy. This is the US major miscalculation in the 20th century,” the Russian envoy said.
“Today we see that the process of the NATO expansion has not resolved any of the real problems of the European continent,” the diplomat said.
According to Grushko, NATO’s activity in the Balkans has led to numerous troubles in the region and the collapse of states.
“We know the results of NATO’s activity in Libya. Many NATO countries participated in intervention in Iraq and the situation, which has developed in the region, is largely the result of the activity of that organization,” the Russian envoy said.
NATO, US Missile Defense Plans Threaten
Russian Nuclear Forces — Chief of General Staff
TASS
MOSCOW (April 16, 2015) — The number of cases of NATO non-Black Sea states’ ships entering the Black Sea area has increased four times and the number of flights of early radar warning planes has increased nine times.
The United States’ prompt global strike concept and the deployment of a global missile defence system poses a threat to Russian strategic forces and to global security, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov, has said.
“Alongside the creation and deployment of strategic missile defence systems certain fears are aroused by the United States’ implementation of the prompt global strike concept.
“It is universally known that within that concept non-nuclear high accuracy attack weapons of a global range are being developed,” Gerasimov told the 4th International Security Conference in Moscow.
Despite the considerable financial costs and technical problems research in that field is continuing. For that reason it should not be ruled out that non-nuclear global strike weapons will become a reality in the foreseeable future,” Gerasimov said.
“In combination with the implementation of ballistic missile defence plans this may create a risk of upsetting the strategic nuclear balance, which still remains a safeguard of world stability,” Gerasimov said.
These steps by the United States are solid reasons for Russia to take proportionate retaliatory measures, he warned.
NATO seeks to create hotbeds of tension on Russian borders
“As they seek to ‘put Russia in its place,’ Washington and its NATO partners show increasingly obvious interest in creating crisis situations in the regions bordering on the Russian Federation,” he said at the 4th Moscow conference on international security.
For this purpose, the tactic of color revolutions is used, the chief of the Russian General Staff said.
“The technology of these revolutions has become standard — manipulating outside with the population’s protest potential, using the information space combined with political, economic, humanitarian and other non-military measures,” he said.
The scenarios of state coups in the form of color revolutions in the post-Soviet space were successfully implemented in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldavia, he said. “As a result, basically pro-Western and anti-Russian forces were brought to power,” the general said.
Gerasimov said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization seeks to create new hotbeds of instability near Russian borders. He recalled that the admission of new members to the alliance was continuing non-stop.
“Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are considered as the most likely aspirants. Also, the alliance keeps speculating about the prospects of Georgia’s and Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration,” Gerasimov said.
“It is characteristic that almost all new members of the alliance are former members of the Warsaw Treaty Organization or post-Soviet republics. In other words, since the 1990s NATO’s expansion has proceeded strictly to the east, towards Russia’s borders,” Gerasimov told the 4th International Security Conference in Moscow on Thursday.
“We are being told that the development of the North Atlantic Alliance is being carried out exclusively for defensive purposes and that it is not aimed against Russia. In the meantime, universally-known facts point to the opposite. Since 1999 the number of the alliance’s members has grown by twelve, while throughout the Cold War period only four new members were admitted,” Gerasimov said.
“Even regardless the political aspect of the NATO leadership’s policies the analysis of the situation entirely from the strategic viewpoint cannot but identify the negative influences of the emerging situation on Russia’s military security,” he said.
According to Gerasimov, the Russian Defense Ministry has recorded intensification of NATO military activity near Russia’s borders.
“Compared to 2013 [in 2014] the number of cases of NATO non-Black Sea states’ ships entering the Black Sea area has increased four times, the number of tactical and reconnaissance aircraft flights near the Russian borders has increased two times, and flights of early radar warning planes — nine times,” he said.
“Since the start of 2014, the number of NATO operations has drastically increased,” Gerasimov said.
According to the Russian General Staff Chief, the number of NATO exercises last year increased practically 1.8 times, compared to 2013.
The total number of military personnel of NATO countries has exceeded 3.7 million.
“The number of joint armed forces of NATO reaches 1.7 million people, and the overall number of regular armed forces of the alliance has exceeded 3.7 million people,” Gerasimov said.
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