RUSSIA - Russia poses a direct threat to the European Union through acts of sabotage and cyberattacks, but its massive military spending suggests that President Vladimir Putin also plans to use his armed forces elsewhere in the future,...
the EU’s top diplomat warned on Wednesday. “Russia is already a direct threat to the European Union,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. She listed a series of Russian airspace violations, provocative military exercises, and attacks on energy grids, pipelines and undersea cables.
Kallas noted that Russia is already spending more on defence than the EU’s 27 nations combined, and this year will invest more “on defence than its own healthcare, education and social policy combined.” “This is a long-term plan for a long-term aggression. You don’t spend that much on (the) military, if you do not plan to use it,” Kallas told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France.
“Europe is under attack and our continent sits in a world becoming more dangerous,” she added. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said that Russia is producing as much weapons and ammunition in three months as the 32 allies together make in a year. He believes that Russia could be in a position to launch an attack on a NATO ally by the end of the decade. The acts of sabotage and cyberattacks are mostly aimed at undermining European support for Ukraine, military officers and experts have said. But concern is mounting in Europe that Russia could try to test NATO’s Article 5 security guarantee – the pledge that an attack on any one of the allies would be met with a collective response from all 32. (Jamaica Gleaner)
