Russia is not happy about the U.S. and NATO decision to rotate American armored brigades into Eastern Europe on a permanent basis as a response to preceived Russian aggression against the Baltics and former Soviet nations.
“We are not passive observers, we consistently take all the military measures we consider necessary in order to counterbalance this reinforced presence that is not justified by anything,” Moscow’s permanent representative at the alliance, Aleksandr Grushko, said in an interview with TV channel Russia-24 on Wednesday. “Certainly, we’ll respond totally asymmetrically,” reports RT.
Grushko did not elaborate on his statement, but said Russia’s actions would correspond to its “understanding of the extent of the military threat, would not be extremely expensive, but also highly effective.”
“As of today, assessing as a whole what that the US and NATO are doing, the point at issue is a substantial change for the worse in the security situation,” he said.
The Pentagon plans to deploy up to three heavy units at a time into NATO’s eastern flank that borders Russia. These will include at least one armored, one airborne, and one Stryker brigade.
“This Army implementation plan continues to demonstrate our strong and balanced approach to reassuring our NATO allies and partners in the wake of an aggressive Russia in Eastern Europe and elsewhere,” Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove of the US European Command said. “This means our allies and partners will see more capability – they will see a more frequent presence of an armored brigade with more modernized equipment in their countries.”
It is yet to be seen what Russian military commanders mean by an ‘asymmetric response.’
“We see that the plan to increase readiness approved at the NATO summit in Wales is being consistently implemented, new and new measures aimed at ‘calming down’ US allies in Eastern Europe are announced,” Grushko said as he responded to the news from the Pentagon. “Reading these materials makes your hair stand on end, because of how some experts discuss with aplomb that if NATO had not taken measures, our [Russia’s] tanks would already be in Tallinn and Riga.”
