Russia poses an immediate threat to the European Union through sabotage and cyber-attacks, but its high military spending suggests President Vladimir Putin intends to use his armed forces elsewhere in the future, the EU's top diplomat has warned.
“Russia is already a direct threat to the European Union,” said EU Foreign Minister Kaja Kallas.
She cited several cases of airspace violations, provocative military exercises and attacks on energy networks, pipelines and undersea cables.
Ms Kallas stressed that Russia already spends more on defence than the 27 EU countries combined and this year will invest “more in defence than in its own healthcare, education and social policy combined.”
“This is a long-term plan for sustained aggression. You don't spend so much money on (military) things if you're not going to use it,” Ms Kallas told EU policymakers in Strasbourg, France.
“Europe is under attack and our continent is in increasingly threatening circumstances,” she added.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said that Russia produces the same amount of weapons and ammunition in three months as 32 NATO countries produce in a year.
He suggests that by the end of the decade, Russia could launch an attack on a NATO ally.
According to military officials and experts, the acts of sabotage and cyberattacks are mainly aimed at weakening European support for Ukraine.
Still, there is growing concern in Europe that Russia might seek to test NATO's Article 5 security guarantee – the promise that an attack on any ally will trigger a collective response from all 32 countries.
In 2021, NATO allies agreed that significant and cumulative cyber-attacks could, in certain circumstances, also constitute an armed attack that could trigger Article 5, but no action has been taken so far.
With the Trump administration now focusing on security issues in the Middle East and China, Europe has been left to its own devices and Ukraine, leaving it in an even more vulnerable position.
Last week, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service (BND), Bruno Kahl, warned against underestimating the Russian threat to the West and NATO.
“We are absolutely certain and have intelligence data that confirms that Ukraine is just a step towards the West,” Mr. Kahl said on the Table Today podcast on June 9, according to the German news agency dpa.
Russia's goal is to expand its influence in the West, the head of the BND noted.
“They are seeking to return NATO to the state it was in in the late 1990s. They want to exclude
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
