Russia tensions could trigger all-out war: Britain’s top NATO commander warns Soviet-style tactics could pose ‘existential threat to our whole being’
General Sir Adrian Bradshaw said Vladimir Putin could use ‘hybrid-warfare ‘to seize former Baltic states
He backed plans to set up Nato force integration units in eastern Europe to ‘send a strong signal’ to the Kremlin
Comments echo those by Defence Secretary who claimed Russian aggression poses as great a threat as Isis
Ukraine secret services accuse political aide to Vladimir Putin of directing the snipers in Kiev prior to the revolution
RAF jets this week scrambled to intercept two Russian bombers capable of carrying nuclear missiles off Cornwall
Tupolev Tu95 Bear aircraft streaked along fringes of UK airspace, prompting the deployment of two Typhoons
Russian TV later screens footage of mid-air contact thought to have been filmed on previous interception
Country ‘could not cope’ if Russia attacked because our defences have been ‘decimated’, say military chiefs
David Cameron defiantly dismissed the incident, saying the Russians ‘are trying to make some sort of a point’
But former air chiefs say number of British fighter squadrons has fallen from 26 at Cold War end to just seven
By DANIEL MILLER
DailyMailUK
20 February 2015
Britain’s top Nato commander today warned that current tensions with Russia represent an ‘existential threat to our whole being’ and could escalate into all out war.
During a speech in London, General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin could use ‘Soviet-style’ tactics to seize former Baltic states such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
General Bradshaw, a former director of British special forces and the deputy supreme allied commander Europe, backed plans to set up Nato force integration units in eastern Europe designed to counter a ‘range of hybrid threats’ claiming they would ‘send a strong signal’ to the Kremlin.
He said: ‘The threat from Russia and the risk it brings of a miscalculation resulting in a strategic conflict, however unlikely we see it as being right now, represents an existential threat to our whole being.’
The general claimed Russia may use both traditional Soviet-tactic of escalation dominance as well as hybrid warfare techniques to seize Nato territories.
He pointed to the take-over of Crimea as an example of ‘hybrid warfare’ – where the use of un-uniformed soldiers of unknown nationality and propaganda blurred the true extent of their involvement.
He said that this makes it difficult to judge the true extent of Russian involvement and it therefore becomes hard for all 28 Nato member states to agree on the appropriate response.
He explained: ‘The resulting ambiguity [makes] collective decisions relating to the appropriate responses more difficult’.
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