The secretary-general of the NATO alliance said on Tuesday that Russia was playing a “double game” in Ukraine, issuing conciliatory public statements while massing its forces along the border and smuggling arms and equipment to separatists inside eastern Ukraine.
“There’s no doubt that Russia is heavily engaged in destabilizing eastern Ukraine, and they continue their activities,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an interview shortly after meeting with US President Barack Obama at the White House.
Speaking in unusually blunt terms, Rasmussen, whose term ends in October, warned the West not to be fooled by moderate statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he said was trying to fend off another round of economic sanctions.
Photo: AFP
“Don’t make any mistake, it’s pure tactics,” Rasmussen said. “He keeps open the option to intervene if necessary.”
Rasmussen served as Danish prime minister before becoming NATO secretary-general in 2009. During much of his tenure, the alliance was preoccupied with the war in Afghanistan, a mission far removed from its original role: the defense of Europe against a potential Soviet attack. However, with Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its support for separatists in Ukraine, NATO has returned to its roots.
Russia, Rasmussen said, was waging what he called “hybrid warfare,” a combination of military action, covert operations and an aggressive program of disinformation — all calculated to weaken Ukraine’s new government and leave its eastern part under Russian influence.
Rasmussen said it was likely that separatist fighters had used Russian antiaircraft weapons to shoot down Ukrainian planes and helicopters — echoing recent comments by NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe US Air Force General Philip Breedlove and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
“Who else should have provided the separatists with those weapons?” Rasmussen asked, “Who else?”
With NATO preparing for a critical summit meeting in Wales in early September, Rasmussen said the alliance also needed to reshape itself to face the longer-term reality that “Russia doesn’t consider NATO a partner; Russia considers NATO an adversary.”
With Russia’s military spending on the rise and the military expenditures of many NATO members waning, he said, that presents the alliance with a major challenge.
Besides the threat to Ukraine, Rasmussen said he and Obama had also discussed the winding down of NATO combat operations in Afghanistan and how the alliance planned to respond to what he described as an arc of instability, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and across North Africa.
While Rasmussen said he did not want to speculate about Putin’s immediate plans in Ukraine, he said the most likely situation was a continuation of the Russian strategy to undermine the country’s government.
“I wouldn’t exclude that he keeps open the option to intervene further at a later stage,” he said. “But my guess is that at this stage, he feels that he has achieved a lot through the destabilization of eastern Ukraine.”
It is Rasmussen’s final official visit to Washington as secretary-general.
Former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg is to take over as the NATO head in October.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS