On Friday, February 20, 2015, Sir Adrian Bradshaw, second-in-command of Nato’s forces in Europe, a former commander of British land forces and the most senior UK officer in the alliance, spoke at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London. He warned Nato forces about a large-scale conventional assault by Russia that wants to snatch European territory.
Adrian Bradshaw noted about the violating ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine by Russian-backed terrorists and providing by Russian Federation “hybrid” warfare.
“Russia might believe the large-scale conventional forces she has shown she can generate at very short notice — as we saw in the snap exercises that preceded the takeover of Crimea — could in future not only be used for intimidation and coercion, but to seize Nato territory,” Bradshaw said.
Sir Adrian Bradshaw pointed on the using by Russia classic Soviet techniques such as escalation dominance:
“After which the threat of escalation might be used to prevent re-establishment of territorial integrity. This use of so-called escalation dominance was, of course, a classic Soviet technique.”
Sir Bradshaw said that the best response was a new rapid reaction force, currently being drawn up by the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Poland:
“This would not contravene Nato treaties with Russia by positioning major forces on its borders, but would send a strong signal in the form of a sustained, multinational Nato presence in the eastern states.”
“Nato’s plans would need to include not just conventional forces, but countering political agitation and subversion, cyber-attack, hostile propaganda and other destabilising effects. This would need assistance from the EU, for example to produce Russian-language TV coverage as as alternative to the hostile and almost laughably inaccurate propaganda beamed out every day to Russian domestic audiences”.
