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NATO Members Ill-Prepared To Fight Russia

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

BRUSSELS/MOSCOW (Worthy News) – The NATO military alliance has warned its members that they are ill-prepared for a possible war against Russia as red tape hinders troop movements across Europe, prompting an angry reaction from Moscow.

Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, the chief of NATO’s logistics command, said in published remarks that the alliance is running out of time. “What we don’t get done in peacetime won’t be ready in case of a crisis or a war,” added Sollfrank, who leads what is known as Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC).

“We need to be ahead of the curve. We have to prepare the theater well before Article 5 has been invoked”, he said, referring to NATO’s collective defense clause, which says an attack on one member is an attack on all.

But that won’t be easy for JSEC, which started operating in the southern German town of Ulm in 2021.

Its job is to coordinate the swift movement of NATO troops and tanks across the continent as well as logistical preparations such as the storage of munitions on the alliance’s eastern flank.

After Moscow invaded Ukraine, JSEC reflected the assessment that NATO, decades after the Cold War was declared over, needed to be ready again for an armed conflict in Europe.

However, the task of quickly deploying forces up to the size of a division with some 20,000 troops, as well as having ammunition, fuel, spare parts, and provisions in place, remains a challenge.

MULTIPLYING LENGTH

While NATO and Warsaw Pact troops in the past faced each other mainly in Germany, the alliance has since expanded some 1,000 kilometers to the east, multiplying the length of NATO’s eastern flank to some 4,000 km in total.

“The expanse of space, the fact that not all forces are forward-based — all this means that the alliance has to be quick in moving troops from their bases to the right spot on the eastern flank,” Sollfrank noted, adding this needed preparation.

“At the heyday of the war in Ukraine, Russia fired 50,000 artillery shells per day. These rounds have to reach the howitzers,” he said. “So you have to set up warehouses — for ammunition, fuel, spare parts, and provisions.”

As it is, NATO forces must navigate various national regulations, stretching from the advance notice required before ammunition can be shipped to the permissible length of military convoys and disease prophylaxis.

“We have a surplus of regulations, but the one thing we don’t have is time,” warned Admiral Rob Bauer, head of NATO’s military committee. “Russia’s war against Ukraine has proven to be a war of attrition — and a war of attrition is a battle of logistics.”

Sollfrank said he would like to see a “military Schengen,” an area of free military passage akin to the political Schengen zone that allows free movement within most of the European Union.

NATO must not prompt a miscalculation in the Kremlin by giving the impression that Moscow might stand a chance to win because the alliance is not prepared, he warned.

TENSION INSTIGATION

However, Russia on Friday called the statement an “instigation of tension in Europe” and a possible threat to its security.

“Europe does not wish to heed our concerns, and Europe pushes aside the invariable principle of indivisible security, which means that they talk about their security to our detriment,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

He accused NATO of “moving towards” Russia and threatened with possible “countermeasures to ensure our (Russian) security.”

Tensions between Moscow and NATO spiked following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, leading neutral states like Finland or Sweden to seek membership in the alliance over security concerns.

Russia has repeatedly labeled NATO as a threat to its security and uses Kyiv’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations as one of the justifications for its invasion.

“Europe does not wish to heed our concerns, and Europe pushes aside the invariable principle of indivisible security, which means that they talk about their security to our detriment,” the Russian presidential spokesman said.

“In this case, I want to stress again that it is NATO that is constantly moving its infrastructure close to our border. We are not moving towards NATO’s infrastructure. It is NATO that is moving towards us. This cannot but cause our concern, and this cannot but prompt countermeasures to ensure our security,” he added.