Russia poses a direct threat to the European Union and its massive defence spending shows that the Kremlin has a “long-term plan for long-term aggression”, the EU’s foreign policy chief warned on Wednesday.
Kaja Kallas said that Russia was violating the bloc’s airspace, attacking its pipelines, undersea cables and electricity grids, and recruiting criminals to carry out sabotage.
The EU and several member states have repeatedly accused Russia of conducting sabotage campaigns in the West. The Kremlin has strongly denied such allegations.
Kallas noted that Russia is already spending more on defence than the EU’s 27 nations combined, and said the country this year will invest more “on defence than its own health care, education and social policy combined”.
“This is a long-term plan for long-term aggression. You don’t spend that much on (the) military if you do not plan to use it,” Kallas told the bloc’s lawmakers in Strasbourg.
“Europe is under attack and our continent sits in a world becoming more dangerous,” she added.
Speaking ahead of next week’s NATO summit in The Hague, Kallas said every European country should be thinking about defence.
At that summit, NATO will propose to alliance members an overall military spending goal of 5% of gross domestic product, up from the current target of 2%.
“Europe’s collective economic might is unmatched,” Kallas said. “I don’t believe there is any threat we can’t overcome, if we act together, and with our NATO allies.”
‘Help Ukraine or start learning Russian’
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said that Russia is producing as many weapons and ammunition in three months as the alliance’s 32 members collectively make in a year.
He believes that Moscow could be in a position to launch an attack on a NATO ally by the end of the decade.
Concern is mounting in Europe that Russia could try to test NATO’s Article 5 security guarantee — the pledge that an attack on any one of the allies would be met with a collective response from all 32 members.
With the Trump administration having turned its sights to security challenges in the Middle East, Europe is under increasing pressure to fend for itself on matters of defence and support Ukraine without US assistance.
“We have to do more for Ukraine, for our own security too,” Kallas told EU lawmakers.
“To quote my friend, Mark Rutte, if we don’t help Ukraine further, we should all start learning Russian. The stronger Ukraine is on the battlefield today, the stronger they will be around the negotiation table, when Russia finally is ready to talk,” she added.
Russia has intensified its aerial campaign in Ukraine and stepped up ground attacks along the more than 1,000-kilometre front line. Two rounds of direct peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv failed to make progress on ending the war, now in its fourth year.
Last week, the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service (BND), Bruno Kahl, warned against underestimating Russian intentions toward the West and NATO.
“We are very certain, and we have intelligence evidence for this, that Ukraine is just a step on the path to the West,” Kahl told the Table Today podcast.
Additional sources • AP
