He made a recent interview with the Daily Mail of the British General Richard Shiroffa high officer of the Armed Forces of his British Majesty and former supreme ally in Europe (the second most important charge within the NATO military structures), according to which there is the risk of an “extreme, but not impossible” scenario in which, in the face of a Surprise attack on a large scale of Russia against Europe, the Eastern defenses of NATO can give in just 100 hours. The “apocalyptic” scenario also made hypotheses of “third world war up”. But is it really the case?
This is not a new thesis by Shirreff: already in 2016 with his book 2017: War with Russia: an urgent warning from senior military commands to spare the military world as much as that of politics regarding that The general warned that NATO is in a state of complete unpreparedness which would make it unable to organize a sufficient defense if the worst scenario in the east of NATO concretized. That the evaluations expressed by Shireff over the years are realistic or not is the subject of debate: what we can say is that at the moment There are no credible signals of a surprise Russian offensive in preparation.
Because at the moment a surprise attack by Russia is unlikely
The main reason why it appears unlikely that at the moment Moscow is preparing for a large -scale surprise offensive along the east of NATO east is theabsence of preparations by the Russian Navy. This asset holds a position of fundamental importance in the military strategies of the Kremlin, as widely confirmed during the Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war and during the Russian-Ukraine war. Before the start of hostilities, between October 2021 and February 2022, there is in fact one Abnormal concentration of Russian naval forces In the waters of the Black Sea (some from the North Fleet or even from that of the Pacific), in particular landing ships to support the amphibian operations along the Ukrainian coasts.
The large -scale mobilization of the Navy was an unequivocal signal of the fact that the Kremlin was preparing for an attack. To date though No similar preparations were noticed that it would assume that the Russia Navy is close to going out into the sea by mass in war set -up. This is a very significant clue, because a hypothetical surprise attack against NATO it could not in any way ignore the use of the Navyon whose shoulders the responsibility of attacking the NATO sides would fall and hitting strategic objectives located in depth with a rain of conventional or even nuclear cruise missiles.
The absence of any “suspicious movement” by the “vessels with the cross of Sant’Andrea” is enough to dispel the most foschi scenarios: Russia is not one step away from attacking us.
The growing Russian tensions and born
The lack of signals that lead us to affirm that the outbreak of the “third full -time world war” is not around the corner, however, must not make us think that “everything is going well”. In the last decade Relations between Russia and NATO have gradually worsened until you leave the field to one open hostility And, consequently, the high commands and the Think Tanks of the opposite factions have wondered several times regarding the hypothetical war scenarios.
The increase in the voltage has resulted in recent Frontier accidents who are growing in a worrying way, from the alleged cases of GPS JAMAMING to the alleged incursions of drones in the airplane spaces of Eastern Europe. From this point of view it is legitimate to ask whether the two contenders are actually preparing for one War on a large scaleeven if it is not easy to distinguish between reality and rhetoric, especially when the contenders resort to declarations of incendiary nature such as those to which the Russian ex-president has been accustomed to us for years Dmitry Medvedev.
Without a doubt Russia, in an attempt to bring the Russian-Ukraine war to a victorious solution for her, has very large resources invested In the expansion of his armed forces and in the reconstruction of the military-industrial complex necessary to support them, even with a view to discussing with the enlarged West. The NATO, for its part, has openly deployed in favor of Ukraine and is almost unanimously supported Kiev in his fight against Moscow, but the General rearmament program of the alliance has now produced conflicting results.
Although at the moment it does not seem imminent a direct confrontation, there is the question at all at all secondary of theUpdate of operating doctrines of the contenders. While Russia is literally reforming the operational concepts of its armed forces also in the light of the real experiences learned on the battlefields of the First Conventional War on a large scale of the 21st century (massive use of drones, use of electronic disorder systems and so on), NATO seems to date Refreshment to embrace the revolution in the military field that this war is bringing.
