Admiral Bauer: If Russia Attacks, Alliance Will Fight Back To Break Enemy

(MENAFN- UkrinForm) Admiral Rob Bauer, former Chair of the NATO Military Committee, expressed this view in an interview with Ukrinform on the sidelines of a special event organized by the Brussels office of the Kyiv Security Forum.

"Ukraine has to fight this war in a certain way because it was limited by the U.S. and other Western nations in the use of certain weapon systems or not allowed to use some of them. So NATO is not going to fight exactly the same way as Ukraine is fighting the Russians," Bauer said.

He explained that in the event of an attack, the Alliance would deploy its air force and navy and launch long-range precision strikes against Russian territory.

"This is something that Ukraine is now doing more and more with weapon systems that it has developed yourself. As you were limited at the outset, you started to work on the drones. So in a way, the drones were your answer to a limited amount of artillery ammo. The fact that you are successful in that area now is a testament to the fact that you found an answer to the fact that you were not supported as we should have supported you," the admiral said.

Read also: Ukraine should not agree to limits on size of its armed forces – Admiral Bauer

Even Ukraine's possession of a certain number of F-16 fighter jets cannot match the capabilities of a full fleet of strategic bombers, F-35s, F-22s, F-15s, F-16s and other assets available to the Alliance, Bauer said.

He added that the Alliance's regional plans are fully aligned with the tasks at hand.

"General Grynkewich, NATO's SACEUR, talked about this at a forum in Warsaw just a couple of weeks ago. His message was that Article 5 is ironclad and that the U.S forces in Europe will fight within NATO to first block the Russians, then blunt them if necessary, and if it takes longer, to break them. We are talking about the industrial complex and the logistics support of a longer war that we will have to break, as Ukraine is doing now with Russia, with its refineries and everything else," the admiral said.

Asked whether he believed all NATO allies would have the political will to repel an aggressor, Bauer said: "General Grynkewich would never have been able to say this in Warsaw if it hadn't been exclusively approved by the White House."

In Bauer's view, this was "a message from President Trump to NATO: America is with NATO, article 5 is ironclad, and the regional plans are in place."

He also explained that if intelligence indicated Russia was building up its forces and the Alliance knew which direction they might try to advance in, "the battle groups can be strengthened from 1,000 to 5,000, to a brigade size in different nations."

"At the political level, these plans have already been agreed, so at a certain stage, within those plans, certain things are going to happen," the admiral said.

He added that the situation had been different in the past, when many of these measures would have been debated, with questions raised about whether they were necessary.

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