Yuri Kobzar19:08, 25.11.24

NATO leadership recommends that European businesses prepare to operate in wartime conditions.

The Russian army has grown significantly in size since before the war, but its quality has declined since then, NATO Military Committee Chairman Admiral Rob Bauer said, as quoted by Reuters .

“The Russians are not the threat they will be in February 2022 at the moment, so we have a little time to prepare,” he said, adding that this means more investment in the defense industry.

At the same time, Bauer called on companies to prepare for a “wartime scenario” and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly to be less vulnerable to blackmail from countries such as Russia and China.

In particular, he recalled the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Russia cut off gas supplies to Europe.

“We thought we had an agreement with Gazprom, but in fact we had an agreement with Mr. Putin. The same goes for infrastructure and goods belonging to China. We actually have an agreement with (Chinese President) Xi (Jinping),” Bauer warned, recalling that China extracts 60% of all rare earth materials in the world, and processes even more – 90%.

The admiral noted that chemical ingredients for many important drugs consumed by the West also come from China.

“We are naive if we think that the Communist Party will never use this power. Business leaders in Europe and America must realize that the commercial decisions they make have strategic implications for the security of their nation,” Bauer said.

The admiral also admitted that NATO is discussing the possibility of preemptive high-precision strikes on Russian territory if a conflict with an aggressor state begins.

“It is wiser not to wait [for Russia to strike], but to hit the launchers in Russia if Russia attacks us. A combination of high-precision strikes is needed that will disable the systems used to attack us, and we must strike first,” he noted.

Bauer called positive the fact that NATO has changed its attitude towards its nature as a defensive alliance. In addition, the perception of the idea that it is necessary to “sit and wait until we are attacked” and only then react has changed.

NATO is preparing for war with Russia

As UNIAN wrote, due to the worsening situation with international security, Germany wants to create more shelters . According to the government, there are currently only 579 bunkers in Germany, which can shelter only 480 thousand people. During the Cold War, there were 2 thousand such shelters.

We also reported that the Western world is not ready for a large-scale war, such as the one in Ukraine now . Former commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valeriy Zaluzhny believes that the European air defense system will last no more than three months in a war against the Russian Federation. The situation with ground forces is even worse.

(C)UNIAN 2024