BRUSSELS
— NATO’s top commander said on Wednesday that the 40,000 troops Russia
has within striking distance of Ukraine are poised to attack on 12
hours’ notice and could accomplish their military objectives within
three to five days.
President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia told Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on
Monday that the Kremlin was beginning to withdraw troops from the
border area near Ukraine.
But
the NATO commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, said in an interview with
The New York Times that so far only a single battalion, a force of 400
to 500 troops, was on the move and that NATO intelligence could not say
whether it was actually being withdrawn.
“What
we can say now is that we do see a battalion-size unit moving, but what
we can’t confirm is that it is leaving the battlefield,” said General
Breedlove, of the United States Air Force. “Whether that movement is aft
to a less belligerent configuration or returning to barracks, we do not
see that.”
General
Breedlove said that the Russian force that remained was a potent mix of
warplanes, helicopter units, artillery, infantry, and commandos with
field hospitals and sufficient logistics to sustain an incursion into
Ukraine.
NATO and Russia on Suspension
NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, and the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Alexander
Lukashevich, discussed the suspension of military cooperation between
the alliance and Russia.
Credit Laurent Dubrule/Reuters
“We
believe that it can move within 12 hours,” he said. “Essentially, the
force is ready to go. We believe it could accomplish its objective
between three to five days.”
General
Breedlove said the Russian presence might be intended as a “coercive
force” during the West’s talks with Russia about Ukraine’s future and as
Ukraine prepares for a presidential election in late May.
If
the Kremlin decides to intervene militarily, General Breedlove added,
the force could be used to establish a land link to Crimea, the
peninsula in southern Ukraine that Russia annexed last month, so that it
does not have to supply it by sea. The Russian force is also capable,
he said, of carrying out a thrust to Odessa; moving to Transnistria, the
Russian enclave in Moldova; or intervening in areas in eastern Ukraine.
“I
think they have all the opportunities and they can make whatever
decision they want,” General Breedlove added. “This is a very large,
very well-equipped force to be called an exercise.”
In January, the United States informed NATO allies that Russia had tested a ground-launched cruise missile, raising serious questions about Moscow’s compliance with its arms control obligations.
American
officials have sought without success to resolve the issue with the
Russians, and the Obama administration is reviewing whether to formally
declare the test to be a violation of a 1987 treaty that bans
medium-range missiles.
Ukraine Crisis in Maps
While
making it clear that he was not prejudging the outcome of that review,
General Breedlove described the Russian missile test as a militarily
significant development.
“A
weapon capability that violates the I.N.F., that is introduced into the
greater European land mass is absolutely a tool that will have to be
dealt with,” he said, using the initials of the I ntermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
“I
would not judge how the alliance will choose to react, but I would say
they will have to consider what to do about it,” he said. “It can’t go
unanswered.”
General
Breedlove said that he did not know if the Russians had deployed the
cruise missile, adding that this would be hard to determine since it
resembles permitted short-range systems.
A
former F-16 pilot, General Breedlove commanded Air Force units in
Europe before he was named the NATO commander in the spring of 2013.
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Discussing
the Russian intervention in Crimea, General Breedlove said Russia had
used a military exercise to mask its preparations. Once its intervention
was underway, he said, Russian forces moved swiftly to cut telephone
cables, jam communications and engage in cyberwarfare to isolate the
Ukrainian military on the peninsula.
The Russification of Crimea
As Moscow’s grip on Crimea tightens, ethnic Russians who were born under Soviet rule are eager to recapture their identity.
Credit Ed Ou for The New York Times
“They disconnected the Ukrainian forces in Crimea from their command and control,” he said.
The
bigger challenge the alliance faces, he said, is the Russian military’s
use of “snap” exercises to rehearse its ability to assemble substantial
combat power in a short period of time.
“They
are absolutely able to bring great force to a position of readiness,”
General Breedlove said. “That is something that we have to think about:
What does that mean geo-strategically that we now have a nation that can
produce this ready force and now has demonstrated that it will use that
ready force to go across a sovereign boundary?”
On
Tuesday, NATO foreign ministers directed General Breedlove to develop a
plan to strengthen the alliance’s military ties with its Eastern
European members by mid-April.
General
Breedlove said that he planned to present options, along with his own
recommendations, for strengthening the alliance’s air, sea and land
abilities to defend those nations without being provocative.
The
air-power options, he said, include aircraft that could protect the
airspace of NATO nations that border Russia as well as planes that could
attack forces on the ground. Naval options include increasing the
alliance’s presence in the Baltic Sea and establishing a NATO presence
in the Black Sea.
General
Breedlove said that he would not exclude the continuous deployment of
land forces, a step that Baltic and East European members would welcome.
One possibility may be moving a roughly 4,500-member American combat
brigade from Fort Hood, Tex., to Europe.
“It is an option,” he said.
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