US plots to cripple us: Russian general
Russia must increasingly threaten its enemies in the West or risk being attacked by the United States, according to President Putin’s military chief.
Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, accused the US of devising a strategy to destabilise its enemy by fomenting street protests before launching military strikes against key infrastructure. Russia was obliged to ‘‘respond to the threat by creating a threat’’, he said.
This included using cyberwarfare, which provide ‘‘the possibility of remote, hidden influence’’. He added: ‘‘Information technologies are becoming some of the most promising weapons.’’
The comments deepened the sense of Cold War mistrust between Moscow and Washington weeks after President Trump scrapped a key arms treaty with Russia. They also suggest that Russia has been rattled by US attempts to topple President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and may respond.
The general said that the US and its allies had ‘‘set out an aggressive vector in their foreign policy’’. The ‘‘offensive military actions’’ that Russia’s opponents were working on included the development of new weapons as well as the use of soft power and ‘‘colour revolutions’’, the name Moscow uses for uprisings in former Soviet states such as Ukraine and Georgia, which it believes were orchestrated by the West.
Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament and a close ally of President Putin, said yesterday: ‘‘We are very afraid that the United States may stage provocations to provoke bloodshed and find a pretext for intervention in Venezuela. But we will do our utmost to prevent this.’’
Gerasimov claimed that the new Pentagon strategy had been named Trojan Horse. ‘‘Its essence is the active use of the protest potential of the fifth column in the interests of destabilising the situation with simultaneous strikes of high precision weapons against the most important facilities,’’ he told top brass in Moscow during his annual speech about Russia’s military strategy. The ‘‘fifth column’’ is a term Putin used after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 to describe domestic opponents that he regarded as a ‘‘disparate bunch of national traitors’’.
Eric Pahon, spokesman for the Russia desk at the Pentagon, denied the claims. ‘‘This is sheer Russian disinformation to cover up their own subversive acts in places like Syria and eastern Europe and Ukraine,’’ he said. ‘‘There is no such thing as a Pentagon programme called Trojan Horse.’’
Gerasimov is credited with advancing a ‘‘Gerasimov Doctrine’’ six years ago, when he made a speech arguing that non-military means were as effective at achieving political and strategic goals as weapons. That seemed to be borne out with US allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 American presidential election. A US grand jury charged 12 officers from the GRU, Russian military intelligence, in absentia last year with hacking the Democratic Party and leaking stolen emails.
However, some analysts in Russia and abroad have said that hybrid warfare using hackers and propaganda is standard practice for modern armies and that Gerasimov’s doctrine was just Moscow playing catch-up.
The full text of the general’s speech, given on Sunday, was published by the defence ministry newspaper Krasnaya
Zvezda (Red Star). It preceded a meeting in Vienna yesterday between him and Joseph Dunford, his US counterpart, to discuss military relations and the Syria conflict.
Gerasimov said in his speech that ‘‘unexpectedness, decisiveness and consistency’’ were important to Russia’s strategic actions. ‘‘Acting quickly, we must pre-empt the enemy with preventative measures, identify his weak spots and create the threat to him of unacceptable damage.’’