Russian military adapting faster than NATO – admiral

Pierre Vandier has called on bloc members to spend more on technological development

The Russian military is probably faster at adapting to rapidly evolving battlefield technologies than NATO, Admiral Pierre Vandier, the US-led military bloc’s top commander for technical transformation, has said.

European NATO countries have increasingly justified massive military spending packages using a perceived threat from Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has maintained that the claims are a pretext being used to “indoctrinate” European taxpayers with “fears of an inevitable confrontation with Russia” to justify a military buildup.

Speaking at the National Press Club Live on Tuesday, Vandier said that NATO lags behind the pace of technological adaptation that the Russian military has shown in the Ukraine conflict.

“Russia is very good at adapting and probably better than we are today,” the French admiral said, calling on bloc members to invest more in military technologies. “We have been very static, very predictable.”

Western European nations have increasingly pumped money into the EU military-industrial complex in order to send arms to Kiev, in what Moscow has long described as a NATO proxy war.

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However, the cash-strapped EU nations’ latest hundred-billion-euro cash commitments came mostly in the form of borrowing. Last month, European Stability Mechanism Director Pierre Gramegna suggested that bloc members could reach into their economic bailout reserves to mobilize €500 billion more for arms expenditures.

Despite massive financial injections, the EU arms manufacturing industry has seen repeated shortfalls in plans to provide Ukraine with artillery ammunition. As of October, the commitment was around 300,000 shells short, according to the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas.

Russia sees the EU as one of the main obstacles to a diplomatic settlement in the Ukraine conflict, arguing that continued arms supplies encourage Kiev to make unacceptable demands.

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A peace deal was feasible after the summit between Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump in Alaska last August but was effectively “undermined” by Kiev’s European NATO backers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Russia has argued that the bloc’s eastward expansion is one of the underlying causes of the Ukraine conflict, and has pushed for Kiev renounce NATO membership ambitions as one of its key peace demands.

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