Mar Báltico, Rússia fecha flanco contra OTAN: pode controlar bem rápido, bloquear toda entrada.
US and NATO troops should better stop posturing up and provoking Russia in the Baltic Sea, as the Russian Baltic Fleet can take control of the entire sea in a short period of time, blocking NATO from even entering the area, Commander of the US Army in Europe Ben Hodges said, according to the Baltic Times. NATO troops would not be able to do anything to prevent the Russian Baltic Fleet from blocking the Baltic Sea and cutting off the three Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — from the rest of the military alliance. "Kaliningrad now has the ability to deny access of our [US] Navy or any NATO Navy to come to the Baltic Sea. From Kaliningrad Russia can stop from entering coming in to the Baltic Sea, and there we have three NATO allies — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania," Lieutenant-General Hodges explained, according to the source. The US General added that the United States and the rest of NATO should be alarmed by this fact.
Kaliningrado: maciço armamento e tropas, um ponto militar dos mais fortes em toda a Europa.
Russia is pouring troops and weapons -- including missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads -- into its western exclave of Kaliningrad at such a rate that the region is now one of Europe's most militarized places. A NATO official, writing to RFE/RL on condition of anonymity, said that Moscow is stationing "thousands of troops, including mechanized and naval infantry brigades, military aircraft, modern long-range air defense units and hundreds of armored vehicles in the territory." The military activity in Kaliningrad, which has no land connection to Russia and which borders EU members Lithuania and Poland, has raised alarms in Vilnius and Warsaw that can be clearly heard in Brussels and Washington. "They're making quite big military exercises in the Kaliningrad district [which is] very, very close to our neighborhood," says Andrius Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister. "So of course we are worried about such military developments very close to our borders." In part due to such concerns, NATO this month is carrying out military maneuvers in Poland and the Baltic States, a U.S. military convoy recently travelled across Eastern and Central Europe in a show of the defense alliance's commitment to protect the region, and Washington is reportedly debating whether to store heavy military equipment in several Baltic and Eastern European countries bordering Russia. The Kaliningrad region, which lies along the Baltic Sea in what was once East Prussia, has long held strategic value.
OTAN confessa, não pode repelir ataque russo no Báltico: "podem tomar tudo em 2 dias, até Kiev".
The deployment of Iskander-M missile complexes in Kaliningrad will “fundamentally change the balance of security in Europe,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during a speech at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday. Stoltenberg described Moscow’s actions as “unjustified, destabilizing and dangerous” while adding that the alliance did not wish to deepen its confrontation with Russia. In Moscow President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov dismissed the NATO chief’s words about Moscow allegedly using military drills as a cover for moving troops to Ukrainian territory as “irrelevant.” On Wednesday, Czech General Petr Pavel who will assume office of Chairman of the NATO Military Committee on June 1, 2015, said that Russia is capable of seizing the Baltic countries and the Ukrainian capital of Kiev within two days. The general also believes that if Russia launched an offensive then NATO forces would be incapable of repelling the attack. Major General Mikhail Matvievsky, chief of Strategic Missile Forces and the Artillery of the Russian Ground Forces, said earlier this month that a missile brigade redeployed to the Kaliningrad region would be equipped with Iskander-M complexes before 2018. The Iskander-M (also referred to as NATO's reporting name SS-26 Stone) is characterized by high mobility and maneuverability, as it takes just 20 minutes to place the system in operational readiness. The system is capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 500 kilometers, with a precision of around 30 centimeters. It can hit adversary troops or underground command centers, depending on the warheads placed on the rockets. The system can also fire high-precision R-500 cruise missiles.
