Quotes
This does not mean that a decision has been made to start a war, but Russia is arming and building the capacity to make that decision,
the report said
I don't think Russia has the capability or intent of an offensive war. I'm also very wary of European intelligence services confidently making predictions, given their inability to predict Russia's invasion of Feb 22. Or Crimea in 2014.
John Foreman, a former U.K. Defense Attaché in Moscow and Kyiv, wrote on X
The key part is "without US involvement". Five years sounds like a long time, until you consider how long serious European rearmament would take & the respective starting positions of Europe and Russia. And consider the limited scope of what we've managed in three years 2022-25."
Commenting on the report, Shashank Joshi, the defense editor at The Economist, wrote on X
The Ministry of Defence of Russia must be ready for any development of events, including a possible military conflict with NATO in Europe in the next decade,
Andrei Belousov said
We see an increased willingness on the Russian side to challenge NATO, and we see an
she said
Russia is likely to be more willing to use military force in a regional war against one or more European NATO countries if it perceives NATO as militarily weakened or politically divided,
states the report, which was released Tuesday
This is particularly true if Russia assesses that the U.S. cannot or will not support the European NATO countries in a war with Russia,
it continues, emphasizing that