The anti-Russian policies of the Baltic countries have allowed deployment of 1,000 troops from the 3rd US infantry division in the territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The United States and its allies in the West are waging the first phase of hybrid warfare against Russia, the commander of Russia’s Western Military District, Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov said on Friday. In doing this they use political and economic methods with the aim of destabilizing the situation in the country, he explained.

“The United States is using greater intensity of the Russian Armed Forces’ operative and combat training in the Western ‘strategic direction’, and also Crimea’s reunification with Russia in attempts to form the image of our country as an aggressor against European countries,” Sidorov said.

He recalled NATO had considerably stepped up its military presence in Eastern Europe.

“The anti-Russian policies of the Baltic countries’ political leadership have allowed for the forward deployment of 1,000 troops from the 3rd US infantry division in the territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,” he said.

“Besides, the situation in the region is keynoted by a brainwashing campaign with the aim to foment steady anti-Russian sentiment in society,” Sidorov said.

Hybrid wars are main type of modern military conflicts

The general noted that hybrid wars are the main type of international conflicts these days, with the emphasis placed not on combat operations, but large-scale propaganda campaigns inside the potential enemy country.

“Central to modern wars are ever more often unconventional, hybrid types of operations, incorporating both military operations and activities without the use of military force,” he said. As an example of countries conducting the so-called hybrid wars Kartapolov mentioned the United States, which was trying “to shake loose the Russian economy with the blows of economic sanctions and to impair greater independence of the European Union and its main engines – Germany and France.”

In part, Kartapolov said, this is seen in the US Ukraine Freedom Support Act, adopted on December 19 last year, which called for using non-commercial political organizations in Russia “for the sake of attaining the US aims of disorganizing Russia’s national development,” Kartapolov said.