MOSCOW, July 12. /TASS/. The United States is seeking to destroy Russian military infrastructure, especially its Baltic Fleet facilities, as it moves to deploy long-range fires units in Germany, program director of the Academy of Political Sciences Alexander Stepanov told TASS.
Washington and Berlin said in a joint statement on July 10 that the US would begin deployments of long-range fires capabilities in Germany in 2026, "which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe."
"Germany is obviously just the beginning in this hybrid architecture of the offensive circuit of missile weapons. Given the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, the threat to the Baltic and Northern fleets will only grow," said Stepanov, who is also a senior research fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ILA RAN). Meanwhile, he said, the strategic goal behind the deployments would be to destroy military infrastructure in European Russia, specifically Baltic Fleet facilities in the Kaliningrad Region, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, as well as industrial hubs and the power grid system across northwestern and central Russia.
"One thing is clear: the United States is trying to keep the fabric of the NATO alliance together by any means in a show of commitment to the alliance and willingness to make a key contribution to integrated containment in Europe," the military expert concluded.
Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said that the US plans increased the likelihood of a missile race and could lead to uncontrolled escalation.