BRUSSELS, October 3. /TASS/. NATO countries began preparing for a confrontation with Russia and a return to the principles of collective defense against a global adversary in 2008, 14 years before the start of Russia’s special military operation, NATO Military Committee Chair Admiral Rob Bauer said.

NATO's military plans contain 4,500 pages of how to counter Russia, he said at the Warsaw Security Forum, which was broadcast online.

"Basically, what happened since 2008, the work started in the military to change our thinking back towards collective defense. That was necessary because of the behavior of Russia, which has been a partner of NATO for more than 15 years, so that was Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014 and 2022. And the biggest change for NATO was to be ready for more and more aggressive adversary," he pointed out.

"And therefore, we started thinking and changing our military strategy, that was in 2019, which led to further, more detailed plans that were agreed in Vilnius (at the NATO Summit of Heads of State and Government in July - TASS). And the plans basically make sure that we are ready," Bauer stressed. "So, we need more readier forces, we need more capabilities, we need more stocks, we need more exercising," he added.

The admiral recalled that NATO had deployed four battalion battle groups to the Baltics and Poland in 2015-2016, which are prepared to rapidly be beefed up to brigades if necessary. "As a result of what happened in Ukraine, we decided to create four more [groups] in the South - Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria," he concluded. According to Bauer, "in the last year, we tried this mechanism of beefing the battle groups up to a brigade.

Bauer went on to say that NATO's plans envisaged increasing the number of alliance forces on Russia's borders "up to 300,000 in the first 30 days." "There’s about 300,000 forces in Ukraine on the Russian side <...> and the 300,000 is probably about right when it comes to the start of a large conflict with Russia," Bauer said.

"It’s more than 4,500 pages of plans, which is impressive, but that’s only paperwork, and now we have to make sure that together with the increase in the budgets - the two percent - the nations do what they have agreed, because NATO is command and control, it’s exercises and standardization. All the forces come from the nations," the admiral emphasized.