Alwaght- US military buildup in Eastern Europe may force the Russian military to respond in kind by reinforcing its frontier presence, says a Russian military official.
Army General Yury Yakubov, a coordinator from the Russian Defense Ministry’s general inspector’s directorate, was responding to reports that the United States Department of Defense is planning to concentrate US heavy military hardware near Russian borders.
"If U.S. heavy hardware including tanks, artillery systems, or other fighting vehicles does appear in some Eastern European and Baltic countries, this would mark the Pentagon and NATO's most aggressive step since the Cold War time of the past century. And Russia won't have anything else to do but bolster its forces and resources on the Western strategic theater of operations," Yakubov said.
He noted that the response would be initialized by the reinforcement the forces along Russia’s western border.
"The missile brigade in the Kaliningrad region will be speedily rearmed with new Iskander tactical missile systems, the Russian combined-arms group in Belarus will be significantly modified, and so on," Yakubov said in commenting on media reports alleging that the White House and the Pentagon planned to concentrate U.S. heavy military hardware, i.e. tanks, artillery systems, and fighting vehicles, near Russian borders on military bases in Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries, including Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and possibly Hungary.