Prague, May 3 (CTK) – Russia does not share the same values as the West, which is why it is dissatisfied with the current world order and leads a confrontational policy against the NATO, Czech General Petr Pavel, the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, said at the Stratcom Summit conference in Prague today.
Pavel tagged Russia as one of the two biggest challenges for NATO, which has to respond to Russia by sticking together and working on securing deterrent military capabilities.
“Russia is dejected due to the current world order being based on the western-type liberal democracies and wants to change it so that it matches its national model of society more,” Pavel said.
He said Russia’s focus in its efforts is on hybrid tools, mainly spreading propaganda in traditional media and on social networks.
“Russia wants to shake the way the countries in the West perceive NATO, its objectives and actions,” he said.
“Accounting for the fact that the public is used to perceiving news through headlines and brief messages, artificially created information may seem true, he added.
The spreading of disinformation is aided by western societies being open, unlike Russia, and the content of news that the public receives being uncontrolled.
From the long-term perspective, an open society, even though it is more vulnerable, is a better place to live in, because it cares for observance of values and principles. NATO must hold on to this advantage, he said.
At the same time, NATO must reinforce its cohesiveness that Russia strives to erode. It must reinforce its joint defence, which means uphold the commitment of all member states to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defence.
“We are signalling to our adversaries that aggression would be expensive and very unlikely to succeed,” Pavel said.
Reinforcing the military presence in the Baltic and Black Sea regions should also have a deterring effect, he said, dismissing the Russian interpretation of these steps being aimed against Moscow.
“If Russia had not invaded Transnistria, Georgia and Ukraine, while throwing all international standards out of the window, the NATO would not have been strengthening its military presence in its eastern and southern wing,” he said.