The former NATO secretary general has warned Russian military leaders there is the potential of war with the alliance “if they overdo things in Ukraine.”
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who served between 1999 to 2003 said the West must not be nervous of an escalation with Russia.
Lord Robertson said that Russian military leaders should be warned there is a real possibility of “an actual war and not a fictitious war” with NATO.
He said, “We need to guard against that fear, that apprehension of escalation in so many leaderships in Europe.
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Instead of the West being nervous of Russian escalation, something that they’ve maxed out already, we need to breed in the military hierarchy in Moscow the worry that if they overdo what is being done in Ukraine then an actual and not fictitious war with NATO might be the result; a war that they know they could only lose.
He is pressing for the West to develop a long-term strategy with Ukraine, who will inevitably join NATO in the future.
Lord Robertson pointed out the “enormous propaganda exercise” by the Kremlin in an attempt to “undermine Western support and encourage the global south countries to bend to them.”
He then warned this is “already having an effect” on European opinion, he pointed to a poll that suggests the majority of Hungarians, Romanians and Bulgarians now believe in providing weapons to Ukraine is provoking “Russia and drags their own countries closer” to the war.
He said that his experience of Russia is that they are “very patriotic and very conservative.”
The former NATO chief added, “The motherland is more important and in the end they will not be prepared to risk the motherland for a failing Putin-esque adventure, and especially one which has been so spectacularly unsuccessful and wasteful and indeed humiliating.
Lord Stirrup, who served as head of the Armed Forces between 2006 and 2010, has previously said that relations between the West and Russia post-conflict and Putin cannot be allowed to resume as if “nothing has happened.”
The independent crossbench peer added, “It must accept at last that it is dealing not with a normal government but, as I publicly asserted nine years ago, with a gangster regime; a regime that will tell any lie, betray any promise and commit any crime in pursuit of what it sees as its interest.
“The West must respond accordingly, it must impose an appropriate cost on Russia and that will inevitably have long-term consequences for international relations.”
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