WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Earlier in July 2015, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter praised the Special Operations Command as the “tip of the spear” of the faster, more agile armed forces the United States would need in order to carry out its security commitments in the coming decades.
“They are using information operations, they are using their own military capabilities and they are using ethnic Russian populations in some of these countries as surrogates,” Votel said on Friday, according to the News report.
Russia’s use of conventional and non-conventional forces and the use of military and non-military governmental capabilities present problems beyond a simple military solution, Votel said.
Votel also claimed that the range of Russian activities the region served to “perpetrate this idea of coercion and pressure on neighbors along their periphery to meet their particular objectives.”
Russia’s objective, Votel alleged, was to create a situation where NATO cannot thrive.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “is attempting to create these frozen conflicts and situations that are difficult to resolve along their border and in doing that stalemate a lot of things,” the News quoted Votel as saying.
