Putin could attempt territorial encroachment in Finland but Gotland invasion farcical | Chip Chapman

Putin could attempt territorial encroachment in Finland but Gotland invasion farcical | Chip Chapman

two of the things which have happened since the invasion of Ukraine is firstly that ukra um Finland has joined NATO is the 31st member and secondly in March this year Sweden has joined as the 32nd member now what this actually means is that you’ve got a strategic uh dilemma for Russia in the notion that the Baltic is now a NATO lake so you have nine countries which surround the Baltic region Russia and eight others which all appear to be NATO members or are NATO members and therefore the notion that Russia would do any overt action on Scotland and any sort of invasion is paral the notion of of that just isn’t credible Major General chip Chapman former senior British military advisor to us Central Command so Chip if you wouldn’t mind starting starting us off then what do you believe are the basis for these fears that have that have come out then in the last last uh 24 hours or so I think really it’s more to do with the notion of deterrence and the Democratic in attention that we’ve had recently because if you look at this from a geostrategic and geopolitical perspective two of the things which have happened since the invasion of Ukraine is firstly that ukra um Finland has joined NATO as the 31st member and secondly in March this year Sweden has joined as the 32nd member now what this actually means is that you’ve got a strategic uh dilemma for Russia in the notion that the Baltic is now a NATO lake so you have nine countries which surround the Baltic region Russia and eight others which all appear to be NATO members or are NATO members and therefore the notion that Russia would uh do any overt action on Scotland and any sort of invasion is paricle the notion of of that just isn’t credit what is credible of course is that they would take hybrid action in the region including off gotland and actually in terms of territorial encroachment in uh Finland and some of the islands of Finland and again this week we’ve had talk of that that Russia intends to recalibrate the coordinates of its territorial Waters to alter the sea boundaries now it’s pushing back against those sorts of things which happen it’s not only those things which are on the surface is of course also the subsurface things where we see hybrid Warfare where for example the Russian research ship the Vladimir ad Admiral vladim Minsky recently has been data collecting on wind farms gas pipelines power and internet cable so those are the Notions that would uh encroach along with of course over the last 10 years there have been encroachments on The Sovereign airspace of goland and Sweden and that’s against the Chicago convention which does give you the parameters of where you’re allowed to fly in either Sovereign airspace or International airspace so the fear is perhaps unfounded and maybe something further down the line but I perhaps would suggest there’s no doubt that if Putin was able to put this plan into place that has been suggested he would actually probably like to yeah but he can’t so if you look at this being the 80th anniversary of dday and go back to the early 1950s where the two principal protagonists in the um military hierarchy on that day Eisen and Montgomery in the early 50s they were both sackur Supreme Allied Commander and Deputy Supreme Allied Commander and Montgomery’s line at the time early 50s was that the Test match is being postponed indefinitely due to the deterrent effect of the Western Alliance that still pertains and even more so with the addition of Finland and Sweden so what kind of pressure then do you think Putin’s almost trying to be put under slightly then by what we’ve heard come out of Sweden then what’s the sort of you sort of explained the the background to it but what’s the the actual um sort of reasonings you think for coming out now Sweden well partly the reason I think is that Sweden has taken the r as it were seriously they’re going to 2.5% of GDP and they’d like to see other people do that in NATO and of course just after the election we have the 75th Anniversary NATO Summit in Washington where I think that will be a pledge that people want and also it’s pretty inconvenient for any newly elected prime minister whoever that may be so it’s really to have the conversation so that we don’t go down the appeasement rout because appeasement is the way that the Test match will actually have to be played and that’s not a route you want to go then and this idea of gotland then why have they focused on gotland specifically do you think is it location basically within the Baltic Sea well that’s why it’s sort of slightly anomalous because there’s no way in terms of the geography either from St Petersburg probably being 300 miles or the krad or blast being at least 100 miles that you could do anything in a encroachment sense in an invasion sense and one of the things about if you’re going to do any uh amphibious operations is don’t go along uh large large spheres of water because they’re incredibly complex operations but I think it plays with the um the what we call the crank countries China Russia Iran North Korea because simultaneously we’ve got this notion that uh China don’t recognize the median line in uh the Taiwan Straits which has been the line demarcating Taiwan and China for the last 70 years so if you no longer acknowledge something then you see what the reaction of other states are because you can always have outliers in the International Community you can peel away so it’s really trying to see who those outliers are and reinforce from the NATO perspective those who do see this is a threat for the future there’s also this issue that the article mentions of the alland islands is that is that’s something that also should be taken into consideration well I think all these things play into this this is the thing about trying to build your consensus for territorial encroachment and what the reaction of other forces are so we’re seeing this both in terms of Finland and Sweden uh and but basically there is a strategic deficit from the Russian perspective one thing we get wrong about Russia is that it’s actually a continental with inconvenient sea flights we’ve seen one of the inconvenient sea flanks in the Black Sea we’re now really seeing because of the fact that Finland and Sweden have joined Nat to another inconvenient SE Flank In the Baltic and the other issue or sort of Point mentioned is is this idea of the Aging oil tankers I mean again is this something really to be worried about no I don’t think it is but again it’s that notion of encroachment when we talk about um hybrid Warfare we we talk about things like territoran encroachment information arcs both propaganda and subversion and these all play into what Russia is going to do one of the things it’s not going to do is open a second flank in military terms against any NATO country when we’re almost approaching the point where it’s lost 500,000 people at least if you believe the statistics from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense it’s to be taken in consideration but it’s really just plays again into this way that we look at um hybrid Warfare either uh territorial encroachment by deniable assets and of course deniable attacks are one of the ways that you do hrid Warfare Nord spring 2 for example whoever did that along with the use of proxy forces information operations including subversion in propaganda and one of the things the Russians are trying to do is to use both propaganda in subversion to see who those outliers are in the west who they can exploit for the future either in terms of negotiations or to split them away from the Western Community I mean any word at this point as to who those could be well we’ve already seen the outliers in terms of Hungary for example and certain elements in society from all the democracies which can you can peel away so for example that is both the extreme right-wing elements in countries and the extreme leftwing elements and this is where Democratic elections are always a potential problem in that you can micro Target and do particularly spear fishing in uh in um various constituencies if there’s going to be for example a 49 to 51% split if you micro Target on specific issues in constituencies which we might see for example in the UK on the Gaza issue then you can alter we know that occurred in in America in 2016 in various places for example and just lastly then to sort of summarize um essentially the threat I guess you’re what you’re saying is any threat is always there but we sort of we sort of have to um put into perspective things that are more or less likely to happen I think so we always look at scenarios and threat from our perspective is always intent capability and opportunity they don’t have the opportunity to do anything in an over sense they don’t have the capability at the moment overtly because of the war in Ukraine but they do have the intent to offset the balance in the Western Alliance so don’t be complacent uh and they not in terms of NATO in the undersea environment for example by the fact that at northward there’s a new NATO undersea uh capabilities and Maritime monitoring to ensure that we can deal with this in the future okay lovely stuff chip thank you very much for talking to us

“You’ve got a strategic dilemma for Russia in the notion that the Baltic is now NATO’s lake”.

Maj Gen Chip Chapman tells #timesradio that the notion “Russia would do any overt action on Gotland” is “farcical”. But it is “credible” that they might take “hybrid action in the region” including “territorial encroachment in Finland”.

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