Moscow Concerned With US Assumptions of Clashes With Russia

The Russian New Generation Warfare Handbook which explains how the US Army should "defeat Russia's hybrid-warfare strategy" has caused concern in Moscow since it hints at the possibility of military clashes between the US and Russia.

MOSCOW, September 26 (Sputnik) — Russia is very concerned with the appearance of US' Russian New Generation Warfare Handbook and believes that the fact that the United States considers the opportunity of clashes between US and Russian troop is rather alarming, Nikolay Lakhonin, the spokesman of the Russian embassy in the United States, said.

The 68-page document was prepared by the US Army in December 2016 and issue earlier in September. The paper described the authors’ vision of the Russian military strategy, strengths and weaknesses of the Russian army as well as combat characteristics of Russian vehicles.

"We paid attention to the media coverage of Pentagon's handbook on 'Russian new generation warfare,' including so-called 'hybrid operation'…  We are concerned with the fact that the document of the US Department of Defense, which is designed for internal use, includes serious assumptions of military clashes between US and Russian armed forces. The concrete methods of training military personnel for [military] actions against Russian Armed Forces are proposed [in the document]. Such evidence of training US servicemen for direct military conflict with Russia is very alarming, especially considering the current difficult security situation in Europe," Lakhonin said.

The spokesman stressed that the two countries needed "pragmatic cooperation" on key security issues, not "the circulation of scary stories." He noted that the contents of the handbook contradicted the constructive nature of meetings between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.