“a Dagger in the heart of Western Europe” called Kaliningrad oblast Advisor to the President for national security Robert O’brien. He stated this in an interview with German tabloid Bild.
According to him, Russians are concentrated in the Kaliningrad region a large number of missiles and other weapons, threatening all the European allies, the US and the Baltic region. The United States, said O’brien, failed to achieve flybys of the Kaliningrad region in the framework of the open skies Treaty, Russia has denied them this right.
given its geographical position, the region needs to be a place of profitable Commerce, tourism, social interaction between Russia and Western Europe, said the representative of the US administration. Russia, however, “unfortunately, turned it into a closed military base bristling with high-tech weapons and missiles,” he complained.
In an interview with Bild, he spoke about the reasons for the US withdrawal from the Treaty on open skies (DON). According to O’brien, the sky was open only when it came to overflights of US territory, and closed when they talked about the overflight of Russian territory.
the Russians, he said, had systematically violated the DON, not allowing U.S. aircraft and their allies over Russia, and themselves used their opportunities in the framework of this agreement not only for monitoring military installations, but also to fly around critical government facilities and civilian infrastructure of the United States. As an example, O’brien called the White house, the country residence of the US President’s camp David and Golf club in Bedminster, state of new Jersey, where he spent time President of the trump.
According to the O’brien, the United States will do everything possible to mitigate the loss of intelligence, which will lose its allies in Europe as a result of the retirement of Washington from DON. It is, in particular, the provision of the USA’s allies in NATO intelligence to Russia, mined by Americans in other ways, and the possibility of ISPrisovanija European partners USA part used American military equipment — for example, the observation aircraft.
