“This criminality, the terrorists, and the returning foreign fighters are clearly a daily part of the refugee flow in Europe”, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
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In congressional testimony Tuesday, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove says the refugee flow is “masking the movement” of these unsafe elements.
Breedlove, who also heads the USA military’s Europe Command, yesterday spoke to lawmakers and reporters in Washington to warn of the increase in violence in Ukraine’s Donbass region and of Russia’s generally aggressive stance. Despite its public pronouncements, Russian Federation has done little to counter IS but instead has bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has slammed claims by the Supreme Allied Commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Europe that Russia is using “non-precision” weapons in Syria, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Wednesday.
Maj Gen Breedlove said: “The only objective of these indiscriminate attacks is to terrorise Syrian citizens and get them on the road”.
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More than 27,000 refugees have been stranded in Greece after countries along the migrant route created a bottleneck by following Austria’s lead in introducing limits on the number they will let pass.
Nearly 130,000 migrants have reached Europe by sea since the beginning of this year, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
However, experts have said that the overly repeated western claims that terrorists are using the crisis as a way to get into Europe is being overplayed.
And on Monday morning frustrated migrants used home-made battering rams to break through the fence in Idomeni.
“I think that every refugee flow needs to be looked at with an eye towards it could be taken advantage of by those who would seek to do us harm”.
“Russia has chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the USA and to our European allies and partners”, Breedlove stated on Tuesday.
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Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee that alongside the threat posed by extremist organizations in Europe was the potential for unrest from local nationalists opposed to the unprecedented influx of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and unstable parts of Africa.
