Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski recently boasted that Warsaw and its NATO allies could defeat Moscow \u201cquite quickly\u201d<\/p>\n
Poland could cease to exist as a state within days if it enters a war against Russia, Nikolay Patrushev, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has warned in response to Warsaw\u2019s claims that NATO could quickly defeat the country.
\nPolish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said over the weekend that Poland and its allies would enjoy overwhelming air superiority in a hypothetical conflict with Russia.
\n\u201cIf Russia attacked us and we took our gloves off, I think we would defeat Russia quite quickly,\u201d Sikorski claimed at the Yalta European Strategy meeting in Kiev, adding that NATO could destroy Russia\u2019s oil refining capacity within six weeks.
\nPatrushev dismissed the assessment as an \u201camateurish view\u201d of Russia\u2019s military might, pointing out that Moscow isn\u2019t utilizing its full military potential in the Ukraine conflict.
\n\u201cIf Poland were to enter military action against Russia, our country would employ the full arsenal of its available forces and resources, and Polish statehood would cease to exist within two or three days,\u201d he said in an interview given to Russian media on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
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Patrushev also accused Sikorski of \u201cRussophobic\u201d militarism, forgetting the lessons of history, and of repeatedly endangering his own country rather than ensuring its security.
\nOther Russian officials have also condemned the Polish minister\u2019s rhetoric. Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko said Sikorski\u2019s calls for NATO to conduct more aggressive exercises near Russia\u2019s Kaliningrad Region should be assessed by \u201cpeople in white coats,\u201d while Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described his comments as \u201cRussophobia of the brain.\u201d
\nWarsaw, along with the Baltic states, Germany, and other European countries, have increasingly claimed that Russia could eventually attack NATO territory and have called for increased military spending and a stronger presence of the bloc along Russia\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Polish defense minister dismisses claims Russia could attack<\/p>\n
NATO has also discussed strengthening its nuclear posture in Europe, with Washington reportedly considering stationing US strategic weapons in Poland and the Baltics.
\nMoscow has repeatedly rejected claims that it intends to attack any NATO members, describing related suggestions as fearmongering used to justify militarization. Even Poland\u2019s own defense minister said in July that there was no indication Russia was preparing a full-scale attack on the country.
\nRussian officials have instead warned that Europe\u2019s accelerating rearmament and increasingly aggressive military planning are themselves raising the risk of a direct confrontation.
\nPutin recently noted that Western states are now openly talking about preparing for war with Russia, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has stressed that Moscow has \u201cno reason\u201d to attack Europe unless it is attacked first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski recently boasted that Warsaw and its NATO allies could defeat Moscow \u201cquite quickly\u201d Poland could cease to exist as a state within days if it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t