“It is not we, the West, who should fear a clash with Putin, but the other way around,” Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said.

A war between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and NATO would end with Moscow’s “inevitable defeat,” Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said Thursday.

"It is not we, the West, who should fear a clash with Putin, but the other way around,” Sikorski said during a speech to the Sejm, the lower house of Poland’s parliament. “It is worth reminding about this, not to increase the sense of threat in the Russians, because NATO is a defensive pact, but to show that an attack by Russia on any of the members of the Alliance would end in its [Russia’s] inevitable defeat.”

Sikorski, who was laying out Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s vision for the new government’s foreign policy, said Russia’s military and economic potential “pales in comparison to that of the West,” as NATO has three times as many military personnel, three times the aerial resources and four times as many ships as Russia.

Western allies and top military officials have become increasingly worried about a potential spillover of violence from Putin’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine — as the Russian leader continues to issue veiled nuclear threats toward the West and stashes atomic weapons in Belarus, which borders NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

  • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    8 months ago

    For obvious reasons (ie: we’re still here) it’s never happened. But you can say the same thing about a former US president facing criminal fraud charges in court and the US dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Just because it never happened before doesn’t mean the conditions are not ripe for it to happen now (or in the near future).

    • bhmnscmm@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      8 months ago

      Not to mention the fact that all it takes is for one nuclear exchange to happen, and the world as we know it ceases to exist. The stakes are incredibly high.

      • VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        This was my point with my WWIII comment. It would be WWIII because everyone will nuke everyone. That’ll fuck things globally. I’m not even in England and if the UK gets hit I’ll either die in the radiation spread or have to suffer through an irradiated atmosphere. Same with Europe, countries not in NATO but situated near France for example (I admit I don’t know if Spain or Belgium is a member but I doubt Andorra is) would be affected the same as well. The results of a war between Russia and NATO would be completely catastrophic and it’s crazy to me that some people would like to see it just to get rid of Putin.

    • cygnus@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      8 months ago

      And every Russian is going to go along with Putin’s suicide-by-NATO? This isn’t a comic book.

      • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Do you believe that Putin cares what anyone else thinks? Never mind the fact the average Russian has no say in what happens in their nation, ie: their whole most recent election cycle.