Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski (Photo: Reuters).
“Russia’s attack on any NATO country will certainly lead to Russia’s defeat,” Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told the House of Representatives on April 25.
“NATO has three times the force, three times the air defense resources and four times the number of warships of Russia,” he argued.
Mr. Sikorski noted that Russia has just over 1.3 million soldiers after the first mobilization in September 2022. Meanwhile, NATO’s unmobilized force is 3.5 million people, nearly 3 times larger than Russia’s.
The Polish diplomat also pointed out that the nominal GDP of NATO and EU countries is more than 45,000 billion USD, while that of Russia and Belarus is only 2,200 billion USD, which is 20 times less.
Foreign Minister Sikorski said: “The 15 NATO countries that most actively support Ukraine spent more than 1,170 trillion USD on defense in 2022, while Russia only spent 86.4 billion USD, or nearly 14 times less.”
Recently, some Western officials said that Russia could attack NATO countries within the next 5-8 years if it wins in Ukraine.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that there are currently some signs that Russia is preparing for a major conflict with NATO, including increasing the scale of defense production. .
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said this week that Russia’s defense industry is currently expanding to a scale that exceeds the needs for the military campaign in Ukraine. Excess weapons are being stockpiled.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied these speculations. “This is nonsense. Speculations that we will attack Europe after Ukraine are completely meaningless and only serve to scare their people to take their money,” he declared at the end of March.
On the other hand, Moscow also warned of the risk of widespread conflict due to the West’s continued arms aid to Kiev or the growing threat from NATO to Russia.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that Moscow would consider nuclear weapons deployed by foreign countries in Poland as its main military target. He said Moscow views any expansion of NATO’s nuclear sharing agreement as “deeply destabilizing” in nature and “threatening” to Russia.
On the same day, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said any US nuclear missiles in Poland could become targets in the event of a Russia-NATO conflict.
Previously, Polish President Andrzej Duda said the country was ready to receive US nuclear weapons in the context of escalating hostilities between Russia and Ukraine. He said Warsaw took such a stance because “Russia is increasingly militarizing” the Kaliningrad region bordering Poland and Lithuania and Moscow also deployed nuclear weapons in Belarus.
