A former US commander has warned that an attack on a NATO country would look nothing like the trench-style fighting seen in Ukraine.
Gen. Ben Hodges, the one-time US commander in Europe, told Vladimir Putin that a conventional strike on Poland would provoke a devastating NATO response. His comments followed a series of drone incursions into Poland and other NATO airspace that world leaders condemned as “reckless” and “unprecedented.”
“If Russia attacked Poland today the way it attacked Ukraine, it would have been destroyed by NATO air forces and allied ground forces,” Hodges said. “You can be sure Kaliningrad would be eliminated in the opening hours. All Russian military facilities would be destroyed including any in Sevastopol in occupied Crimea.”
The remarks drew an angry reaction from retired general and hardline MP Andrey Gurulev, who said Russia must “prepare for a major war.” He accused NATO of rehearsing plans to demolish Kaliningrad and Sevastopol and insisted Kaliningrad home to Russia’s Baltic Fleet “must be an impregnable fortress.”
Meanwhile, Kremlin-aligned television figures have raised the stakes further. Commentators including Andrei Klintsevich and Vladimir Solovyov warned that the delivery of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine could trigger a wider conflict. The Tomahawk, which can travel more than 1,500 miles, would put Moscow within range of strikes launched from Ukrainian territory though the US has not proposed supplying nuclear weapons to Kyiv.
Solovyov portrayed the use of a Tomahawk as “the start of a nuclear war,” and vowed aggressive retaliation, threatening strikes on “storage and deployment sites of nuclear launchers and decision-making centres.” Klintsevich urged the use of Russia’s high-speed underwater nuclear drone Poseidon against Britain, claiming such a strike would create a “nuclear tidal wave” that could “wipe out” the country.
The exchange from warnings of overwhelming conventional retaliation to explicit nuclear rhetoric underscores how quickly tensions can escalate when NATO members and Russian officials publicly trade threats.
Comments
Post a Comment