Published April 26, 2024
A spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened Thursday that U.S. nuclear weapons facilities in Poland would be among the first “legitimate targets” by Russia’s military should NATOprovoke a direct military confrontation.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing on Thursday, days after Poland expressed openness to holding NATO allies’ nuclear weapons on its territory, that such action could be viewed as a red line, escalating the conflict between Russia and Ukraine into a more global affair.
The Polish authorities have made no secret of their ambitions in terms of how to ‘cuddle up to’ the U.S nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, they have been talking about this for a long time,” Zakharova said, according to Russian news agency Tass.
“They are still commenting on this, linking it to their hostile policy towards Russia. The impression is that Warsaw is maniacally seeking to attract even more attention from military planners in the Russian General Staff.”
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SOURCE: www.newsweek.com
RELATED: Russia would lose a war with NATO, Poland warns
“It is not we, the West, who should fear a clash with Putin, but the other way around,” Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said.
Radosław Sikorski said Russia’s military and economic potential “pales in comparison to that of the West.” | Wojtek Radawanski/AFP via Getty Images
Published April 26, 2024
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.
“Putin’s only hope is our lack of determination,” he warned.
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.
