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Polish Foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorksi said a victory against Vladimir Putin’s forces would be swift due to the “overwhelming superiority” of its air forces, even without support from the United States.
“If Russia attacked us and we took our gloves off, I think we would defeat Russia quite quickly. We have overwhelming superiority over Russia in air power. General, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s something like 2,500 aircraft,” he said during a discussion at the Yalta European Strategy meeting in Kyiv on Saturday.
“Even without the US it’s still overwhelming, and I haven’t checked recently how many F-35s and JASSMs and all the deep-strike capabilities we have.”
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He went further to say that Poland could knock out half of Russia’s refining capacity in a matter of weeks. The comments were in relation to a potential conflict between Russia and Nato and not about the prospect of a direct war between Russia and Poland.
“But if the Ukrainians have knocked out half of Russia’s refining capacity in six months, we could do it in six weeks and take out the other half,” he continued.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused Sikorski of “Russophobia of the brain” in discussing the conflict.
Speculation has abounded that Moscow is plotting to attack Nato, claims that the country has denied.
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Last month CIA director John Ratcliffe made a short trip to Moscow - the last time that a CIA chief visited the country personally was in the weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Several sources familiar with the discussions told CBS News that Ratcliffe had made the visit to warn Russia against an attack on Nato.
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I don’t believe you. Prove it.
Clickbait title again! 😡
“If Russia attacked us and we took our gloves off, I think we would defeat Russia quite quickly.”
Yes, agreed. There isn’t even any bluster in that statement. And I think NATO agrees that this option isn’t off the table.
But a cornered animal will do weird pointless self-destructive things, and it’s possible it still has one or two functioning nukes…
edit:
I’m getting replies that seem to assume that I just said that Russia doesn’t have nuclar weapons. I haven’t said that.
I had a closer look at some articles about all that, and while most stick to the “official” numbers, and while it can be said with certainty that Russia has and is actively developing nuclear weapons, there is no definity about how many there actually are or if they are deployable or even working. Careful phrasing like “it is generally estimated” or “Moscow claimed” is prevalent.
And that’s the problem. As long as Russia is what it is we will never know. But they’re not doing well and I think it’s fair to speculate that the “official” numbers might not reflect reality anymore.
No, it’s a dumb statement. Russia has more than enough nukes to destroy the world. Such war has only one outcome.
Due to the decades of corruption where every levelwere skimming off money in the Russia army, it is legit doubtful that many, if any, nukes are still functional
Remember that these devices, if ever used, will end the world and it doesn’t matter. If someone is going to use them, they effectively will kill you. Does it really matter any lre that the nukes then don’t work? What are they going to do? Kill you for that? You’d already be dead if they worked anyway.
Nukes are extremely expensive in maintenance all year around, and its fairly easy and safe to just skip money off them.
My bet is that most of their arsenal won’t be able to go critical for an explosion any more
oh no lets not fight back then /s
Thanks for putting words in my mouth.
You have definite information about what Russia has and is up to! Please tell us where we can find it.
edit:
I’m getting replies that seem to assume that I just said that Russia doesn’t have nuclar weapons. I haven’t said that.
I had a closer look at some articles about all that, and while most stick to the “official” numbers, and while it can be said with certainty that Russia has and is actively developing nuclear weapons, there is no definity about how many there actually are or if they are deployable or even working. Careful phrasing like “it is generally estimated” or “Moscow claimed” is prevalent.
And that’s the problem. As long as Russia is what it is we will never know. But they’re not doing well and I think it stands to reason to assume that they can’t keep it all in working order.
https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals is this good enough for you?
Are you serious? Feel free to read.
According to a Russian military doctrine stated in 2010, nuclear weapons could be used by Russia “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies, and also in case of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened”
I know about that doctrine. It tells me nothing factual. It’s the same threat & posturing they’ve been doing ever since '22 and possibly since Soviet times.
That wikipedia article is very long; could you point out to me the bits where numbers provided by the Kreml have been independently verified?
Particularly whether any of these warheads are known to be working.
It only takes a few working for it to be a threat. We know of the USSRs tests and we know they have missile technology. What more do you need, to be hit by one?
Yes, take the word of a blohard country that constantly lies at face value. Russia has issued 135 nuclear threats against Ukraine since the beginning of its special military operation. However, not a single tactical nuke has been deployed yet.
So imagine you’re out walking in the street when some hobo bum rushes you tackles you to the ground and starts beating you while screaming about the gun in their pocket and how they’re going to shoot you with it if you don’t stop fighting back because that’s what’s happened for the last 3 years.
I don’t understand why are you being downvoted, it is a known fact russian have thousands of nukes.
Because some of us have experience in engineering and maintenance work. And some of us can look at the state of Russia’s naval fleet and summarize that Russia hasn’t had any money for basic maintenance and repairs for over 3 decades. Traditionally, a naval fleet is the Force projector of a military country. Because you can sail your ships right off the coast of your adversaries and show off. So one would conclude that if they can’t even maintain the show Force then they probably can’t maintain the hundreds of missiles that are capable of launching nuclear payloads let alone constantly refining new material and replacing the worn out fissile material.
Paper tiger
based on your analysis, North Korea, which doesn’t have a functioning country, are on a brink of famine and at least 50 years behind their next neighbors technology wise ( thats what we are being told) but somehow they are able, if needed, to drop a nuclear bomb? Seriously, you really believe that the russians wouldn’t keep functioning nukes as a last line of defense? A bit naive I would say, but we will see it live if we live long enough. another point is this one https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals
Oh I’m sure they have 5 to 15 that can actually fire. But they never would fire them. France alone would clobber the shit out of them with their retaliatory strike.
you are sure? thats enough for me, i can relax now.
Lemmy is sometimes weird, specially when it comes to Russia 🤷
It takes a hand to press the nuke button.
Remove that hand.
Nope, they have distributed capabilities. There is no way one would destroy them all before they launch at least some of them.
Tanky confirmed. Has no idea what starship troopers are.
I welcome such rhetoric. Not cause I believe it’s true, but cause it have some chances to make the war easier for Ukraine, one way or another :-)
In war you can have all the advantages you can think about and still lose. Overconfidence about military supremacy has a huge cost if the war proceeds.
Germany in WW1 entered it avoiding attempts at deescalation, because it was overconfident it would overwhelm France and Russia. Both France and later USA had to withdraw from Vietnam. For recent example Russo-Ukranian war had Russia at clear advantage in manpower and industry, but we know now in retrospect, that it was not a couple of week pacification campaign as even myself was convinced it would be.
I guess that statement was likely a diplomatic posturing, but keep in mind that military conflicts very rarely go according to plan. The only certain thing that happens is human suffering inherent to military conflicts.
I think you can safely add Israel/USA - Iran war to the list of fuckups. WWI should be lesson for everyone that overconfidence can kill tens of millions.
The problem isnt defeating russia or pushing it back. It it doing so while not triggering a nuclear response. So salami tactics it is. Currently russia loses entire generations on foreign battlefield. Signs of internal collapse are there.
I just feel like we should investigate russias sponsors like china and stop or threaten to stop trade with them plus finance their antagonists like pakistan (eww) or taiwan or whatever group gives them trouble.
finance their antagonists like pakistan
Pakistan is on China’s side. They have their newest AA rockets.
No one can put the brakes on China without going into an immediate recession. The cost of ceasing trade with China will be catastrophic for both parties and trigger a war.
No one can put the brakes on China without going into an immediate recession.
I am not sure whether there will be a recession, but China will suffer much more (and earlier) as soon as such a trade war begins. The Chinese economy is heavily dependent on exports.
I expect this to only work like that if done by enough countries in coordination, otherwise China will likely trade with others more, and suffer way less than the ones trying to pull them. But I hope we will not have to witness if that is so
We can’t slam on the breaks on China trade, but we can ease them on a bit. As you say, ceasing trade would be catastrophic, but slight adjustments could be effective. The key is not to slap on tariffs or regulations which only encourages a similar targeted response, but to build capacity and out perform them (even at an economic loss). Not easy in a capitalist economy, but governments can do this. It’s what China has done for cars and renewable tech. We need to fight back the same way.
to build capacity and out perform them (even at an economic loss)
Good one. The average salary difference between most European countries and China is so big that we’d need slavery and we’d still be doing it at an economic loss.
We’d need our own Shenzhen. Where do you propose we build a city of millions, ideally 10, 20 million people that’s entirely focused on tech and manufacturing?
what China has done for cars and renewable tech
We’d then also need to own the entire supply chain for batteries from mining to refinement to ready-made batteries. If we tried making lithium batteries for even twice as much cost as China incurs, it wouldn’t be enough.
20 years ago you could’ve done this. Now that ship has sailed. Europe will never catch up to China in manufacturing. We don’t have enough cheap humans. Ironically a place where automation could help us a ton… by putting people out of jobs.
Nato would defeat Russia quickly if ‘we took our gloves off’, says Poland
Even without the US it’s still overwhelming,
Finally somebody with public reputation says it.
We are spending immense amounts of money to buy even more weapons. That spending was justified by the supposedly huge threat from Russia.
We were played and we will be played again if we don’t figure out how we can protect us, not so much from Russia, but from media deception.
“But if the Ukrainians have knocked out half of Russia’s refining capacity in six months, we could do it in six weeks and take out the other half,” he continued.
Yeah because you have the drone production capacity and knowledge Ukraine has, right? Then why do you use Jets to defend drones at the EU border?
This guy is getting nervous, and that’s exactly what Putin wants. He wants to spread insecurity about supporting the Ukraine. Doubt Russia has the illusion of “defeating Europe”, that is ridiculous if we look on how they are doing on the battle field in Ukraine.
He wasn’t talking about using drones. It was in context of a full scale conflict using fighter jets and bombers. And he was not referring to Poland, either, but to NATO.
That does not change the fact that Ukraine is attacking Russia’s energy infrastructure using drones, not fighter jets.
Ukraine doesn’t have the numbers of advanced jets that NATO has. Drones have proven to be an astonishingly useful weapon, but it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily the best weapon for any given job, it means they’re the best weapon that Ukraine has access to at sufficient scale.
Western donations of jets to Ukraine are certainly not nothing, but Russia had a colossal aviation advantage going into this war. Ukraine’s air force does not have the ability to shut Russia’s down and fly where it pleases like the collective NATO air forces do
I don’t want to act like I am a military expert, but as far as I understand, the drone war has changed the battlefield drastically - they can be produced in masses, they are cheap and they fly low. This guy is talking about Russian energy infrastructure that has shown to be very vulnerable towards the Ukrainian drones. Your hypothesis is this could be carried out easier with bombers, I am not so sure about this. Getting your jet the whole way to Siberia to drop a bomb on an oil plant seems to be very risky to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt NATO can easily reach air superiority over Russia, but transforming this air superiority into something useful, and that over a large country as Russia, is not as easy.
I’m no expert either, just trying to assume that the experts in charge of each country are operating rationally (which I assume you’re doing too). As far as I understand, the advantages a full-on human-piloted jet has over drones for something like striking Russian oil refinieres are:
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Far bigger payloads. A drone can damage the refinery, but you need a shitload of drones or one big plane to destroy it
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The ability to get past air defence. Ukraine has been rapidly switching up where it attacks to avoid Russia’s air defences. Hit one place for a while, Russia moves anti-air stuff to defend it, start attacking somewhere else. If you’re attacking with something much more capable, you can choose the targets that you think will hurt Russia the most rather than the ones Russia is defending the least
Russia has substantial drone production of its own and hasn’t stopped using its own air force. Similarly, Ukraine is still absolutely using what aviation it has
It’s also worth remembering that we hear a disproportionate amount about drone usage because a) it’s new and b) they inherently all have cameras on them streaming to a computer, so it’s incredibly easy to get footage of them working
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If there’s no doubt that NATO can reach air superiority, then what’s the doubt about bombers reaching far into Siberia? Air superiority means that any aircraft can get anywhere uncontested.
In any case most NATO bombers are just heavier jets (oversimplified). ONLY the USA and China have purpose built strategic bombers.
To be fair, any air superiority scenario is always about some kind of specific geographic area, and Russia is big enough that there are likely to be targets beyond the range of the fighters that enforce air supremacy
Also there is a third country which operates strategic bombers: Russia. It has been using them against Ukraine, and Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb (the raid with trucks full of drones) was specifically an effort to take out a big chunk of that strategic bomber fleet
All correct. The sheer size works both in favor and against Russia. It’s harder to gain air superiority, but it’s also harder to cover everything with defense.
(I totally blocked out the Tupolev bombers in my mind, unintentionally.)
