Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said NATO could quickly defeat Russia if Moscow attacks the Alliance, claiming that Europe has “huge superiority“ in air power, Kyiv Post reported.
“If Russia attacks us and we take off our gloves, I think we will defeat Russia quite quickly. We have a huge superiority over Russia in air power. "General, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's something like 2,500 aircraft," Sikorski said during a discussion at the annual Yalta European Strategy Summit in Kiev.
Sikorski also compared Europe's potential ability to attack Russia's energy infrastructure to Ukraine's ongoing campaign against Russian refineries.
"If the Ukrainians destroyed half of Russia's refineries in six months, we could do it in six weeks and destroy the other half," the Polish diplomat said.
The Polish minister called on Europe to convince Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin that any aggression against Europe would come at an "incredibly high" cost. price.
Sikorski noted that the combined defense budgets of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries exceed those of Russia, while acknowledging that Europe does not yet have full defense sovereignty.
Sikorski stressed that strategic pressure on the Russian economy is key to ending the conflict, the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported, quoted by BTA.
"Negotiations are one way to end this war," said the Polish foreign minister, who is also the country's deputy prime minister. "Another way, however, is for the war to simply die down, with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin running out of resources to continue waging it. "To do this, Ukraine should focus mainly on strikes on oil refineries," he advised.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova meanwhile sharply criticized Shikorski. She described his statement that if Russia attacked Poland, it would be defeated very quickly, as a manifestation of a brain disease, TASS reported. "Russophobia in the brain," Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel.