this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2026
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51
Nato would defeat Russia quickly if ‘we took our gloves off’, says Poland (www.independent.co.uk)
submitted 5 hours ago by tardigrade@scribe.disroot.org to c/europe@feddit.org
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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.”

...

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.

...

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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[–] Skua@kbin.earth 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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

[–] lokalhorst@feddit.org 1 points 38 minutes ago* (last edited 37 minutes ago)

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.