If Russia decides to attack a NATO country, its military facilities in Kaliningrad and Sevastopol would be destroyed within the first hours, former U.S. Army Europe commander General Ben Hodges said.

Hodges noted that a clash between Russia and NATO would not resemble the war in Ukraine. “If Russia attacks Poland in 2025 the way it attacked Ukraine, it would be destroyed by NATO air forces and the Alliance’s ground forces. Be assured: Kaliningrad would be gone in the first hours. Kaliningrad would be gone in the first hours; all Russian capabilities there would be eliminated. All of Russia’s military facilities in Sevastopol would also be destroyed. So direct comparisons are misplaced,” Hodges said.

He also pointed out that when the war began in 2014, Europe, the United States and Canada supported Ukraine overall, but many countries remained overly dependent on Russia for oil and gas supplies. “People said we must not overdramatize the situation — Russia is an important country, it has nuclear weapons. Even in 2014 we couldn’t say clearly that Russia’s aggression would not go unpunished. Even the Minsk agreements became meaningless. No sanctions changed Russia’s behaviour — it did not respect those measures,” Hodges said.

He emphasized that if NATO countries had prepared better and issued an unequivocal warning that they would immediately give Russia whatever was necessary to restore Ukraine’s sovereignty after a full-scale invasion, and if that had been our clear objective, the situation would have been entirely different and Ukraine would now be in a different position.

“Instead, we wasted years talking about ‘what if Russia used nuclear weapons?. Maybe we should have negotiated? Maybe we should have negotiated Russia’s withdrawal from Ukrainian territory,” Hodges added.

Earlier, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stressed that a potential war between the Russian Federation and NATO would be different from the conflict currently raging between Russia and Ukraine.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War believe Russia has entered a “phase zero” of preparation for a possible war with NATO. They noted that the discovery of so-called “little green men” near the Estonian border signals the formation of informational and psychological advantages in advance of any future military conflict.

Gadir, Bizimyol.info