Moscow says it will keep pushing its offensive in Ukraine, though NATO doubts Russia has the resources to make a significant breakthrough.
NATO’s top military officer has said Russia’s armed forces are incapable of any major advance.
“The Russians don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough,” NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli told reporters on Thursday.
“More to the point, they don’t have the skill and the capability to do it; to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage,” the general said.
If you don’t have the capacity, then you can’t. How do you know they are “trying”? NATO said Russia is a threat to NATO and the US says Russia is a threat to national security. This statement seems to indicate that NATO is crossing their own lies. It is a contradiction, one of many coming out of NATO.
It’s really not that complicated. Russia today lacks the forces. Russia in two years, after the economy is pushed further into wartime measures and further mobilization of troops, may not.
I don’t recall NATO officials ever saying Russia was going to attack the Baltics tomorrow.
This is exactly what’s happened over the last few decades too. They take Georgia, then they wait and resupply. They take Crimea and launch a war in Eastern Ukraine, then wait and resupply. They thought they could take the entirety of Ukraine and repeat the pattern, but they’ve overplayed their hand.
Russia is a threat to NATO member states, not NATO. NATO is aware of how easily it can stomp the Russian military, and so do all the NATO members.
What’s worrisome is how close some NATO members are to Russia, a country that has made its willingness to invade other countries based on made up justifications very well known, and actively sows disunity propaganda and actively influences politics on other countries, explicitly as acts of hybrid war (as in, based on state war fighting doctrine).
It’s also very clearly able to undertake large scale war, which its neighbors don’t necessarily have.
I don’t know exactly what you’re arguing here… that Russia actually isn’t a threat to NATO? Or are you seeking some kind of “gotcha” moment when people acknowledge that Russia is both dangerous, but not as fierce as analysts initially expected? Maybe you can clarify what you mean by “NATO lies,” for starters?
Russia has said multiple times that they are a threat to NATO. Pretending otherwise is as childish as pretending this isn’t a proxy war between NATO and Russia.
If you’re going to defend Russia, at least try not to contradict Russia.