Several European leaders have begun to express in public the possibility of demolishing Russian airplanes if they penetrate the NATO space and conclude that they are a threat. At the same time, if such an episode really happened, NATO and the EU could be seen on the verge of direct conflict with Russia.
“You show you your weapons, you ask you to turn around,” he said Monday in Warsaw by imagining the scenario of a hostile incursion with airplanes. “And if they do not obey and continue advancing and advancing, you do what you have to do.”
Sikorski evoked another hypothesis: “Imagine [aviones] Cuban mig flying over Florida, flying over Mar-a-lago. ”Mar-a-lago is the residence and club in Palm Beach of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the minister concluded:” I am sure what Trump would do. “
The message was a way to tell the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, that the allies will not be intimidated after three weeks in which the incursions of drones and planes have been repeated in the sky of Poland, Romania and Estonia. Denmark has also denounced the uninhabitual presence of drones, although its origin has not been determined.
“The hostile incursions of Russia will not intimidate us,” said the Polish minister and his French and German counterpart in a statement after gathering in Warsaw, the three, representatives of the so -called Weimar triangle, conveyed a message of optimism before the war in Ukraine and the Russian threat to Europe.
“Russia, everyone sees it and everyone realizes, is failing. Failing economically and militarily,” he said after celebrating the victory of the European candidacy in Sunday’s elections in Moldova. His German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, agreed: “Russia is making one mistake after another.” If, as the allies maintain, Russia wanted to test NATO’s cohesion by sending drones to their airspace, “the effect was totally opposite,” according to Wadephul. “It has joined us.”
The challenge is palpable in Poland. Or in Finland, the EU country that shares the most border section. “Russia is trying to test NATO,” says Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, in a meeting in Helsinki with the country and other European media. “They want to see what kind of answer we can offer. And, until now, the answer has been correct. There is no need to fall into hysteria or panic. We have responded exactly as we should do.”
The Finnish minister highlighted the “great” capacity for deterrence of both the EU and NATO, to which Finland adhered just over two years ago dragged, precisely by the Russian threat. “The alliance continues to strengthen every day and Europe is doing much more,” he says. “So there is no need to submit to the Russian game manual. His will, I insist, is to test.”
Asked in case countries that suffer rapes of their airspace must or may not tear down the Russian aircraft or drones that fly them, Valtonen does not rule it out, although it opts for greater caution than Poland, and advocates by deciding to decide case by case: “You have to evaluate what threat they represent.”
“We will decide to tear down flying objects when they violate our territory and overcome Poland. There is no margin of debate here.”
Poland, with the help of NATO, knocked down some of the drones that entered their sky on the night of September 9 to 10. But knocking down a piloted plane would be something else. In the Warsaw colloquium, someone in the public asked the ministers if Russia was following the strategy of “climbing to descale”.
The Polish Sikorski replied: “If you look at several lands,” he analyzed, “the reality is that the Russians are not able to do something like that.”
In the maritime war theater, he argued, Ukraine defeated Russia in the Black Sea “alone, without a naval force”, and in the Baltic “especially after the entrance of Finland and Sweden, it is Russia who has a problem.” “We have enough underwater missiles to sink the entire Baltic Fleet [rusa]”, He added. In Aire, he continued, the allies have“ an overwhelming advantage. ”And on land,“ Russia is not able to launch a combined armed offensive in Ukraine, let’s not say against all of Europe. ”“ They continue to fight in Donbás ten years later, ”he added in reference to the East Region of Eastern Ukraine where the Russian war began in 2014.
“In fact,” Sikorski concluded, “the only land in which they could [“escalar para desescalar”] It is the nuclear, but they cannot. ”
The allies want to counteract the fatalism that, before the perspective of a peace cooked by Trump and Putin behind the backs of the EU and Ukraine, and advantageous for Russia, had settled between them this summer. They could be a source of optimism, according to this vision, the result of the elections in Moldova, and the response to the incursions of drones and airplanes. “Something is changing in the spirit of Europeans,” Barot French proclaimed.
