Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeated long-standing policy in a recent interview when he told his interlocutor that “We are not going to attack any part of Europe. We have absolutely no reason to do so. And if Europe opts to materialize its threats to prepare for war against us and starts attacking Russia, the president said that it will not be a special military operation on our part, it will be a full-scale military response with all available military means in accordance with the doctrinal documents on this matter.”
To elaborate, Russia never had any plans to risk World War III by invading the Baltic States and/or Poland, whose hostile populations would also represent an enduring security threat in any occupation. All such talk to the contrary is simply a reflection of what can be described as the trauma from the darker periods of their shard history with Russia, the details thereof being beyond the scope of this analysis to expound upon. It’s sufficient to know that there’s no basis to claims of militant Russian revanchism towards them.
That being said, there’s no doubt that Poland and the rest of its European NATO allies in general pose credible security threats to Russia, but their nature is evolving and typically cautious Putin won’t authorize a first strike at the risk of sparking World War III. Prior to Russia’s development of hypersonic missiles, US missile defense infrastructure in Poland undermined Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities, but the aforesaid arms have since restored strategic parity by neutralizing this threat.
The latest Polish-emanating threat to Russia concerns its unprecedented military build-up, which has led to it commanding the EU’s largest army at over 215,000 troops, with plans to reach 300,000 by 2030 and half a million by 2039 (200,000 of which would be reservists). “Germany Is Competing With Poland To Lead Russia’s Containment”, while the EU promulgated the €800 billion “ReArm Europe Plan” last year, and all these reserves will swiftly reach the Russian/Belarusian border due to the “military Schengen”.
This refers to early 2024’s pact between the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland for facilitating the movement of troops and equipment across their borders, with plans for Belgium and France to join too. NATO’s Eastern Flank is also rapidly militarizing, not only in terms of redoubling their arms procurement and number of recruits, but also with regard to physical infrastructure. The “EU Defense Line”, which links the “Baltic Defense Line” and Poland’s “East Shield”, is quickly turning into a new Iron Curtain.
Most ominously, Trump 2.0’s National Defense Strategy declares that “European NATO dwarfs Russia in economic scale, population, and, thus, latent military power”, all of this just has to be properly managed in order to most effectively contain Russia. Although Russia is winning the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with NATO in Ukraine, it’ll be increasingly more difficult to maintain its lead, and the potential “dwarfing” of its capabilities by the EU could become an existential threat if a conflict ever breaks out.
It’s with this scenario in mind that Lavrov strongly implied that Russia would employ nuclear weapons in its response to any hypothetical invasion by the EU. If the US oversees the optimization of the EU’s military-industrial complex, military logistics, and other defense-related matters, then the challenge that Russia might face along its western frontier could mirror the one in June 1941. Unlike back then, Russia is now a nuclear superpower, and that might be the only factor that deters the EU from invading Russia.
