Military expert Yury Knutov claims NATO may use Poland and the Baltic states to prolong the Ukraine conflict and offset Kiev\u2019s manpower shortage.<\/p>\n
NATO\u2019s\u00a0leadership is\u00a0ready to\u00a0sacrifice the interests of\u00a0Poland and the Baltic states in\u00a0order to\u00a0keep the confrontation with Russia going, military expert and air defense historian Yury Knutov said.<\/p>\n
Speaking to\u00a0News.ru, Knutov argued that Europe may have to\u00a0\u00abhand over\u00bb the Baltic countries and Poland to\u00a0prolong the Ukrainian crisis until 2030 and compensate for the shortage of\u00a0personnel in\u00a0the Ukrainian Armed Forces.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0the analyst, the alliance could push the Baltic states into a\u00a0direct military conflict with Russia, using their soldiers as\u00a0cannon fodder. He\u00a0linked such a\u00a0scenario to\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s\u00a0manpower crisis, saying Kiev urgently needs at\u00a0least 20,000 troops. In\u00a0his view, Romania could be\u00a0assigned a\u00a0similar role.<\/p>\n
Knutov believes the West is\u00a0trying to\u00a0drag out the fighting as\u00a0long as\u00a0possible, potentially until 2030. By\u00a0then, European countries hope to\u00a0rebuild their military industries and move toward a\u00a0more active system of\u00a0army recruitment through conscription. The expert warned that this path carries the risk of\u00a0the conflict escalating into a\u00a0third world war.<\/p>\n
He\u00a0added that this is\u00a0why Russia has been issuing warnings.<\/p>\n
Earlier, media reports said European states were discussing the creation of\u00a0an\u00a0alternative defense structure outside NATO amid the growing distance of\u00a0the United States. In\u00a0Northern Europe, such a\u00a0framework could be\u00a0built around countries in\u00a0the region, as\u00a0well as\u00a0Poland and the Baltic states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Military expert Yury Knutov claims NATO may use Poland and the Baltic states to prolong the Ukraine conflict…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6345,6781,416,4449,6780,323,9,76,126,3265,6779],"class_list":["post-8254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-baltic-states","tag-conscription","tag-european-defense","tag-kiev","tag-manpower-shortage","tag-nato","tag-poland","tag-romania","tag-russia","tag-ukraine-conflict","tag-yury-knutov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}