Europe must show it can defend itself, according to Michel Hofman.

After Ukraine, the Kremlin’s next targets could be Moldova and the Baltic countries, Belgian army chief Michel Hofman has warned.

Russia has “already shown that they have the will to attack a neighbor,” Hofman told Belgian news outlet VRT while visiting Belgian soldiers stationed in Romania. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s language “is always ambiguous. It is absolutely possible that they will also have other ideas later. Either in the south in Moldova or the Baltic states,” he said.

“Europe must urgently prepare and make it clear that it can defend itself” and that “it will … counterattack if necessary,” said Hofman, who is the chief of defense of the Belgian armed forces.

Ukraine has been fending off Putin’s full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022 and shows no signs of abating despite fierce resistance from Kyiv’s forces.

“Russia has switched to a war industry,” Hofman added. Even if Moscow’s forces seem weakened at the moment due to their ongoing war against Ukraine, this weakness is “temporary,” he said. If Russia wins the war, it “will eventually regenerate the war machine and rebuild its armed forces,” the army chief warned.

    • Hyperreality@kbin.social
      422·
      11 months ago

      They’re replenishing troops:

      https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-army-expansion-a2bf0b035aabab20c8b120a1c86c9e38

      And their arms and defense industry is ramping up heavily:

      https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-ramps-up-output-some-military-hardware-by-more-than-tenfold-state-company-2023-09-19/

      They’ve lost a lot of troops. Putin doesn’t care, he can always send more of his countrymen to their deaths.

      They’ve lost a lot of equipment. Putin doesn’t care, the Soviet Union spent far far more than Russia as a proportion of GDP and maintained that spending for decades.

      They are not to be underestimated, especially if Trump wins and further undermines NATO.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.worldEnglish
        142·
        11 months ago

        Russia just does not have the economic capacity that the USSR did, and there not even winning. They’ve stalemated at best.

        This apples and oranges.

        • Hyperreality@kbin.social
          261·
          11 months ago

          They’re not winning, yet.

          No one ever won a war by underestimating the enemy. Alarm bells should be going off across the west. They should have been going off a decade ago.

          • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.worldEnglish
            31·
            11 months ago

            The winner is always the one who simultaneously estimates their opponents most accurately, while their opponents estimate them least accurately.

            It’s both Tsun tsu and the fundamental theory of poker, and as an outsider looking in, Ukraine is winning by this definition. They’ve made a good estimate and response to Russian capabilities while Russia both misestimated and misapplied it’s survey of forces. In this sense they are losing

            However, what Russia has that Ukraine doesn’t, which it is using to great effect, is a deep, heavily invested in, propaganda and foreign influence campaign. Almost all negative impacts on global policy over the past 15 years tie back to this (Trump 2016, Brexit, Catalonia, The first invasion of Ukraine, Turkey and many more). It’s not something Ukraine can really compete against. It’s something the people of the world can compete against to support Ukraine however.