Moscow Slams US General For Plan To Destroy Russia’s Air Defenses

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

It goes without saying that the US and Russia both have many, many plans to attack one another. Generally speaking, however, it’s been treated as bad form to bring them up, and worse form to brag about them.

So Russia is criticizing US General Jeffrey Harrigian for talking up how the US has plans to destroy all air defenses in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, saying there should be “no doubt” the US could do it.

US General Jeffrey Harrigian said on Tuesday that “If we have to go in there to take down, for instance, the Kaliningrad IADS (Integrated Air Defense System), let there be no doubt we have a plan to go after that,” the Breaking Defense magazine reported.

Russian Foreign Ministry officials say they consider the statement a “threat” and also particularly irresponsible, while the Defense Ministry said that Kaliningrad is well defended from US aggression.

“Firstly we consider this a threat. Secondly, we consider such statements to be absolutely irresponsible,” Russia’s Ministry of Defense said.

“The region of Kaliningrad is reliably protected from any aggressive ‘plans’ developed in Europe by US generals passing through,” it added.

US forces in Poland often conduct wargames settling around moving north into Kaliningrad, and the region is small enough that the US could probably take it, at least for a time, in the event of a war.

Bastian Coastal Defense Missile Systems 

That probably doesn’t matter, however, as a full-scale ground war between the US and Russia where they’re seizing territory almost certainly would escalate into a nuclear conflict, and by the time the general is proven right, tens or hundreds of millions of people are about to be killed in a conflagration.