A Russia beaten in Ukraine will be a “vindictive” threat to NATO, the outgoing head of Britain’s Royal Air Force has warned.
Sir Mike Wigston, the head of the Royal Air Force, has warned that if Russia is defeated in Ukraine the country would end up being “brutal” and “vindictive”, ultimately representing a serious threat to both the UK and NATO as a whole.
The Air Chief Marshal is to step down next month from his position in the organisation — which has repeatedly been criticised as being in a state of dysfunction — later this year, having presided over the force as it allegedly banned the recruitment of white males in the hopes of hitting diversity quotas.
According to a report by The Telegraph, Wigston appears confident that Ukraine will somehow be victorious in the ongoing war against Russia, and will be able to “restore” its territorial borders to some extent.
However, the senior official believes that such a victory will come at a cost and that a spurned Russia will become a more “brutal” threat to the United Kingdom and its NATO allies after losing the war, with or without Vladimir Putin at the helm in Moscow.
“When the Ukraine conflict is over and Ukraine has restored its borders, as it must, we will have a damaged, vindictive, and brutal Russia, whose means of harming us is through air attack, missile attack and subsurface attack,” he explained to the publication.
Ultimately, such a threat is something Wigston believes NATO “must focus our minds on”, with the country’s air and sea capabilities being likely to endure even after a loss in Ukraine.
The Air Chief Marshal’s comments come at a time when many parts of the UK’s military are in states of dysfunction, with there being numerous predictions that the armed forces would be incapable of engaging in a war with either Russia or China.
Wigston’s RAF is no exception to this rule, with the air force being described as struggling to train fighter jet pilots, something that would likely prevent them from being effective in a fight against any of the major world powers.
To make matters worse, the force has appeared to be too preoccupied with achieving its new progressive goals to remedy any of its problems, coming under sustained fire earlier last year over accusations it had effectively banned the hiring of white males in order to better achieve diversity quotas.
Such a move even prompted allegations of illegality within the force, with its then-head of recruitment reportedly refusing the order to stop hiring white males over fears that the command was in breach of the law.
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