In an interview for the Vot tak project, he stated that in the event of Russian aggression against an Alliance member country, Russian military facilities in Kaliningrad and Sevastopol would be destroyed immediately.

The rapid destruction of Kaliningrad

General Hodges emphasized that a direct attack by Russia on NATO would lead to an extremely swift and overwhelming response from the Alliance.

"If Russia invaded Poland in 2025, the way it invaded Ukraine, NATO air and ground forces would destroy it," Hodges said."You can be sure - Kaliningrad would be destroyed in the first hours. In the first hours. Kaliningrad would not exist; all Russian facilities would be destroyed. And so would any Russian military facilities in Sevastopol. Therefore, direct comparisons are not appropriate," the general added.

Arrival of MiG-31i aircraft in Kaliningrad region

Hodges criticizes the West's approach after 2014

The general also criticized the West's reaction to the start of the war in 2014. He pointed out that many European countries were too dependent on Russia for gas and oil supplies.

“People said, ‘Don’t dramatize, Russia is an important country, it has nuclear weapons.’ And we failed to make it clear back then, in 2014, that Russian aggression would not go unpunished,” Hodges said. He also criticized the ineffectiveness of diplomatic and economic tools: “Even the Minsk agreement turned out to be a farce. No sanctions changed Russia’s behavior—it had no respect for these measures.”

The former commander emphasized that if NATO countries had been better prepared and had clearly warned Russia after the start of the large-scale invasion that they would provide Ukraine with everything necessary to restore its sovereignty, “if that had been our clear goal, the situation would have been completely different and Ukraine would have been in a different position.”

Instead, he said, the West"wasted years talking in the spirit of: 'What if Russia uses nuclear weapons? Maybe we need to negotiate? We should agree on Russia's withdrawal from Ukrainian territory.'"

GBU-57 in action: a strike with the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal

The White House has released a video of a test of the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bomb, which weighs 13,600 kg and was used in recent US military attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities./Source: White House

Hodges' comments come as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte earlier confirmed that"a likely war between the Russian Federation and NATO would be different from the war now taking place between Russia and Ukraine."

Analysts from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believe that Russia has launched "phase zero" preparations for war with NATO. The analysts pointed out that the appearance of the so-called"little green men" on the border with Estonia "suggests the formation of an information-psychological bridgehead for a possible future military conflict."