Russia Must Prepare for War With NATO in 2023, State TV Guest Says

A guest on Russian State TV has said that Moscow must begin preparing for a war with NATO in spring 2023, in a clip that has now gone viral.

Konstantin Sivkov, speaking on a show hosted by Yevgeny Popov—a pro-Putin member of Russia's parliament—said Russia must focus on preparing more missiles for this conflict.

The clip was posted on Twitter on Tuesday by Anton Geraschenko, the advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, and has so far been viewed more than 160,000 times.

Sivkov, a military expert and prominent supporter of Russia's war against Ukraine, also said Poland would soon be attacking Kaliningrad, a Russian province sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. It was formerly part of Germany but was annexed by the USSR at the end of World War II.

The pundit said: "We need to produce more powerful and modern weapon systems, given the inevitability of a clash with NATO in the near future.

Popov asked for clarification on whether he meant an armed conflict and whether it would be World War III or nuclear conflict.

Sivkov replied that the conflict may not necessarily be nuclear but insisted that a showdown was inevitable.

He continued: "Yes. All this is going on. We're talking about the spring period. If Poland goes to Kaliningrad, God forbid, or anywhere else. Poland is openly preparing for that. So the probability of this conflict in my estimation is high."

Major General Pekka Toveri, a Finnish former intelligence chief, ridiculed the suggestion in a tweet.

"How can you make these guys believe that the West is not planning a war with Russia[?}," he tweeted, according to a Google translation, before listing three reasons.

"1. The West would win easily.

"2. The West does not want Russia's miserable infrastructure and millions of Russians to support.

"3. Who would we make fun of on Twitter after that."

Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, has warned that Russia could launch a new offensive in the spring of 2023.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' official YouTube Channel released a video earlier this week in which Kuleba discusses the ongoing conflict with Russia.

"I think the Russian ability to launch a major offensive will probably be restored sometime in late January or February," Kuleba said. "But that's what they're trying to do and what we're trying to prevent.

"That is, I am not saying that it will definitely happen. But in the best-case scenario, taking into account the mobilization, the conscription that they announced, the training of new conscripts and the movement of their heavy weapons around the country—they clearly hold out hope that they will be able to break through our defenses and advance deeper into Ukraine."

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NATO for comment.