Regarding the "why" of Russian drone/air shenanigans: I don't think Russia wants to get their expensive assets shot down or provoke a NATO-wide war. Many people seem to believe this but it presumes far too much. They don't gain from more fronts. They cannot realistically march into the west, they can't even march into west Ukraine.
Realistically, Russia is doing these antics to force as many European countries as possible to feel that they need their air defense inventory (eg MIM-104 Patriot interceptor stock) for themselves, rather than giving or selling that inventory to Ukraine. That has immediate material benefit for the current Russian war effort with almost zero cost (assuming EU countries don't shoot down anything important).
May be. During the meeting with EU diplomats in Moscow they were allegedly told the recent incidents are a payback for Ukraine's attack on Crimea. The diplomats didn't comment on that, though.
There's been fighting over Crimea for years. It doesn't ring true as a cause of new behavior.
One thing that is new though is Russians waiting in mile long lines for petrol while they watch their refineries explode. Moscow may be trying to widen the war as a domestic distraction from that not looking good.
At least if they mix it up with NATO they can say sorry we're in a war with NATO rather than the embarrassment of we picked on a country 1/4 our size and now they are beating us.
Europe is struggling with soaring energy costs and a lack of alternatives. Whether it's red tape or unfortunate geography, Europe cannot afford to turn off the Russian gas tap.
A benevolent US would see this and find ways to bridge the gap for Europe and lower its energy costs, further choking Russia.
A less benevolent US would see this and encourage it to continue, weakening both parties and sowing internal feuds within Europe.
We already turned off the tap (look at the link above). It is just unimportant countries like Hungary and Slovakia that still import pipeline gas (and they're not making any friends...) . Would be great to pressure them more. Till this year Ukraine still imported nat gas from Russia btw.
LNG is a fungible commodity that is traded world-wide. Don't see much beyond symbolic value here in refusing it. Trying to enforce a price cap would be great there, but needs coordination.
Hello from Slovakia. The gas pipeline from Russia through Ukraine into Slovakia (and further west/south) does not work since January 2025, it was turned off by Ukraine. If there is still gas flowing from Russia, it's through other pipelines, most likely Turkstream, and that too will end in time:
https://www.politico.eu/article/bulgaria-end-russian-gas-flo...
We, as far as I know, also sadly import oil from Russia. I expect that to end soon too, because of a combination of political pressure and Ukrainian attacks.
Our current government is pretty close to Putin and Orban and it would be very welcome if the rest of EU attacked this issue more, as you mention.
Wind and solar can not replace oil and gas without a working energy storage solution which is not feasible for many if not most countries except for those with suitable geography for hydroelectric storage. As it stands now every GW of solar/wind generating capacity needs to be combined with a similar GW of either nuclear or fossil capacity. Especially in the case of nuclear power it does not make sense to build generation capacity and not use it since it is in the planning and building phases that the largest investment lies. Once built a nuclear power plant should run at capacity to recuperate the costs of building and the coming costs of dismantling it. Fossil plants do have relatively high running costs so they are more suitable as backup solutions, especially quick-started gas turbine installations running on natural gas. Of course these power plants need a fuel source which ties their use to all the geopolitical politicking around supply sources, emissions and supposed 'climate impact'.
One good solution would be for wind and solar and other renewable power to be used for the creation of an easily storable fuel which can be used in e.g. gas turbines.
When I was a boy I learned about this cool new technology of storing energy in chemical reactions. Fascinating stuff.
Super convenient for balancing the power demand curve.
Cheap too. (See economics examples from southern Australia)
You could even deploy it at the edge by simply splitting the cost with residents. Imagine if everyone drew power during the demand trough and then replayed it during the demand peak. Now grid balancing is way easier for providers, green power can produce as much as it wants whenever it wants.
Although every country should invest in home-grown battery technology just in case China bites off Taiwan and we gotta cut them out of the global economy too.
I am not backing Trump here at all, but in his first term he pointed out how over reliant Europe is for Russian energy. A few Euro leaders practically laughed in his face (publicly, on TV) and told him with smirks on their face that he was mistaken. They attempted to frame him as a crazy person for even suggesting it's a problem. A man like Trump does not strike me as somebody that will forget and forgive that. I would not expect a benevolent US after. Why would anybody help Europe after their refusal to even admit the problem?
> Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, Future U.S. political leaders– those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.
Feels kinda like you're removing Europe's agency here. "Red tape" is just another way of saying "terrible policy decisions for decades". If they dug themselves into a hole before, what's to stop them from doing it again when after you help them fill in the hole a little bit?
Could you give some evidence for this claim? Here is some counterevidence: [1] says that the top buyers of Russian energy include:
• Hungary: 416 million euros ($488m)
• Slovakia: 275 million euros ($323m)
• France: 157 million euros ($184m)
• Netherlands: 65 million euros ($76m)
• Belgium: 64 million euros ($75m)
[2] suggests that China and India are the main buyers. I don't how reliable those sources are. There is also the problem of how to classify 'laundered' oil that was bought and resold by, e.g. India.
How do you (especially Europeans) understand this move from Russia? Can it really sustain a war against us? Does it want to break NATO by proving the US won't move?
What move, you mean about the drones? I first want to be sure about what happened. Remember that few years ago you were still being labeled as "Russian propaganda" if you had doubts about the NS incident.
Now we're expected to believe a rag-tag crew of Ukrainians used a leaky sailboat to simultaneously detonate deep water pipelines, lol.
Denmark and Sweden gave up thier investigations quite quickly, probably they arrived at the truth but couldn't say it, only Germany was strong-armed into keeping the charade going.
I think they are like the mafia in many ways and like to threaten people and leave horses heads in beds and the like. It's a way to try to intimidate others not to mess with them. I'm not sure it's going to work in this case.
I think the idea from putin is, they are done in 20 years anyway from a population/financial position anyway. There only chance is to expand and take over populations to rebuild their ability to survive as a country.
Is this something that you would have done? I don't see how russia's survivability would be improved by expanding it's sphere of control, but, on the contrary it would stretch resources thin.
Russia is burning money, even with the billions they get from EU to pay for gas they are reaching the end of their "runway" and if there are no big changes and the economy goes to hell, Putin will very quickly get very unpopular with Russians. This seems like a desperate move to provoke a larger war which can keep Putin in power for a while longer.
I have heard this move characterized as "horizontal escalation". Putin is stuck in Ukraine (hasn't taken anything strategically significant, controls less territory than 3 years ago). So he tries to widen the confrontation geographically.
Have you heard about accelerationism? This is an ideology of influential far right wing politicians and activists. They want to introduce as much world instability as they can, to break any existing structures where they a the losers. Then they hope when everything goes to hell, they will be the first to pick up the biggest pieces for themselves. This is Putin's real aim and this is why Trump is so baffled this whole year, he is giving Putin a victory and a way to exit the war one time after another and Putin rejects it repeatedly. This is because winning this war is not Putin's aim. His aim is total chaos in Europe, dissolution of the EU and NATO, and then he will pick up eastern scraps to form USSR 2.0. This is why trading thousand men for thousand square meters is acceptable to him. Wellbeing of humans or economy is a secondary thought to him.
This strategy is known as "disaster capitalism" and was explored by Naomi Klein in her book "The Shock Doctrine". Which details how UofChicago economists experimented on South America in addition to natural disasters, etc. The rich love to burn everything down so they can buy what's left for pennies. It's sick.
It's hybrid warfare, disrupting the economy by shutting down airports, increasing fear in the population to pressure us to not escalate it further "or else..."; I don't believe it's an attempt to break NATO, they want to keep the harassment and disruptions at as low cost as possible, and these drones flying over important hubs (airports, ports, bases) are quite cheap while causing relatively larger annoyances.
They can't sustain, economically speaking, a war against EU/NATO but Putin can definitely play on our fears much harder than we can play on Russians fears.
This is a joke, right? Diplomacy is something Russians completely disregard, lie about, and only agree to do when they are the only one benefiting, and even then only until they decide to break whatever agreements were made, because they've done so every single time so far. How do you have any diplomacy with someone like that? You can't.
Right now the US under Trump is leading the diplomatic efforts toward Russia. I think Europe and the Ukraine would have been better served with European leaders doing this.
Russia has reaffirmed Ukrainian territorial sovereignty in 1990s, after splitting along said boundaries, in return for concessions partly in their favour (Ukrainian nuclear disarmament), then invaded Ukraine. Twice. And that's ignoring tons of smaller violations - some of which are still pretty big.
What deal can you make with someone who just doesn't stick to the deals they agree to?
By leading you mean writing tweets with scary threats and then following usual strategy TACO.
Rolling red carpets for putin is actually undermining EU efforts to isolate Russia. Russian should be welcome only within their allies: Eritrea and North Korea.
Russia doesn't want to be involved in diplomatic efforts with Europe, it doesn't suit their purposes. With the US however it can drive a wedge, so "diplomacy" it is.
Trump is just rambling. His 24 hours to end the war was an election slogan.
Putin only understands the language of power. European countries don't want Ukraine to lose but can't commit themselves to the billions it would cost to win.
There have been literally (not figuratively literally, literally literally) zero diplomatic resolutions of military conflicts or tensions with Russia during the Putin era. None. The closest one you can see, if you squint extremely hard, is the detente of 8 years that that followed the invasion of Crimea. And then we know what happened.
Conflicts in Putin's Russia end militarily, always (usually in victory or stalemate, though he for sure "lost" in Syria), or at best a lie in preparation for the next war. Negotiated peace is not a thing.
Negotiated peace can be a thing if there is enough of a threat behind it. I imagine Putin would like to be able to nuke Ukraine but the US have threatened bad things if he does. I think if the west had made more of a threat before the 2022 invasion Putin may well have backed off but Biden was like if you only invade a little bit we won't do much which is kind of how it went.
How nuking Ukraine will help to occupy and control Ukraine? Imagine tomorrow Kyiv is nuked. Troops are still there and now have even more will to fight russians.
"This hasn't worked for 30 years, but this time it will for sure!" makes for pretty awful geopolitical strategy, historically. But you do you.
(Your broader point that Putin's actions are constrained by nuclear deterrents is obviously correct. But it's very clearly not a point about diplomacy!)
I'm not convinced it hasn't worked. There were rumors the US diplomats said to Putin that if he used nukes in Ukraine then probably the US would a) take out his military in Ukraine and b) target him to be killed personally. The diplomatic bit is saying that privately rather than actually getting the nuking and killing going.
Because it angers the fascist right-wingers brigading any topic they dislike, among them support for Ukraine. Also the moderation is completely fine with this and hides between "remaining apolitical", or "avoiding divisive topics".
The drone sightings is a mix of Russian ops, and copycat actors. The jets that violate airspace, are probably a mix of intentional close flying, under the plausible deniability that navigation jamming in the area causes them to cross into neighboring airspace.
In the case of Russian aggression, it is to create more tension. Why on earth would Russia want to escalate this, you might ask? Well, now that pretty much every country west of their border is a NATO member, a Russian attack on NATO would likely trigger article 5.
If Russia can provoke any NATO countries to attack first by, say, downing some airplane of theirs (fighter jets, recon, strategic bombers, etc.), they can use this as casus belli, and use it as propaganda. One thing Russia learned after 2022 was that any larger scale mobilization is incredibly unpopular. They can't mobilize millions of soldiers without any real cause, and march into the west. If they can sell the idea (with "proof") that NATO is actively attacking Russia, that's another thing.
They're probably also banking on the fact that the heightened situation will scare people in the west, which in turn will make them vote for isolationist parties that don't want to commit. One thing is to talk about war, another thing is to actually see the writings on the wall.
I don't think European NATO members can do much other than to just keep reinforcing and fortifying their borders, build up their armed forces as if Russia will invade tomorrow, and dig in. And keep hammering Russia with sanctions.
The imperialist dreams of Russia is the expand into the ex-Soviet countries. They've tried election meddling, which worked to some degree, but I think they know that to achieve their goals, they need some larger conflict to happen - so that they can annex the desired areas when peace talks come up.
> If Russia can provoke any NATO countries to attack first by, say, downing some airplane of theirs (fighter jets, recon, strategic bombers, etc.), they can use this as casus belli, and use it as propaganda.
This has already happened, Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015, the Russian state very quickly tucked its tail in after that. The VKS can't afford to lose these planes willy-nilly.
The Turkish pilot who shot down was persecuted by Erdogan:
> Erdoğan announced in an interview that the two Turkish pilots who downed Russian aircraft were arrested on suspicion that they have links to the Gülen movement, and that a court should find out "the truth".
Russia didn't tuck its tail, they deployed SAMs to their Syrian base, they deployed the late Moskva in the region, and they pressured Erdogan to punish the pilot.
I am not sure what European "leaders" expected. Many of them support Ukraine militarily in the war, so yes, EU is in fact in war with Russia, through Ukraine as a proxy.
I oppose the military support to Ukraine. I think it's responsibility of the stronger party, here NATO, to seek deescalation. I also disapprove that the military support for Ukraine was decided undemocratically, without any consideration whether this might escalate into a war. And here we are...
Russia is the aggressor in this war; if it stopped its aggression and withdrew from Ukraine, the war would stop. So the responsibility for deescalating falls squarely on Russia.
Russia has no intention to stop; on the contrary it is ramping up the production of military equipment. As only military means can stop a military aggression, it makes every sense for European leaders to support Ukraine militarily.
If anything, European leaders deserve criticism for not supporting Ukraine enough.
Which war? Yes, between Russia and Ukraine, Russia is the aggressor, and bigger. Between NATO and Russia, NATO is the aggressor (from Russian perspective) and bigger.
Russia started the war in Ukraine to stop the NATO expansion. It's against the international law, but this intent was made pretty clear also in Georgia.
EU and NATO then reacted with more NATO expansion, and supporting Ukraine militarily. They didn't offer any deescalation. (IMHO NATO should have kicked Turkey out of NATO - not a democratic country - in exchange for Ukraine to continue being sovereign neutral state.)
Neither side wants to deescalate. I think both sides behave as little children. But with rockets and nukes.
> NATO has not expanded into Russia. Russia has expanded into Ukraine.
Morally you're correct, but on a practical level, Russia didn't want the NATO to be in Ukraine. Morality (or international law) doesn't always win - look at the Cuban missile crisis.
> People join NATO in self-defence against Russia.
Yes, the motivation of the joining countries is clear. What is less clear (and you should question), why they should be accepted - if such offers pose a risk of eventual escalation into a war. (I know it's not fair, but that's geopolitics.) It was the U.S. announcing in 2007 NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia, despite Germany and France being against and no public/democratic discussion of this in Ukraine and Georgia (or any other NATO member). Is it hard to believe this is done for any reason other than imperial vanity?
> They wouldn't have to if Russia didn't keep attacking its neighbours.
U.S. have attacked unprovoked countries all over the planet, why trust them more than Russia? Seems quite shortsighted.
"I only burglarized your home because you threatened to join the neighborhood watch" isn't the ironclad defense of Russian imperialism you seem to think it is.
> Nobody is forcing anyone to join the "Resist the violent bully in your doorstep" club.
That kind of club might be fine, but NATO simply isn't it. Again, you're not asking the question, what is in it for the U.S. (to promise protection - with nukes - to those countries).
Look at my country - Czechia. After the end of Cold war, in the context of NATO, we have done more for American security than America did for ours. We had soldiers in Afghanistan and 11 of them died. During the same period, no American soldier has died defending Czech Republic.
> It just seems to happen naturally when the violent bully starts attacking their neighbours.
NATO continued expanding after the end of Cold war, without Russia attacking anyone. I think it was a mistake - EU should have created its own defense, and start from a clean slate.
Anyway, I don't care much about the question of historic guilt. I commented here because I think western "leaders" should be honest about their goals vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, and they aren't.
Peace and stability for about 100 million people in Central and Eastern Europe, who will in turn consume American products and services and cheaply write code for American companies instead of designing nuclear missiles for Russians to target Washington DC. All that the Americans have to do is give a guarantee that essentially costs nothing, if it's believable enough.
> NATO continued expanding after the end of Cold war, without Russia attacking anyone.
NATO is not some loaf of bread sitting on a windowsill that expands on its own. Most countries in Eastern Europe worked feverishly to join NATO. Why? Because their leaders had seen the grainy VHS tapes from the 1994–1996 First Chechen War, showing horrific Russian atrocities against civilians, similar to what many had personally seen or even experienced in the 1940s and 1950s. These images dispelled any illusion that the Russian Federation was more civil than the USSR or that it would respect the sovereignty and self-determination of other peoples.
By the mid-1990s, Russia had already employed its strategy of setting up fake separatist movements to instigate armed conflicts in Europe, and a good chunk of Moldova remains under Russian military occupation to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistrian_War
Nobody wanted to become the target of the next artificial "separatist movement" that would drain resources, hinder economic development, block EU integration, and leave the country vulnerable to full-scale invasion like Ukraine experienced in 2014 and then again in 2022. In an alternate timeline, Eastern Europe could have ended up like a series of Moldovas. Very poor, stagnating countries, constantly battling Russian meddling in their internal affairs.
Even 30 years ago, this threat was obvious to anyone familiar with Russia. For example, here's Chechen president Dudayev, a former commander of a Soviet nuclear bomber base, predicting the future in a 1995 interview as the Russians were hunting him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IavEOx3hUAk
Sorry, but what you're describing is American exceptionalism, in line with PNAC for instance.
> Peace and stability for about 100 million people in Central and Eastern Europe, who will in turn consume American products and services and cheaply write code for American companies instead of designing nuclear missiles for Russians to target Washington DC. All that the Americans have to do is give a guarantee that essentially costs nothing, if it's believable enough.
Precisely what led to this conflict, the idea that the Eastern Europe (or now specifically Ukraine) should be "owned" by some superpower.
I am not a fan of Russia, in fact, I work for American company and I got rich thanks to that, and I generally like Americans, but if you don't see how incredibly patronizing this is, I don't know what to tell you. (I mean, Eastern Europe aside, the idea that for example Germany (or France), one of the largest economies in the world, needs some help from Americans to defend themselves is ridiculous.)
And paradoxically, the islamophobic sentiment is so strong in Eastern Europe today that most people would actually agree with the Russian approach to the Chechen war, unfortunately. Keep in mind Russia is not that different from U.S. when it comes to waging foreign wars.
The idea that war is in any case justifiable is just something that never works out as a consistent moral principle, and that's true for NATO's support for Ukraine as well (though I don't have a problem with Ukrainians defending their country, I think it's the right thing to do).
But once you start using violence as a means to revenge, or to regain the territory, you have morally lost it (which is what NATO is being asked by Ukraine). In Palestine, most of the world recognizes that the problem of Israeli colonization and apartheid has to be resolved through peaceful means (my preferred solution would be one state), not through Palestinian violence, despite all the Israeli violence (which is more than 10x) towards Palestinians. The same principle should be applied to Ukraine-Russia relations.
Ukraine was left out of NATO. When Russia first invaded in 2014, European leaders looked the other way. Claims that there plans for Ukraine to join NATO and that Russia felt threatened and was forced to attack are just lies to attempt to justify this war.
At the time fictions like "Russian-backed separatists" were made up to deny the reality: that it was a foreign invasion. Yet all the signs were there: for example, "separatist" leaders like Igor Girkin were citizens of Russia, not Ukraine; OSCE observers found military vehicles containing documentation indicating that the equipment had been maintained in Russia.
European leaders called for "deescalation", "political resolution"; seeing weakness and appeasement in the Minsk agreements, Putin escalated. That's the problem with aggressive leaders like Putin: if you look weak and vulnerable, they will attack you.
Russian leaders see Russia as an empire and regularly say Eurasia should extend from Lisbon to Vladivistok. Putin tries to terrorize us, stating that if we resist it will lead to "World War III" or "nuclear apocalypse". We must not fall for this, or we will gradually lose our freedoms.
Look it up, in 2007 G.W.Bush invited Ukraine and Georgia to NATO. Also look up PNAC. Unfortunately, there was little interest from the U.S. side to end the cold war - they had to be a "world policeman".
Yes EU leaders called for deescalation, that is true. But the U.S., the most important NATO member, did not. There is a 2018 report from RAND that suggests Ukraine should be used as a tool to weaken Russia.
The Ukraine conflict, although there is a contribution from other causes (russian and ukrainian nationalism), is a proxy war between U.S. and Russia, a continuation of the cold war.
I don't disagree with you on Russia, but the US and EU (currently) is unfortunately not interested in deescalating.
Why would the US want to fight a proxy war with Russia? Before the recent Ukraine invasion, nobody really cared about Russia. They were just kind of around, cheating at the Olympics was like the big news if anyone talked about Russia.
What does Russia have that US would want to fight a proxy war over? Certainly isn’t technology or natural resources.
The military industrial complex in the U.S. is constantly lobbying the American government to start and participate in wars. So after Afghanistan, some other place had to be found where to cause trouble, so that ḿilitary contracts can be made.
Now that Ukrainian resolve to fight is cooling off, you can see Trump administration planning more wars - in Palestine, Yemen, Iran, Venezuela..
These operations benefit wealthy class in the U.S. (the profit from government contracts) as well as a fat layer of middle class Americans who are involved in making wars.
Every country that exports weapons has this incentive, including Russia, but the U.S. is by far the largest country producing weapons it doesn't need internally. International arms trade should be IMHO completely banned, because it gives (capitalist) countries strong motivation to cause wars. It's a negative externality.
> Russia started the war in Ukraine to stop the NATO expansion.
You do realize NATO doesn't expand by itself? It's always a country that asks to join so that Russia can't attack it, not the other way round. NATO is not going around asking new countries to join. On the contrary: Ukraine already asked before the war and was rejected.
(Not to mention the absurdity of this argument when you consider why Finland and Sweden joined NATO.)
NATO is not expanding on it's own. It is expanding because states around Russia does not want to be attacked by Russa.
Or you think that Putin would be trying to swallow Ukraine, if Baltics would be outside NATO? Of course not, he would be going after Baltics. Easier prey.
"Russia started the war in Ukraine to stop the NATO expansion."(c) - tell me now, exactly which NATO expansion has happened before the invasion of Ukraine, to trigger the war? You are lying, that's what it is.
PS: to anyone else reading this, the last NATO expansion in the Russian direction has happened 10 years before the invasion, when Putin was hugging western leaders and not bothered at all by the "scary NATO". This user is posting a retcon propaganda by a Kremlin. A lie.
Russia started those wars to prevent Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO, which was announced by G.W.Bush in 2007. I am not lying, read my comments more carefully.
This is an insane take. No one, not a single country, has even entertained an idea that Ukraine may join NATO. Not even in 2025, when everyone repeatedly tell Ukraine that NATO is out of the question, stop asking us. Even more, between 2010 and 2014 Ukrainian parliament has officially adopted a neutral status regarding NATO, just because it was clear it will never happen, NATO was too afraid.
So basically on one hand there is factual evidence that NATO did not expand towards Russia for 10 years before invasion, and that Ukraine got a firm rejection about joining NATO and resigned to it 4 years before invasion. And on the other hand is some remark of one person, no longer in charge of anything for a decade and who's remark contradicts all factual actions of his country and his government.
Yet again a kremlin lie, desperately trying to justify a war by looking for literally anything as a pretext and disregarding facts.
Also, there is no need to speculate about my opinions - I am on this forum and can answer questions. I am quite decidedly not imperialist. :-) I understand that some people have difficulty understanding that somebody might take a position that doesn't conform to tribalistic friend-enemy distinction; but I do (and I am not alone). I think I have morally consistent stance on Ukraine/Russia, which is in fact in line with my stance on Palestine/Israel, for instance.
The article you linked is from 2007. Bush did indeed express strong support for offering Ukraine and Georgia a path to NATO membership at the 2008 NATO summit, but he was overruled by other allies[1] who caved in to pressure from Russia, and the topic was taken off the table and remains there.
Putin's former senior advisor Illarionov maintains that the idea of invading Ukraine goes back much further than the 2008 summit. He says that he personally first heard of the idea from Putin during a closed meeting of senior staff in September 2003, when Russia first violated Ukraine's sovereign territory during the Tuzla Island conflict.[2]
[1] Like Germany under Schröder, who was later rewarded with the well-paid position of chairman of the board of Rosneft, Russia's state-controlled oil company.
Not sure how you came to the idea that supporting Ukraine militarily has been decided undemocratically...
Every European nation can and has made their own decision on this matter. Spain, Portugal, Italy, some Balkan countries have contributed a lot less. Hungary, who are in NATO, have almost contributed zilch.
Thinking that de-escalating the war as-is giving Russia the strategic victory is a very dangerous thought. This will destabilize the Northern and Eastern parts of Europe, which we definitely can not let happen.
In some sense that remains true, but the war remains a stalemate after three years nonetheless. It's become clear that Russia's per-capita war fighting ability is basically garbage. They aren't a superpower, they're something more like Iran, a regional power that is big enough to be expensive to mess with but not a feasible threat to anyone but weaker neighbors.
Ukraine's infrastructure damage can be backstopped by robust trade with wealthy partners and supporters, while Russia is losing refining capacity and running out of gas. To the extent that the war represents an existential threat to either side, it's Putin that has to be more worried. Ukraine can keep this going for a decade or more, it seems like.
I think this view is delusional. NATO countries are supplying Ukraine with weapons, it's pretty conventional to consider this as being a party to the war.
The only reason we don't say it openly is that elites want to maintain pretense that we are not in a war (that's unpopular in Europe and US) and that NATO is defense-only organization.
According to your logic it's Canada fighting North Korea in Ukraine.
Just a Russia Today style of whataboutism. Why you take any russian word as true? They can only lie. Whatever they say about Ukraine is a lie.
If you want to believe russians, why not believe that this Ukrainian 3-days special operation is going according 5 years plan of grinding Ukrainian soil treeline a day and pushing neutral neighboring countries to actually join NATO?
I mean, I completely and utterly disagree with js8, but yeah, the wars you mentioned were called proxy wars between USSR and US, in the larger context of the Cold War
To my knowledge, these things are never put forward as an election topic or referendum. There is no discussion with citizens, it's always a fait accompli, we have to do it for national security sort of thing.
The blowback is not discussed. I am from Czechia, and Russians attacked Vrbětice munition factory, because it supplied Ukraine. That's the reason. But in media it's always portrayed without this context.
FWIW, I am not opposed to humanitarian and economic help to Ukraine. But I don't believe military support will end the war in a good way, whatever it means.
Representative democracies are supposed to work this way, a government is elected, and they represent their electorate. If the electorate disagrees with the actions the government took they will be voted out the next election cycle, in between it's in the hands of the elected government to make decisions in these matters.
> FWIW, I am not opposed to humanitarian and economic help to Ukraine. But I don't believe military support will end the war in a good way, whatever it means.
It means Ukraine falling in the hands of Russia, is that a better alternative for the rest of us? Have you considered the Pandora Box this opens up to? Without supporting Ukraine militarily they will be defeated, Russia will get a large border with Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Moldova.
And more people to use against other countries, because for sure they would enlist every able bodied Ukrainian by keeping their family hostage. They've done this since day #1 in the occupied parts of Ukraine.
I don't thing this decision was done without population support. We also don't supply the Ukraine to win. We just don't want the Ukraine to fall, because we think we are next.
Yes, there is popular support, but the consequences have been barely discussed. We don't openly admit, that by supplying Ukraine, we are entering a war with Russia, based on our own decision (not as a defensive measure). This vigilantism (even if it can be argued is employed to protect international law) goes against the idea that we're a peaceful country.
There is no consensus about Russia attacking Czechia (or any EU country) next. In fact many military experts agree that Russia doesn't even have military personel to occupy whole Ukraine.
It's also unclear why, if Putin's ambition is some kind of Hitlerian/Napoleonic expansion to Europe, he would wait 25 years (into his 70s) to do it. And to the extent he has reasonable goals, we can put something tangible on the negotiation table to see what he really wants, instead of guessing. We (I mean NATO) didn't - this indicates it's us who doesn't want to negotiate; because we don't want to reveal our colonial preference (Ukraine is already being described as a great next investment).
We had have Russian cyber attacks and terrorist attacks for decades. I don't think we get to decide to not be in war with Russia. Being an weapon source is also different form being in open war.
> In fact many military experts agree that Russia doesn't even have military personel to occupy whole Ukraine.
Doesn't really matter. Nazi Germany also didn't had the military personnel to occupy Central Europe for a prolonged time, this didn't stop them from trying.
> if Putin's ambition is some kind of Hitlerian/Napoleonic expansion to Europe, he would wait 25 years (into his 70s) to do it
Internal politics (NS Germany started the expansion when they got bankrupt), being busy in other parts of the world (Middle east), there is not a lack of incentive.
> because we don't want to reveal our colonial preference
We don't prevent countries from joining if there population supports it. This is different from taking colonies even if Russia claims to not understand this distinction.
> We had have Russian cyber attacks and terrorist attacks for decades.
I am curious what are you referring to. I have read some reporting based on BIS reports and Vrbětice is by far the worst incident (2 dead).
> Being an weapon source is also different form being in open war.
As long as you can maintain it, perhaps. But did Putin give us an assurance that he will not escalate to an open war? I am not Putin fan, but I don't see us trying to deescalate, which is the only realistic way to end the war.
> Nazi Germany also didn't had the military personnel to occupy Central Europe for a prolonged time, this didn't stop them from trying.
According to quick search, Germans during WW2 had >600k troops in Poland maintaining order. Russia doesn't have an army to fully occupy Ukraine.
Even if we accept that today's Russia has similar ambitions to Nazi Germany, and has to be defeated in a similar way, there are two important obstacles to that victory:
- Russia has nuclear weapons, WW2 Germany had not
- Today, there is no USSR helping to fight, which was significant
So it's a non-starter. And idea that you somehow put Russia on their knees and keep them there, for decades - not only it is morally abhorrent, but also bad for European security and economy (unlike U.S., we are their neighbor).
> We don't prevent countries from joining if there population supports it. This is different from taking colonies even if Russia claims to not understand this distinction.
Yes, but why should Americans care? See my other comments in this thread.
I think there is this mass delusion among Americans that they don't have any colonies, but I think Israel and Gaza shows that's not true. It's a different system, more adhoc, but U.S. maintains significant economic and military power in many parts of the world.
And U.S. have destroyed Middle East with these shenanigans, so I am not happy them applying similar divisive policies to Eastern European countries.
A lot of cyber attacks in the last decades, stuff like WannaCry, Kaspersky..., Navalny, threats to politicians, espionage for example the recent case about Maximillian Krah, Navalny, bombs in packets that were supposed to be in the air while detonating, drone attacks, purposed limitations in gas supply...
I mean now NATO is discussing responses, but these things aren't exactly new and have been going on for years.
> Russia doesn't have an army to fully occupy Ukraine.
As far as I understand it they are still not really using the official army, since they fear that might have consequences about the stability of the regime.
Also there is an asymmetry as we care about a nation as it's people, but the Russian leadership (it's not only Putin) doesn't feel like that. Troop loss isn't more to them than a number and they have a wast population that they are willing to burn for there own goals.
Ukraine was really underestimated, but I think we underestimate our military ability. We relied to much on the USA and dissolved our armies thinking there will never be another war.
> And idea that you somehow put Russia on their knees and keep them there, for decades
I don't think anybody plans for that.
>> Yes, but why should Americans care?
I don't understand what you want to say, this wasn't about Americans?
> I think there is this mass delusion among Americans that they don't have any colonies, but I think Israel and Gaza shows that's not true.
The USA are/were the major world power, yes they do have influence among the world. But the Israel/Gaza issue is mostly caused by having nationalists on BOTH sides. The other nations on the world also have agency.
> And U.S. have destroyed Middle East with these shenanigans, so I am not happy them applying similar divisive policies to Eastern European countries.
Russia wasn't exactly uninvolved either, but I don't see how Ukraine is that much comparable and EU countries investing in the military is very much the agency of ourselves.
> but I don't see us trying to deescalate, which is the only realistic way to end the war.
This always assumes that Putin has issues that are orthogonal to the war that we can just negotiate. What I perceive to be the case is that they just want territory expansion and control over the run away states of the USSR. The war isn't just a necessary nuisance and a means to the goal, but the goal itself.
Exactly. The size of the Russian arsenal is such that - even if 80% of it is broken and entirely useless - it still has about twice as many warheads than the two European nuclear powers, France and the UK, combined.
So you will do anything, trade away everything, and capitulate at the slighted provocation to avoid the faintest possibility of war?
If not, where do you draw the line?
Because this isn’t the first time this has been analyzed, and the math is clear: the only winning strategy with terrorists not negotiate under any circumstances. You call their bluff, and you make known that you will always call their bluff in the future, and never back down. Do anything else and the terrorist can manipulate you into anything they want.
No, I certainly would not. You make a lot of assumptions.
However, the idea that a conventional force would obliterate the capital of a nuclear armed power without escalating into full-on nuclear war seems unlikely to me.
It is an informed statement. The Russian military had ALWAYS operated on grift and cronyism, all the way back to the napoleonic wars. When shit hits the fan, as in Crimea, WW1, WW2, and Ukraine, it turns out all those paper capabilities don’t exist. Even in the height of the Cold War, ICBM silos in Russia were often flooded and inoperable.
Nuclear weapons are extremely sensitive and maintenance heavy devices. They have parts that need to be regularly checked and replaced or else the bomb will fissile. These parts are EXTREMELY precise and very high purity. The rockets have similar needs or else the engine will as likely blow up on launch.
Maintenance cycles are on the order of 10-15 years. We are now 35 years out from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the nuclear and space industries have experienced massive brain drain and almost complete elimination of operational and maintenance budgets.
The likelihood that these strategic weapon systems have been adequately maintained is indistinguishable from zero.
It takes a lot more than one nuke that works. They would need hundreds of strikes, probably thousands to ensure they aren’t immediately annihilated in response. There is a game theory to nuclear warfare, and dropping one city buster on a nuclear armed adversary is the sovereign equivalent of suicide-by-cop.
If this is the case, do France and the UK even have a nuclear deterrent? They have just over 500 weapons total between them - is there any chance that they are able to “ensure that they aren’t immediately anihalated” by a Russian response?
For reference, that number of nuclear weapons is where China decided to draw the line as a nuclear deterrence against the US until recently.
A hundred modern nuclear weapons is plenty to fucking ruin a country, but no, it doesn't not take "just one". Most western countries would survive say, a smuggled terrorist nuke (or 4) just fine. Angry and mourning, but fine.
France alone has enough deterrent in their nuclear weapons. The UK has theirs in submarines, to ensure even if you magically erased the entire British Islands, you still take tens of nukes up the ass.
Nuclear deterrence is not complicated, and it's pretty well understood in public. I don't know why so many people here are so wildly off base.
Meanwhile, all this was always intended to be roughly "backup" to the US's absurd stockpile, including tons of literal gravity drop nukes so we can cosplay Dr Strangelove as the world ends. And the ending of the IRBM treaty means the US has recently told our defense industry that it gets to play with the cool rockets again.
Russia has its own satellite network, its own rockets, the most advance missiles in the world (and demonstrated usage), has continually bombed Kiev and other parts of Ukraine .. but sure, let's listen to you spout your detached-from-reality comments about nuclear war.
Contrast this with many "advanced" nations such as UK, EU, Australia etc. that can't even get a rocket into space. There was a period recently where the US was relying on Soyuz rockets to get into space.
Russia couldn't even bomb Kyiv reliably, before buying a drone manufacturing line from Iran, of all places. The sanctioned to the gills Iran apparently can produce a flying junker with a gas prop and a 100 kilos of explosives strapped to a planer, while Russia can't. This can tell us something. Russia can't even produce trucks from which to launch these drones, they are all western made on official photos.
>has continually bombed Kiev and other parts of Ukraine
Yeah, with primarily low sophistication weapons invented by a country that has to build everything from scratch in bunkers. This is only possible because Ukraine does not have much in terms of anti-air missile systems and cannot police its airspace.
Meanwhile, Kyiv is giving back plenty of half-assed weapons systems, including multiple jury-rigged light sport aircraft that Russia was unable to keep out of their airspace.
Both combatants are basically children playing with toys right now.
>There was a period recently where the US was relying on Soyuz rockets to get into space.
At no point was the US relying on Soyuz rockets to "get to space". The entire time the US was using Soyuz to ferry astronauts to the collaborative space station we were launching unmanned payloads with multiple launch vehicles, and the military has at no point lost the ability to put payloads into orbit.
Meanwhile in Russia:
>Despite the Russian claims that the missile is on 'combat alert', since its 2022 flight test, it [Sarmat] has experienced four failed tests, the most recent on 21 September 2024.
Russia is not the Soviet Union.
In terms of their nuclear vehicles, I'd bet on enough of them working to be a deterrent, but there's lots of open questions about what percentage. Russia has been running even their Rocket Force on a remarkably small budget compared to the number of warheads they are supporting. Unless they have magical efficiency, they are likely skimping somewhere, and in a military rife with outright fraud and every step of the chain pocketing money that is supposed to be used for procurement, why should we believe the Rocket Force is free of that behavior?
Civilian rockets and military/strategic rockets are not even remotely similar. Totally different technology driven by vastly different needs. Russia hasn’t had a technological edge in military rocketry since the 1950’s.
The Kinzhal is just a normal ballistic missile. If it is "hypersonic", so were the missiles the US has sitting in bunkers.
China has the first real "hypersonic" weapon.
Besides, Russia's super awesome hypersonic missile that will totally kill the west is regularly intercepted by the Patriot platform. Because it's just a normal ballistic missile, which is what the Patriot is designed to intercept.
All long and medium range rockets are hypersonic, simply by virtue of falling from space fast enough. From any country. So the "reached speed" metric is kinda pointless. Lately people tend to call rockets hypersonic is they can be controlled at the hypersonic flight stage. Oreshnic is an old ballistic missile, whose only innovation is removing third stage from an existing rocket, and can't be controlled with precision. This is why there was no significant damage and hits were all over the place with hundreds of meters of error. It is 80 million dollar equivalent of a single Smerch or Uragan shot, which is a pretty dumb and useless idea, considering price and complexity of a rocket.
There are thousands of nuclear weapons that cannot be stopped in play. NATO is actually behind in missile capabilities. That leaders are not frantically negotiating a settlement makes me wonder if the survival of their constituents is not a goal.
He admits he is in Czechia, which is coincidentally one of the three biggest spots for Russian emigration inside EU. Maybe even the biggest, if counted as a percentage of total population. No wonder there are a lot of imperialists there, he may be a Russian citizen himself, pining for the "spheres of influence" and "bipolar world".
I sincerely hope one day military support will be denied to you, wherever you live. What a brainwashed cabbage... "escalate into a war"(c) - this is a blatant 100% lie, with no ifs or buts, just a plain lie. There was zero military aid to Ukraine before the invasion.
They also are saying West should deescalate by stopping support of Ukraine. Basically to force then to surrender. Likely they missed modern history class, especially "peace for our lifetime" lesson.
I'm not sure they are brainwashed, they could be a salaried russian who has task to spread RT narratives.
Then USA shouldn't send arms and troops to Europe to fight Hitler. It also wasn't democratic decision.
Not providing military support will actually bring a war to Europe much faster. If Ukraine surrenders Baltic states are next to be annexed by russians.
I don't think so. I have russian coworkers who visited their family in Russia recently. They say there is more investment in infrastructure in Russia since the war. Basically, Russian oligarchs cannot invest abroad so they have to do it at home.
So there are signs that the war helped Russia to resolve its "dutch disease" (a situation where a state relying on natural resource such as oil stunts its economic growth in other areas).
That's probably all centered around Moscow and St. Petersburg?
All the wages were up, but are now coming down. They tried supporting the economy ( to not hit deflation), but that is crumbling soon
Note: I don't live there. But the central bank of Russia really has a competent head ( Elvira Sakhipzadovna Nabiullina ) that's worth listening too. She's so competent that Putin won't block/silence her too much.
Economy is so good that they have 20% interest rate. So good that they are cutting workweek, furloughing workers on the biggest car and truck factories. So good that they are limiting petrol sales to 20l per person.
No, you are misreading the situation. Russia is spending a lot of money and effort and resources internally because it has a near total wartime economy now.
That is not a good thing. Nobody can eat a tank. You can't plow a field with a howitzer. Your economy suffers when you can make more money being a frontline soldier than you can being a skilled worker. Every single Shahed they build is a waste!
And Russia's demographics are fundamentally broken, even before they got hundreds of thousands of Russian young men killed.
They can't keep it going forever. Even if they won the war today, there would be serious repercussions. Russia is lucky they have a good central bank to manage these problems but that isn't magic.
Russia is burning dollars and real human lives for very little gain, again, even if Ukraine capitulated today. Putin already lost the war. Even gaining all of Ukraine, with a pacified populace, would be somewhat Pyrrhic, and just stave off problems.
Meanwhile, Russia's weapons export market, which was significant and meaningful, is just gone. Nobody wants what they sell anymore, and they can't make enough to export some of it anyway.
Also meanwhile, they have not fixed their "dutch disease" since Russia's economy is still entirely reliant on selling gas to people, and what little trade they had other than that is gone.
Well, you might be right, I agree that war is a waste of resources. But that's actually why EU should stop them, by offering Russia some tangible alternative, a path to prosperity. Instead we cut the ties completely (which we didn't do with U.S. when it attacked Iraq, Israel genociding Palestinians also doesn't seem to matter).
Instead, EU wants to embrace the same kind of (they call it) "military keynesianism". They think military spending will fix their economies. (In fact, attempt to use war as a way to prop up the economy was suggested as a reason why Putin started the war.)
It's also bad because longterm, it puts Russia on the same path the U.S. has been - a big weapons manufacturer that is looking to export a war somewhere.
Germany still has a very large industrial base, things don't just disappear into the ether because they aren't profitable. Factories are still there, they can be retooled in case of need such as in a war.
Perhaps you should be a bit more humble when spewing bullshit, it might even make it more believable instead of this word vomit.
Russia has about twice the steel output that Germany does, comparable to the United States (which has twice the population of Russia). Russia uses about twice the electricity that Germany does too.
Here's Germany doing its NATO exercises with broomsticks due to shortages
I have always found the summary of Foundations of Geopolitics[1] to be an interesting re-read whenever some larger event involving Russia happened. It feels like the puzzle pieces have been coming together at least since Brexit, if not much longer.
Don't pay for it, unless you want to fund what Wikipedia describes as a "Russian far-right political philosopher [and] strong supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin".
The Baltics, Poland, and northern European countries don't have any illusions that NATO is already in a de facto state of asymmetric war with Russia already: hacking, sabotage, and election meddling of all sorts. The surface of concerns extend beyond that to Ukraine-like hot war scenarios especially for neighboring countries like Finland and the Baltics.
In 2007 and later everybody in Europe understood that russia is basically in the toilet and they can't do anything offensive that won't make them hurt themselves terribly. The only thing is nobody, except Eastern European countries, imagined is that russia is stupid enough to do it anyways.
Besides the fact this fear mongering is very useful in this timeline to pass laws violating people's privacy and strengthening state surveillance, the only one winning is whoever is selling the weapons, hmmm who could it be?!
That’s some far fetched piece (based on what is above the paywall).
For jets argument you must first understand where Kaliningrad is: something akin to Alaska for US — open the map to see
what European countries are invariably in between.
Even if they crossed momentarily the air border (though there was no objective visual proof from either side, which is why the story died), supersonic jet is not like crusing at 20 mph: if you sway for several seconds you can easily graze some border. It is unprofessional but not impossible.
As for a few drones: the key word is undentified.
Yet the piece is titled: Europe is under Russian Attack. Meh
It’s in the realm of probability but very thin for me. As always: the means, the benefits. How would Russia benefit?
> EU leaders meeting in Copenhagen backed plans to strengthen European defenses, including a proposed "drone wall," after recent drone incursions over Denmark raised fears of Russian hybrid attacks. Officials said the initiative would focus on eastern airspace protection and sit alongside projects for eastern flank security, missile defense, and a space-based shield . Leaders also began a first formal debate on using frozen Russian assets in Europe to fund aid for Ukraine.
Ah, those sweet-sweet frozen assets. Also see how this piece implies Russian without any proof.
Also the more you fear monger the EU population, the more you can continue the war: which is money for some elites; redeemeer of economic recession for others, etc.: war is universal resetter for social/economic issues.
> As always: the means, the benefits. How would Russia benefit?
Ah, they can't be behind it because they never, ever make mistakes and everything they ever do serves them somehow.
In the meantime, in real world russia hasn't made a single good decision in almost 4 years.
> Ah, those sweet-sweet frozen assets. Also see how this piece implies Russian without any proof.
When you talk about mountain climbing you also silently imply that gravity exists.
What's the alternative?
> Also the more you fear monger the EU population, the more you can continue the war:
It's not exactly fear mongering. Europe is gearing for war and I don't think even immediate russian surrender could stop it at this point. Europe will steamroll russia in the following decade or two. There are no decisions to be made anymore. Now the stage is fully set and history just plays out.
The idea you can lay down arms up to the last moment before conflict is a pipe dream. It pretty much never happens.
Is in your mind "intentional" and "mistake" contradictory?
Haven't you ever done anything intentionally that turned out to be a mistake?
It's pretty plain to see that everything russia did in recent years harmed it and strengthened its enemies. That's a mistake in my book unless your goal is a suicide.
If only they started spending more on defense 10 years ago when they were being called on to do so instead of pretending Brexit and anti-immigrant sentiments were their biggest enemy rather than Russian energy dependence.
If only we didn't have a metric boatload of Russian interference and sabotage in our countries that constantly blocks any efforts to get free from their dependence.
While there is no consensus on whether Angela Merkel was "too friendly" to Russia— critics argue that her policies left Germany and Europe too dependent on Russian energy and that she failed to take a sufficiently tough stance against Vladimir Putin. Supporters, including Merkel herself, have defended her diplomatic approach as a pragmatic and necessary strategy given Russia's place in Europe.
Even today money flows from US allies including NATO member states into Russia to buy gas rather than into the military and defense systems that might have prevented the bloodbath in Ukraine.
>Is there some reason Europeans should go to war to satisfy the desires of American organizations?
That is the wrong question. The question is:
Is there some reason Europeans should go to war when Russia invades a European country in order to annex it by force?
The answer is yes. The reason is not letting force impose over things like democracy or rights. If Europeans do we(I am European) will become slaves.
It happened multiple times: The Ottoman Empire, Napoleon or Hitler and Stalin.
You don't have to explain that to a Polish person: They lived the occupation of Russia and Germany and all of them have family members that were exterminated by the germans first and then by the communists. Let alone they were subjugated over decades making then a puppet state of Russia making Russia richer and Poland poorer.
If Europeans do not oppose the dictator Putin controlling Russia, next time we will have to fight against Russia, Ukraine(occupied by Russia) and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and all the new conquests(of the new Russian Empire) in the same way if you do not oppose the ottomans taking Constantinople, you will have to oppose them in Vienna, when they have become much stronger.
Well I am Polish, and no, you don't have to explain it.
But both America and Europe are very inconsistent on the matter; for example, the EU has placed something like 19 sanction packages on Russia. But it has placed none on Israel, despite the fact that Israel, since even just 2023, has bombed the Yemen president, invaded Lebanon, Syria and well, and killed large numbers of Palestinian people; I will let the lawyers discuss what variation of war crime that counts as.
Furthermore, when Poland helped the US, the UK and Australia invade Afghanistan and Iraq there was apparently no concern about about turning people into slaves, occupation, making Afghanistan/Iraq poorer.
Allow me to quote:
An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died “indirectly,” as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.
https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human
Are you concerned about Western imperialism, and if not, why not?
As a historical note, the equivocation between Soviet/Stalin and Hitler is at best inaccurate. If you're Polish, presumably you know about "General Plan Ost" that aimed to eradicate 85% of the Polish population and similar numbers of other Slavic nations; while Stalin was a terrible dictator (which even Putin has mentioned in interviews), the crimes of the Soviets against Poland pale in comparison.
You can oppose Putin if you wish; but you will only destroy Europe's future, which the Americans will smile at as they buy up your industry and prosperity. Unfortunately, the hatred of Russians outweighs the Europe's comprehension of its own self interest.
Regarding the "why" of Russian drone/air shenanigans: I don't think Russia wants to get their expensive assets shot down or provoke a NATO-wide war. Many people seem to believe this but it presumes far too much. They don't gain from more fronts. They cannot realistically march into the west, they can't even march into west Ukraine.
Realistically, Russia is doing these antics to force as many European countries as possible to feel that they need their air defense inventory (eg MIM-104 Patriot interceptor stock) for themselves, rather than giving or selling that inventory to Ukraine. That has immediate material benefit for the current Russian war effort with almost zero cost (assuming EU countries don't shoot down anything important).
May be. During the meeting with EU diplomats in Moscow they were allegedly told the recent incidents are a payback for Ukraine's attack on Crimea. The diplomats didn't comment on that, though.
There's been fighting over Crimea for years. It doesn't ring true as a cause of new behavior.
One thing that is new though is Russians waiting in mile long lines for petrol while they watch their refineries explode. Moscow may be trying to widen the war as a domestic distraction from that not looking good.
At least if they mix it up with NATO they can say sorry we're in a war with NATO rather than the embarrassment of we picked on a country 1/4 our size and now they are beating us.
> we picked on a country 1/4 our size
1/28th rather.
Europe is buying billions of Russian gas and petrochemicals.
https://energyandcleanair.org/financing-putins-war/
The first step when finding yourself in a hole is to stop digging.
Except they can't.
Europe is struggling with soaring energy costs and a lack of alternatives. Whether it's red tape or unfortunate geography, Europe cannot afford to turn off the Russian gas tap.
A benevolent US would see this and find ways to bridge the gap for Europe and lower its energy costs, further choking Russia.
A less benevolent US would see this and encourage it to continue, weakening both parties and sowing internal feuds within Europe.
We already turned off the tap (look at the link above). It is just unimportant countries like Hungary and Slovakia that still import pipeline gas (and they're not making any friends...) . Would be great to pressure them more. Till this year Ukraine still imported nat gas from Russia btw.
LNG is a fungible commodity that is traded world-wide. Don't see much beyond symbolic value here in refusing it. Trying to enforce a price cap would be great there, but needs coordination.
Hello from Slovakia. The gas pipeline from Russia through Ukraine into Slovakia (and further west/south) does not work since January 2025, it was turned off by Ukraine. If there is still gas flowing from Russia, it's through other pipelines, most likely Turkstream, and that too will end in time: https://www.politico.eu/article/bulgaria-end-russian-gas-flo...
We, as far as I know, also sadly import oil from Russia. I expect that to end soon too, because of a combination of political pressure and Ukrainian attacks.
Our current government is pretty close to Putin and Orban and it would be very welcome if the rest of EU attacked this issue more, as you mention.
A less intelligent US currently encourages the EU to stop investments in wind/solar
Wind and solar can not replace oil and gas without a working energy storage solution which is not feasible for many if not most countries except for those with suitable geography for hydroelectric storage. As it stands now every GW of solar/wind generating capacity needs to be combined with a similar GW of either nuclear or fossil capacity. Especially in the case of nuclear power it does not make sense to build generation capacity and not use it since it is in the planning and building phases that the largest investment lies. Once built a nuclear power plant should run at capacity to recuperate the costs of building and the coming costs of dismantling it. Fossil plants do have relatively high running costs so they are more suitable as backup solutions, especially quick-started gas turbine installations running on natural gas. Of course these power plants need a fuel source which ties their use to all the geopolitical politicking around supply sources, emissions and supposed 'climate impact'.
One good solution would be for wind and solar and other renewable power to be used for the creation of an easily storable fuel which can be used in e.g. gas turbines.
When I was a boy I learned about this cool new technology of storing energy in chemical reactions. Fascinating stuff. Super convenient for balancing the power demand curve. Cheap too. (See economics examples from southern Australia) You could even deploy it at the edge by simply splitting the cost with residents. Imagine if everyone drew power during the demand trough and then replayed it during the demand peak. Now grid balancing is way easier for providers, green power can produce as much as it wants whenever it wants.
Although every country should invest in home-grown battery technology just in case China bites off Taiwan and we gotta cut them out of the global economy too.
I don't know what kind of "lowering" you are referring to, but the US is selling more gas than ever to the EU:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-lng-exports-surge...
At three times the price it used to pay Russia
Yes, LNG is more expensive than pipeline gas. This is known. That would have been a good reason to build more pipelines to Norway.
at least some of that is gonna be shipping.
I am not backing Trump here at all, but in his first term he pointed out how over reliant Europe is for Russian energy. A few Euro leaders practically laughed in his face (publicly, on TV) and told him with smirks on their face that he was mistaken. They attempted to frame him as a crazy person for even suggesting it's a problem. A man like Trump does not strike me as somebody that will forget and forgive that. I would not expect a benevolent US after. Why would anybody help Europe after their refusal to even admit the problem?
This actually goes even further back to the Obama era in 2011.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/text-of-spe...
> Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, Future U.S. political leaders– those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.
Europe is not a single entity, it's mainly the German politicians that ignored the problem.
Feels kinda like you're removing Europe's agency here. "Red tape" is just another way of saying "terrible policy decisions for decades". If they dug themselves into a hole before, what's to stop them from doing it again when after you help them fill in the hole a little bit?
Because it takes decades to stop digging a hole you've taken decades to dig.
It's not like we can make dozens of nuclear power plants appear out of thin air.
Indeed. My point is rather that Europe has given no indication of changing tack. As such it seems premature to try to help them out of the hole.
Best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today.
What is the plan today?
Western and Central Europe has been dependent of Eastern Europe for centuries. This doesn't change just when a dictator owns these lands.
France made great strides towards energy independence until they started to walk back nuclear.
This is Slovakia and Hungary, not "Europe". The future of Hungary in the EU is not certain.
This is what Wendelstein and Iter are for. It's still gonna take a bit, unfortunately. In the meantime, all we can do is continue renewable buildout.
The beauty of having your opponent in hole when you own both the shovel and the ladder, is they can’t figure out how to stop digging.
What part of this is Hungary and such?
That is mostly Germany. Once Germany stops buying oil from Russia other countries will be forced to stop too.
Could you give some evidence for this claim? Here is some counterevidence: [1] says that the top buyers of Russian energy include:
• Hungary: 416 million euros ($488m)
• Slovakia: 275 million euros ($323m)
• France: 157 million euros ($184m)
• Netherlands: 65 million euros ($76m)
• Belgium: 64 million euros ($75m)
[2] suggests that China and India are the main buyers. I don't how reliable those sources are. There is also the problem of how to classify 'laundered' oil that was bought and resold by, e.g. India.
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/3/how-much-of-europes...
[2] https://energyandcleanair.org/june-2025-monthly-analysis-of-...
Looks like I have old data. Germany stopped buying officially oil from Russia. We will see now pressure on other countries to follow.
I'm not sure Europe is ignoring it. In a recent WSJ headline:
>Europe’s Emerging Plan: Give Ukraine $200 Billion in Russian Money https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/europes-emerging-plan-give-...
How do you (especially Europeans) understand this move from Russia? Can it really sustain a war against us? Does it want to break NATO by proving the US won't move?
What move, you mean about the drones? I first want to be sure about what happened. Remember that few years ago you were still being labeled as "Russian propaganda" if you had doubts about the NS incident.
Things are still being label "Russian propaganda" because Russia no longer has a free press.
(NS = nord stream gas pipes)
Now we're expected to believe a rag-tag crew of Ukrainians used a leaky sailboat to simultaneously detonate deep water pipelines, lol.
Denmark and Sweden gave up thier investigations quite quickly, probably they arrived at the truth but couldn't say it, only Germany was strong-armed into keeping the charade going.
I think they are like the mafia in many ways and like to threaten people and leave horses heads in beds and the like. It's a way to try to intimidate others not to mess with them. I'm not sure it's going to work in this case.
I think the idea from putin is, they are done in 20 years anyway from a population/financial position anyway. There only chance is to expand and take over populations to rebuild their ability to survive as a country.
Is this something that you would have done? I don't see how russia's survivability would be improved by expanding it's sphere of control, but, on the contrary it would stretch resources thin.
> Can it really sustain a war against us?
It's like with AI, that question doesn't really matter. It only matters if their leader wants to try.
Russia haven't made a single smart or gainful action since 2022. I understand it as more of sadly now customary stupidity.
Russia is burning money, even with the billions they get from EU to pay for gas they are reaching the end of their "runway" and if there are no big changes and the economy goes to hell, Putin will very quickly get very unpopular with Russians. This seems like a desperate move to provoke a larger war which can keep Putin in power for a while longer.
I have heard this move characterized as "horizontal escalation". Putin is stuck in Ukraine (hasn't taken anything strategically significant, controls less territory than 3 years ago). So he tries to widen the confrontation geographically.
It makes no sense, these drones etc. were not armed. It's just Putin being Putin.
Have you heard about accelerationism? This is an ideology of influential far right wing politicians and activists. They want to introduce as much world instability as they can, to break any existing structures where they a the losers. Then they hope when everything goes to hell, they will be the first to pick up the biggest pieces for themselves. This is Putin's real aim and this is why Trump is so baffled this whole year, he is giving Putin a victory and a way to exit the war one time after another and Putin rejects it repeatedly. This is because winning this war is not Putin's aim. His aim is total chaos in Europe, dissolution of the EU and NATO, and then he will pick up eastern scraps to form USSR 2.0. This is why trading thousand men for thousand square meters is acceptable to him. Wellbeing of humans or economy is a secondary thought to him.
This strategy is known as "disaster capitalism" and was explored by Naomi Klein in her book "The Shock Doctrine". Which details how UofChicago economists experimented on South America in addition to natural disasters, etc. The rich love to burn everything down so they can buy what's left for pennies. It's sick.
It's hybrid warfare, disrupting the economy by shutting down airports, increasing fear in the population to pressure us to not escalate it further "or else..."; I don't believe it's an attempt to break NATO, they want to keep the harassment and disruptions at as low cost as possible, and these drones flying over important hubs (airports, ports, bases) are quite cheap while causing relatively larger annoyances.
They can't sustain, economically speaking, a war against EU/NATO but Putin can definitely play on our fears much harder than we can play on Russians fears.
Europe should be leading the diplomatic efforts towards Russia, not the US.
This sort of rhetorics leads nowhere useful.
This is a joke, right? Diplomacy is something Russians completely disregard, lie about, and only agree to do when they are the only one benefiting, and even then only until they decide to break whatever agreements were made, because they've done so every single time so far. How do you have any diplomacy with someone like that? You can't.
Right now the US under Trump is leading the diplomatic efforts toward Russia. I think Europe and the Ukraine would have been better served with European leaders doing this.
Russia has reaffirmed Ukrainian territorial sovereignty in 1990s, after splitting along said boundaries, in return for concessions partly in their favour (Ukrainian nuclear disarmament), then invaded Ukraine. Twice. And that's ignoring tons of smaller violations - some of which are still pretty big.
What deal can you make with someone who just doesn't stick to the deals they agree to?
These weren't "concessions", they were very eager: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/ukraine-nuclear-...
Then again in 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Russian%E2%80%93...
By leading you mean writing tweets with scary threats and then following usual strategy TACO.
Rolling red carpets for putin is actually undermining EU efforts to isolate Russia. Russian should be welcome only within their allies: Eritrea and North Korea.
Russia doesn't want to be involved in diplomatic efforts with Europe, it doesn't suit their purposes. With the US however it can drive a wedge, so "diplomacy" it is.
Trump is just rambling. His 24 hours to end the war was an election slogan.
Putin only understands the language of power. European countries don't want Ukraine to lose but can't commit themselves to the billions it would cost to win.
This is basically every superpower.
I don't think Russia is a superpower or that all superpowers act like that. Russia is just a mafia state.
Signs of superpower:
1. Usage of arms introduced 70+ years ago.
2. Assault troops equiped with civil cars and motorcycles.
3. Logistics powered by donkeys.
4. Begging North Korea to help with troops and ammo.
There have been literally (not figuratively literally, literally literally) zero diplomatic resolutions of military conflicts or tensions with Russia during the Putin era. None. The closest one you can see, if you squint extremely hard, is the detente of 8 years that that followed the invasion of Crimea. And then we know what happened.
Conflicts in Putin's Russia end militarily, always (usually in victory or stalemate, though he for sure "lost" in Syria), or at best a lie in preparation for the next war. Negotiated peace is not a thing.
Negotiated peace can be a thing if there is enough of a threat behind it. I imagine Putin would like to be able to nuke Ukraine but the US have threatened bad things if he does. I think if the west had made more of a threat before the 2022 invasion Putin may well have backed off but Biden was like if you only invade a little bit we won't do much which is kind of how it went.
How nuking Ukraine will help to occupy and control Ukraine? Imagine tomorrow Kyiv is nuked. Troops are still there and now have even more will to fight russians.
> Negotiated peace can be a thing if
"This hasn't worked for 30 years, but this time it will for sure!" makes for pretty awful geopolitical strategy, historically. But you do you.
(Your broader point that Putin's actions are constrained by nuclear deterrents is obviously correct. But it's very clearly not a point about diplomacy!)
I'm not convinced it hasn't worked. There were rumors the US diplomats said to Putin that if he used nukes in Ukraine then probably the US would a) take out his military in Ukraine and b) target him to be killed personally. The diplomatic bit is saying that privately rather than actually getting the nuking and killing going.
Can and will, Ukraine shoulda never gave up those nukes.
This Slate article debunked it with declassified documents: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/ukraine-nuclear-...
That makes sense, but still, the assurances of protection, nothing flash there.
Why was this flagged?
HN flagging system is failing more and more, it needs to be revised
Because it angers the fascist right-wingers brigading any topic they dislike, among them support for Ukraine. Also the moderation is completely fine with this and hides between "remaining apolitical", or "avoiding divisive topics".
The question is why does this remain flagged? We have daily Gaza threads, but war in Europe doesn't even rate a monthly one.
My take:
The drone sightings is a mix of Russian ops, and copycat actors. The jets that violate airspace, are probably a mix of intentional close flying, under the plausible deniability that navigation jamming in the area causes them to cross into neighboring airspace.
In the case of Russian aggression, it is to create more tension. Why on earth would Russia want to escalate this, you might ask? Well, now that pretty much every country west of their border is a NATO member, a Russian attack on NATO would likely trigger article 5.
If Russia can provoke any NATO countries to attack first by, say, downing some airplane of theirs (fighter jets, recon, strategic bombers, etc.), they can use this as casus belli, and use it as propaganda. One thing Russia learned after 2022 was that any larger scale mobilization is incredibly unpopular. They can't mobilize millions of soldiers without any real cause, and march into the west. If they can sell the idea (with "proof") that NATO is actively attacking Russia, that's another thing.
They're probably also banking on the fact that the heightened situation will scare people in the west, which in turn will make them vote for isolationist parties that don't want to commit. One thing is to talk about war, another thing is to actually see the writings on the wall.
I don't think European NATO members can do much other than to just keep reinforcing and fortifying their borders, build up their armed forces as if Russia will invade tomorrow, and dig in. And keep hammering Russia with sanctions.
The imperialist dreams of Russia is the expand into the ex-Soviet countries. They've tried election meddling, which worked to some degree, but I think they know that to achieve their goals, they need some larger conflict to happen - so that they can annex the desired areas when peace talks come up.
> If Russia can provoke any NATO countries to attack first by, say, downing some airplane of theirs (fighter jets, recon, strategic bombers, etc.), they can use this as casus belli, and use it as propaganda.
This has already happened, Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015, the Russian state very quickly tucked its tail in after that. The VKS can't afford to lose these planes willy-nilly.
The Turkish pilot who shot down was persecuted by Erdogan:
> Erdoğan announced in an interview that the two Turkish pilots who downed Russian aircraft were arrested on suspicion that they have links to the Gülen movement, and that a court should find out "the truth".
Russia didn't tuck its tail, they deployed SAMs to their Syrian base, they deployed the late Moskva in the region, and they pressured Erdogan to punish the pilot.
Erdogan did this 9 months after the incident, shortly after a military coup against him. Presumably this was about scoring an internal policy win.
> the Russian state very quickly tucked its tail in after that
Russia retaliated by disallowing tourism to Turkey in the summer of 2016, causing about $5 billion of damage to the Turkish economy.
https://carnegieendowment.org/static/media/images/202105-Pri...
I am not sure what European "leaders" expected. Many of them support Ukraine militarily in the war, so yes, EU is in fact in war with Russia, through Ukraine as a proxy.
I oppose the military support to Ukraine. I think it's responsibility of the stronger party, here NATO, to seek deescalation. I also disapprove that the military support for Ukraine was decided undemocratically, without any consideration whether this might escalate into a war. And here we are...
Russia is the aggressor in this war; if it stopped its aggression and withdrew from Ukraine, the war would stop. So the responsibility for deescalating falls squarely on Russia. Russia has no intention to stop; on the contrary it is ramping up the production of military equipment. As only military means can stop a military aggression, it makes every sense for European leaders to support Ukraine militarily. If anything, European leaders deserve criticism for not supporting Ukraine enough.
Which war? Yes, between Russia and Ukraine, Russia is the aggressor, and bigger. Between NATO and Russia, NATO is the aggressor (from Russian perspective) and bigger.
Russia started the war in Ukraine to stop the NATO expansion. It's against the international law, but this intent was made pretty clear also in Georgia.
EU and NATO then reacted with more NATO expansion, and supporting Ukraine militarily. They didn't offer any deescalation. (IMHO NATO should have kicked Turkey out of NATO - not a democratic country - in exchange for Ukraine to continue being sovereign neutral state.)
Neither side wants to deescalate. I think both sides behave as little children. But with rockets and nukes.
NATO has not expanded into Russia. Russia has expanded into Ukraine.
People join NATO in self-defence against Russia. They wouldn't have to if Russia didn't keep attacking its neighbours.
> NATO has not expanded into Russia. Russia has expanded into Ukraine.
Morally you're correct, but on a practical level, Russia didn't want the NATO to be in Ukraine. Morality (or international law) doesn't always win - look at the Cuban missile crisis.
> People join NATO in self-defence against Russia.
Yes, the motivation of the joining countries is clear. What is less clear (and you should question), why they should be accepted - if such offers pose a risk of eventual escalation into a war. (I know it's not fair, but that's geopolitics.) It was the U.S. announcing in 2007 NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia, despite Germany and France being against and no public/democratic discussion of this in Ukraine and Georgia (or any other NATO member). Is it hard to believe this is done for any reason other than imperial vanity?
> They wouldn't have to if Russia didn't keep attacking its neighbours.
U.S. have attacked unprovoked countries all over the planet, why trust them more than Russia? Seems quite shortsighted.
Yes, the bully who keeps attacking their neighbours didn't want anyone to protect their neighbours.
Going along with this seems like a terrible idea, if you value the bully not slowly expanding until they're your neighbour.
It's precisely this mindset, "us vs them", that neutral states cannot exist, which is at the heart of current escalation.
"I only burglarized your home because you threatened to join the neighborhood watch" isn't the ironclad defense of Russian imperialism you seem to think it is.
Nobody is forcing anyone to join the "Resist the violent bully in your doorstep" club.
It just seems to happen naturally when the violent bully starts attacking their neighbours.
> Nobody is forcing anyone to join the "Resist the violent bully in your doorstep" club.
That kind of club might be fine, but NATO simply isn't it. Again, you're not asking the question, what is in it for the U.S. (to promise protection - with nukes - to those countries).
Look at my country - Czechia. After the end of Cold war, in the context of NATO, we have done more for American security than America did for ours. We had soldiers in Afghanistan and 11 of them died. During the same period, no American soldier has died defending Czech Republic.
> It just seems to happen naturally when the violent bully starts attacking their neighbours.
NATO continued expanding after the end of Cold war, without Russia attacking anyone. I think it was a mistake - EU should have created its own defense, and start from a clean slate.
Anyway, I don't care much about the question of historic guilt. I commented here because I think western "leaders" should be honest about their goals vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, and they aren't.
> what is in it for the U.S.
Peace and stability for about 100 million people in Central and Eastern Europe, who will in turn consume American products and services and cheaply write code for American companies instead of designing nuclear missiles for Russians to target Washington DC. All that the Americans have to do is give a guarantee that essentially costs nothing, if it's believable enough.
> NATO continued expanding after the end of Cold war, without Russia attacking anyone.
NATO is not some loaf of bread sitting on a windowsill that expands on its own. Most countries in Eastern Europe worked feverishly to join NATO. Why? Because their leaders had seen the grainy VHS tapes from the 1994–1996 First Chechen War, showing horrific Russian atrocities against civilians, similar to what many had personally seen or even experienced in the 1940s and 1950s. These images dispelled any illusion that the Russian Federation was more civil than the USSR or that it would respect the sovereignty and self-determination of other peoples.
Since the dissolution of the USSR, the Russia has been almost continuously at war, and it was only a matter of time before its attention shifted from the Caucasus to Eastern Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia#...
By the mid-1990s, Russia had already employed its strategy of setting up fake separatist movements to instigate armed conflicts in Europe, and a good chunk of Moldova remains under Russian military occupation to this day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistrian_War
Nobody wanted to become the target of the next artificial "separatist movement" that would drain resources, hinder economic development, block EU integration, and leave the country vulnerable to full-scale invasion like Ukraine experienced in 2014 and then again in 2022. In an alternate timeline, Eastern Europe could have ended up like a series of Moldovas. Very poor, stagnating countries, constantly battling Russian meddling in their internal affairs.
Even 30 years ago, this threat was obvious to anyone familiar with Russia. For example, here's Chechen president Dudayev, a former commander of a Soviet nuclear bomber base, predicting the future in a 1995 interview as the Russians were hunting him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IavEOx3hUAk
Sorry, but what you're describing is American exceptionalism, in line with PNAC for instance.
> Peace and stability for about 100 million people in Central and Eastern Europe, who will in turn consume American products and services and cheaply write code for American companies instead of designing nuclear missiles for Russians to target Washington DC. All that the Americans have to do is give a guarantee that essentially costs nothing, if it's believable enough.
Precisely what led to this conflict, the idea that the Eastern Europe (or now specifically Ukraine) should be "owned" by some superpower.
I am not a fan of Russia, in fact, I work for American company and I got rich thanks to that, and I generally like Americans, but if you don't see how incredibly patronizing this is, I don't know what to tell you. (I mean, Eastern Europe aside, the idea that for example Germany (or France), one of the largest economies in the world, needs some help from Americans to defend themselves is ridiculous.)
And paradoxically, the islamophobic sentiment is so strong in Eastern Europe today that most people would actually agree with the Russian approach to the Chechen war, unfortunately. Keep in mind Russia is not that different from U.S. when it comes to waging foreign wars.
The idea that war is in any case justifiable is just something that never works out as a consistent moral principle, and that's true for NATO's support for Ukraine as well (though I don't have a problem with Ukrainians defending their country, I think it's the right thing to do).
But once you start using violence as a means to revenge, or to regain the territory, you have morally lost it (which is what NATO is being asked by Ukraine). In Palestine, most of the world recognizes that the problem of Israeli colonization and apartheid has to be resolved through peaceful means (my preferred solution would be one state), not through Palestinian violence, despite all the Israeli violence (which is more than 10x) towards Palestinians. The same principle should be applied to Ukraine-Russia relations.
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Ukraine was left out of NATO. When Russia first invaded in 2014, European leaders looked the other way. Claims that there plans for Ukraine to join NATO and that Russia felt threatened and was forced to attack are just lies to attempt to justify this war.
At the time fictions like "Russian-backed separatists" were made up to deny the reality: that it was a foreign invasion. Yet all the signs were there: for example, "separatist" leaders like Igor Girkin were citizens of Russia, not Ukraine; OSCE observers found military vehicles containing documentation indicating that the equipment had been maintained in Russia.
European leaders called for "deescalation", "political resolution"; seeing weakness and appeasement in the Minsk agreements, Putin escalated. That's the problem with aggressive leaders like Putin: if you look weak and vulnerable, they will attack you.
Russian leaders see Russia as an empire and regularly say Eurasia should extend from Lisbon to Vladivistok. Putin tries to terrorize us, stating that if we resist it will lead to "World War III" or "nuclear apocalypse". We must not fall for this, or we will gradually lose our freedoms.
Look it up, in 2007 G.W.Bush invited Ukraine and Georgia to NATO. Also look up PNAC. Unfortunately, there was little interest from the U.S. side to end the cold war - they had to be a "world policeman".
Yes EU leaders called for deescalation, that is true. But the U.S., the most important NATO member, did not. There is a 2018 report from RAND that suggests Ukraine should be used as a tool to weaken Russia.
The Ukraine conflict, although there is a contribution from other causes (russian and ukrainian nationalism), is a proxy war between U.S. and Russia, a continuation of the cold war.
I don't disagree with you on Russia, but the US and EU (currently) is unfortunately not interested in deescalating.
Why would the US want to fight a proxy war with Russia? Before the recent Ukraine invasion, nobody really cared about Russia. They were just kind of around, cheating at the Olympics was like the big news if anyone talked about Russia.
What does Russia have that US would want to fight a proxy war over? Certainly isn’t technology or natural resources.
The military industrial complex in the U.S. is constantly lobbying the American government to start and participate in wars. So after Afghanistan, some other place had to be found where to cause trouble, so that ḿilitary contracts can be made.
Now that Ukrainian resolve to fight is cooling off, you can see Trump administration planning more wars - in Palestine, Yemen, Iran, Venezuela..
These operations benefit wealthy class in the U.S. (the profit from government contracts) as well as a fat layer of middle class Americans who are involved in making wars.
Every country that exports weapons has this incentive, including Russia, but the U.S. is by far the largest country producing weapons it doesn't need internally. International arms trade should be IMHO completely banned, because it gives (capitalist) countries strong motivation to cause wars. It's a negative externality.
> Russia started the war in Ukraine to stop the NATO expansion.
You do realize NATO doesn't expand by itself? It's always a country that asks to join so that Russia can't attack it, not the other way round. NATO is not going around asking new countries to join. On the contrary: Ukraine already asked before the war and was rejected.
(Not to mention the absurdity of this argument when you consider why Finland and Sweden joined NATO.)
NATO is not expanding on it's own. It is expanding because states around Russia does not want to be attacked by Russa.
Or you think that Putin would be trying to swallow Ukraine, if Baltics would be outside NATO? Of course not, he would be going after Baltics. Easier prey.
"Russia started the war in Ukraine to stop the NATO expansion."(c) - tell me now, exactly which NATO expansion has happened before the invasion of Ukraine, to trigger the war? You are lying, that's what it is.
PS: to anyone else reading this, the last NATO expansion in the Russian direction has happened 10 years before the invasion, when Putin was hugging western leaders and not bothered at all by the "scary NATO". This user is posting a retcon propaganda by a Kremlin. A lie.
Russia started those wars to prevent Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO, which was announced by G.W.Bush in 2007. I am not lying, read my comments more carefully.
This is an insane take. No one, not a single country, has even entertained an idea that Ukraine may join NATO. Not even in 2025, when everyone repeatedly tell Ukraine that NATO is out of the question, stop asking us. Even more, between 2010 and 2014 Ukrainian parliament has officially adopted a neutral status regarding NATO, just because it was clear it will never happen, NATO was too afraid.
So basically on one hand there is factual evidence that NATO did not expand towards Russia for 10 years before invasion, and that Ukraine got a firm rejection about joining NATO and resigned to it 4 years before invasion. And on the other hand is some remark of one person, no longer in charge of anything for a decade and who's remark contradicts all factual actions of his country and his government.
Yet again a kremlin lie, desperately trying to justify a war by looking for literally anything as a pretext and disregarding facts.
I mean look it up: https://www.rferl.org/a/1075801.html (I thought it was on Wikipedia but it isn't anymore.)
Also, there is no need to speculate about my opinions - I am on this forum and can answer questions. I am quite decidedly not imperialist. :-) I understand that some people have difficulty understanding that somebody might take a position that doesn't conform to tribalistic friend-enemy distinction; but I do (and I am not alone). I think I have morally consistent stance on Ukraine/Russia, which is in fact in line with my stance on Palestine/Israel, for instance.
The article you linked is from 2007. Bush did indeed express strong support for offering Ukraine and Georgia a path to NATO membership at the 2008 NATO summit, but he was overruled by other allies[1] who caved in to pressure from Russia, and the topic was taken off the table and remains there.
Putin's former senior advisor Illarionov maintains that the idea of invading Ukraine goes back much further than the 2008 summit. He says that he personally first heard of the idea from Putin during a closed meeting of senior staff in September 2003, when Russia first violated Ukraine's sovereign territory during the Tuzla Island conflict.[2]
[1] Like Germany under Schröder, who was later rewarded with the well-paid position of chairman of the board of Rosneft, Russia's state-controlled oil company.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Tuzla_Island_conflict
Not sure how you came to the idea that supporting Ukraine militarily has been decided undemocratically...
Every European nation can and has made their own decision on this matter. Spain, Portugal, Italy, some Balkan countries have contributed a lot less. Hungary, who are in NATO, have almost contributed zilch.
Thinking that de-escalating the war as-is giving Russia the strategic victory is a very dangerous thought. This will destabilize the Northern and Eastern parts of Europe, which we definitely can not let happen.
> I think it's responsibility of the stronger party, here NATO, to seek deescalation.
NATO isn't fighting in Ukraine, Ukraine is fighting in Ukraine and Russia is the stronger party in that conflict.
> Russia is the stronger party in that conflict
In some sense that remains true, but the war remains a stalemate after three years nonetheless. It's become clear that Russia's per-capita war fighting ability is basically garbage. They aren't a superpower, they're something more like Iran, a regional power that is big enough to be expensive to mess with but not a feasible threat to anyone but weaker neighbors.
Ukraine's infrastructure damage can be backstopped by robust trade with wealthy partners and supporters, while Russia is losing refining capacity and running out of gas. To the extent that the war represents an existential threat to either side, it's Putin that has to be more worried. Ukraine can keep this going for a decade or more, it seems like.
> NATO isn't fighting in Ukraine
I think this view is delusional. NATO countries are supplying Ukraine with weapons, it's pretty conventional to consider this as being a party to the war.
The only reason we don't say it openly is that elites want to maintain pretense that we are not in a war (that's unpopular in Europe and US) and that NATO is defense-only organization.
According to your logic it's Canada fighting North Korea in Ukraine.
Just a Russia Today style of whataboutism. Why you take any russian word as true? They can only lie. Whatever they say about Ukraine is a lie.
If you want to believe russians, why not believe that this Ukrainian 3-days special operation is going according 5 years plan of grinding Ukrainian soil treeline a day and pushing neutral neighboring countries to actually join NATO?
So USA was fighting USSR by supplying weapons to Afghanistan?
USSR was fighting USA by supplying weapons to Korea and Vietnam?
Wasn't Russia paying a bounty for American soldiers in Afghanistan? That seems more like 'at war with' than providing arms.
I mean, I completely and utterly disagree with js8, but yeah, the wars you mentioned were called proxy wars between USSR and US, in the larger context of the Cold War
What was undemocratic about the decisions to support Ukraine?
To my knowledge, these things are never put forward as an election topic or referendum. There is no discussion with citizens, it's always a fait accompli, we have to do it for national security sort of thing.
The blowback is not discussed. I am from Czechia, and Russians attacked Vrbětice munition factory, because it supplied Ukraine. That's the reason. But in media it's always portrayed without this context.
FWIW, I am not opposed to humanitarian and economic help to Ukraine. But I don't believe military support will end the war in a good way, whatever it means.
It shouldn't be a referendum.
Representative democracies are supposed to work this way, a government is elected, and they represent their electorate. If the electorate disagrees with the actions the government took they will be voted out the next election cycle, in between it's in the hands of the elected government to make decisions in these matters.
> FWIW, I am not opposed to humanitarian and economic help to Ukraine. But I don't believe military support will end the war in a good way, whatever it means.
It means Ukraine falling in the hands of Russia, is that a better alternative for the rest of us? Have you considered the Pandora Box this opens up to? Without supporting Ukraine militarily they will be defeated, Russia will get a large border with Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Moldova.
And more people to use against other countries, because for sure they would enlist every able bodied Ukrainian by keeping their family hostage. They've done this since day #1 in the occupied parts of Ukraine.
I don't thing this decision was done without population support. We also don't supply the Ukraine to win. We just don't want the Ukraine to fall, because we think we are next.
Yes, there is popular support, but the consequences have been barely discussed. We don't openly admit, that by supplying Ukraine, we are entering a war with Russia, based on our own decision (not as a defensive measure). This vigilantism (even if it can be argued is employed to protect international law) goes against the idea that we're a peaceful country.
There is no consensus about Russia attacking Czechia (or any EU country) next. In fact many military experts agree that Russia doesn't even have military personel to occupy whole Ukraine.
It's also unclear why, if Putin's ambition is some kind of Hitlerian/Napoleonic expansion to Europe, he would wait 25 years (into his 70s) to do it. And to the extent he has reasonable goals, we can put something tangible on the negotiation table to see what he really wants, instead of guessing. We (I mean NATO) didn't - this indicates it's us who doesn't want to negotiate; because we don't want to reveal our colonial preference (Ukraine is already being described as a great next investment).
We had have Russian cyber attacks and terrorist attacks for decades. I don't think we get to decide to not be in war with Russia. Being an weapon source is also different form being in open war.
> In fact many military experts agree that Russia doesn't even have military personel to occupy whole Ukraine.
Doesn't really matter. Nazi Germany also didn't had the military personnel to occupy Central Europe for a prolonged time, this didn't stop them from trying.
> if Putin's ambition is some kind of Hitlerian/Napoleonic expansion to Europe, he would wait 25 years (into his 70s) to do it
Internal politics (NS Germany started the expansion when they got bankrupt), being busy in other parts of the world (Middle east), there is not a lack of incentive.
> because we don't want to reveal our colonial preference
We don't prevent countries from joining if there population supports it. This is different from taking colonies even if Russia claims to not understand this distinction.
> We had have Russian cyber attacks and terrorist attacks for decades.
I am curious what are you referring to. I have read some reporting based on BIS reports and Vrbětice is by far the worst incident (2 dead).
> Being an weapon source is also different form being in open war.
As long as you can maintain it, perhaps. But did Putin give us an assurance that he will not escalate to an open war? I am not Putin fan, but I don't see us trying to deescalate, which is the only realistic way to end the war.
> Nazi Germany also didn't had the military personnel to occupy Central Europe for a prolonged time, this didn't stop them from trying.
According to quick search, Germans during WW2 had >600k troops in Poland maintaining order. Russia doesn't have an army to fully occupy Ukraine.
Even if we accept that today's Russia has similar ambitions to Nazi Germany, and has to be defeated in a similar way, there are two important obstacles to that victory:
- Russia has nuclear weapons, WW2 Germany had not
- Today, there is no USSR helping to fight, which was significant
So it's a non-starter. And idea that you somehow put Russia on their knees and keep them there, for decades - not only it is morally abhorrent, but also bad for European security and economy (unlike U.S., we are their neighbor).
> We don't prevent countries from joining if there population supports it. This is different from taking colonies even if Russia claims to not understand this distinction.
Yes, but why should Americans care? See my other comments in this thread.
I think there is this mass delusion among Americans that they don't have any colonies, but I think Israel and Gaza shows that's not true. It's a different system, more adhoc, but U.S. maintains significant economic and military power in many parts of the world.
And U.S. have destroyed Middle East with these shenanigans, so I am not happy them applying similar divisive policies to Eastern European countries.
> I am curious what are you referring to.
A lot of cyber attacks in the last decades, stuff like WannaCry, Kaspersky..., Navalny, threats to politicians, espionage for example the recent case about Maximillian Krah, Navalny, bombs in packets that were supposed to be in the air while detonating, drone attacks, purposed limitations in gas supply...
I mean now NATO is discussing responses, but these things aren't exactly new and have been going on for years.
> Russia doesn't have an army to fully occupy Ukraine.
As far as I understand it they are still not really using the official army, since they fear that might have consequences about the stability of the regime.
Also there is an asymmetry as we care about a nation as it's people, but the Russian leadership (it's not only Putin) doesn't feel like that. Troop loss isn't more to them than a number and they have a wast population that they are willing to burn for there own goals.
Ukraine was really underestimated, but I think we underestimate our military ability. We relied to much on the USA and dissolved our armies thinking there will never be another war.
> And idea that you somehow put Russia on their knees and keep them there, for decades
I don't think anybody plans for that.
>> Yes, but why should Americans care?
I don't understand what you want to say, this wasn't about Americans?
> I think there is this mass delusion among Americans that they don't have any colonies, but I think Israel and Gaza shows that's not true.
The USA are/were the major world power, yes they do have influence among the world. But the Israel/Gaza issue is mostly caused by having nationalists on BOTH sides. The other nations on the world also have agency.
> And U.S. have destroyed Middle East with these shenanigans, so I am not happy them applying similar divisive policies to Eastern European countries.
Russia wasn't exactly uninvolved either, but I don't see how Ukraine is that much comparable and EU countries investing in the military is very much the agency of ourselves.
> but I don't see us trying to deescalate, which is the only realistic way to end the war.
This always assumes that Putin has issues that are orthogonal to the war that we can just negotiate. What I perceive to be the case is that they just want territory expansion and control over the run away states of the USSR. The war isn't just a necessary nuisance and a means to the goal, but the goal itself.
Parties in elections certainly have positions on it and representative democracies tend to work that way.
Btw., there is quite a bit on the 2014 attack in various places.
I think if Europe was actually at war with Russia, Moscow would have been reduced to rubble.
They talk a big game, but their economy is smaller than Italy's!
With a huge nuclear arsenal. So I doubt Moscow would be reduced to rubble, unless everything else was too.
France has a nuclear arsenal as well, making Moscow's kind of useless unless they want to provoke retaliation.
France has about 290 nuclear missiles in its arsenal compared to Russia's ~5500. This is an order of magnitude of difference.
Could you please come back to reality?
It really doesn't matter if you could cause 10x apocalypse or 100x apocalypse. At some point it just becomes a dick measuring contest.
Only two are needed to end Russia as it exists today, that's the reality of nuclear threats.
It is very likely that there is no working nuclear arsenal.
It's very likely that some of it doesn't work. Maybe even a lot. But I would not care to test how much in a war!
Exactly. The size of the Russian arsenal is such that - even if 80% of it is broken and entirely useless - it still has about twice as many warheads than the two European nuclear powers, France and the UK, combined.
So you will do anything, trade away everything, and capitulate at the slighted provocation to avoid the faintest possibility of war?
If not, where do you draw the line?
Because this isn’t the first time this has been analyzed, and the math is clear: the only winning strategy with terrorists not negotiate under any circumstances. You call their bluff, and you make known that you will always call their bluff in the future, and never back down. Do anything else and the terrorist can manipulate you into anything they want.
No, I certainly would not. You make a lot of assumptions.
However, the idea that a conventional force would obliterate the capital of a nuclear armed power without escalating into full-on nuclear war seems unlikely to me.
I live in a nuclear armed country too.
This is a ridiculous statement
It is an informed statement. The Russian military had ALWAYS operated on grift and cronyism, all the way back to the napoleonic wars. When shit hits the fan, as in Crimea, WW1, WW2, and Ukraine, it turns out all those paper capabilities don’t exist. Even in the height of the Cold War, ICBM silos in Russia were often flooded and inoperable.
Nuclear weapons are extremely sensitive and maintenance heavy devices. They have parts that need to be regularly checked and replaced or else the bomb will fissile. These parts are EXTREMELY precise and very high purity. The rockets have similar needs or else the engine will as likely blow up on launch.
Maintenance cycles are on the order of 10-15 years. We are now 35 years out from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the nuclear and space industries have experienced massive brain drain and almost complete elimination of operational and maintenance budgets.
The likelihood that these strategic weapon systems have been adequately maintained is indistinguishable from zero.
While all of this is true, all it takes is literally one nuke that works.
It takes a lot more than one nuke that works. They would need hundreds of strikes, probably thousands to ensure they aren’t immediately annihilated in response. There is a game theory to nuclear warfare, and dropping one city buster on a nuclear armed adversary is the sovereign equivalent of suicide-by-cop.
If this is the case, do France and the UK even have a nuclear deterrent? They have just over 500 weapons total between them - is there any chance that they are able to “ensure that they aren’t immediately anihalated” by a Russian response?
Probably not. But we do not have a first strike doctrine. There is enough to ensure that attacking us would be a very, very bad idea.
Uh yes?
For reference, that number of nuclear weapons is where China decided to draw the line as a nuclear deterrence against the US until recently.
A hundred modern nuclear weapons is plenty to fucking ruin a country, but no, it doesn't not take "just one". Most western countries would survive say, a smuggled terrorist nuke (or 4) just fine. Angry and mourning, but fine.
France alone has enough deterrent in their nuclear weapons. The UK has theirs in submarines, to ensure even if you magically erased the entire British Islands, you still take tens of nukes up the ass.
Nuclear deterrence is not complicated, and it's pretty well understood in public. I don't know why so many people here are so wildly off base.
Meanwhile, all this was always intended to be roughly "backup" to the US's absurd stockpile, including tons of literal gravity drop nukes so we can cosplay Dr Strangelove as the world ends. And the ending of the IRBM treaty means the US has recently told our defense industry that it gets to play with the cool rockets again.
Russia has its own satellite network, its own rockets, the most advance missiles in the world (and demonstrated usage), has continually bombed Kiev and other parts of Ukraine .. but sure, let's listen to you spout your detached-from-reality comments about nuclear war.
Contrast this with many "advanced" nations such as UK, EU, Australia etc. that can't even get a rocket into space. There was a period recently where the US was relying on Soyuz rockets to get into space.
Russia couldn't even bomb Kyiv reliably, before buying a drone manufacturing line from Iran, of all places. The sanctioned to the gills Iran apparently can produce a flying junker with a gas prop and a 100 kilos of explosives strapped to a planer, while Russia can't. This can tell us something. Russia can't even produce trucks from which to launch these drones, they are all western made on official photos.
>the most advance missiles in the world
Uh, by what metric?
>has continually bombed Kiev and other parts of Ukraine
Yeah, with primarily low sophistication weapons invented by a country that has to build everything from scratch in bunkers. This is only possible because Ukraine does not have much in terms of anti-air missile systems and cannot police its airspace.
Meanwhile, Kyiv is giving back plenty of half-assed weapons systems, including multiple jury-rigged light sport aircraft that Russia was unable to keep out of their airspace.
Both combatants are basically children playing with toys right now.
>There was a period recently where the US was relying on Soyuz rockets to get into space.
At no point was the US relying on Soyuz rockets to "get to space". The entire time the US was using Soyuz to ferry astronauts to the collaborative space station we were launching unmanned payloads with multiple launch vehicles, and the military has at no point lost the ability to put payloads into orbit.
Meanwhile in Russia:
>Despite the Russian claims that the missile is on 'combat alert', since its 2022 flight test, it [Sarmat] has experienced four failed tests, the most recent on 21 September 2024.
Russia is not the Soviet Union.
In terms of their nuclear vehicles, I'd bet on enough of them working to be a deterrent, but there's lots of open questions about what percentage. Russia has been running even their Rocket Force on a remarkably small budget compared to the number of warheads they are supporting. Unless they have magical efficiency, they are likely skimping somewhere, and in a military rife with outright fraud and every step of the chain pocketing money that is supposed to be used for procurement, why should we believe the Rocket Force is free of that behavior?
Civilian rockets and military/strategic rockets are not even remotely similar. Totally different technology driven by vastly different needs. Russia hasn’t had a technological edge in military rocketry since the 1950’s.
I believe they used a hypersonic missile before the US has fielded theirs?
No, that's wrong.
The Kinzhal is just a normal ballistic missile. If it is "hypersonic", so were the missiles the US has sitting in bunkers.
China has the first real "hypersonic" weapon.
Besides, Russia's super awesome hypersonic missile that will totally kill the west is regularly intercepted by the Patriot platform. Because it's just a normal ballistic missile, which is what the Patriot is designed to intercept.
I was referring to the Oreshnik, not the Kinzhal. But I'm no missile expert.
All long and medium range rockets are hypersonic, simply by virtue of falling from space fast enough. From any country. So the "reached speed" metric is kinda pointless. Lately people tend to call rockets hypersonic is they can be controlled at the hypersonic flight stage. Oreshnic is an old ballistic missile, whose only innovation is removing third stage from an existing rocket, and can't be controlled with precision. This is why there was no significant damage and hits were all over the place with hundreds of meters of error. It is 80 million dollar equivalent of a single Smerch or Uragan shot, which is a pretty dumb and useless idea, considering price and complexity of a rocket.
There are thousands of nuclear weapons that cannot be stopped in play. NATO is actually behind in missile capabilities. That leaders are not frantically negotiating a settlement makes me wonder if the survival of their constituents is not a goal.
> I oppose the military support to Ukraine.
That makes you a russia supporter in my book.
He admits he is in Czechia, which is coincidentally one of the three biggest spots for Russian emigration inside EU. Maybe even the biggest, if counted as a percentage of total population. No wonder there are a lot of imperialists there, he may be a Russian citizen himself, pining for the "spheres of influence" and "bipolar world".
I sincerely hope one day military support will be denied to you, wherever you live. What a brainwashed cabbage... "escalate into a war"(c) - this is a blatant 100% lie, with no ifs or buts, just a plain lie. There was zero military aid to Ukraine before the invasion.
They also are saying West should deescalate by stopping support of Ukraine. Basically to force then to surrender. Likely they missed modern history class, especially "peace for our lifetime" lesson.
I'm not sure they are brainwashed, they could be a salaried russian who has task to spread RT narratives.
Then USA shouldn't send arms and troops to Europe to fight Hitler. It also wasn't democratic decision.
Not providing military support will actually bring a war to Europe much faster. If Ukraine surrenders Baltic states are next to be annexed by russians.
Alternative link, without paywall: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/europe-no-longer-ignore-...
Armchair analysis: Germany is preparing for war and all of Europe is asking them.
Well, this won't end well for Russia. Germany is one of the biggest industrial producers in the world.
Unless we deescalate this won't end well for anyone. Except maybe mil-ind complex shareholders.
Nah.
Russia is boxing way beyond it's weight.
It will collapse like in 1991 if we would even just put some tanks at the border ( eg. At Finland, Poland).
( Russia's banks are pretty vulnerable atm. )
I don't think so. I have russian coworkers who visited their family in Russia recently. They say there is more investment in infrastructure in Russia since the war. Basically, Russian oligarchs cannot invest abroad so they have to do it at home.
So there are signs that the war helped Russia to resolve its "dutch disease" (a situation where a state relying on natural resource such as oil stunts its economic growth in other areas).
That's probably all centered around Moscow and St. Petersburg?
All the wages were up, but are now coming down. They tried supporting the economy ( to not hit deflation), but that is crumbling soon
Note: I don't live there. But the central bank of Russia really has a competent head ( Elvira Sakhipzadovna Nabiullina ) that's worth listening too. She's so competent that Putin won't block/silence her too much.
Her latest statements are more grim: https://kyivindependent.com/russias-war-fueled-economy-is-ru...
Economy is so good that they have 20% interest rate. So good that they are cutting workweek, furloughing workers on the biggest car and truck factories. So good that they are limiting petrol sales to 20l per person.
No, you are misreading the situation. Russia is spending a lot of money and effort and resources internally because it has a near total wartime economy now.
That is not a good thing. Nobody can eat a tank. You can't plow a field with a howitzer. Your economy suffers when you can make more money being a frontline soldier than you can being a skilled worker. Every single Shahed they build is a waste!
And Russia's demographics are fundamentally broken, even before they got hundreds of thousands of Russian young men killed.
They can't keep it going forever. Even if they won the war today, there would be serious repercussions. Russia is lucky they have a good central bank to manage these problems but that isn't magic.
Russia is burning dollars and real human lives for very little gain, again, even if Ukraine capitulated today. Putin already lost the war. Even gaining all of Ukraine, with a pacified populace, would be somewhat Pyrrhic, and just stave off problems.
Meanwhile, Russia's weapons export market, which was significant and meaningful, is just gone. Nobody wants what they sell anymore, and they can't make enough to export some of it anyway.
Also meanwhile, they have not fixed their "dutch disease" since Russia's economy is still entirely reliant on selling gas to people, and what little trade they had other than that is gone.
Well, you might be right, I agree that war is a waste of resources. But that's actually why EU should stop them, by offering Russia some tangible alternative, a path to prosperity. Instead we cut the ties completely (which we didn't do with U.S. when it attacked Iraq, Israel genociding Palestinians also doesn't seem to matter).
Instead, EU wants to embrace the same kind of (they call it) "military keynesianism". They think military spending will fix their economies. (In fact, attempt to use war as a way to prop up the economy was suggested as a reason why Putin started the war.)
It's also bad because longterm, it puts Russia on the same path the U.S. has been - a big weapons manufacturer that is looking to export a war somewhere.
I agree with stopping Russia.
Put tanks on the border and Russia will collapse on it's own.
Giving Russia what it wants will just create more problems in a couple of years.
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Germany still has a very large industrial base, things don't just disappear into the ether because they aren't profitable. Factories are still there, they can be retooled in case of need such as in a war.
Perhaps you should be a bit more humble when spewing bullshit, it might even make it more believable instead of this word vomit.
Russia has about twice the steel output that Germany does, comparable to the United States (which has twice the population of Russia). Russia uses about twice the electricity that Germany does too.
Here's Germany doing its NATO exercises with broomsticks due to shortages
https://www.newsweek.com/germany-cant-explain-use-broomstick...
https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2018/0...
What was that you were saying about spewing bullshit?
Russia can't even make Lada's without Europe ( see : Renault ) no matter the output of steel.
Germany actually builds tanks that work.
I'd compare GDP if you want a measurement. Oh yeah, use EU's GDP of course. Germany alone is 2 x Russia.
Russia is basically a little brother of Italy. Trying to matter on the world stage.
With the border Russia has with the EU, they don't have enough resources to defend it.
And I'm not even talking about Finland's military who joined NATO...
Ps. About Germany: https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/media/stories/2023/rheinmetal...
https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/products/tactical-wheeled-veh...
And then Russia: https://united24media.com/latest-news/russias-tank-reserves-...
No one listened, no one prepared.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Munich_speech_of_Vladim...
It’s not like there was any warning signs…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
Bullies exploit weaknesses. Time to grow a pair.
I have always found the summary of Foundations of Geopolitics[1] to be an interesting re-read whenever some larger event involving Russia happened. It feels like the puzzle pieces have been coming together at least since Brexit, if not much longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#In_... is frighteningly accurate to current events. I wonder to what degree this is them succeeding?
Here's a link to the full book: https://www.maieutiek.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Foundati...
Don't pay for it, unless you want to fund what Wikipedia describes as a "Russian far-right political philosopher [and] strong supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin".
Worth watching: You won't believe what Estonia just built to stop Russia https://youtu.be/DMRQW18COv4
The Baltics, Poland, and northern European countries don't have any illusions that NATO is already in a de facto state of asymmetric war with Russia already: hacking, sabotage, and election meddling of all sorts. The surface of concerns extend beyond that to Ukraine-like hot war scenarios especially for neighboring countries like Finland and the Baltics.
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In 2007 and later everybody in Europe understood that russia is basically in the toilet and they can't do anything offensive that won't make them hurt themselves terribly. The only thing is nobody, except Eastern European countries, imagined is that russia is stupid enough to do it anyways.
Don't forget the manifest: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
Putin also was in prison in Germany in the 90ies for trying to overthrow the government and restore Soviet control.
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> Regarding the Malaysian airline, Westerners do this all the time
Western governments shoot down civilian airliners all the time?
(Also funny how the propaganda has shifted from “Actually the Ukrainians shot it down” to “Actually others do this too”)
Ukrainians have done it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/135...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
Just two examples Ofc when we do it it's alright. Only when others do it then it's bad.
"We didn't do it and if we did, they deserved it."
My armchair analysis: Putin provokes Europe so that he has an excuse to announce mobilization (otherwise very unpopular move)
Besides the fact this fear mongering is very useful in this timeline to pass laws violating people's privacy and strengthening state surveillance, the only one winning is whoever is selling the weapons, hmmm who could it be?!
That’s some far fetched piece (based on what is above the paywall).
For jets argument you must first understand where Kaliningrad is: something akin to Alaska for US — open the map to see what European countries are invariably in between.
Even if they crossed momentarily the air border (though there was no objective visual proof from either side, which is why the story died), supersonic jet is not like crusing at 20 mph: if you sway for several seconds you can easily graze some border. It is unprofessional but not impossible.
As for a few drones: the key word is undentified.
Yet the piece is titled: Europe is under Russian Attack. Meh
Don't you believe those were russian drones intentionally sent?
It’s in the realm of probability but very thin for me. As always: the means, the benefits. How would Russia benefit?
> EU leaders meeting in Copenhagen backed plans to strengthen European defenses, including a proposed "drone wall," after recent drone incursions over Denmark raised fears of Russian hybrid attacks. Officials said the initiative would focus on eastern airspace protection and sit alongside projects for eastern flank security, missile defense, and a space-based shield . Leaders also began a first formal debate on using frozen Russian assets in Europe to fund aid for Ukraine.
Ah, those sweet-sweet frozen assets. Also see how this piece implies Russian without any proof.
Also the more you fear monger the EU population, the more you can continue the war: which is money for some elites; redeemeer of economic recession for others, etc.: war is universal resetter for social/economic issues.
> As always: the means, the benefits. How would Russia benefit?
Ah, they can't be behind it because they never, ever make mistakes and everything they ever do serves them somehow.
In the meantime, in real world russia hasn't made a single good decision in almost 4 years.
> Ah, those sweet-sweet frozen assets. Also see how this piece implies Russian without any proof.
When you talk about mountain climbing you also silently imply that gravity exists.
What's the alternative?
> Also the more you fear monger the EU population, the more you can continue the war:
It's not exactly fear mongering. Europe is gearing for war and I don't think even immediate russian surrender could stop it at this point. Europe will steamroll russia in the following decade or two. There are no decisions to be made anymore. Now the stage is fully set and history just plays out.
The idea you can lay down arms up to the last moment before conflict is a pipe dream. It pretty much never happens.
Before you told me that drones were sent intentionally. Now you recede to “mistake” and “not a single good decision”.
If you imply some country is stupid and every thing they do is a mistake, that — at very least — is grave mistake for any war.
Is in your mind "intentional" and "mistake" contradictory?
Haven't you ever done anything intentionally that turned out to be a mistake?
It's pretty plain to see that everything russia did in recent years harmed it and strengthened its enemies. That's a mistake in my book unless your goal is a suicide.
You do see how the same story looks with shift by one operation?
Enemies getting stronger, russia growing weaker, and finally, trying to do something about it.
It’s like chicken and the egg situation.
The only dumb thing to do is escalate this even further. One should never “corner” the nuclear power, this is madness.
russia is not a nuclear power or any kind of power
the fact that in 3 years of sabre rattling they didn't perform a single nuclear test, just for show, proves that conclusively
russia myth is pure PR made in USA
I wouldn't pay to read this.
If only they started spending more on defense 10 years ago when they were being called on to do so instead of pretending Brexit and anti-immigrant sentiments were their biggest enemy rather than Russian energy dependence.
If only we didn't have a metric boatload of Russian interference and sabotage in our countries that constantly blocks any efforts to get free from their dependence.
While there is no consensus on whether Angela Merkel was "too friendly" to Russia— critics argue that her policies left Germany and Europe too dependent on Russian energy and that she failed to take a sufficiently tough stance against Vladimir Putin. Supporters, including Merkel herself, have defended her diplomatic approach as a pragmatic and necessary strategy given Russia's place in Europe.
Even today money flows from US allies including NATO member states into Russia to buy gas rather than into the military and defense systems that might have prevented the bloodbath in Ukraine.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/merkels-lack-of-regrets-i...
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/11/trump-germany-russ...
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-tr...
Is there some reason Europeans should go to war to satisfy the desires of American organizations?
Is there some reason European citizens should go to war to satisfy the desires of _political_ scientists - a dubious category at best?
Or to put it another way - why don't the political scientists at these American organizations put on their fighting gear and go fight in Ukraine?
>Is there some reason Europeans should go to war to satisfy the desires of American organizations?
That is the wrong question. The question is:
Is there some reason Europeans should go to war when Russia invades a European country in order to annex it by force?
The answer is yes. The reason is not letting force impose over things like democracy or rights. If Europeans do we(I am European) will become slaves.
It happened multiple times: The Ottoman Empire, Napoleon or Hitler and Stalin.
You don't have to explain that to a Polish person: They lived the occupation of Russia and Germany and all of them have family members that were exterminated by the germans first and then by the communists. Let alone they were subjugated over decades making then a puppet state of Russia making Russia richer and Poland poorer.
If Europeans do not oppose the dictator Putin controlling Russia, next time we will have to fight against Russia, Ukraine(occupied by Russia) and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and all the new conquests(of the new Russian Empire) in the same way if you do not oppose the ottomans taking Constantinople, you will have to oppose them in Vienna, when they have become much stronger.
Well I am Polish, and no, you don't have to explain it.
But both America and Europe are very inconsistent on the matter; for example, the EU has placed something like 19 sanction packages on Russia. But it has placed none on Israel, despite the fact that Israel, since even just 2023, has bombed the Yemen president, invaded Lebanon, Syria and well, and killed large numbers of Palestinian people; I will let the lawyers discuss what variation of war crime that counts as.
Furthermore, when Poland helped the US, the UK and Australia invade Afghanistan and Iraq there was apparently no concern about about turning people into slaves, occupation, making Afghanistan/Iraq poorer.
Allow me to quote: An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 432,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died “indirectly,” as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting. https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human
Are you concerned about Western imperialism, and if not, why not?
As a historical note, the equivocation between Soviet/Stalin and Hitler is at best inaccurate. If you're Polish, presumably you know about "General Plan Ost" that aimed to eradicate 85% of the Polish population and similar numbers of other Slavic nations; while Stalin was a terrible dictator (which even Putin has mentioned in interviews), the crimes of the Soviets against Poland pale in comparison.
You can oppose Putin if you wish; but you will only destroy Europe's future, which the Americans will smile at as they buy up your industry and prosperity. Unfortunately, the hatred of Russians outweighs the Europe's comprehension of its own self interest.