It's amazing that despite russia constantly attacking European countries, we still allow their propaganda and fifth column russia-adjacent political parties to prosper. It's about time Europe wakes up.
This idea that you can delegitimize democratic parties by making some handwavy motions backed by little to no evidence claiming they're controlled by Russia needs to die, because they're an actual and definitive threat to our democratic systems. The Nash equilibrium maintained by political parties in certain systems deserves to be disturbed, because the situation in some European countries (I live in Europe) has clearly been on a downward path for the past one to two decades.
It's amazing that we are still blaming one side even though Europe supplies shit loads of weapons, intelligence and shit load of money to Ukraine to continue the war.
So, yes, it's about the time Europe wakes up and stops financing Ukraine gets NATO the fuck back into borders set back in the nineties.
If it were only the Ukraine the war would have long been over. The West block has supplied more than $500 billion in aid to the Ukraine, that's more than twice the US lend/lease to the Soviet Union in 2026 dollars. Plus intelligence information and probably other things I'm forgetting. The more dollars are sent to Kiev, the more blood and lives the Ukrainians are expected to invest. That's the deal.
Russia has a million man standing army that's now thoroughly blooded and well versed in modern warfare, and an industrial base that's retooled to supply such an army (i.e., drones and missiles). The only problem for them is that they're facing the only other large, experienced army in the world.
Imagine if tomorrow, Russia went on the defensive and froze its lines in Ukraine, setting up Surovikin lines everywhere, then withdrew half the forces it has currently committed. Now imagine that a half million Russian soldiers show up on the border of Estonia, Finland, Kazhakstan, or Georgia.
Yes, Russia is exhausted and doing deep structural damage to its economy. It still has one of the best land forces in the world at the moment. The way Ukraine always smokes NATO forces in exercises is a strong indicator of what would happen if Russia decided to "liberate" the Baltics.
> Imagine if tomorrow, Russia went on the defensive and froze its lines in Ukraine, setting up Surovikin lines everywhere,then withdrew half the forces it has currently committed.
They'd have to give up a big chunk of the occupied land to do that, since creating that line within 50 km of the front line would now be much harder than it was 3 years ago. Who knows, maybe that's what's stopping them from attacking another country as you described.
Ukraine is the biggest country on European continent. It has the most capable military in Europe right now. And it's backed by Europe economically. Saying that Russia can't defeat them is not the insult you think it is. If Russia mobilized 1M people and went full on war in a month, they'd easily take over the Baltics, took half of Poland and bombed the F out of Germany and France. They'd lose eventually if Europe woke up from its delusions, but they definitely can take over most of Eastern Europe.
NATO has virtually no experience in modern warfare, which is substantially different than how they're organized now. NATO is well equipped for an armor-centric battle of maneuver, but Ukraine showed that's not at all how it has to be fought.
Russia wouldn't use armor or logistics to take over the Baltics. They've already got their human waves and infantry infiltration tactics worked out, under a cloud of drones and cruise missiles that NATO has no counter for (and the US just disbanded its drone warfare division because drones aren't manly enough for Hegseth).
> Ukraine showed that's not at all how it has to be fought.
You're taking a regional conflict between militaries using cold war gear and drones and saying "this is what warfare is now".
> They've already got their human waves and infantry infiltration tactics worked out
A million casualties and three-year stalemate in Ukraine is "worked out"? Good for them. I see those swarms are especially effective at defending energy infrastructure, something that's of particular concern when you're fighting an alliance with stealth aircraft.
> under a cloud of drones and cruise missiles that NATO has no counter for
This is the Russian drone infantry currently occupying Kyiv?
> the US just disbanded its drone warfare division because drones aren't manly enough for Hegseth
I'm taking a regional conflict where the total manpower of both sides outnumbers all the rest of the armies of NATO without the US. Where one side, Ukraine, sends OPFORs to NATO exercises and wins handily with drones because NATO doesn't know how to fight drones, or how to operate in a front line that's 20km deep and the enemy knows everything going in it and it's impossible to mass forces because tube artillery is still cheap.
And yes, this is what warfare is now. When Russia invaded in 2022, it was using its new armored battalion tactical groups, and they failed to reach Kyiv at all, or to conquer Kharkiv or Sumy--they just surrounded them and stretched out along the highways, where infantry teams with Javelins destroyed them in detail.
The battlefield transparency that drones bring is a sea change in warfare, and a big part of that change that Ukrainians and Russians have learned is total force dispersion. You can't assemble an armored fist because it's bombed to oblivion before it ever sees the enemy, or encounters an artillery deployed minefield that didn't exist the night before.
NATO will take years to ingest the obvious lessons from Ukraine and adjust its doctrine to handle them. Until that time, they face an adversary who knows them in its bones.
> A million casualties and three-year stalemate in Ukraine is "worked out"? Good for them.
Could NATO take a million+ casualties and still be fighting with another million in uniform and the nation not yet undergoing general mobilization?
> This is the Russian drone infantry currently occupying Kyiv?
If that Russian drone infantry suddenly showed up on Estonia's borders, what chance would you give the Estonians?
>> the US just disbanded its drone warfare division because drones aren't manly enough for Hegseth
> Please explain what you think this means.
It means the most expedient way for the US to learn to apply the lessons of the war in Ukraine was just discontinued. The Pentagon does not see drone warfare as a top priority.
> NATO doesn't know how to fight drones, or how to operate in a front line that's 20km deep and the enemy knows everything going in it
Source: youtube I imagine. Speculation is fine but here you are making assertions without evidence.
> The battlefield transparency that drones bring is a sea change in warfare
And it began 20 years ago.
> Could NATO take a million+ casualties
This is a weird argument for the effectivness of your Russian drone infantry.
> If that Russian drone infantry suddenly showed up on Estonia's borders
They teleport now too? This is getting serious. I imagine within a week Putin would be meeting Gaddafi's fate. Attacking NATO is nothing like bullying a smaller country with no defense pacts. China and India would stop being patron states. You'd see a half dozen Prigozhins as the oligarchs would realize it's not survivable.
> The Pentagon does not see drone warfare as a top priority.
Anduril, GA, Boeing, and Lockmart absolutely inconsolable right now.
> I hope NATO leadership isn't as blythe as you about the changing face of war.
I am fairly confident they are not. And I'm not blythe about it, I just don't see Russia as being some sort of dominant drone army and believe the location that 20 km-wide no man's land is pretty strong evidence. And that there are many aspects of armed conflict we are not seeing in Ukraine.
> Are we ready to approve large increases in defence spending, and for the sacrifices that that might entail in other areas of our national life?
The crux of the article: war hawks fearmongering so they can get more funding to feel big and bad. I would almost be sympathetic if they were asking for funding to send an armored volunteer force to Ukraine in defense of common liberty. As it is, if the UK has need of tanks on British soil, the world is beyond fucked anyways. Peace should be normalized when humanity has invented such destructive weapons that we won't survive the next war. The lesson from the world wars was supposed to be that war can't be normal, but here we have militarists getting off to the idea.
It is my current view that this BBC article and the recent announcement by national security advisor Powell are conditioning the public mind not for an actual hot war, but for a "tough winter" of eye-watering price rises, possible shortages, and maybe even utility supply problems if we are particularly unlucky. While talk of war increases, a glance at the state of the military suggests to me this is unlikely. What we have is rather limited, and even that is only about 1% deployable within 6 months. Much of Europe the same (Poland being an exception).
That said, I also believe that there is fairly widespread, low intensity, grey-zone action across Europe at the moment. Not every random fire or infrastructure failure is "The Russians", but I'd be surprised if none of them were. Indeed some of them have already been formally attributed.
It is, however, correct to attribute all sabotage and random failures to Russia until proven otherwise. No matter if we like it or not, Russia has decided to be hostile, and is actively committing sabotage.
It would be foolish to still just wring our hands about it. We have to name the enemy, Russia, and both support Ukraine's fight and do our own active hybrid actions on Russian soil. And yes, military buildup is required.
And to be clear, this will not end anytime soon. The war in Ukraine is but one aspect of Russia's imperial ambitions. It's fully possible we will not see friendly relations again in our lifetimes.
It is incorrect to blame everything onto some entity, otherwise we'll miss the real things due to being desensitised. It's a version of boy who cried wolf but crying Russia.
Seems off-topic for HN, but let's look at it technologically: if Ukraine and Iran have demonstrated anything, it is that drones are like guerilla warfare squared: even the smallest player can land hits and deny areas to the largest forces.
It might be tending towards impossible to achieve regime change militarily at this point. Maybe we all should just figure out how to get along.
This article shows the biasses of the press. Everything is about public perception, so the problem is that the public don't perceived that there might be a war. This is stupid, public perception can shift very quickly. The actual problem is not maintaining investment and critical industries. The UK was able to shift commercial manufacturing to wartime production for world war II. That doesn't work if you've offshored everything.
We've been in one war or another for most of my adult life.
We are in a perilous position right now in Europe, very close to a major escalation of the Ukraine conflict. This would entail direct conflict between nuclear-armed powers.
I find it deeply troubling that no mainstream party in most European countries seems to think this is a bad idea.
Hot war in Europe. We're doing incursions well into Russia. Attempts have been made on the life of Putin and Zelensky, a drone was dangerously close to a bunch of very senior Europeans the other day.
It's dangerously out of control. We should be seeking de-escalation for our own sakes. The last two major European wars destroyed empires. We're playing with fire here.
I do not want to live through, or die in WW3. I'm worried it's already started.
Europe, Ukraine and the west do want to de-escalate and end the war that Russia started, it's Putin who has repeatedly said to negotiators directly and on TV he wants to continue escalating and believes it's still possible to take over Ukraine and parts of eastern Europe.
It's hard for one side to de-escalate when the other side is an avowed irredentist attempting to rebuild the Russian Empire before they die.
To be honest, while Putin is obsessed with irredentism it's either: let him take back all the old Soviet states (which simply won't be tolerated by people there or Europe) or keep up the ongoing defence and make the cost for Russia high enough to stunt them until Putin dies either naturally or by falling out a window.
People like Trump and Elon think a deal can be done with Putin or he can be placated, or there's some sort of solution like you're waiting to hear, but all attempts to even begin negotiation fail because Putin is dead set on rebuilding the Empire. Apparently in any discussion about his war he spends hours talking about Russia's historical claims and ownership and shows old documents and books etc.
I'm sorry it seems to you like no one has come up with a good solution but it's either give Russia one or more countries (and then he'll want more...) or defend until he loses power or dies.
irredentism is a hell of a drug. Putin is fully locked in.
Regardless of Putin's obsession with Ukraine, the problem is that his clan views this war (and future wars like this) as a campaign to create a new world order where the EU and the US withdraw from supporting countries in what they consider their sphere of influence, and, ultimately, give up any ideas of affecting change inside Russia.
It's an age-old story of a crime family holding on to its mafia state.
Yeah, it's this "we continue fighting until Putin eventually dies" line of thinking which horrifies me. Is that our war strategy? That's a recipe for permanent war.
Of course it's stupid. This is a stupid war.
No one on the Ukraine or EU or western side wants to be in this war.
If you're saying defence is not an option are you suggesting we roll over give Putin back the old Soviet states? Let him do his ethnic cleansing?
Putin does NOT want to freeze this war, he honestly, truely believes he can continue to weaken the west and Ukraine until he can rebuild his empire. Go read any of his writings or interviews for the last 10 years. He's an irridentist to his bones.
This is not the Korean war where a DMZ will be agreed to.
While Putin lives he will keep the war going, keep trying to take over Ukraine entirely and the old Soviet states.
He sees the loss of the ex Soviet states to the EU as a historic mistake and catastrophe that he intends to set right via military action.
While the front might grind to a halt, there's no scenario where he would agree to end the war with just the land he's captured today.
Incorrect, there are lots of people in the West with a vested interest in keeping this war rolling. We're selling guns, doing R&D, Europe now buys its gas from America (at a higher price) instead of Russia, Zelenskyy does not need to face election.
Groups of people in the West are benefiting massively. Most Ukrainians are not. Most normal citizens of Western countries are not, we're shouldering the cost in rising cost of living, elevated military spending.
We have a hot war on our continent. I repeat, this is very fucking dangerous. WW1 was a brutal, grinding land battle with immense costs for all its European participants. It also led to WW2, which culminated in the absolute decimation of European cities and the eventual use of nuclear weapons. This is the path we're retreading.
You continue to personalise this around Putin. It is incredibly naive to think that Putin disappearing will resolve the problem. It will not.
Right. Mighty Russia that has been fought to a standstill by its much smaller neighbour is going to provoke a military alliance absolutely dwarfing it into outright war. Not even China is going to back that after having a look at who the more valuable trading partner is.
Being ready for war is reasonable, being afraid or worried is a waste of time, and even irrational in this case.
From the article, starting in the next paragraph after the one your quote was in:
> But what is the threat? In 1940 the danger of a German invasion of the UK was very real. But the chances of Russian tanks rolling up Whitehall are surely negligible.
> "It's not the tanks you need to worry about," says historian Margaret MacMillan, author of War: How Conflict Shaped Us.
> "It's the cutting of cables on the ocean floor. It's the hacking into systems on which so many things depend. The possibility for asymmetric war, for cyber war, is growing by leaps and bounds."
Case in point, Russia has been fought to a standstill by its much smaller neighbor using asymmetric warfare. There is no reason Russia would not turn around and do the same to other countries.
One may argue it has already done so in the past via election interference, except now it also has AI in its arsenal, which won’t even need ICBMs to be delivered to its targets.
Dude, you have no idea about the modern warfare. The only country Russia is actually afraid of is the USA. And nobody except probably the USA or maybe Turkey is even remotely ready for modern war. Russia is having "military operation" right now. If they start the "war".
Second of all, the "much smaller neighbour" is any European country to them. Ukraine is the biggest country on European continent if we include the occupied territory. And it's actually has the most capable armed forces military-wise. Russia took over 116k sq km of Ukraine. All three Baltic states are 175k sq km combined and they literally can't defend themselves in case USA decides to withdraw.
And last but not the least, Russia's war is irrational. It makes no sense from any rational viewpoint. So relying on common sense in this case is wrong. You need to understand russian ideology and Putin's specifically.
Just leave it. There are so many Russian apologists on this forum it’s exhausting. You’d think the fact that Russia is in the middle of an unwise and unnecessary war of aggression wouldn’t itself be an argument for concerns of more attacks on NATO countries and allies.
But to prebut whataboutism, I also don’t like American imperialism.
I’m not quite sure what the disagreement is here. I was just saying asymmetric or other unconventional warfare can be extremely effective, as Ukraine’s resilience has shown, and there’s no reason Russia could not adopt similar means. In fact it has been doing so in the past. Somehow that makes me a Russia apologist, as sibling comment implies? Genuinely confused.
Didnt they start almost immediately trying to setup like mineral processing facillities in areas they were able to nominally gain control of?
Wonder what the impetus for this was, were the elites embezzling too much or low oil prices or something that motivated them to pillage to make up the difference? Or typical greed in the absence of any asscovery...
How rational is killing others when someone tell you? You need strong propaganda of fear to makes other to kill each other. Something like those articles.
Read between the lines. He's saying "Mess with us, we'll nuke you." They mean it. Putin is desperate enough to do it. Anyone responding to this with Euro-bravado is an idiot. Some of y'all didn't grow up during the cold war and your blind spot is showing.
Deterrence is exactly what we should be doing. Many responses here were some variation of "he'd never try" or "let him try, we'd win". That's not deterrence - that's ignorance and provocation, respectively.
They never mean it, it's a threatening tactics. Their children live in western countries and their money is there. They wouldn't allow nuking western countries just like that. ESPECIALLY if they know they attacked first. Even their own doctrine doesn't allow using nukes for anything except the direct external threat to their statehood.
> “We’ve said repeatedly that we have no intention of attacking Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently addressed this issue in detail, emphasizing that we have no interest in doing so,” he said.
A major difference, IMHO, is the abandonment of the rules-based, rights-based, international order. Within it, international war (as opposed to civil war) was nearly impossible - it hardly existed for generations. While you need to prepare for the worst, you need to work for the best, for progress, like so many generations before us in much more difficult circumstances. Preparing for warfare doesn't mean accepting it; we must also work for freedom, including a just peace. It doesn't happen without work.
Again in this era, reactionary and nationalist messaging has dominated and somehow, despite generations of extraordinary success, despite being born into it and seeing its success and superiority, many/most think such an order is infeasible or even undesireable. At the same time, I've seen American leaders in the military industry advocate for becoming accustomed to mass destruction and death.
And shockingly, even the experts and practioners abandoned it and at nearly the height of its success. It's as if a messaging campaign insisted cloud computing was impossible and absurd, and so everyone just stopped using what was obviously working. For the rules- and rights-based order, yes there were outliers and setbacks and threats; that's life. But the entire free, wealthy, industrialized world subscribed, and were untouchably allied, free, safe and prosperous. Now, having abandoned it, all those things have diminished.
What's missing is not acceptance of warfare but ultimate commitment and work for freedom and peace.
Most of you who rah-rah-rah against Russia would not pick up arms and go to war to protect whatever you believe your democratic values are.
First of all you don't even believe in democracy - if you did, your views would not be so one sided and you would really want to understand the conflict.
Secondly, because no real democracy is left anywhere in the world. It's a myth.
Russia and USA had elaborate discussion on the precipice of war late in 2021, but also continued discussions since the very breakup of the soviet union and the voluntary dissolution of the Warsaw pact.
Negotiations didn't go anywhere unfortunately. And it's not Russia that takes the blame.
This is a British article for Britons. The British press is nuts: everything is taken to extremes: events, statements and political moves. Unfortunately, every day the USA press grows more like the British press, moving leftward and increasingly alarmist. Look at what happened to Drudgereport, It once supported Trump and now it's practically a British tabloid of its own.
Take Rolf Dobelli's advice - don't listen to the news:
Peripheral countries are demilitarized but maintain Article V status, Putin is exiled to Saint Helena and required to spend the remainder of his life lecturing Tucker Carlson on Russian history.
94 comments
[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadSo, yes, it's about the time Europe wakes up and stops financing Ukraine gets NATO the fuck back into borders set back in the nineties.
> china ? why ? they just want taiwan
> russia ? lol, they can't even manage Ukraine ( with our aid )
> iran ? why ? they just want to kill you know who
This is just a fearmongering article.
It does not help that we keep electing extremely selfish strong appearing individuals in winner-takes-all democracies.
That is why Voldemort always comes back in real life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIv1f2AwFCI
Was the common talking point even in early february of 2022
Imagine if tomorrow, Russia went on the defensive and froze its lines in Ukraine, setting up Surovikin lines everywhere, then withdrew half the forces it has currently committed. Now imagine that a half million Russian soldiers show up on the border of Estonia, Finland, Kazhakstan, or Georgia.
Yes, Russia is exhausted and doing deep structural damage to its economy. It still has one of the best land forces in the world at the moment. The way Ukraine always smokes NATO forces in exercises is a strong indicator of what would happen if Russia decided to "liberate" the Baltics.
> Imagine if tomorrow, Russia went on the defensive and froze its lines in Ukraine, setting up Surovikin lines everywhere,then withdrew half the forces it has currently committed.
They'd have to give up a big chunk of the occupied land to do that, since creating that line within 50 km of the front line would now be much harder than it was 3 years ago. Who knows, maybe that's what's stopping them from attacking another country as you described.
Well I never said that.
Russia doesn't have the armor or logistics to "easily take over the Baltics", particularly considering it would trigger Article V.
The Russian Air Force could not hope to bomb anything beyond the range of standoff munitions.
Russia wouldn't use armor or logistics to take over the Baltics. They've already got their human waves and infantry infiltration tactics worked out, under a cloud of drones and cruise missiles that NATO has no counter for (and the US just disbanded its drone warfare division because drones aren't manly enough for Hegseth).
You're taking a regional conflict between militaries using cold war gear and drones and saying "this is what warfare is now".
> They've already got their human waves and infantry infiltration tactics worked out
A million casualties and three-year stalemate in Ukraine is "worked out"? Good for them. I see those swarms are especially effective at defending energy infrastructure, something that's of particular concern when you're fighting an alliance with stealth aircraft.
> under a cloud of drones and cruise missiles that NATO has no counter for
This is the Russian drone infantry currently occupying Kyiv?
> the US just disbanded its drone warfare division because drones aren't manly enough for Hegseth
Please explain what you think this means.
And yes, this is what warfare is now. When Russia invaded in 2022, it was using its new armored battalion tactical groups, and they failed to reach Kyiv at all, or to conquer Kharkiv or Sumy--they just surrounded them and stretched out along the highways, where infantry teams with Javelins destroyed them in detail.
The battlefield transparency that drones bring is a sea change in warfare, and a big part of that change that Ukrainians and Russians have learned is total force dispersion. You can't assemble an armored fist because it's bombed to oblivion before it ever sees the enemy, or encounters an artillery deployed minefield that didn't exist the night before.
NATO will take years to ingest the obvious lessons from Ukraine and adjust its doctrine to handle them. Until that time, they face an adversary who knows them in its bones.
> A million casualties and three-year stalemate in Ukraine is "worked out"? Good for them.
Could NATO take a million+ casualties and still be fighting with another million in uniform and the nation not yet undergoing general mobilization?
> This is the Russian drone infantry currently occupying Kyiv?
If that Russian drone infantry suddenly showed up on Estonia's borders, what chance would you give the Estonians?
>> the US just disbanded its drone warfare division because drones aren't manly enough for Hegseth
> Please explain what you think this means.
It means the most expedient way for the US to learn to apply the lessons of the war in Ukraine was just discontinued. The Pentagon does not see drone warfare as a top priority.
Source: youtube I imagine. Speculation is fine but here you are making assertions without evidence.
> The battlefield transparency that drones bring is a sea change in warfare
And it began 20 years ago.
> Could NATO take a million+ casualties
This is a weird argument for the effectivness of your Russian drone infantry.
> If that Russian drone infantry suddenly showed up on Estonia's borders
They teleport now too? This is getting serious. I imagine within a week Putin would be meeting Gaddafi's fate. Attacking NATO is nothing like bullying a smaller country with no defense pacts. China and India would stop being patron states. You'd see a half dozen Prigozhins as the oligarchs would realize it's not survivable.
> The Pentagon does not see drone warfare as a top priority.
Anduril, GA, Boeing, and Lockmart absolutely inconsolable right now.
Then follow the Kyiv Independent and Kyiv Post, and the ISW's daily reports. Listen to War on the Rocks and read Philips O'Brien's substack.
I hope NATO leadership isn't as blythe as you about the changing face of war.
ETA: is the Wall Street Journal sufficiently credentialed for you to pay attention? https://www.wsj.com/opinion/nato-has-seen-the-future-and-is-...
I am fairly confident they are not. And I'm not blythe about it, I just don't see Russia as being some sort of dominant drone army and believe the location that 20 km-wide no man's land is pretty strong evidence. And that there are many aspects of armed conflict we are not seeing in Ukraine.
> WSJ (links an editorial)
The crux of the article: war hawks fearmongering so they can get more funding to feel big and bad. I would almost be sympathetic if they were asking for funding to send an armored volunteer force to Ukraine in defense of common liberty. As it is, if the UK has need of tanks on British soil, the world is beyond fucked anyways. Peace should be normalized when humanity has invented such destructive weapons that we won't survive the next war. The lesson from the world wars was supposed to be that war can't be normal, but here we have militarists getting off to the idea.
That said, I also believe that there is fairly widespread, low intensity, grey-zone action across Europe at the moment. Not every random fire or infrastructure failure is "The Russians", but I'd be surprised if none of them were. Indeed some of them have already been formally attributed.
It would be foolish to still just wring our hands about it. We have to name the enemy, Russia, and both support Ukraine's fight and do our own active hybrid actions on Russian soil. And yes, military buildup is required.
And to be clear, this will not end anytime soon. The war in Ukraine is but one aspect of Russia's imperial ambitions. It's fully possible we will not see friendly relations again in our lifetimes.
It might be tending towards impossible to achieve regime change militarily at this point. Maybe we all should just figure out how to get along.
We are in a perilous position right now in Europe, very close to a major escalation of the Ukraine conflict. This would entail direct conflict between nuclear-armed powers.
I find it deeply troubling that no mainstream party in most European countries seems to think this is a bad idea.
It's dangerously out of control. We should be seeking de-escalation for our own sakes. The last two major European wars destroyed empires. We're playing with fire here.
I do not want to live through, or die in WW3. I'm worried it's already started.
It's hard for one side to de-escalate when the other side is an avowed irredentist attempting to rebuild the Russian Empire before they die.
We've had this stagnant wound festering in the middle of Europe for a decade.
No one is winning. No one can win, except those who are benefiting from it.
People like Trump and Elon think a deal can be done with Putin or he can be placated, or there's some sort of solution like you're waiting to hear, but all attempts to even begin negotiation fail because Putin is dead set on rebuilding the Empire. Apparently in any discussion about his war he spends hours talking about Russia's historical claims and ownership and shows old documents and books etc.
I'm sorry it seems to you like no one has come up with a good solution but it's either give Russia one or more countries (and then he'll want more...) or defend until he loses power or dies.
irredentism is a hell of a drug. Putin is fully locked in.
It's an age-old story of a crime family holding on to its mafia state.
Groups of people in the West are benefiting massively. Most Ukrainians are not. Most normal citizens of Western countries are not, we're shouldering the cost in rising cost of living, elevated military spending.
We have a hot war on our continent. I repeat, this is very fucking dangerous. WW1 was a brutal, grinding land battle with immense costs for all its European participants. It also led to WW2, which culminated in the absolute decimation of European cities and the eventual use of nuclear weapons. This is the path we're retreading.
You continue to personalise this around Putin. It is incredibly naive to think that Putin disappearing will resolve the problem. It will not.
Right. Mighty Russia that has been fought to a standstill by its much smaller neighbour is going to provoke a military alliance absolutely dwarfing it into outright war. Not even China is going to back that after having a look at who the more valuable trading partner is.
Being ready for war is reasonable, being afraid or worried is a waste of time, and even irrational in this case.
> But what is the threat? In 1940 the danger of a German invasion of the UK was very real. But the chances of Russian tanks rolling up Whitehall are surely negligible.
> "It's not the tanks you need to worry about," says historian Margaret MacMillan, author of War: How Conflict Shaped Us.
> "It's the cutting of cables on the ocean floor. It's the hacking into systems on which so many things depend. The possibility for asymmetric war, for cyber war, is growing by leaps and bounds."
One may argue it has already done so in the past via election interference, except now it also has AI in its arsenal, which won’t even need ICBMs to be delivered to its targets.
Second of all, the "much smaller neighbour" is any European country to them. Ukraine is the biggest country on European continent if we include the occupied territory. And it's actually has the most capable armed forces military-wise. Russia took over 116k sq km of Ukraine. All three Baltic states are 175k sq km combined and they literally can't defend themselves in case USA decides to withdraw.
And last but not the least, Russia's war is irrational. It makes no sense from any rational viewpoint. So relying on common sense in this case is wrong. You need to understand russian ideology and Putin's specifically.
But to prebut whataboutism, I also don’t like American imperialism.
Didnt they start almost immediately trying to setup like mineral processing facillities in areas they were able to nominally gain control of?
Wonder what the impetus for this was, were the elites embezzling too much or low oil prices or something that motivated them to pillage to make up the difference? Or typical greed in the absence of any asscovery...
It's not irrational to notice that irrational actors do irrational things.
It's already gone provoking with the drones at Leipzig and the like.
And the place which is not overflowing with spare cash has been building 20,000 hosptial beds near the Baltics https://militarnyi.com/en/news/russia-plans-16-000-20-000-ho...
The trolling never stops, as if they have any intention of fixing anyone broken
It is clear we are not.
Hillary Clinton even conspired with the Russian Government to spy on Trump during his first campaign.
https://www.rt.com/news/645860-lavrov-eu-nato-putin/
They are unlikely to nuke Europe - there's a lot of it and they only really have a couple of decent cities which could be gone rapidly.
Where have I heard this before?
Yes, there is a war, the same that Warren Buffett famously referred to – a class war.
Again in this era, reactionary and nationalist messaging has dominated and somehow, despite generations of extraordinary success, despite being born into it and seeing its success and superiority, many/most think such an order is infeasible or even undesireable. At the same time, I've seen American leaders in the military industry advocate for becoming accustomed to mass destruction and death.
And shockingly, even the experts and practioners abandoned it and at nearly the height of its success. It's as if a messaging campaign insisted cloud computing was impossible and absurd, and so everyone just stopped using what was obviously working. For the rules- and rights-based order, yes there were outliers and setbacks and threats; that's life. But the entire free, wealthy, industrialized world subscribed, and were untouchably allied, free, safe and prosperous. Now, having abandoned it, all those things have diminished.
What's missing is not acceptance of warfare but ultimate commitment and work for freedom and peace.
First of all you don't even believe in democracy - if you did, your views would not be so one sided and you would really want to understand the conflict.
Secondly, because no real democracy is left anywhere in the world. It's a myth.
But your attitude is exactly the problem - remember, people are all equal as per western democratic values.
And the way to solve the differences is by talking! And yes, I am ready to talk to russians about democracy as well as ukranians.
It looks like you are not, discarding them based on ethnic grounds.
Why did you attack Ukraine instead of talking then?
Negotiations didn't go anywhere unfortunately. And it's not Russia that takes the blame.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Take Rolf Dobelli's advice - don't listen to the news:
https://www.dobelli.com/en/books/
The British press is not, on aggregate, left-leaning. That's just a weird weird wrong idea.
Russia wants a non-NATO buffer zone around its western periphery. None of those countries want to be 'unaligned' no-man's-lands.
There is nothing to negotiate.