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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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-...
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.
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.
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.
What was undemocratic about the decisions to support Ukraine?
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!
> I oppose the military support to Ukraine.
That makes you a russia supporter in my book.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?