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snovv_crash

Which point did Russia make exactly, if this causes Finland and Sweden to join NATO?

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They better hurry:

"Four Russian fighter jets violate Swedish airspace over Baltic Sea"

https://www.thelocal.se/20220302/four-russian-fighter-jets-v...

To be fair this type of border probing is something that's happened every now and then since the cold war.

Yes but the timing here is not an accident. Four airplanes at the same time lost of where they are?

The timing of these regular border transgressions, or the simulated bombing runs on radar stations along the Swedish coastline, have never been accidents. They always follow Swedish political decisions and statements that disgruntle the Kremlin.

This stuff happens all the time in Scandinavia. The timing for the deliberate airspace violation is definitely on purpose, but Russia has been probing the airspace boundaries of Sweden, Finland and Norway like clockwork since the 1960s. It's just a minor escalation of the play-fighting their doctrine dictates.

It is very frequent, even in Norway. It's data mining, probing for response time and response type.

There was a military exercise with Sweden and Finland in that region at that time, they could have just wanted to have a little look and see and their signal recon from a distance probably sucks like everything else.

It's of course provocative but still less than 2013 when 4 fighter jets and 2 bombers flew in attack formation against Sweden in a simulated nuclear attack.

Yeah I don't really think it's ever been an accident.

Sweden and Finland may not be in NATO yet, but still, if Russia moves on those countries, NATO is much more likely to get involved than with Ukraine.

Even without NATO, Russia can't afford to engage Finland and Sweden in the coming years.

People forget that the EU has it's own mutual defence clause that calls everyone into war.

They do that all the time.

https://theaviationist.com/2014/09/19/su-24-violated-swedish... for example

They also violate NATO airspace

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/russian-fighter-jet-violates...

And more

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29956277

It's quite rare, it makes headlines everytime they do it. If you think that it's a common occurence and just shrug you shoulders then you are wrong. Especially since it was political this time.

I'm pretty sure Russia considers the price of Finland and Sweden joining NATO to be well worth the price of Ukraine never joining.

Ukraine's border is much more significant than Finland's.

But the border of Finland is like 50 miles from St. Petersburg...the city of the Czar's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg

It's not terrain you ever want to be invading through, though.

Check out the "winter war". Invading would be a crapshoot both ways.

The Ukrainian border has no geographic features that would impede an invasion though, and would let NATO cut Russia off from its oil fields, form a land bridge to the caspian sea and cut Russia off from the black sea entirely all within about a day.

Its strategic significance cant be underestimated.

You don't need to invade, it's within artillery range

> But the border of Finland is like 50 miles from St. Petersburg...the city of the Czar's

Yes but it doesn’t go anywhere

Look at Ukraine and Poland on the map - they can close off Russia to Europe

If Russia withdraws, Ukraine is going to join NATO the second it's not in hostilities.

And it'll be accepted, because what Europe wants is not to have to sanction Russia so it can continue buying its gas. And that is now easier to do when Russia is locked out of being able to prosecute border wars.

That's the thing: the only interest anyone had in Ukraine not being in NATO was if Russia didn't cause more problems because it wasn't. That's gone.

>If Russia withdraws, Ukraine is going to join NATO the second it's not in hostilities.

Ukraine has spent the last two years begging NATO to hurry up and approving their accession and Putin sitting on the border with tanks for three months only served to make Zelensky more insistent.

I suspect NATO would be a lot more willing to let them in in one piece than if they were militarily destroyed, but who knows.

Ukraine was kept out because the theory was Putin would leave them be (since he kept saying that was the issue), and that that would be better for everyone.

But Putin has shot the hostage now: Russia occupying Ukraine means Russia has a NATO border anyway, Europe has a refugee crisis again, and no one can sit around and just get rich off of gas pipelines.

Ukraine wasnt "kept out". They just hadnt progressed to full membership yet.

NATO had already expressed its desire quite clearly both in Bucharest in 2008 and in Brussels in 2021 to put and keep Ukraine on the path to full membership.

Putin's gamble is that reducing the country to rubble now makes it unviable as a member and hence lowers the likelihood of him ending up like Gadaffi and Russia ending up like Libya.

It could backfire and it may be the worst gamble anybody ever made but it's not irrational.

Putin ending up like Gadaffi and Russia like Libya was never going to happen, because Russia has nukes. Just like the US hasn't taken out the Pakistani government despite them literally harbouring Osama Bin Laden.

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