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Comment by rainworld | Hacker News Reader

“Pre-war Russia” would have been clearer. They consider Crimea as Russian as Moscow and would respond accordingly to a serious attack. They are apparently more pragmatic about the new territories.

There’s a reason they hide the work of SBU, GUR and also certain Western countries under monikers like “Russian Volunteer Corps”. And why these attacks are, all things considered, rare and their effect negligible. We might, however, see significantly more of that in the near future and Russia could finally be forced to respond overtly.

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> “Pre-war Russia” would have been clearer. They consider Crimea as Russian as Moscow and would respond accordingly to a serious attack. They are apparently more pragmatic about the new territories.

Considering that the Crimean bridge exploded, and that many airbases and other military facilities in Crimea keep exploding with no consequence, I take that as Russia would do nothing if Ukraine hit Moscow itself?.

There’s also the multiple attacks that have taken place against Russia proper using either drones helicopters or missiles and nothing happened again.

> There’s a reason they hide the work of SBU, GUR and also certain Western countries under monikers like “Russian Volunteer Corps”.

There are no western countries fighting for Ukraine at this moment just volunteers.

It’s also par for the course to hide things like intelligence activities behind not the regular army, like Russia did in 2014.

> And why these attacks are, all things considered, rare and their effect negligible. We might, however, see significantly more of that in the near future and Russia could finally be forced to respond overtly.

Sure they are negligible mostly but they have also take a lot of aircraft including strategic TU bombers, this outside the fact pro Ukrainian forces currently occupy part of Belgorod at the moment.

Still no overt response.

I follow what you're saying. What overt response could they offer? Their opening bid was an attempt to take Kiev. Whatever Russia can do, it is trying to do. It's already all on the table. They're doing better now because so many of the incompetent Russians are dead, but they're still limited by what Ukraine allows them to do.

> I follow what you're saying. What overt response could they offer?.

There’s lots they could do but they won’t because they can’t.

* Declare it war instead of a SMO although I think in reality this doesn’t change anything

* Try and take Kyiv again although I don’t think they will because I don’t think they can

* Test a nuclear weapon Russian territory as a warning. No idea why this hasn’t happen but my guess is it just bolsters support for Ukraine.

My point is the exact one you’re making despite multiple hits on Russia proper there’s no response because they are doing everything they can realistically.

Right: it seems like this basically comes down to them using nuclear weapons, or some other major escalation that will generate a coalition response. Otherwise: there really aren't retaliatory options open to them that I see. Every horrible thing you can imagine doing, they've already done or attempted to do, and then left a trail of Russian Armed Forces corpses and burning tanks as Ukraine pushed them back.

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