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Comment by munksbeer | Hacker News Reader

The problem is, what more can Europe do? Sanctions are already in place. What is the next step? Conflict?

Sanctions are partial, the shadow fleet is operating, support for Ukraine is partial, China and India are not experiencing notable repercussions for supplying Russia, Europe is buying Russian gas. There's a lot Europe could do to show that it's serious about security, without troops in Ukraine. Oh, troops and training personnel in Ukraine's rear is another one.

My guess is that this is how much they can do before seriously impacting people's cushy lives. Wouldn't want to inconvenience your population in any way, would you? /s

The leaders of free countries have the issue that if they increase the cost of living too much they'll be voted out by voters angry enough to listen to Russian agitprop. The Western narrative is very damaged especially in our own underclasses.

If you aren't willing to move to conflict (or whatever the next step is) at some point, then you are, in fact, just bluffing, and you are being called out on that bluff.

You can choose what that point is, but it's weird not to expect enemies to continually test where your line is, and walk you right up to it.

I'm not sure what you expect to see here?

Let's assume for a second armed conflict is the "natural" next step.

Either you are willing to get into an armed conflict over it or not. If you aren't, and they are willing to accept everything other than armed conflict (sanctions, etc), why should they care at all what you think or do? They already know you won't escalate past a certain point. As long as they are willing to accept how far you are willing to escalate, ....

In the end, people monitor actions, not words.

And how much of Russia's puffed up chest and militaristic culture is America's fault?

You edged them during your whole cold war thing & now you got a headache and want the neighbours to take care of it.

russia has been invading and committing genocide since day 1 of its existence, starting with Genghis Khan:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan

Russia existed before mongol invasion (Ghenghis Khan was from Mongolia, and not Russian). For example, one of great Russian kings hanged his shield on the gates of the capital of Eastern Roman Empire, the city of Konstantinople in 10th century (it was located where modern Istambul is, but the shield sadly isn't there anymore).

This seems 100% irrelevant to the question of "what more can be done".

I'm totally unsure why this is directed at me.

EU is just being out greyzoned by RU in this area - greyzone because under UNCLOS subsea infra regulations, RU suppose to pay for indemnities but we know that's not going to happen unless EU returns siezed RU $$$. TBH RU still has 100B+ more worth of cables to sabatoge and other shenanigans going forward in response to EU shooting firt with greyzone seizing of RU assets. People calling for blockades / shooting ships think that's worth escalating to actual kinetic war, in which case EU will simply be the relative larger loser since a 20T EU economy vs 2T RU economy has much more to lose, i.e. would be fairly easy to just fuck up EU energy / energy import infra.

Yes, this all comes back to Russia calling our bluff on war. They can continue to harass and invade and pursue their territorial expansion, because they have less to lose than the EU.

But, at some point there is a limit. If the EU does choose, as you call it, kinetic war, Russia will be toast. They cannot win a conventional war against a far larger economy. Just like Ukraine cannot win the war against Russia.

Investing a lot more into Ukraine's military, so Ukraine can defeat Russia for us.

Also increase Sanctions even more. We still have Banks like the Austrian Raiffeisenkasse that operate in Russia.

Do sanctions work? Russia is buying things I am not going to name without issues while some European countries buy Russian LNG.

Conflict already exists. Next step is punching bully back in the face.

Sink any russian ship making a move.

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