Denmark bans civil drones after more sightings
dw.com
dw.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think a case can be made for it being slightly misleading. Also there is not mention of title length that I can see.
When people have analyzed the flight logs, the sightings match with known planes: https://x.com/ThomasH_Synth/status/1972236703864586463
https://x.com/MickWest is a good source to follow since he and others are willing to actually track down the data related to UFOs.
I imagine there are lots of false positives too, but they're not all false
But now that the US has become an unreliable partner and the EU is talking about the need for increased cooperation suddenly they exact same stories become big news and ministers use it as examples of our complacency, when two years ago they would have said it's nothing to worry about.
And indeed now I see it shared all over social media with more and more "people" calling for harder responses, a single EU military, even outright declarations of war against Russia.
Russian air assets never crossed NATO airspace until this September, and the last time the Zapad exercises were held, Ukraine was invaded within months.
As such, most European nations are on extreme edge right now for a possible escalation.
Yes, they had. ACLED reports[0] that it occurred 50 times since 2022, and 4 of them had already been in Poland. It just never became a huge news piece until September, that's exactly what I mean.
0: https://acleddata.com/expert-comment/acled-data-show-least-5...
"mostly crashes of Russian and Ukrainian stray drones and missiles"
The recent incident in Poland and Romania was drones that were not strays or crashes.
> The recent incident in Poland and Romania was drones that were not strays
We don't actually know this do we? The report states that the technology to push drones off their intended path has been ramped up significantly.
Proof points:
- the drones that made it into Poland did not have warheads
- they flew over Belarus before entering Polish airspace
- they were under continuous control from the moment of launch
- they were prepped with longer range tanks than they would have had if they had been aimed at Ukraine
- quite a few of them were equipped with ways of sending back telemetry
So no, these were not strays. The best explanation is that they were an intel gathering mission with respect to the kind of response generated and the speed with which they were detected. Other possible uses for russia are to misdirect attention from wherever they might want to attack for real (say, the Baltics) and a way to reduce the flow of defensive measures to Ukraine by instilling fear in the population further West.
1. Imagine: Your are Russia, are you going to launch drones with the fuel to fly not only into Ukraine, but also all across the map of Poland? Or do you dedicate that space to bigger warheads. Or lighter drones to increase their speed. That alone answers your question.
2. The drones found crashed, has modifications like bladdertank in the warhead section to increase their fuel. You do not accidentally get a drone all the way to Gdansk without increasing its fuel load. See point 1 again ...
3. Having a drone gone stray is not uncommon, but there is a difference between 1 going stray and 20 going stay. Your argument about jamming is flawed by the simply fact that we have the path the drones took, and unless Ukraine magically got the exact same drone misdirecting tech, active on multiple paths, again, check the map. See the issue there?
4. If the drones got jammed / flight spoofed, why did they not fly in a erratic course. You expect a drone that has its course altered to to suddenly start flying in different path.
5. The drone paths again, if the drone left the jamming or misdirection area, it will try to get back to to its intended area. They did not do so.
6. If this tech worked so great, why did we not have more mass drones flying in the wrong direction the following days? Drone attacks happen every day in Ukraine, they are not one off events. If the Ukrainians got this tech to work so good, to send 20 drones into Poland, why no repeat? You do not fix a flaw that the enemy found in just one day. Did Russia ground its drones the next day, the next week until they fix the issue? Added more antenna's and more hardware to make it harder to jam/redirect? No, they continue they typical pattern.
7. ... insert conspiracy that it was all planned and they do not use that tech again to not over use it (while giving the Russians time to adjust their hardware???). Sigh ...
People posting this nonsense that NATO is looking for a war or to ramp up incidents. Here is a simple answer: Who attack first? Was it NATO? Was not Ukraine? No ... Russia invaded a country for the SECOND TIME, triggering this mess.
You claim financial motives to trump up rhetoric ... our arms industries can already not keep up with the orders. We have backlogs that will take 10+ years to fill already, even with the expanding industry.
Like always, some people are just too much into conspiracy but what else is new these days. Hate to tell ya, but the internet / social media is a battlefield these days, just as much as troops on the ground. Please use your mind a bit more and understand that those drones are not a new tactic, its just a modern adaptation of old tactics. The new "remember we have nukes, we can get you", or the old USSR "see our planes flying into your identification zones"...
> Please use your mind a bit more and understand that those drones are not a new tactic
Where have I even claimed anything like this? Can you appreciate how it comes across to set up a strawman and begin with "please use your mind a bit?" It's incredibly condescending and makes it difficult to take anything you've said seriously. I even made explicit reference to the repeated border tests on both sides over the past 30 years, and I linked to an independent body that showed how often it happens with drones. Did you just not read anything I wrote?
> Like always, some people are just too much into conspiracy ...
Are you really saying that neither Russia nor other state actors perform online misinformation campaigns? It only takes a second of research to see otherwise.
If not, it's not manufacturing consent. It's just sparkling self-defense.
Putin's Russia has shown herself to be incredibly antagonistic against the western world. See {polonium poisoning Litvinenko, defenestration (multiple), Syrian actions, Ukraine invasion, etc}
Military resources are expensive and inefficient, so it takes some degree of political capital to develop and maintain them. I'd so much rather see that capital (human and otherwise) go into research and art and human flourishing, but that's not the world we live in.
) Driving refugees into liberal western democracies is a deliberate outcome of this strategy.
> If not, it's not manufacturing consent.
Is it not? Maybe we have a different understanding of what manufacturing consent means. For me the consent could be manufactured long before the question is raised. I'm not sure why it needs to be called for immediately, why do you believe so?
> Putin's Russia has shown herself to be incredibly antagonistic against the western world.
Yes it has, consistently, but I feel a significant seachange in the landscape of various media channels, both mainstream media and social media, as well as in the rhetoric of politicians. And yes, they have been talking about increased cooperation, taking heavier action against stray drones etc.
And it all seems to have happened in the past 2 months, like a sudden spike.
I hope not. That's never worked. Napoleon, Hitler, and the Wagner Group's comic-opera invasion all failed.
The Economist seems to view this as the end of a happy era for Europe, an era when the EU could focus on making the EU work well and provide a good life for its people, without worrying too much about external problems. They're not wrong.
Putin's stated goal is to re-establish a Russian empire, out to the boundaries of the 19th century Russian Empire.[1] He's been saying things like this for years now: "Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he took something from them, he did not take anything from them, he returned [them (to Russia)]. Apparently, it also fell to us to return [what is Russia’s] and strengthen [the country]. And if we proceed from the fact that these basic values form the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in solving the tasks that we face."
In fact, I've noticed a lot of opposition to my view that I think is state organized, but probably by Russia. I've seen zero people like me online. I've seen zero repeated pro-war, zero capability-emphasizing arguments. Complete silence except for me.
I believe that war should be conducted to exploit the enemy, not go at him in some idiot maneuver.
Our actions in Ukraine should be limited to stand-off weapons and glide bombs, mirror the Russian manner of aerial attack. We should also attack gas pipelines, ammonia plants, electrical infrastructure, etc. in Russia and generally shut the place down. We should of course also seize all Russian-flagged ships.
Exploits its dependence on transport and cheap energy, exploit Russia's size by seizing weak or undefended regions to force troop movements, attacking the troops with stand-off weapons while their being transported to the front etc.
Basically, we're playing tennis, and they're playing with both corridors in addition to the singles court. We should of course let them run.
I am absolutely opposed to sending ground troops against Russian positions or any region with sufficient defence, or capacity to resist. This risks the lives of soldiers needlessly and is not what war is about.
They know well that any attacks by them will be matched by attacks by us, so any nuclear exchange is just miscalculation on their part. It will end quickly.
It's important to understand that threats are irrelevant. If somebody says 'Eat this horrible snail, or I'll you shoot you' you just say 'No, you can shoot me anyway'. Same thing here. If they nuke us, so what? They can do that today too.
It's not in our power to decide whether they nuke us, and therefore it can't be a reason to limit any action against them.
Upon this there is of course also our own capability to nuke them, and due to Russian attitudes and their view of their place in the world any nuclear exchange with them will be short. They can choose to erase us if they are willing to erase themselves. That's their power, but the Russians won't ever be willing to erase themselves. They believe that they are on par with the US and a cultural beacon that is critical to the balance of the world, something without which there's nothing that matters. They will never choose to erase themselves.
Because of this-- mutually assured destruction and the irrelevance of threats, nuclear weapons only matters when one power has them and the other does not. It doesn't make sense for the Russians to erase themselves even if I stand at outside Moscow with an army, even if I have taken Moscow. There's never a slice when it makes sense. Thus the balance between nuclear power is determined entirely by the balance of conventional forces.
In reality, even if Moscow were cheating on its treaty obligations and had (in ready-to-use form) every nuke that the Soviet Union possessed at the peak of its arsenal, plus all the intercontinental missiles and bombers the Soviets had at the peak of their arsenal, Moscow could kill only about half of the US population. Since the Russian population is more concentrated in cities than the US population, Washington could kill about 55% of Russians with the arsenal it possessed at the height of the Cold War.
There is a bit of a wild card in these estimates: if the effect called nuclear winter turns out to be as bad as some say it will be, a lot more would die (mostly outside the countries that got nuked). Nuclear winter will probably turn out to be a nothing burger, but we cannot know that for sure, so there is some chance it would cause the deaths of most of the people in the world, but if Moscow's situation becomes desperate enough and there is a clearly identified enemy who is causing the desperation, it start to become rational for Moscow to bet that the nuclear winter won't be extremely bad (which it probably won't be).
Moscow might calculate that Russian are better at enduring hardships than the West is, so Russia will be able to recover from the nuclear exchange before the West does, so that in a model in which the only thing that matters is Russia's strength relative to the West, a nuclear exchange can make sense -- not now, but if the situation becomes more desperate for Moscow because of the attacks you describe.
A government of a society like Russia (or the US for that matter or Britain) doesn't collapse when it is hit very hard. Everyone rallies around the government, or more precisely, most people rally around and the rest either remain silent or get imprisoned or killed.
Hitler famously believed that the Soviet Union would collapse if invaded: "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down," he said. It didn't collapse, nor did China when Japan invaded and killed millions of Chinese and occupied all its coastal cities. Neither of China's two governments collapsed even though before the Japanese invasion the two governments were engaged in a civil war that was in itself the third most deadly war of the 20th Century.
The most powerful military in the world could not force regime change on Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s or on Afghanistan in the 2000s and 2010s. This is because when invaded, most countries will become very unified around the goal of expelling the invader -- and a big nuclear attack will elicit the same "nationalistic" feelings as an invasion.
At best they'll be going into the subway. I think losses would be >75% though.
The unrestricted warfare you're proposing escalates the situation dramatically and for Russia, nuclear warfare starts to look disturbingly approachable. The conversation wouldn't be about full exchange but a warning shot. A tit for tat escalation that makes Europe back off while the US is paralyzed with dysfunction. Any possible risk of a nuclear event is too much.
I don't see how what I propose is unrestricted. It is simply how one conducts war.
Entering Ukraine with troops puts those troops lives at risk for no reason. It is not legitimate to ask somebody to stand under artillery bombardment while the factories producing the shells are permitted to exist, or to attack well-defended positions when that is not the most efficient manner of attack.
We have no right to conduct a war so badly. Our duty to our soldiers and to our population is to conduct the war in the free and appropriate way that is the normal conduct of war.
We have a duty to undertake no operation of any kind that is not the most efficient and useful operation. This means not going against any prepared position, while betters targets exist, without considering any escalation concerns. This means focus on radical targets-- the roots of the enemy's fighting capability.
This is our duty to our soldiers in planning and conducting a war and this not something we can deviate from.
Actors like … Russia?
Now are European leaders smart enough to play geopolitics properly? That I doubt. To be honest, I doubt if the democratic processes will result in leaders that are competent enough and mature enough to deal with all this. More likely for countries to keep electing unhinged populists from either side.
I don't like this reality either, but it is what it is.
We tried the appeasement through trade route already and look at what it lead to.
From Russian perspective it’s kind of the same (except the war part of course). Same language spoken, shared history etc. If you look at any empire, they colonize other nations. This specific conflict is framed as imperial by analysts based on the notion that the annexed territories are where a completely separate nation forged, which is being colonized. It’s not a historical but a propaganda narrative, that attempts to hide all the complexity of this topic.
Languages and history have nothing to do with it, it is all about consent. If you plan to kill people in order to get them to join your idea what your country should look like you've already lost, then you're just another occupier.
I've lived in Poland under the USSR, it was pretty clear what the Russian position was on how they viewed the Poles - and anybody else that wasn't 'properly' Russian for that matter. This was an occupation, not a league of nations, and in a way Russia got more out of WWII than even the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact would have given them. I've lived in Romania, I visited Latvia many times, I visited Ukraine, many times. Everywhere the sentiment is roughly the same: that they would rather die than live under Russian occupation again, they already know what that is like. And no amount of shared history or language (or forced relocation, which in many of those cases is the source of that shared history) is going to offset that.
You're if I'm not mistaken someone with Russian roots living in Berlin. Coincidentally, I know more people that are in that position. Most of them still have family back in Russia so they are very circumspect in the positions that they take. But they have zero illusion about Russia having good intentions in any of the wars they have engaged in since the USSR fell apart and it is patently clear by the indiscriminate attacks on the Ukrainian population that Russia does not care for the people that they in the same breath claim to call their brothers and sisters.
I actually do understand why Russia is attempting to seize Ukraine, and from a strategic geopolitical perspective it was sort of logical. But so what, that doesn't mean we should have any sympathy for them or let them gain any advantage. Better so utterly crush, humiliate, and impoverish them so that they cease to be a threat for a couple generations to come. This will also serve as a useful object lesson to anyone else who might want to try a similar stunt: FAFO.
So basically just like Israel in Gaza. What will be left from EU if it cannot stick to its own charter, which rejects collective responsibility?
That amount of money is barely enough for Ukraine anyway. European defense will cost much more.
Yes, it is possible to be both against what Israel does in Gaza and to be against what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
> What will be left from EU if it cannot stick to its own charter, which rejects collective responsibility?
This does not even parse. The EU has plenty of collective responsibility, is part of the EU mutual defense pact and is part of NATO. The only two countries that are nominally in the EU but that are not unified in their viewpoint here are substantially influenced by russia.
> That amount of money is barely enough for Ukraine anyway.
It seems to have an outside effect on the situation in russia, for as little as it is, but I agree with you it should be much more and we should do this sooner rather than later.
> European defense will cost much more.
So what? Why are you so focused on the money angle, rather than on the injustice and the indiscriminate murder of citizens in a country that meant russia - or should I say you - no harm?
Where is your voice in this? As a person safe in Berlin you could afford to raise your voice against Putin if you wanted to.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_responsibility
Israel executes collective punishment of all Palestinians for actions of Hamas. Putin executes collective punishment of all Ukrainians for actions of certain politicians. The commenter above suggested that the same principle should be applied to all Russian citizens.
> So what? Why are you so focused on the money angle, rather than on the injustice and the indiscriminate murder of citizens in a country that meant russia - or should I say you - no harm?
Why I should be focused on that? To release the steam? Oh, yes, that’s bad, poor people. What’s next? Their fates are determined not by the preparation of Europe to war, but by the willingness of politicians to discuss realistic peace terms. The sooner the war will end, the less people will die. This war was lost by Ukraine and NATO when counteroffensive failed (not least because NATO failed to provide sufficient help), so the only important thing to discuss is how to minimize the losses, because we are obviously not engaging directly. But nobody in Europe is prepared to start this conversation. The money is the only topic where real conversation happens.
> Where is your voice in this? As a person safe in Berlin…
What kind of voice are you expecting and why do you think I’m not using it?
Yes, both are nuts.
> The commenter above suggested that the same principle should be applied to all Russian citizens.
There is a fair chance that if Russia decides to engage NATO that it will in fact end up that way. If that's not something you want then now would be a good time to act.
> Why I should be focused on that? To release the steam? Oh, yes, that’s bad, poor people.
Yes, indeed, poor people. Why gloss over that? It's the main article, not some kind of side dish.
> Their fates are determined not by the preparation of Europe to war, but by the willingness of politicians to discuss realistic peace terms.
Did you entirely miss the previous times that Russia agreed to terms and then violated them, over and over again? If you want people to be willing to discuss peace terms it would really help if you had a good track record of abiding by those terms. Russia does not currently have that track record.
> The sooner the war will end, the less people will die.
No shit. But unfortunately there is one party that seems to want to continue this war, no matter what the cost. The other side has one option: to capitulate, but for some weird reason they seem to think that that is not an option. Mostly because they already know how that part of the story goes just by looking at other places that did just that.
> This war was lost by Ukraine and NATO when counteroffensive failed (not least because NATO failed to provide sufficient help), so the only important thing to discuss is how to minimize the losses, because we are obviously not engaging directly.
You are not as well informed as you seem to think. As we speak 21.7% of russian oil refinery capacity is down, and it will remain down for another 3 to 6 months at a minimum. My guess is that when Ukraine is done going after russian oil infrastructure that number will be a lot higher and then they're going to set their sights on electrical infra. And they're getting scary good at this. Russia is succeeding in grabbing land and killing civilians, Ukraine is succeeding in seriously reducing Russia's capacity to continue to be a power of any kind at all. You must at least be aware of some of this.
> But nobody in Europe is prepared to start this conversation.
Nobody in Europe is in a position to negotiate with russia on this, the only parties that we believe can credibly do this are russia and Ukraine and one of these believes that they should continue the war because they have something to gain from it.
> The money is the only topic where real conversation happens.
Indeed. And you won't be able to sell me on Ukraine's land being worth as much as russia is currently prepared to pay for it. Or rather, to be more precise, than russia is willing to make other parties pay for it because it isn't exactly the crowd from St. Petersburg and Moscow at the front lines. And if it ever should come to that the war would be over very quickly.
> What kind of voice are you expecting and why do you think I’m not using it?
I'm expecting you to speak up against Putin, and to donate as much as you can afford to the defense of Ukraine. If your comments in this thread are a sample of how you really feel about all this then I'm guessing you're not doing either until you provide proof otherwise. You are all but suggesting the EU or Ukraine are at fault here when clearly it is russia that is the aggressor, and which continues to commit one warcrime after another with complete disregard for human rights and what is considered civilized in general.
The numbers are wrong. It’s in 10-15% range, not all damage requires months of work and it’s within overcapacity that Russia had before the war. There exist temporary local shortages after strikes and it’s creating inflationary pressure, but it’s not dramatic yet. Also, 30% of capacity is beyond Ukrainian reach.
I don’t see any point to comment on anything else. Personal attacks are against the rules of this forum.
You're quite wrong about that.
> What concerns me is that Eastern European nationalists are selling the big war narrative that will make Europe overspend on defense and American LNG when we have plenty of other problems.
Europe can not possibly overspend on defense at the moment, the way the situation has shifted in the last five years has made that abundantly clear. And if you live in Berlin, then your security too depends on this. It definitely isn't the 'Eastern European Nationalists' that are the problem.
> It doesn’t have to go this way, but that requires really good understanding of intentions and capabilities of either side, at least on the level of Cold War.
You are, I assume, aware of the various acts of espionage and sabotage of Russia in the West? And if you are then I assume that you realize that these are not just games but that they feel suspiciously like a prelude similar to what happened prior to Russia engaging in Ukraine for a second time. I don't need to see much more evidence beyond what I've already seen to believe that there may well be an operation already planned, either an attack on one of the Baltic countries to see if Europe can be further divided, or, if Putin is really reckless, one on Poland. The fact that 'Eastern European Nationalists' are selling that narrative is because they are actively under threat, not because they are making up funny stories for comedic effect.
> At the moment there’s no such understanding neither among public nor among politicians.
Why do you believe that to be the case? All I see is very measured responses and attempts to leave a backdoor to normalcy open. I also see the other side interpreting this structurally as weakness. But frankly, that is a massive mistake. Europe doesn't like to go to war, but if it has to it will.
> What’s worse, there’s no even attempts to understand - you are great example of such attitude.
That's not even close to the truth. Given my history, places where I've lived and people that I know I think I have a fair picture of what is going on. Putin bit off far more than he could chew and has found out the hard way that as long as his nukes are off the table that he does not have a way to resolve this in his favor. Every day Ukraine is getting stronger and every day Russia is set back further and further. The best that could happen to Russia at this point in time is a leadership change and a path to an off-ramp. Anything else will only lead to more of the same with China as the laughing party in the background.
Your characterization of me as someone who does not even try to understand is unfair and not worthy of discourse here, if you, given all of your unfettered access to media are unable to see the truth of what is going on then that's on you, not on me, I know enough Russians who see things dramatically different from how you position them to know that it is possible to do better than that.
In case of Ukraine there was at least plenty of strategic and political reasons. Why Russia should attack any NATO country? They were afraid even to respond to Turkey shooting down their planes. Hypothetical land bridge to Kaliningrad? It is not completely isolated - there’s a railway connection still operating for example. Well, maybe, but the stakes are much higher here and Moscow and St.Petersburg will be on the line of fire.
> Why do you believe that to be the case? All I see is very measured responses and attempts to leave a backdoor to normalcy open.
Do you see any plausible strategy communicated and executed by the West on how this war can end on favorable terms for Ukraine? I don’t.
> Putin bit off far more than he could chew and has found out the hard way that as long as his nukes are off the table that he does not have a way to resolve this in his favor. Every day Ukraine is getting stronger and every day Russia is set back further and further.
Russia is making steady gains in territory over quite long period of time now and is on track to achieve it’s current military goals that were outlined in their peace proposal (full control of Donbas and land bridge securing logistics for Crimea). It’s hard to understand what are you talking about.
>Your characterization of me as someone who does not even try to understand is unfair
You literally told that in previous comment, dismissing the understanding of differences as unimportant.
> unable to see the truth of what is going on then that's on you, not on me
What makes you think that I’m less informed and understand it less than you? Just the fact that I disagree?
And all of them illegal. But never mind that, right?
> Why Russia should attack any NATO country?
Well, that's a good question but I'm the wrong person to ask. Clearly, sending a wave of drones into Poland is inviting some kind of response and unless you believe this was just for shits and giggles you too should be worried. Because if and when Russia decides that NATO is an alliance they'd like to go up against your position will rapidly become very difficult.
Of course you are donating as much as you can to Ukraine to stop that from happening, right?
> They were afraid even to respond to Turkey shooting down their planes.
Yes. And that's because Turkey is part of NATO and because at that time there was no benefit to Putin from any escalation. But today there just might be. It does not have to be rational, if that were the case then Ukraine would have never been invaded in the first place.
> Hypothetical land bridge to Kaliningrad? It is not completely isolated - there’s a railway connection still operating for example. Well, maybe, but the stakes are much higher here and Moscow and St.Petersburg will be on the line of fire.
That railway connection is one of those little proof points that it isn't Poland, the EU or NATO that seems to be hell-bent on escalating this. It's not Poland that flies waves of drones into Russia.
> Do you see any plausible strategy communicated and executed by the West on how this war can end on favorable terms for Ukraine? I don’t.
I do. Because with every passing day Russia is getting weaker to the point that even the most die-hard Putin supporters are going to have to question whether or not they are better off with or without him. True, that may not happen tomorrow. But dictators like Putin don't go quietly, they go out with a bang. The question is more one of how large of a bang it will be, and how many more people he wants to take with him into his grave. But his legacy will forever be the little man that overstepped his boundaries, not the person that brought Russia back to greatness.
> Russia is making steady gains in territory over quite long period of time now and is on track to achieve it’s current military goals that were outlined in their peace proposal (full control of Donbas and land bridge securing logistics for Crimea).
Yes, sure, 'steady gains' at absolutely massive expense of territory that will never be recognized and which eventually will be given back. That's where this will end. There is no way the developed world will recognize the gains during this war as legitimate.
> It’s hard to understand what are you talking about.
Maybe that is because you don't want to understand?
How hard is it to understand that the days of gaining ground by conquest in Europe are - as far as the rest of Europe is concerned - over. And that any attempt to revive that sentiment is going to be met with resistance? Merkel got it wrong, we know that much now. So that changes the equation considerably.
> You literally told that in previous comment, dismissing the understanding of differences as unimportant.
Yes, I'm trying to get you to understand that the Russian point-of-view in this whole discussion is utterly irrelevant, we're talking about the victims, not about the aggressors and I honestly don't give a fuck about what justification Russia feels it needs to do whatever it is that it is doing: it is wrong. And you are perfectly positioned to see that it is wrong.
> What makes you think that I’m less informed and understand it less than you? Just the fact that I disagree?
The fact that in spite of living in the West you seem to insist on carrying water for Putin and company. That makes you a liability rather than an asset. If that's not your position now would be an excellent time to correct the record. There is no way that you can legitimize the Russian aggression against Ukraine, it doesn't matter if Russia wins territory or not, it doesn't matter whether Russia ends up victorious or not. What matters is that they are the aggressors and that they are wrong in doing so. What matters is that they indiscriminately bomb civilians. What matters is that even Russians living abroad who could know better are still somehow closing their eyes to the truth: Russia was wrong to start this war, Russia is wrong to continue this war and Russia is making a massive miscalculation about the degree of resolve in other countries about this.
> There is no way that you can legitimize the Russian aggression against Ukraine
I did not legitimize the Russian aggression. Understanding the logic and legitimizing are not synonymous. Whether the reasons were legal or not, it doesn’t change the fact that they serve as a basis for starting negotiating position.
> I'm trying to get you to understand that the Russian point-of-view in this whole discussion is utterly irrelevant
If it’s irrelevant to you, this is fine. It’s absolutely relevant to EU foreign policy and the negotiations and as such worth talking about, because it may actually save lives.
I understand the direction of this conversation, so maybe it doesn’t make sense to continue. We are looking at it from very different angles and while agreeing in principle that the war is bad, have very different perspectives on the future of it. Time will tell who is right.
Yes, but only the russian side is escalating. And seems to want to escalate much further still.
> But if you wish so, I do fully agree that Russia was wrong to start this war and Russia is wrong to continue this war.
Good. Thank you for clearing that up.
> As for resolve, time will tell. I don’t see a lot of resolve now in practice.
There are a lot of Ukrainians dying every day and it is certainly not their fault that this is so. Only russia can stop this war, the alternatives that Ukraine has are to capitulate, be roped into russia's armed forces and to see their people further murdered and used, just like what russia is doing to the other parties that they've roped into this fight.
So if you want the EU and Ukraine to stop this you are barking up the wrong tree, they do not have agency other than to give up and that isn't going to happen.
> I did not legitimize the Russian aggression. Understanding the logic and legitimizing are not synonymous. Whether the reasons were legal or not, it doesn’t change the fact that they serve as a basis for starting negotiating position.
No, they do not. A negotiation position is only believable if the parties in the negotiations have previously shown that they can be trusted. Russia has proven beyond a shadow of doubt that they can not be trusted and that if there is any kind of peace agreement it will just be used to re-arm and try again from a stronger position.
> If it’s irrelevant to you, this is fine. It’s absolutely relevant to EU foreign policy and the negotiations and as such worth talking about, because it may actually save lives.
It won't save lives in the longer term. The only thing that will save lives in the longer term is the ultimate defeat of russia a-la Germany and to take away their nuclear toys. Then they can figure out at what point they want to re-join the developed world, it is clear that as long as they can hide behind their nukes that they will keep trying to expand their territory at the expense of their neighbors.
> I understand the direction of this conversation, so maybe it doesn’t make sense to continue. We are looking at it from very different angles and while agreeing in principle that the war is bad, have very different perspectives on the future of it. Time will tell who is right.
The idea that there is a 'right' here in itself is one that I disagree with, and if you are truthful in that you believe that this war should have never started then you already know the answer to what really is right.
But that's not a future that I think is viable with the current russian leadership, they've decided that their own wealth is more important than the lives of their citizenry. It will take a sea change for that to no longer be the case and I don't have much hope that the tide will turn. But maybe it will.
The other strategy is to cut off Russia's war funding through a combination of sanctions and (more importantly) Ukrainian long-range strikes on fossil fuel export infrastructure. This is more of a long shot but it could work.
That is a easy postition for the Netherlands to take because it has very little security against invasion even now before Friesland secedes, given its location in which there is little in the way of mountains, rivers or seas between it and countries more powerful than it. (More powerful if only because of their greater size: I'm not claiming that the Dutch are bad at fighting).
But it would be foolish for Australians to allow a large chunk of Australia to secede or for the Japanese to allow part of Japan to secede because the way it is now, both countries enjoy a very favorable security situation in which any invader would need to cross an ocean or at least a wide channel even to begin an invasion. If Japan split into two, then one of the two new countries might invite in the military of a larger power with the result that the other new country is in a vastly more precarious security situation than it was before the split into 2 countries.
The Mongols attempted a massive invasion of Japan, but the invasion was foiled by stormy weather while the Mongols were trying to cross the wide channel. If there were two polities in Japan at the time, the Mongols could have offer to protect one polity from the other one, and if their offer had been accepted, they could have moved their forces to Japan at their leisure, and would not have needed to risk an operation in which all their forces try to cross a sea as quickly as possible ready to fight as soon as they get to the other side.
Because of their separation from other countries by large bodies of water, Australian and Japan have been invaded or occupied only once in the last 2000 years (Australia when Europeans arrived and Japan after WWII) whereas during those 2000 years, the Netherlands has been invaded many times (with the occupation or annexation of the Netherlands by Spain having proved particularly painful).
Again: the Netherlands is not giving up much in the way of security advantages by allowing parts of itself to secede, but not all countries are in a similar situation.
> From Russian perspective it’s kind of the same (except the war part of course). Same language spoken, shared history etc. [...]
This is a truly bizarre piece of mental gymnastics. You list superficial similarities and casually gloss over the only thing that is substantial as if it were some inconsequential detail. By your "logic", rape is indistinguishable from making love. The same organs involved, the same movements (except the consent part, of course).
It is fascinating in a pathological way, but it also makes me wonder to what degree there is a rational pathway out of this. If this is the best then the people inside the russian propaganda machine don't stand a chance. Fortunately I know some russians outside of russia that have their eyes wide open but they too are scared of the long arm of putin.
The EU, and Germany by way of Merkel in particular for the longest time believed in 'wandel durch handel'. It turns out that this was a massive mistake and in spite of the still lingering abberations (Orban, Fico) that seem to think that sucking up to the Russian mob is going to pay off for them in the long term the sentiment has changed quite dramatically from where it was five years ago. I don't think there is any high level EU politician that still believes that we are going to go back to 'the good old days', and that is in spite of the current course of the USA, which is best described as 'confused'. Just check out what Russia did in the last 24 hours to give you an idea of how far from any kind of compromise we are. I think escalation is more likely than de-escalation and that's not something I consider lightly. But Putin has dug himself into a very deep hole and he does not seem to have a way out other than to keep on digging, he's ignored each and every off-ramp offered so far thinking that they were offered out of weakness rather than out of an aversion to war.
If Europe is ever forced to go - reluctantly - to war against Russia it will be because it saw no other way out. Until then we will keep arming Ukraine and we will continue to build up our defenses. Russia's main plan: to decapitate Ukrainian leadership and to use Ukrainians to continue its operation in the South has failed so utterly it is incredible, and yet, here we are. Whether Russia will still exist in one form or another in a decade is now something you can legitimately wonder about. All they had to do was absolutely nothing, and they'd be in a far stronger position today. Just live and let live. But that idea seems to be very hard for Russian leadership to entertain: that you can create together rather than that you can only expand at someone else's expense.
Right now, Russia is a country waging a war of conquest. Regardless of what they say, they are making it unambiguously clear that they do not recognize the sovereignty of their neighbors. It's not possible to be in friendly terms with such a neighbor, until there is a regime change. Or until enough time has passed that the supporters of the regime waging the war have become irrelevant.
Then there are bigger entities like NATO and the EU. From their perspective, geopolitics means having to choose between being in friendly terms with some of their eastern member states and Russia. They cannot choose both.
Russia has gotten more offensive and attacking more frequently in the hybrid war, including a murder plots against Rheinmetall CEO [1], putting explosives in packages [2], etc.
It’s not some sinister conspiracy. Most likely has two aims (1) testing Trumps commitment to NATO; (2) their invasion of Ukraine is not going well. The front barely moves annd Ukraine is starting to mass produce their own long-range cruise missiles and they are hitting oil refineries in Russia. Most likely he wants to instill fear in Europeans to support the narrative that Europe should keep weapons/money for their own defense, hoping that Ukraine will lose support.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/threat-plot-murder-rhei...
[2] https://amp.dw.com/en/russia-linked-group-planned-parcel-bom...
No, that's true. But they could be worried about their lack of strength without the US and recognise that there's no domestic appetite to move public funds towards strengthening the militaries, so publicising the "potentially imminent dangers" posed by Russia could be a way to do that.
> It’s not some sinister conspiracy. Most likely has two aims
What is "it" here?
1. There are actors who would benefit from arms race. The money, the military careers etc. The whole NATO nearly became irrelevant before Russia started invading. Now all those generals have jobs again and Rheinmetall shares are going up.
2. There are actors for whom threat from the East is existential factor (it’s in the core of the political platform of nationalists in Baltic states - remove it and they are suddenly less competitive compared to neutral or pro-Russian parties). Current chief of EU diplomacy Kallas belongs to this group.
However I think Russia wants to make a point too. It’s hardly planning any war with NATO (I hope their intelligence isn’t as bad as in Ukraine), but they do need to convince European voters that war is possible if peace in Ukraine won’t come anytime soon (on their terms). And European voters are certainly not in the mood for big war, so the question really is, who is more convincing: von der Leyen & Co with their idea to support Ukraine until it wins, or Russia with it’s idea that further escalation may harm EU citizens directly.
Whether there's a mood for a big war, I am not sure. But there are states that are ready for it. And yes, it is within EU interests to let the fighting happen in Ukraine rather than EU.
Also, it's a nice collection of the subtler Russian points you have here, B+ for effort.
Just as a reminder: Latvian Riflemen helped to create it by supporting Lenin in the crucial phase of revolution and suppressing anti-Bolshevik rebellion in Moscow. Baltic republics were well-represented in party structures and in Soviet elites. So this “oh, it was so terrible in Soviet Union” projection on Russia is a very specific nationalist narrative ignoring shared history of both nations, which included shared suffering from the same regimes and shared participation in oppression.
Name one Lithuanian or Estonian member of the Politburo in the half-century spanning 1940 to 1990. I'll save you time: there were none.
Your knee-jerk reaction of trying to shift blame onto historical oddities like the Latvian Riflemen reminds me of neo-nazis pointing out that the Wehrmacht had some 150 000 Jews in its ranks, "proving" that Germans weren't all that antisemitic and that the Holocaust has been exaggerated. Same impulse.
Where? Not blocked in the US. Russia Today is accessible.[1] Old-school Pravda is reachable.[2] The video stream from Russia Today is working.[3]
Accelerationists + rando crazy people, war hawks, and defense contractors sure want it.
Without finding real perpetrators and verifiable evidence, it still lives in the domain of speculation and politicians can and will use fictional narratives to do whatever they want.
Open war should never be started "preemptively", however NATO needs to and is preparing diligently for possible need for defense. Eastern Europe won't be safe until Putin is gone and replaced by a moderate who isn't a nationalist expansionist.
Threatening neighboring countries?
Your prior is that Denmark wants a shooting war with Russia? Or do you have a weirder antecedent in mind for "actors"?[1]
Basically this idea needs a ton of elaboration and construction. As written it's a little tin-foily.
[1] I mean, let's make the obvious point and take Russia off that list of actors: they literally can't even win a shooting war against Ukraine. Maybe you can make a brinksmanship/extortion argument, but not a "actors want a war" one from their perspective.
> Your prior is that Denmark wants a shooting war with Russia?
No, I didn't say this.
> let's make the obvious point and take Russia off that list of actors: they literally can't even win a shooting war against Ukraine.
You're assuming that the intended result of this apparent campaign is to actually start a war between the EU and Russia. But it could just as much be to create enough fear of one amongst EU voters that there is increased pressure towards bolstering military qualities within the EU, which in turn creates complications and financial burdens that could result in support for Ukraine being--even if unintentionally--weakened.
> Maybe you can make a brinksmanship/extortion argument, but not a "actors want a war" one from their perspective.
Yes, I could, if you could let me do so without calling me weird before I open my mouth.
Your original framing of your question was: "Does anyone else feel like there are actors now trying to manufacture consent for a war with Russia?"
So, yes, that's exactly what I assumed you meant. Because it's what you said. (Absent, again, a bunch of exposition that wasn't delivered).
And you still haven't clarified what "actors" you're thinking about. I stand by the criticism of this as conspiracy logic.
I do not see it as a direct way to manufacture consent for a war, but the impact on civilian infrastructure is starting to be annoying enough that the military of multiple nations around the Baltics are looking to do something, and the effect of that something may create political waves. Same things with the attacks on undersea cables and the suggested counter measures, which also include military aspects to it.