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.