Do you really think after years of crushing defeats in battle and sanctions, that they have the money or soldiers to fight the EU? If they did, they would have taken over Ukraine by now.
Now if China gets involved? It's a different story.
Now if China gets involved? It's a different story.
Such is propaganda: You need to keep the population in fear so they will follow your policies.
discount at the gas station while a potential rival hollows itself out and turns into the Canada of China -- a mostly empty resource hub that follows your lead
China, Turkey, and India are main buyers of Russian oil at the moment: https://energyandcleanair.org/october-2025-monthly-analysis-...
Also russia has firm footing in EU politics already - for example every single far right group is parroting russian propaganda even when directly aimed against given country. It took decades to build to sow division in whole EU and they are using it now to their fullest.
[EDIT] Gotta love the downvotes, I am just describing what I see across whole EU including my own country. Would love some constructive feedback but this is clearly a touchy topic for many folks
But I don't see how that would work, unless the US is intentionally witholding intel from their allies - the US, since the invention of spaceflight, has had spy sattelites trained at Russia and they would see large accumulations and transports of tanks and tank parts.
https://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/7%2C114881%2C3206584...
But it's not the one I read which was literally a general saying "they are building tanks and not sending them to the front - why if not to fight with NATO eventually".
> Russian factories are working at full speed, producing new tanks and repairing those that have been dusty for years," writes "Le Figaro". The French daily refers to its sources and data from independent study groups. On the other hand, experts also point to the fact that this year the losses of the Russians have decreased - this year it was only 200 tanks. According to the newspaper, this may be due to the fact that the participation of these vehicles in the fighting at the front has been reduced. This, in turn, is the result of greater use of drones.
This actually strikes me as fairly plausible: it suggests that Russia has decided that tanks are not ideally suited for the current drone war in Ukraine. So they're continuing to ramp up production, but aren't (at this point) sending them to the front.
This doesn't necessarily mean that they have a long-term plan to invade NATO, however. I can think of many other scenarios where it would be in Russia's strategic interest to have a large modernized tank force in reserve.