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Comment by themgt | Hacker News Reader

It's not World War 3. It's just two increasingly overlapping unsolvable wars involving two increasingly coherent geopolitical blocs consisting of dozens of countries spanning three continents, most major nuclear powers holding 95% of global nuclear stockpiles and the vast majority of global military spending and resources, with nuclear-capable cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles flying back and forth, attacks on strategic nuclear early warning systems, threats of nuclear first-use and global nuclear holocaust, etc. Fighting over issues the leaders of the involved superpowers and great powers have described as existential and beyond compromise.

Not World War 3 though, currently.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/26/ukraine-war-br...

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Are there enough nations on Russia's side to call them a bloc? It seems like almost everyone is supporting Ukraine.

China is a bloc unto itself

India and China are both supporting Russia in various overt and covert ways. That's a huge fraction of the world.

Iran is even more closely linked. Arguably the real reason for the American attack on Iran is to reduce their contribution to the Ukraine conflict.

Plus Russia's various Toadies (which included Hungary, an EU nation, until recently)... It's a pretty sizeable bloc.

It's not yet an all out Axis and Allies situation, but it's definitely not just Russia against the world.

India and China are the only reasons Russia hasn’t collapsed on itself yet. Much to the detriment of a country that had no interest in being invaded.

> Arguably the real reason for the American attack on Iran is to reduce their contribution to the Ukraine conflict.

How nice of Trump and Netanyahu, thinking about the world peace and Europe's well-being.

While they are clearly leading this war for their own purposes, both require the support of a governing apparatus (the Republican and Likud party bureaucrats) who have their own motivations. Those motivations are not necessarily positive, but can at least be understood in terms of a national policy rather than individual temper tantrums.

> individual temper tantrums.

whatever the rationale for starting hostilities against Iran, the situation we are currently in is best described as an individual temper tantrum.

North Korea is definitely part of the Russian bloc now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clypr5985ejo

Now? It’s always been part of the Soviet / Russian block.

The only nations against Russia are in Europe, or run by absurdly corrupt right-wing dictators. The problem with supporting Russia is that the US is psychotic, aggressive, and takes pride in causing civilian casualties. It will starve your children to death as a openly proclaimed tactic; it loves to double-tap. Russia isn't going to hurt you for being neutral, but the US will, joyously.

Europe doesn't even really support Ukraine, it just hates Russia for defeating it in WWII. Thank God France has nukes, or Germany would be invading it again for not showing enough support for Ukraine and Israel.

edit: Poland is starting to remember what the Ukrainians did back then, too. And to notice that the psychotic Ukrainian nationalist minority (that we funded and armed) are proud of having done it, and would do it again.

It's not Ukraine that regularly threatens Poland. Russian propaganda is truly only for absolute brain dead - how can you at same time fantasize about bombing Warsaw, jam GPS over Baltic, do hybrid war across Polish-Belarusian border and say that actually Ukraine is the real danger. Unfortunately there are lots of people that are stupid enough to actually believe this.

russia's invasion of Ukraine is absolutely solvable. It's just a disgrace that Ukraine is left to do it alone, with huge casualties (civilian as well as military), and inconceivable destruction.

No, it's not that complicated - one country invaded another - that's it.

One is a nuclear power, so the reaction is not what it would be otherwise.

This is the same as Russia invading their neighbours like they have since Peter I.

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