Regarding the "why" of Russian drone/air shenanigans: I don't think Russia wants to get their expensive assets shot down or provoke a NATO-wide war. Many people seem to believe this but it presumes far too much. They don't gain from more fronts. They cannot realistically march into the west, they can't even march into west Ukraine.
Realistically, Russia is doing these antics to force as many European countries as possible to feel that they need their air defense inventory (eg MIM-104 Patriot interceptor stock) for themselves, rather than giving or selling that inventory to Ukraine. That has immediate material benefit for the current Russian war effort with almost zero cost (assuming EU countries don't shoot down anything important).
May be. During the meeting with EU diplomats in Moscow they were allegedly told the recent incidents are a payback for Ukraine's attack on Crimea. The diplomats didn't comment on that, though.
There's been fighting over Crimea for years. It doesn't ring true as a cause of new behavior.
One thing that is new though is Russians waiting in mile long lines for petrol while they watch their refineries explode. Moscow may be trying to widen the war as a domestic distraction from that not looking good.
At least if they mix it up with NATO they can say sorry we're in a war with NATO rather than the embarrassment of we picked on a country 1/4 our size and now they are beating us.
Europe is struggling with soaring energy costs and a lack of alternatives. Whether it's red tape or unfortunate geography, Europe cannot afford to turn off the Russian gas tap.
A benevolent US would see this and find ways to bridge the gap for Europe and lower its energy costs, further choking Russia.
A less benevolent US would see this and encourage it to continue, weakening both parties and sowing internal feuds within Europe.
We already turned off the tap (look at the link above). It is just unimportant countries like Hungary and Slovakia that still import pipeline gas (and they're not making any friends...) . Would be great to pressure them more. Till this year Ukraine still imported nat gas from Russia btw.
LNG is a fungible commodity that is traded world-wide. Don't see much beyond symbolic value here in refusing it. Trying to enforce a price cap would be great there, but needs coordination.
I am not backing Trump here at all, but in his first term he pointed out how over reliant Europe is for Russian energy. A few Euro leaders practically laughed in his face (publicly, on TV) and told him with smirks on their face that he was mistaken. They attempted to frame him as a crazy person for even suggesting it's a problem. A man like Trump does not strike me as somebody that will forget and forgive that. I would not expect a benevolent US after. Why would anybody help Europe after their refusal to even admit the problem?
Feels kinda like you're removing Europe's agency here. "Red tape" is just another way of saying "terrible policy decisions for decades". If they dug themselves into a hole before, what's to stop them from doing it again when after you help them fill in the hole a little bit?
How do you (especially Europeans) understand this move from Russia? Can it really sustain a war against us? Does it want to break NATO by proving the US won't move?
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.
Now we're expected to believe a rag-tag crew of Ukrainians used a leaky sailboat to simultaneously detonate deep water pipelines, lol.
Denmark and Sweden gave up thier investigations quite quickly, probably they arrived at the truth but couldn't say it, only Germany was strong-armed into keeping the charade going.
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.
Is this something that you would have done? I don't see how russia's survivability would be improved by expanding it's sphere of control, but, on the contrary it would stretch resources thin.
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.
This strategy is known as "disaster capitalism" and was explored by Naomi Klein in her book "The Shock Doctrine". Which details how UofChicago economists experimented on South America in addition to natural disasters, etc. The rich love to burn everything down so they can buy what's left for pennies. It's sick.
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.
This is a joke, right? Diplomacy is something Russians completely disregard, lie about, and only agree to do when they are the only one benefiting, and even then only until they decide to break whatever agreements were made, because they've done so every single time so far. How do you have any diplomacy with someone like that? You can't.
Right now the US under Trump is leading the diplomatic efforts toward Russia. I think Europe and the Ukraine would have been better served with European leaders doing this.
There have been literally (not figuratively literally, literally literally) zero diplomatic resolutions of military conflicts or tensions with Russia during the Putin era. None. The closest one you can see, if you squint extremely hard, is the detente of 8 years that that followed the invasion of Crimea. And then we know what happened.
Conflicts in Putin's Russia end militarily, always (usually in victory or stalemate, though he for sure "lost" in Syria), or at best a lie in preparation for the next war. Negotiated peace is not a thing.
Negotiated peace can be a thing if there is enough of a threat behind it. I imagine Putin would like to be able to nuke Ukraine but the US have threatened bad things if he does. I think if the west had made more of a threat before the 2022 invasion Putin may well have backed off but Biden was like if you only invade a little bit we won't do much which is kind of how it went.
Because it angers the fascist right-wingers brigading any topic they dislike, among them support for Ukraine. Also the moderation is completely fine with this and hides between "remaining apolitical", or "avoiding divisive topics".
The drone sightings is a mix of Russian ops, and copycat actors. The jets that violate airspace, are probably a mix of intentional close flying, under the plausible deniability that navigation jamming in the area causes them to cross into neighboring airspace.
In the case of Russian aggression, it is to create more tension. Why on earth would Russia want to escalate this, you might ask? Well, now that pretty much every country west of their border is a NATO member, a Russian attack on NATO would likely trigger article 5.
If Russia can provoke any NATO countries to attack first by, say, downing some airplane of theirs (fighter jets, recon, strategic bombers, etc.), they can use this as casus belli, and use it as propaganda. One thing Russia learned after 2022 was that any larger scale mobilization is incredibly unpopular. They can't mobilize millions of soldiers without any real cause, and march into the west. If they can sell the idea (with "proof") that NATO is actively attacking Russia, that's another thing.
They're probably also banking on the fact that the heightened situation will scare people in the west, which in turn will make them vote for isolationist parties that don't want to commit. One thing is to talk about war, another thing is to actually see the writings on the wall.
I don't think European NATO members can do much other than to just keep reinforcing and fortifying their borders, build up their armed forces as if Russia will invade tomorrow, and dig in. And keep hammering Russia with sanctions.
The imperialist dreams of Russia is the expand into the ex-Soviet countries. They've tried election meddling, which worked to some degree, but I think they know that to achieve their goals, they need some larger conflict to happen - so that they can annex the desired areas when peace talks come up.
> If Russia can provoke any NATO countries to attack first by, say, downing some airplane of theirs (fighter jets, recon, strategic bombers, etc.), they can use this as casus belli, and use it as propaganda.
This has already happened, Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015, the Russian state very quickly tucked its tail in after that. The VKS can't afford to lose these planes willy-nilly.
The Turkish pilot who shot down was persecuted by Erdogan:
> Erdoğan announced in an interview that the two Turkish pilots who downed Russian aircraft were arrested on suspicion that they have links to the Gülen movement, and that a court should find out "the truth".
Russia didn't tuck its tail, they deployed SAMs to their Syrian base, they deployed the late Moskva in the region, and they pressured Erdogan to punish the pilot.
Readit News
Realistically, Russia is doing these antics to force as many European countries as possible to feel that they need their air defense inventory (eg MIM-104 Patriot interceptor stock) for themselves, rather than giving or selling that inventory to Ukraine. That has immediate material benefit for the current Russian war effort with almost zero cost (assuming EU countries don't shoot down anything important).
One thing that is new though is Russians waiting in mile long lines for petrol while they watch their refineries explode. Moscow may be trying to widen the war as a domestic distraction from that not looking good.
At least if they mix it up with NATO they can say sorry we're in a war with NATO rather than the embarrassment of we picked on a country 1/4 our size and now they are beating us.
https://energyandcleanair.org/financing-putins-war/
The first step when finding yourself in a hole is to stop digging.
Europe is struggling with soaring energy costs and a lack of alternatives. Whether it's red tape or unfortunate geography, Europe cannot afford to turn off the Russian gas tap.
A benevolent US would see this and find ways to bridge the gap for Europe and lower its energy costs, further choking Russia.
A less benevolent US would see this and encourage it to continue, weakening both parties and sowing internal feuds within Europe.
LNG is a fungible commodity that is traded world-wide. Don't see much beyond symbolic value here in refusing it. Trying to enforce a price cap would be great there, but needs coordination.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-lng-exports-surge...
>Europe’s Emerging Plan: Give Ukraine $200 Billion in Russian Money https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/europes-emerging-plan-give-...
Denmark and Sweden gave up thier investigations quite quickly, probably they arrived at the truth but couldn't say it, only Germany was strong-armed into keeping the charade going.
It's like with AI, that question doesn't really matter. It only matters if their leader wants to try.
Deleted Comment
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.
This sort of rhetorics leads nowhere useful.
Conflicts in Putin's Russia end militarily, always (usually in victory or stalemate, though he for sure "lost" in Syria), or at best a lie in preparation for the next war. Negotiated peace is not a thing.
The drone sightings is a mix of Russian ops, and copycat actors. The jets that violate airspace, are probably a mix of intentional close flying, under the plausible deniability that navigation jamming in the area causes them to cross into neighboring airspace.
In the case of Russian aggression, it is to create more tension. Why on earth would Russia want to escalate this, you might ask? Well, now that pretty much every country west of their border is a NATO member, a Russian attack on NATO would likely trigger article 5.
If Russia can provoke any NATO countries to attack first by, say, downing some airplane of theirs (fighter jets, recon, strategic bombers, etc.), they can use this as casus belli, and use it as propaganda. One thing Russia learned after 2022 was that any larger scale mobilization is incredibly unpopular. They can't mobilize millions of soldiers without any real cause, and march into the west. If they can sell the idea (with "proof") that NATO is actively attacking Russia, that's another thing.
They're probably also banking on the fact that the heightened situation will scare people in the west, which in turn will make them vote for isolationist parties that don't want to commit. One thing is to talk about war, another thing is to actually see the writings on the wall.
I don't think European NATO members can do much other than to just keep reinforcing and fortifying their borders, build up their armed forces as if Russia will invade tomorrow, and dig in. And keep hammering Russia with sanctions.
The imperialist dreams of Russia is the expand into the ex-Soviet countries. They've tried election meddling, which worked to some degree, but I think they know that to achieve their goals, they need some larger conflict to happen - so that they can annex the desired areas when peace talks come up.
This has already happened, Turkey shot down a Russian jet in 2015, the Russian state very quickly tucked its tail in after that. The VKS can't afford to lose these planes willy-nilly.
> Erdoğan announced in an interview that the two Turkish pilots who downed Russian aircraft were arrested on suspicion that they have links to the Gülen movement, and that a court should find out "the truth".
Russia didn't tuck its tail, they deployed SAMs to their Syrian base, they deployed the late Moskva in the region, and they pressured Erdogan to punish the pilot.
Russia retaliated by disallowing tourism to Turkey in the summer of 2016, causing about $5 billion of damage to the Turkish economy.
https://carnegieendowment.org/static/media/images/202105-Pri...