Summary
Germany warns that Russia is rearming faster than expected, replacing war losses and stockpiling tanks, missiles, and drones.
Putin has redirected Russia’s economy to fuel its military, aided by supplies from Iran and North Korea.
While there’s no clear evidence of plans to attack NATO, Russia is creating the conditions for it.
On the Ukraine front, Russian forces are advancing in south Donetsk, nearing strategic town Pokrovsk, a key supply hub and coal mining center.
Analysts suggest Putin aims to seize land before potential peace talks.
replacing war losses
With what? Starving Koreans and untrained children?
While there’s no clear evidence of plans to attack NATO, Russia is creating the conditions for it.
Holy clickbait. How is this article allowed
Sort of clickbait. Not the most egregious example.
But yes reading that line did make me feel misled.
Kinda seems like Russia is getting fucked up pretty badly already and they haven’t even taken one country. Seems doubtful they would have much luck against an alliance.
They will if they have the US backing them.
Still seems like they’d get their shit wrecked if they started a war with Europe, even with help.
You vastly underestimate the size and power of the US military. This isn’t even a brag; it’s atrocious that our military is so large, but the US would have little trouble taking on Europe.
If the US leaves that alliance and then starts surreptitiously sending drone parts to Russia, it’ll get dicey.
If the AfD forms a coalition government with the normal conservatives and Germany decides to turn inwards and keep Deutsche money für die Deutscher, it’ll get dicey.
If Macron finally completes his heel turn and appoints Marine le Pen to interior secretary…
If Italy keeps going the way they’ve been going…
If the Finnish right decides that joining NATO was a mistake that let too many minorities in…
If the rest of Africa goes along with the Sahel nations and starts funneling their resources into the Russian war machine…
If Modhi lets Russia open more factories in India…
If China decides that they’re cool with sharing power on the global scale and fully buys in on the BRICS bloc…
Russia looks weak right now because the invasion has been such and embarrassment, but that can change surprisingly quickly. The global shift towards authoritarianism is coming hand-in-hand with a shift away from US/Eurocentric hegemony.
Code review came back. Too many nested ifs.
Russia has faced a tiny fraction of NATO’s combined military strength and has failed to produce any meaningful results. Attacking NATO would be suicidal
If you think other allies would unite as a matter of course, you haven’t been paying attention.
I’ve been at this long enough to know when I see an incredibly pessimistic take.
People play patheticly when it’s only money involved, see how things change when shit gets real.
You think entering a war is an easy clear cut decision? There’s nothing in article 5 that compels any ally to join a counterattack. If the US supports Russia and doesn’t do anything, it becomes a much harder sell to enter a war.
Something something mutually assured destruction?
We live in a world where might makes right. International laws and norms were killed on Oct 9, 2023.
The erosion of international laws and norms –insofar as these were ever a thing and not merely a hopeful illusion– did not begin with Israel’s Gaza campaign; by the time Israel started bombing Gaza, international laws and norms had already been put into question by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the United States and the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, among others. The list is not exhaustive and any bias unintended.
Nothing like what’s happening in Palestine though. The US didn’t kill as many children or destroy as much infrastructure as Israel did. Despite the criminality of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, their intentions weren’t genocidal even if they did show complete disregard for human lives. Somehow Israel has impunity that no one else has, and committed war crimes at a rate and scale that not even Russia did in Ukraine. Israel intentionally created a famine in the Gaza Strip as part of its campaign against the Palestinians as a people.
As my GM once said, right before I TPK’d my whole group: “You can certainly try.”
lmao, russians can stockpile rocks and have their propaganda call it best weapon ever.
I’m sorry, but even with the U.S. out of NATO, Russia would get their ass kicked. Putin must know that.
I think the plan is to be ready for WWIII, when China, Russia, Iran, and… haha…. North Korea, team up.
So are those the good guys or bad guys? I don’t know anymore. It would be funny America trying to take over a bunch of countries and China coming to European aid. What a screwed up world we live in.
That’s what’s fun, geopolitically there are no “good” guys
Only bad guys and innocent civilians who suffer because of a few dumb “leaders”
Add the US to that list. Just watch.
Nah. What’s the end game there. Greenland?
All depends on if NATO as a whole isn’t just a bluff. Are the UK, Germany and France, the three remaining major economies after the US leaves, actually going to go to war with Russia over Lithuania (no offense at all toward Lithuanians), for example? That’s what he’s testing, and that’s why he wants the US out.
NATO could crumble and Germany and France would still come to Lithuania’s aid, they’re an EU member. With NATO gone UK might technically not be on the hook any more but they’d still get into the fray, despite their faults and their insistence that they’re not they’re still Europeans.
The actually difficult part would be stopping Poland from bee-lining for Moscow, nukes be damned. They don’t spend 4.7% of GDP because they plan on sitting back.
That’s a lot of faith to have in treaties. Historically Nations tear up treaties of the drop of a hat. They’re only as valuable as the vested interest of those involved.
The EU is way more than just a treaty.
Everything’s just a treaty at the end.
Nations, towns, families, your left hand agreeing with the right, all just treaties, got you. Maybe go a bit easier on the reductionism.
Right back at you with the Absurd hyperbole.
NATO is required to come to the defence of any member nation if it is attacked.
On paper, yes. Will they, though?
It takes Russia weeks/months to take a tiny village at the cost of thousands of soldiers. They can’t attack NATO.
I mean they can… but it would go as expected.
They’re betting on their fascist puppet in the US tearing apart NATO, so they don’t have to worry about such things when they start eyeing the Baltic states.
And what, lose another 3 years and a third of the country’s young to losing the fight for Estonia? Russia is absolutely incapable of successfully invading anything. They couldn’t even stay in Syria when a bunch of untrained militia said they might show up later. Russia is weak.
As long as there is an war going on for the rest of Putin’s life, I don’t think he cares about the any of those problems.
All he cares about is that if there isn’t a war going on, Russians will start to look at what their own government does.
Simultaneously so weak and incompetent that they can’t take a village of 80 year olds but so scary that they’ll go to war with like a fifth of the planet.
How does the Umberto Eco thing go again?
While there’s no clear evidence of plans to attack NATO, Russia is creating the conditions for it.
This is also a very telling sentence.
“There’s not evidence this is even on their minds or that they would ever attempt such a monumentally stupid move, buuut…just use your 🌈 imagination 💫”
NATO is not a monolithic defense shield. There are weak points that Russia can go after.
The Baltics are made up of very small nations that Russia even in its current state could roll through in a few days.
Once they take those countries they can just sit on them and declare that they will use nukes to defend them.
That leaves NATO in a very bad position militarily of having to retake those countries with the very real threat of nuclear war. It will test the resolve of Alliance members especially those who aren’t immediately adjacent to Russia and are not threatened by them militarily. Will they risk the lives of their people?
Combine that action with China trying to take Taiwan and a US that is not very reliable under Trump and it’s not nearly as cut and dry as you think it may be.
The Baltics are made up of very small nations that Russia even in its current state could roll through in a few days.
They thought that about Ukraine as well… It’s 2025 and the Russian border is probably one of the most observed in the world right now. The chances of a Blitzkrieg style attack is nil.
That said if there was ever a time for the EU to start building up its war machine, that time is now.
No one can predict the future but Ukraine has caught Russia unprepared by rushing small but well equipped units to the front to take land during the Kursk offensive and then rush reinforcements in afterwards.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility for Russia to do the same in the Baltics.
