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.
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.
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Hey he told the women to have 8 babies. That’s the fix.
Russia is absolutely incapable of successfully invading anything.
Why is Ukraine constantly begging for help, then?
Because the most well trained, committed and disciplined soldiers armed with sticks still lose to a 5th grade drop-out conscript with a machine gun.
Battles are won by soldiers. Wars are won by production and logistics.
Zoom out.
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I’m sorry, but even with the U.S. out of NATO, Russia would get their ass kicked. Putin must know that.
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 is required to come to the defence of any member nation if it is attacked.
On paper, yes. Will they, though?
Yes.
I’m not sure if people know the history of trilateral defense agreements.
Iirc it was the French and English who put their war on hold to fight the Spanish specifically because of a weird defense pact.
No they won’t. They’ll yell and saber rattle. Won’t do anything till it reflects them as history has shown.
I don’t think it would matter because if Lithuania is invaded, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Finland are joining the fight and that’s already a huge war in Europe. Sweden seems ready to defend and if Sweden goes it’s pretty safe to assume Denmark and Norway are going as well.
Then, if Denmark is fighting, the Netherlands are probably going to help and if the Netherlands are at war so it’s Belgium, you see the pattern. So while I don’t think Spain would want to defend Lithuania, they would defend France.
This is actually not true.
Article Five states that an attack on one becomes an attack on all. This wording is very specific, and they wrote it with this wording intentionally, to get people to be willing to agree to join.
It does not require counterattacks or declarations of war, merely that you consider an attack on a member an attack on you.
How do people respond to different sorts of attacks? How can they theoretically respond if they so choose? These are the kinds of games being played in Putin’s head.
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.
I think the plan is to be ready for WWIII, when China, Russia, Iran, and… haha…. North Korea, team up.
Add the US to that list. Just watch.
Nah. What’s the end game there. Greenland?
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.
Not if the US gives them troops and arms.
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 💫”
It’s the Telegraph; Egyptian TV host Tamer Amin is safe.
The Telegraph loves this. “<Insert shocking headline> MAY OCCUR!!” = It has not been proven mathematically impossible.
While there’s no clear evidence of plans to attack NATO, Russia is creating the conditions for it.
Have they read the news within the last 3 years?
Simultaneously so weak and incompetent that they can’t take a village of 80 year olds
If they’re that weak, why hasn’t Ukraine beaten them out yet?
Because they’re given just enough resources to bleed Russia, without giving them enough to beat them.
Ukraine want them gone for sure, but the US would rather Russia just waste its resources on a futile war.
I suspect Trump’s “peace plan” is just “everybody keeps the ground they’re currently on and have a ceasefire while they build up resources again”.
I mean Russia is doing quite poorly. Even if the Ukrainian Army poofs out of existence today and gives Russian a leisurely stroll to the capital its still kind of a pyrrhic victory. They have done well to go in a war economy and have learned from their mistakes, but they are still punching under their expected weight.
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Hold on! The orange buttplug is about to do something stupid!..
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
Eh, it’s the Telegraph.
Sort of clickbait. Not the most egregious example.
But yes reading that line did make me feel misled.
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.
Until the US starts giving them munitions because we have to fight the deep state/globalists that infect Europe.
Yep musk has said stuff similar to that.
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
Yeahhhh, but what if someone in charge of the US sides with them instead of against them.
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and has failed to produce any meaningful results.
The absolute delusion among you people.
Sure, at this rate Russia should take all of Ukraine… in roughly 100 years.
Yeah, war really brings out the stupidity in you people.
You just can’t understand propaganda for what it is.
You keep saying “you people” as if the war would affect you lol
I guess I must just be too stupid to preemptively surrender
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When Ukraine stops receiving arms from the USA the odds might switch towards Russias favour 😢
Hopefully other countries can make up the difference.
Something something mutually assured destruction?
lmao, russians can stockpile rocks and have their propaganda call it best weapon ever.
An armchair analyst take here but I think they are gearing up to finally try to take Pokrovsk in the spring.
Folks at lemmy.ml were shouting from the rafters most of last year: Invading Kursk was a mistake! Russia will drive them back, and Pokrovsk will fall any day now! But like Avdiivka, I expect it to be a siege and for it to take a while. If they can take it early enough this year, Russia will again be able to conquer massive swaths of farmland because that’s really the only thing the “throw bodies at the problem” strategy is very effective at. If Ukraine holds out until the late fall, Russia will again be stalled for months, so the pace of their entire army will be “1 regional hub per year”, which I’m not sure is sustainable for Russia’s economy and society.
Honestly the pace of Russian advancement has been slowing down which is understandable because their losses are not sustainable. Their only hope for true victory is if Ukrainian losses are even less sustainable.
This is possible, especially if Germany and the US, the 2 wealthiest partners, cut off or scale back aid. But at the moment Ukraine seems slightly ahead of the attrition game and the US just INCREASED sanctions.
Perun (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EHUQmJCa3aY) just released a video yesterday that went over Ukraine’s war material situation.
TLDW: Ukrainian military equipment is for the most part qualitatively better than it was at the start of the war but not quantitatively.
Russia on the other hand is qualitatively worse, is running out of reserve war equipment (Soviet stockpiles), and is expected to deplete some of categories of equipment sometime in 2024 (tank stockpile source: Covert Cabal https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K8CcuVCDEUw).
Edit: some spelling mistakes.
That’s about what I thought. Ukraine has gotten 40 trucks here, 12 tanks there. Better than the old Soviet stuff Russia is using, but not enough to decisively turn the tables.
As my GM once said, right before I TPK’d my whole group: “You can certainly try.”
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.
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.
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.
That’s what they said about Afghanistan too though. Plus, the odds of the US getting directly involved in a war against Europe any time soon are still pretty damn low.
The US can’t project power without aircraft carriers which would be gone quite quickly. Noone has a counter against stealth subs and Europe has both the best and plenty.
It’s a great time to do that. Trump won’t interfere as a very well known Russian asset.
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.
World was always run on the rule that might makes right.
replacing war losses
With what? Starving Koreans and untrained children?
It’s all going to depend on if the rest of NATO can hold together. They have to plan for 100% no American Aid. Though I wonder how incredibly damaging having a US general be in charge of the NATO forces will be in that regard. Will he actively sabotage NATO defensive efforts?
