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.
lmao, russians can stockpile rocks and have their propaganda call it best weapon ever.
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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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.
I’m sorry, but even with the U.S. out of NATO, Russia would get their ass kicked. Putin must know that.
Not if the US gives them troops and arms.
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.
Do you mind if I borrow your crystal ball? You seem unusually certain of things most leading experts would call “very likely.”
It would be weird if experts called it very unlikely, very likely is itself a claim of near certainty.
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.
I think the plan is to be ready for WWIII, when China, Russia, Iran, and… haha…. North Korea, team up.
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.
They’re all Hamas.
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.
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