Is the UK in danger from Russia?

[hereforalongtimenotagoodtime]

Keep receiving conflicting information. I am sick to my stomach and quite simply hate the unknown. So a simple question - is it likely that the UK will be in danger from Russia? And if so what does that look like? Cyber attacks, bombs being dropped?

@youhadmeatjello

I don’t understand why they want Chernobyl? Am I being dense and missing something?

Because of it’s location, it helps gives them a direct route into Kyiv.

Ah thanks @doris86 my geography is appalling. I was thinking more of the radioactive material there but realised that made no sense.

@ApolloandDaphne

I guess on the positive side, more knowledgable posters will be able to inform those who know less. Not everyone keeps up with world affairs. They can be complicated and hard to understand. Have some compassion for others and help them try to get their heads around the current situation.

agree lets try not to have a slanging match on every thread

@youhadmeatjello

I don’t understand why they want Chernobyl? Am I being dense and missing something?

A quick Google suggests it now creates a clear and easy access route to the capital because it's on the Belarus side and they're Russia's allies.

There are fears though that they can somehow use it to create a radiation cloud but I'm not sure about that.

What people do need to bear in mind is that part of Russia's cyber war is well underway and that involves creating a fear campaign using, amongst other things, social media. They're actively trying to whip us up into a panic so we won't stand up to them.

Chernobyl is en route to Kyiv the easy way in as not much is there . Ngl I wouldn’t fancy standing so close to that reactor for too long .

@Tealightsandd

OP asked about danger to the UK.

Covid and Long Covid is a major danger to the UK.

Fgs you are obsessed

@Echobelly

I don't think so. But I also don't think the rest of the world is prepared to intervene beyond arming Ukranians, it's just not worth enough to them sadly for the Ukranian people. This is basically why the EU didn't want to admit Ukraine, as its leaders knew Putin would invade and they didn't want to deal with that.

It doesn't stop at Ukraine, though, does it?

@Tealightsandd

If not Russia, there's Long Covid. Despite rumours to the contrary that threat has not gone away.

What a disgraceful, insensitive and tone deaf comment.

Sums up perfectly the mentality of the covid doom mongers on here for the past two years.

You ought to be ashamed.

But of course rationality isn't always in abundance

Bit rich coming from you, @Tealightsandd

If it was newsround then it is filtered and age appropriate
School cant run everything past parents for fear of upsetting the minority so sorry but yabu

@Valhalla17

If Boris keeps making threats then it's highly likely we will be nuked.

A labour voter 🙄

One-on-one war against Russia and we will definitely lose, we literally like a mosquito bite compared to what they can do. The only countries that can win against Russia one-on- one are USA & China and there's absolutely no way China will ever fight on the same side as USA.

A lot of UK citizens sleep easy thinking we can defend ourselves but we are not even in the top 5 strongest armies and we barely make it in the top ten.

Someone made the point that part of Russian campaigns, meddling and general shit stirring is via social media. A good example is on this forum and the idiotic "they're talking about subscription in the UK" post yesterday.

@Monday55

One-on-one war against Russia and we will definitely lose, we literally like a mosquito bite compared to what they can do. The only countries that can win against Russia one-on- one are USA & China and there's absolutely no way China will ever fight on the same side as USA.

A lot of UK citizens sleep easy thinking we can defend ourselves but we are not even in the top 5 strongest armies and we barely make it in the top ten.

We would never have one on one war with Russia though. All NATO countries, including the USA, would be on our side.

Russia is definitely a danger to the UK. They have the nuclear firepower to destroy us if they choose to. We could retaliate with a single nuclear-armed submarine.

It's not likely it would get to that stage though because even Putin knows nuking a NATO country would result in a retaliation from the whole of NATO.

Cyber attacks are more likely, in fact they're a constant danger already. Expect infrastructure like power, communications, travel and banking to be hit suddenly from time to time.

I don't think Putin wants a war with the whole of Europe, he just wants to recover the territory Russia lost when the USSR collapsed. Once he's got Ukraine he'll be moving to reclaim other countries - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia. Not necessarily to conquer them but to install pro-Russian governments.

That's where the risk to the UK really ramps up. If he attacks a NATO member, we'll be expected to send troops in. Hopefully it will just be a conventional war on mainland Europe so won't affect us too much. There's a risk it will become a total war of course, with Russia bombing the UK (and the US probably, from the far east of Russia) and vice-versa, and that could escalate into a nuclear apocalypse, but that's probably months, if not years away.

The war in Ukraine is undoubtedly really bad but given that there are other wars like this going on all the time that just don’t get any media attention, we need to not catastrophise based on horrible photos and TV soundbites.

We live in an ultra-capitalist world. The people at the very top lead lives of immense wealth and luxury. They might be evil or mad but they’re still people and they don’t want to live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland any more than anyone else does! Where is the profit in nuclear war? There is none! It won’t happen. War in Ukraine on the other hand could be very profitable for Russia.

@Monday55

One-on-one war against Russia and we will definitely lose, we literally like a mosquito bite compared to what they can do. The only countries that can win against Russia one-on- one are USA & China and there's absolutely no way China will ever fight on the same side as USA.

A lot of UK citizens sleep easy thinking we can defend ourselves but we are not even in the top 5 strongest armies and we barely make it in the top ten.

But it's not one on one. The UK is standing with all of NATO. Russia is just Russia. I dont think for a second China will fight alongside them. And remember that Russia is really quite a poor country, war will hit their population a lot harder than ours. When the people get fed up enough that's the end of Putin and his regime.

@youhadmeatjello

Ah thanks *@doris86* my geography is appalling. I was thinking more of the radioactive material there but realised that made no sense.

It makes a bit of sense but the material from the other reactors was supposed to be removed and the Russians know this they were instrumental in the sarcophagus construction as it currently stands you can stand by the elephants foot for 3000 seconds without taking too much damage which is an improvement on the 30 seconds but the land is still contaminated and I wouldn't personally be wanting my troops there for a significant amount of time so we can expect rapid progress from this point on im afraid

In all honesty, I think we’re all fucked, anyway - when climate change is already a massive threat to world stability and life in general, instead of working together as a planet, we are rushing headlong into accelerating the creation of uninhabitable wastelands. It’s not as if we aren’t totally reliant on other countries to feed us, keep us warm, provide us with raw materials, provide us with goods. Our entire economy is corrupt - democracy has not brought honesty or high ideals, just blind eyes turned to the sources of wealth, tax havens, nurturing of oligarchs, hoarding of money by dangerous, powerful, selfish people and institutions, and repulsive billionaires blasting themselves self-importantly into space.

@Walkaround how depressingly true.

@HesterShaw1 that thread really was something else.

@Kinsters and @Doris86 I know Nato will step-in but we will be too busy being dead by the time Nato retaliate.

If not Russia, there's Long Covid. Despite rumours to the contrary that threat has not gone away

If not Russia, there's Long Covid, if not Long Covid, there's extremist Islamic Terrorists, if not extremist Islamic Terrorists there's climate change, if not climate change, there's super bugs and resistance to antibiotics, if not super bugs and resistance to antibiotics, there's poverty and food insecurity, if not poverty and food insecurity, there's the rise of hackers, if there's not hackers, there's the risk of a super volcano, if not a super volcano there's the risk of a coronal mass ejection causing a Carrington Event and taking out all our satellites, power supplies and making planes fall out of the sky.

Or perhaps you could learn about relative risk and how to manage your anxiety better, cos saying shit like this is not a healthy sign.

[quote Monday55]**@Kinsters* and @Doris86* I know Nato will step-in but we will be too busy being dead by the time Nato retaliate.[/quote]
But that's why it won't happen in the first place. Putin and those around him know that if they nuke the UK then they will be nuked in return and won't win the ensuing war (noone will). Even if Putin is mad enough to want to launch nukes (and I don't think anyone thinks he is) someone around him will have enough sense of self preservation to stop him.

I agree with @Walkaround, we actually need a form of world government to sort out climate change but culturally and psychologically we don't seem ready for it and it's used as a idea to be very afraid of to really sorry for the likes of Trump and Putin.