Is Russia ramping up to invade other countries?

[FirstCuppa]

The news seems to be suggesting they've had fighter drones over Poland.
Is it just me or does this feel like WWII all over again?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2enwk1l9e1t

I know we haven't funded our military (other priorities, quite rightly), but is that the only reason we aren't getting involved in Ukraine, Gaza and now this? Anyone else feeling twitchy that we seem to just be letting everything escalate?

Best not let paranoia get hold of you OP,

Not forgetting Sudan, DRC and all the other places where war is dragging on ruining everything.

I wish all the brains and scientists could focus on fighting the war on disease, illness, famine, equal distribution of world resources, crime, mental health, looking after the planet and all within in it.

He's a wise man.
It is exactly how they start, testing boundaries like annexing Austria (Crimea), invading Poland (Ukraine).

Funny how History repeats.

I can see this happening.
A civilian in a NATO country will die due to a Russian drone. The country will be rightly furious and want to invoke Article 5.

Some NATO countries will be rightly behind them. Others (looking at Turkey and USA) will again downplay it.

Putin and the Rest of the World will see it as one giant weakness to exploit.

NATO drags their heels, China invade Taiwan, Russia launches strikes in the heart of Kiev and Putin declares victory whilst we're still naval gazing and some idiots protest for peace and nuclear disarment every weekend.

Considering that Russia has failed in its attempted invasion of Ukraine and has got stuck in a lasting conflict he is hardly in a position to invade more countries.

Russia is constantly poking the West with a stick, harder and harder, seeing what it can get away with, to test our reactions and see if we will react as a united force or just keep letting them get away with it. Its not just drones, its everything, its gps jamming, its cyber attacks, its pushing refugees across borders, its paying/forcing people in the West to commit acts of violence and sabotage.

Right now Russia can't invade, but its laying the groundwork, and we need to be preparing now for it. The Finnish military suggests Russia can pose a threat to NATO within the next 3-5 years - we monitor Russia closely, and have done for decades, and can see how they are building up. They are building new buildings in their bases near the Finnish border, ready for increased troops there.

We supply a very small number of parts to Israel which is pretty self sufficient in weapons other than the Iron Dome.

Putin is doing a masterly job manipulating Trump etc. My Russian FIL used to fly sorties just into enemy territory during the Cold War - it’s part of the MO. React and you look like you are the aggressor.

To PP who talk about tanks etc - cutting gas and internet (remember that undersea cable that just happened to get hooked by a Russian trawler?) is what war would look like now imo. Attack critical resources, deny, aim to maximise damage.

@JustGoClickLikeALightSwitch

To PP who talk about tanks etc - cutting gas and internet (remember that undersea cable that just happened to get hooked by a Russian trawler?) is what war would look like now imo.

That is what the runup to a war could look like..

I think the idea that's where it would automatically stop is a widely held view but sadly probably incorrect.

If you want an example look at Ukraine.

Yeah sabotage and cyber attacks are just the prelude

During the last two world wars we didn’t have nuclear weapons, which have, ironically, stopped wars expanding because of the ultimate cost.

putin’s ‘testing’ of NATO makes sense, it’s his MO (though NATO’s weak response is a worry.) pushing the boundaries and invading are two different things though. Russia is no match for NATO as it stands now. But, again, this is exactly why we need to invest in defence and deterrence, so that Russia isn’t able to build up to a capacity where it really could be a challenge. We need to make sure there is an overmatch - permanently

Too early to say but from everything I’ve read I don’t think they have the capacity to invade anywhere with ground troops, they don’t have the disciplined manpower nor the equipment, definitely not countries like Poland or Romania, their tanks couldn’t cope with fields!

Very interesting news today with Estonia and Finland also receiving airspace violations.
Putin is really trying to provoke NATO member states isn't he.

I came on to say this. Russia has about 600k troops in Ukraine. It's spending 40% of government revenues on the military and military production and procurement. They're also learning a lot about drone warfare.

When the war in Ukraine comes to some sort of end, all of those resources will be sitting around, looking for a new mission. We'd be mad not to think about what could come next.

Russia wants to control the former Soviet republics, either directly or through puppet governments. Russia does not want to invade and occupy NATO countries that it does not share a contiguous border with. It does want to destabilize NATO as a military alliance and eliminate its military power as much as possible. They are genuinely concerned that NATO poses a threat to them.

Oh we get airspace violations so often in Finland

The Russians only really seemed to get the FAFO message about Turkish airspace when the Turks shot down one of their Su-24 attack aircraft in 2015.

I only just realised this was still going so had to catch up!

I wouldn't be surprised if Trump is a Russian plant at all but to be honest I think he is too thick to be trusted with anything other than causing disruption in the West, whether he knows that's their plan for him to play out or not. He breaks everything he touches so having him running US was a stroke of genius. I'm still convinced he uses tech from Russia to gerrymander the elections and that's their "secret" relationship. Maybe I've gone full tin foil hat there but Trump is a useful idiot to Putin.

Agree Russia is poor, probably too poor for a larger military operation or full scale attack, but as others have said their cyber and drones can do enough damage without them taking much flak in response as it's goons for hire really with no direct orders from Russia.

I am interested in our tech deal with US this week, to see how that plays out for US, UK and EU. I did wonder if some of the tech companies are coming here because we have a better code of practice, in essence, than America - they can see where that is heading. I for one barely know anyone who can still use FB now; full of advertisements and politics and discord. If they want to try a different way, using UK as a base might change the tack of AI for example, away from 4Chan and far right reformation of their "freedom of speech" over there.

I’m always interested by the thought of Russia ‘invading’ as I’m wondering what that would look like in practise and to what end.

Democracies are an absolute pain in the arse to communist countries. The people won’t capitulate to authoritarianism and so really the only way to do that would be to kill swathes of the population. I’m not putting it past Putin to do that but I don’t think his citizens would be too happy if putin decided to kill all the people in neighbouring countries enmasse. I just can’t see that sitting comfortably with everyone.

There is already a war taking place through tech, activist and spy infiltration, that seems much more likely. I don’t know why Western governments arent more interested in all the paid protesters whose links can be traced back to a billionaire who resides in China. I follow quite a few accounts online where they do exposes on activists who pop up on every protest from
Palestine to Climate change to anti-ICE in America. These are people earning a large amount of money to be professional activists and agitate against democracy constantly.

It is interesting to me that you think the Palestinian supporters and ICE protesters are anti-democratic, as to me they are both pro-democracy and anti Trump and genocide. If you think Trump and Reform nationalism is the way forward you really aren't supporting democracy, likewise genocide and displacement and war atrocities which are really not high on the Geneva Convention/UN/Western code of conduct post Nuremburg Trials...

It is the other way round: the west started this war and has not stopped funding it, because their biggest pleasure is seeing Slavic killing Slavic and want to eventually see Russia ruined.

It's all just a bunch of greedy rich men in my opinion. We will all be better off when these boomers meet whichever maker they have decided on and with luck the world can resume some normalcy. Putin, Xi, Netanyahu and Trump all have a lot to answer for and act like greedy spoilt kids a lot of the time.

you are only half telling the truth here. It is NATO which moved to Romania and Bulgaria and the Baltics and started this war. Now the EU lol, is going to make Ukraine, an EU country.

I’d be delighted if everyone would stop killing each other tbh. There’s a billion people in the world who don’t have enough food. 1 in 6 people in the world are effected by conflict. Over 120 million people have been displaced by conflict. There are over 40 million refugees due to conflict.

Can you imagine how quickly we could fix the worst humanitarian problems in the world if everyone just ceased fighting today.

I’m not entirely sure how the west is responsible for Russia invading Ukraine not once but twice since 2015.

I see you’ve swallowed the Russian propaganda on this. Those sovereign countries applied for NATO membership to protect themselves from an aggressively expansionist Russia. Are you suggesting that they didn’t have the right or a good reason to do so?

Christ, what propaganda have you been listening to?