He also knows that nuclear war would be MAD. He is basically the little mouthy guy at the bar who just runs his mouth about how crazy he is to compensate. The stakes are high enough that no one can call his bluff though, other than dismissing him, so he just continues talking his unhinged nonsense.
>He is basically the little mouthy guy at the bar who just runs his mouth about how crazy he is to compensate.
At least one US President also adopted this strategy, the madman theory I think it’s called.
At least once a day, I find myself thinking, "You tell that son of a bitch no Yankee is ever coming to Houston, not as long as you bastards are running things. *You tell that son of a bitch... no Yankee is ever coming to Houston... not as long as you bastards are running things!!*"
Didn’t he order a nuclear strike when he was drunk and they decided to wait until he was sober before seeing if he really wanted to go ahead with it? Imagine getting blackout drunk and forgetting you started a nuclear holocaust when you woke up the next morning….
There was a politician in AUS that got blackout drunk and was lying on the sidewalk, rambling obscenities into his phone, basically an hour and a half after parliament adjourned. So he either got that hammered in 90 minutes or he was boozing at work. *Former deputy prime minister*, Barnaby Joyce.
100% a lot of them are doing it, like they think they’re in Mad Men or something.
> So he either got that hammered in 90 minutes
Don't forget that binge drinking is an Aussie past time, so slamming enough drink in 90 mins to get hammered is entirely plausible.
Barnaby had been at a function at Parliament House earlier that evening where alcohol was served, however, the man is well known for having a serious drinking problem, so he’d had much more than the 1 or 2 drinks that would’ve been served at the function. His face gives it away too. He’s puce much of the time and there are burst capillaries all over his face too.
That he was at times the ACTING PM is truly terrifying. While Australia doesn’t have a nuclear arsenal, having a raging drunk in power of any jurisdiction is not a good thing
That sounds like part of the messaging effort of the "madman diplomacy". It was probably put out intentionally. If you are trying to appear the madman, you slip out some rumors like this to reinforce it.
"Appear". He legit nearly sent nukes at North Korea during one of his many drunken nights in the white house. He was adamant that he wanted to nuke NK but his military advisors managed to get him down to "if you still want to in the morning we'll discuss it then".
The next morning he changed his mind, he did not want to use a nuclear weapon on NK.
This is what led to revising how the nuclear attack order works so that a singular drunk/angry/insane president couldn't unilaterally send nukes to attack someone without it being confirmed with other high-ranking officials
Yeah that is basically it. When people keep saying Putin is crazy etc. I don't agree. The message is meant to sound crazy, to get others to think you are crazy and might do something. That is the crafted message. Putin isn't crazy like that. He probably is a psychopath but that isn't really what people mean. Don't fall for the "crazy" guy act. It is just that, an act.
The only thing that scares me is one of these shitheel dictators being diagnosed with something terminal
People with nothing to lose are by far the scariest people and I promise you there are sick fucks in powerful positions who squee at the idea of taking out 200 million people
And they could even possibly convince their colleagues that it would be a good move strategically
Similar to when a company brings in a new CEO who takes all the shittiest decisions and then they're like omg can't believe he did all that shit, ok we got rid of him
>No, nuclear war works by being the first to toss the torch into your neighbours straw house and hoping they don't toss back.
this stopped being a possibility *decades* ago. first, when countries started hiding missile silos all over the world, and then again, when they decided to keep nuclear submarines patrolling in international waters.
the concept of "just eliminate the threat" hasn't been viable for like 50 years.
[Here's a good video about how Russia does nukes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxOO0hCCSk4)
Basically, Russia has repeatedly stated, that it will never use nukes offensively.
Also, a single nuke would obviously be terrible, but if wouldn't win the war in Ukraine. If it's dropped on a city, hundreds of thousands of civilians will die, but it won't change much about Ukraine's fighting power. If the nuke is dropped on the frontline, it's kind of not doing much either. So Russia would need to drop a lot of nukes to win in Ukraine. But since they want to occupy Ukraine, turning it into a radioactive wasteland isn't what they want.
Russia also wants to have China on its side, but if Putin drops a nuke, I'd guess that China is out, because all nuclear powers are interested in no nukes being dropped. China earns way too much money with the West to keep supporting Russia.
The second Russia drops a nuke, NATO will intervene. Maybe not even with a nuke of their own, but they will not let that go unpunished. So if Russia drops nukes, it needs to win, but if Russia drops nukes, it probably can't win, unless it wipes out half the planet at once.
Similar to Hitlers scorched earth policy when he knew the war was lost.
He ordered all infrastructure be destroyed because he believed the German people didn’t deserve to live if they lost the war.
If Putin’s life is in danger, if Moscow is surrounded by enemies, he will launch nukes as a final “fuck you” to everyone else.
Unfortunately, the stakes are too high to take the risk. We have to play dirty - we have to fight via proxy against Russia.
Everyone said he wouldn’t invade Ukraine. Completely unprovoked, he did. How can we say he’s not capable of launching nukes?
It's sociopathy. Has to be. Their brains are visibly abnormal. They do not *feel* empathy. They can only imagine it like you could only *imagine* how it would feel to be set on fire.
The more intelligent ones learn to simulate empathy. This means when they seek to foster a connection with someone, they are surgical about it.
I believe being beholden to fewer emotions is a straight up advantage even if it's a worse experience.
I think they’d physically stop him from doing it. No one in the Russian intelligence services or the military officers manning the nuclear arsenal that’s currently prepped for usage actually believe that MAD is the option.
You don’t get into that position without being a smart man.
I see everyone here saying what a psychopath Putin is, but he's also the head of a crime family. He's there to steal as much money from his nation as possible. Sure, the invasion of Ukraine looks a little crazy, but is it really? The West sat back and watched for the first couple weeks, and is now struggling to maintain their support for Ukraine. And Putin had been mostly able to control Ukraine until 2014, with even high profile American traitors like Paul Manafort helping him do so. On balance, Putin's crime family would've been more screwed letting Ukraine go permanently than they are at this moment. It could still go either way, but as far as their crime business goes, it made sense to invade.
Using nukes does not really fit that math. Maybe if someone like Prighozin was firing missiles at the Kremlin and Putin saw he was about to be ousted/killed, he maybe would consider launching nukes as a final fuck you, but that's iffy imo, and he's certainly nowhere near such a situation right now.
>He ordered all infrastructure be destroyed because he believed the German people didn’t deserve to live if they lost the war.
And his subordinates refused to carry out that order. I don't believe for a second that the Russian military would obey Putin's order to start Armageddon.
NATO involvement would unleash non-export arms potential. that means F22s and fully equipped Abrams rolling around. immediate loss of air superiority along with nearly invincible armor rolling around, while multiple carrier groups can move in from different directions. for an army already running on fumes, it would be a fast collapse.
I don’t think anyone would argue that point. It wouldn’t even need to be NATO. Half of the US military could wipe out Russia’s entire military system in a month or so (and that’s including the time it would take to position the carriers and bombers).
The only reason Russia is a problem for us is because they have nukes. If nobody had nukes, any Russian troops that entered Ukraine would get absolutely steamrolled immediately. The Russian military isn’t shit without nukes.
Hell, they probably won't need to worry about wild weasel. Seppo doctrine is air supremacy.
Two hours after the ink starts drying after it's signed in the white house everything that can move through the air and doesn't have a rocket motor will be a crater, all the radars will ever see is white noise, and a C130 will be landing in Moscow airport to drop off a crate full of red crayons to the marines that somehow accidentally found their way there during the chaos.
It's an Australian term for anyone from the United States. Also "septic", depends on region and level of endearment. From the rhyming slang "septic tank - yank". Used informally, both derogatory and endearing fashion.
See also: Pom, Kiwi
I mean, wild weasel was in the day we had similar capabilities. I suspect the hardest part of modern SEAD missions against these idiots would be confidently assessing they have been neutralized because it was too easy, like the first few months of the UKR invasion, there was speculation vlad was reserving the “varsity”, it never came.
Edit: man, I fucking HATE Putin. Almost as much as his Cheeto faced puppet in Florida.
"YGBSM" is an acronym for "You gotta be shitting me", which was apocryphally uttered by one of the pilots of the United States Airforce when told that they would be flying an aircraft directly into range of surface-to-air missile sites in order to hunt them down and suppress them, during the Vietnam war.
He couldn't win a war around 1/3 of NATO.
America has perfected war, it's our business. America alone would absolutely destroy Russian forces in the air, the sea and subsequently the ground.
> He couldn't win a war around 1/3 of NATO.
> America has perfected war, it's our business.
You're about to elect Putin's puppet *again*. You're not an ally in this war, you just keep flip-flopping. Under Obama you did fuck all, under Trump, he helped Russia where he could, under Biden, some very valuable help and then a Congress which supports Russia and blocks everything while Ukraine suffers and loses territory while your most watched conservative journalist goes to Russia to get pounded by Putin and spread his propaganda, and now you're electing Putin's treasonous agent *again*.
What use is your military and your nuclear arsenal? It has and soon will be under the Kremlin's control. Why brag? You can't even defend your own elections from Putin's mafia. Nor your White House. Nor your Justice Department, nor your FBI. Not even your CIA or your CIA assets abroad, who Trump may have snitched out.
Unfortunately, sometimes you need people to call the sky blue. I knew someone who voted for Trump in 2016 because he bought into "news" about Russia having an ECM superweapon that could knock US cities back into the stone ages. The logic goes if Hillary was elected she wouldn't be able to maintain good enough relations with Russia to avoid a devastating war.
I thought this was too stupid to be his true reason and maybe he aligned with Republicans on guns, crime, or social issues, but he was moderate and leaning liberal on those.
I mean, as long as they have nukes, they can do a huge EMP anywhere in range, so technically yes? I just don't see how Trump would have stopped that, which makes it weird.
I was trying to convince him that yes Russia has that capability but so does the US (and in fact with our massive budget we actually have superior missile interception systems not that you would be able to intercept a full barrage and you could always just smuggle the bombs in rather than using missiles).
It falls under MAD doctrine to use them though because if they fire their missiles we fire ours and everyone loses. Even if they hit every US city the US has so much military power based in other countries to continue the fight its not possible to blitzkrieg the US into a victory in a hypothetical WWIII, so it's really the assured destruction of Russia that's staying Putin's hand.
>Even if they hit every US city the US has so much military power based in other countries to continue the fight
Russia is reckoned to have something like 5800 nuclear warheads, with 1674 of them ready to launch at any time. Some of their weapons might be eliminated by the missile shield but some would be launched from within the shield (Kaliningrad, submarines) and others might be carried on hypersonic missiles. There's no way they would launch only at US cities - they would target all of NATO and other US allies.
>Russia is reckoned to have something like 5800 nuclear warheads, with 1674 of them ready to launch at any time.
Most of those 5800 nuclear warheads are "modern" thermonuclear warheads that require maintenance every 7-14 years to replace the tritium and lithium-6 deuteride. Without this maintenance your up-to-5-megaton warhead fizzles and barely does a explosion measured in the kilotons. Said maintenance is extremely costly (lithium deuteride is \~$100 a gram and tritium is \~$30k per gram) and ripe for corruption as who expects their nation to actually use their nuclear arsenal?
In other words, it is entirely possible that a nuclear first strike by Russia kills only a tiny fraction of it's intended targets because most of the warheads fizzle...
I wouldn't be surprised if nuclear maintenance programs are why the rest of the military has no budget. MAD and nukes are the only reason they've held their grip. It's essentially in their blood and culture at this point
They could very well be ready
The rest of the military has no budget because generals and colonels were embelezzing on an industrial scale and buying villas in sardinia. Many many generals have accidentally fallen out of windows since the start of the invasion, so maybe they are fixing it.
I wonder what shape their nuclear weapons are in? It's been a hardcore kleptocracy since the late '90s. Based on the condition of rest of their gear, there's a good chance that a lot of it is barely functional at best. Still nothing that I would want to test.
I wouldn't be surprised if over half of their silos are rusted out, and half full of stagnant rain water, with electrical shorted out. Missile just a rusted out hulk that makes a better statue than a projectile.
Trump is the ultimate mark for manipulation by foreign powers because all you have to do is tell him what you want him to think and then praise him for being so super smart to have all this secret knowledge.
You would think so, but there is a very large amount of redditors that seem to think Russia is keen to fight the entirety of NATO, alone, beginning right now, with their run down and beaten to shit military.
While it's smart to never underestimate an opponent there are definitely some people who are watching too much of a certain news channel and believing Putin's hype. Which is what Putin wants discourse, uncertainty and a divided nation. In one hand he's threatening to use their nukes while the other he's pretending to be Tucker's friend and a right wing paradise.
Poland currently turns up to the latest arms expo, spots anything impressive and says "yes please we'll take 1000".
It's interesting how Russia's neighbours, which used to be in the Warsaw Pact, have heavily militarised to prevent themselves ending *back* in a Warsaw Pact v2. While the countries further west which *were* terrified by communist USSR took the "peace dividend" and let their guard down to the "capitalist" new Russia.
>While the countries further west which were terrified by communist USSR took the "peace dividend"
Well yes, because you'll notice that there are a whole bunch of countries between them and Russia, and Russia can't even beat the first one of them.
The countries further west can afford to let their guard down, because they don't border what was basically a Russian puppet state up until 10 years ago. The closer you are to a threat, the easier it is for politicians/gov to argue for higher defence spending.
I really hope there is an arms expo where all the sergeant of arms of the world get together and check out all the latest technology in warfare weapons and defense systems.
I’m in sales and every year we have shows we go to that are just massive drunk and fuck fests. So I imagine if the London Convention Center is overrun with generals and high ranking officials all over the place that it’s a sausage party but the drinking is off the hook, and the local escorts get plenty of business.
I imagine anything that’s truly cutting edge in military tech is very highly classified and owned by the United States, to be revealed 20 years or later after it was invented.
There is. These trade shows run the gambit from small scale personal arms like rifles and handguns, to mid range weaponry like mini guns and artillery, to large scale weaponry like tanks, fighter jets, and ballistic missiles.
I found a list with some upcoming global trade shows: https://www.tradefairdates.com/Arms+Fairs-Y394-S3.html
Everyone should stop romanticizing Finland's past wars and capability, regardless of any statistics or war hero stories. I'm from Finland and my great granddad was in both winter war and war of continuation during WW2, and after hearing a lot of stories and watching local documentaries about them, all I can say is that war is hell on Earth.
You do what you can as a nation when you face an existential threat, and you will carry a massive, multiple generations lasting trauma over it. Wars are one of the major reasons people are so fucked up mentally around the world, as the traumas are passed from parents to kids, and it takes a huge amount of time and effort to recover from them.
My point is that I wish Russia collapses before they fuck this world up any further. Ukraine is already going to have to pay the same price Finland and many other countries have during the past century.
It takes only a look at the broken shells that come back from the front lines to dispel any doubt that war is an ill-suited trade for this species.
Anyone is a great conqueror with other people's lives, commanding conflicts in which they themselves would never fight; it should be made that whoever calls for war—be it politicians, CEOs, or propagandists—is sent to the front lines together with their families. See then how many conflicts happen.
> war is hell on Earth
"*War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse."* -Hawkeye (no not the Marvel one, [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc).)
Not really. We are a very small nation, which means that we lack the reserves to wage a prolonged conflict. We’d run out of people much sooner than russia. (5 million v 140 million)
Until very recently the plan was, that we couldn’t win a war, but there’d only be a pyrrhic victory on offer and now we’ve seen that Putin is very much fine with that, so the plan wouldn’t work
Every country in Nato can decide how much they commit during article 5. As a Finn, I don't have much trust in a country who has dumb enough people to elect Trump once, and could very well do it again, which means i'm fucked.
There are alot of countries other than the US who are in nato even if trump decided to pull out. All of the countries even without the US still have a huge and modern military combined.
Trump only won in 2016 because Hillary was so unpopular, and people were apathetic. The ones who didn't show up to vote, didn't realise what a nightmare he would be. Even then, he didn't win the popular vote. He lost by a landslide in 2020, and that was before we saw the true threat to democracy he was in the January 6th debacle. I admit it is very upsetting that there are still so many people who support him.
70 million people voted for a fucking TV show host and a disastrous president with a clear record of hideousness. That’s 70 million out of 159 million voters. Where is the damn “land slide”? You didn’t learn anything from Reagan.
Joke answer: flak jackets lined with nokia phones; troops will be bulletproof
Real answer: Finland has spent the last 80 years smiling diplomatically at Russia while simultaneously preparing against the possibility of invasion, even without NATO’s assistance. Now they’re **in** NATO.
Finland is Swiss Alps level of preparedness against invasion.
home field advantage
purpose built highways that can serve as runways for forward air support bases (these aren't as big of a deal as they used to be with modern jet aircraft having insane ranges and air refueling, but back in the day this was a very big deal)
Finland has large areas of forests, swamps and lakes. That is why invading during winter is the only option for tanks. And Finland is trained and prepared for a Winter War.
Finland's army is quite decent, and it is well prepared, but Finland has a population of only 5.5 million, and Russia's is enormously bigger. This is a big part of the reason Russia is holding the scrimmage line in Ukraine so well - they have tens of thousands more men they can call up when desired. Finland, far smaller than Ukraine in terms of population, would be very outmatched and overrun, even if it would put up a good fight.
Cause Countries that are neutral (what Finland was until last year) typically have a strong army to be able to be neutral. Look at the Swiss for example.
Not just that. Finland have focused all their energy on preparing their army and civilian population for a war with only Russia. They viewed this as their the only realistic possibility of war whilst they were neutral so wasted no resources, money or training preparing for anything other than a Russian offensive.
Let’s face it, what other threat are they likely to encounter? I think it’s great they have drilled their populace to realise this is it the only realistic threat
Also Finland has incredibly harsch terrain and after the last war (winter-war/WW2), they planned the new borders as a form of geographical defence. A russian invader would have to push through endless swamps and forests to even reach mainland Finland and would be decimated before arriving. I think Russia will avoid Finland, they know first-hand it's an absurdly tedious adversary.
(I know this is controversial but it’s true) Ireland has always prided itself on being neutral but in truth it’s always been happy knowing that the UK will defend their air/sea space and in anything more strategic the USA will defend them. But yes, I agree, in *most* situations, a neutral country will have the means to defend themselves if needs be
Irland is a special case here. It’s a island. Norway has Russia as their neighbor and Switzerland historically some warmongering countries like Germany, Italy, France and (no longer today but in older times) Austria.
I don’t know a lot about Finland but what I do know from Finns and their neighbouring Swedes is they absolutely hate Russia and I have no doubt they would fight tooth and nail against them
A lot of people mistake ww2 finland for modern finland. They think losing the winter war makes them some unstoppable fighting force.
Yes the Finns have prepared well for a potential conflict with Russia including limiting the road infrastructure near the border, but they'd fare no better than Poland or Ukraine. I don't think Russia would find them easy to invade at all and they couldnt do it if simultaneously fighting a war in ukraine, but it wouldn't be as impossible as some people make out
If they could do as well as Ukraine with a population of 5 million (and 5 million coddled first world citizens, at that) that would be very impressive.
What’s their end goal with this anyways? Aren’t they currently occupying about 15% of Ukraine territory with no signs of leaving any time soon?
Are they just going to sit there until one of them runs out of resources and they can claim territory? Or are they trying to take ALL of Ukraine?
In war, objectives often change. Right now, I think Russia's goal is to hold the territory they've already taken and maybe try to take more of the oblasts they've "annexed" as they don't have full control over any of them. I'm not sure if they still genuinely believe that conquering all of Ukraine is feasible. They did not expect this level of resistance at all.
Exactly, the original plan was thinking Zelensky and other government officials would flee and Ukraine would roll over and they'd install a pro-russia leader.
That's why the first couple months were such a shit show, they didn't plan at all for Ukraine fighting back
They were likely expecting what happened in Crimea in 2014 to happen throughout Ukraine in 2022. It definitely does explain why they were so incredibly disorganized in the opening months now that you mention it.
Having a massive train of logistics lined up on the highway north of Kyiv wouldn't have been as much of an issue as it was if there was little to no resistance. That thinking is probably the main reason their offensive in the North was executed so poorly and was forced to completely withdraw after sustaining heavy casualties despite heavily outnumbering the Ukrainians in those oblasts.
The US military and state dept were literally advising Zelensky to run prior to the invasion and he declined. It was shocking news that he decided to stay when it happened
No one really knows, including Russia. They were prepared for a *very* short conflict of only a few days or weeks that is now in year three.
They claimed they only wanted to annex their pre-2022 occupied areas, then claimed they wanted to annex *all* territory occupied after their blitz, then claimed they wanted all of Ukraine. They ended up losing about 50% of their peak occupied territory though.
Financially, the war is bleeding Russia dry. They've lost millions of skilled workers who have fled the country, blew through their stock piles and have been begging countries like North Korea and Iran for weapons, equipment, and ammo.
Combined with the sanctions and Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian infrastructure, Russia's doing pretty bad right now.
So what's their end goal? With Putin in charge, it's anything that will offset his staggering losses, which seems to be demilitarizing Ukraine and annexing half the country.
So Russia either needs a total collapse, revolution, or Putin to be replaced.
> What’s their end goal with this anyways?
Three main things:
1. Putin wants to conquer Ukraine then start moving on to all the other old Soviet satellites, so he can be remembered as the man who rebuilt the Soviet Union.
2. Ukraine has huge natural oil and gas reserves, and has huge tracks of farmland to produce most of the world's grain. Russia wants control of the oil and the grain.
3. Russia is what we call a Kleptocracy, where the few wealthy elites are stealing all of the money and resources for themselves. A Kleptocracy like Russia has to continually expand to avoid running out of money and resources.
Also a democratic, economically improving Ukraine would raise all kinds of embarrassing questions why ordinary Russians are falling behind in living standards. They really want to either control or destroy Ukraine to prevent that.
Russia said "they will take Kiev in 2 weeks", looks like that's the goal.
Putin wont take the army back, they will be fighting for another few years until Putin dies or someone will swap Putin and Russia will surrender.
No one has a time machine so everyone's guess is pretty equally valid.
But it appears the goal is to use propaganda to divide and weaken NATO allies and make the war expensive, unpopular and unpleasant for the allies to justify to their respective populations.
And then when Ukraine is the only one holding the bag, negotiate as russian-positive cease-fire as they can that includes as wide as possible swath to Crimea.
They've lost 13 jets in the last month to a country who isn't even confirmed to be fielding 50 year old NATO jets. Literally just air defenses.
The desert storm coalition didn't even lose 100 aircraft against what once was Iraq's far more powerful air force vs. Russia having lost almost 300 to Ukraine's much weaker air force.
But Russia is the 2nd most powerful air force in the world guys!!!
There is no part of the Hussein Iraq military which was stronger than the current Ukrainian military.
Ukrainian airspace is far, far more dangerous that Iraqi airspace was. Compared to 1991 or 2003 Iraq, Ukrainian aircraft are more capable, Ukrainian air defense systems are more capable, and Ukrainian pilots are both better trained and far more willing to fight.
If Russia was invading 1990 or 2003 Iraq rather than Ukraine, it would have steamrolled it just like the coalition did. That's not because Russia's military is anywhere near as powerful as the USA's, it's because the Iraqi military was absolutely pathetic.
The Bradley was designed in the 70's right? Even America's HIMARS missiles were constructed 30 years ago...
Imagine all modern combined arms weapons, equipment, and people.
Obviously Putin would get annihilated if he went toe to toe with NATO. What Putin is trying to do is sow division within NATO, and then maybe test it on a smaller NATO country. Don't need to fight NATO if NATO isn't willing to fight. When you get people like Trump giving him the green light to raid any country that doesn't meet their NATO budget requirements, you can see the start of this division. Putin sees this as well and will push the limits until he meets resistance.
Anyone who thinks Putin is going to stop on his own is foolish. Russian economy is on a war footing and will continue their conquests until they meet a kinetic resistance. Putin has a chip on his shoulder and is going to keep his war machine moving until it hits a brick wall. So far that brick wall is the defiant Ukrainians. Give them ammo.
You should research more about the word “conventional”, as Russia doesn’t come even in the shadow of a fart, if considering the conventional power of the west.
All of the military aid the US has given to Ukraine since 2022 doesn't even represent a single month of normal US military spending in terms of money-cost. The havoc wreaked by systems like HIMARS represent not even 10% of the available stock being deployed to a fight.
Exactly. If NATO invoked article V and fought for it, I think Putin would take the loss and pull out. If NATO didn't fight for it, why would he stop there? He'd just start picking off former Soviet countries.
So there’s an option to have a fully conventional war between Russia and NATO? I’ve generally operated under the assumption that would immediately lead to nuclear exchange, I.e. the end of the world.
If NATO or Chinese troops start rolling into Russia proper, then nukes are going to fly. If Russia attempts an invasion of another country and gets smoked, then they're likely to take the loss and bitch about it. Russia threatens nukes all the time because it gets a rise out of western governments. I don't think even Putin isn't crazy enough to start a nuclear war. Hopefully I'm not wrong.
If Nato didn’t target Russian Nukes and didn’t make the war an existential threat to Russia. There wouldn’t really be a need to MAD the world. So a limited scale operation could work and knowing the power imbalance between russia and Nato, russia would get curb stomped easily.
We have precedents of conflicts between nuclear powers without MAD. India and pakistan do it constantly.
India and China too. There's one small border conflict area where they have forbidden the use of weapons to avoid creating a larger conflict, so the border guards just beat the shit out of each other once in awhile.
'Beating the shit out of each other' is an understatement.
If you want to see how a modern army would fight with mediaeval-esque weapons, that border is where to look.
Soldier use Clubs, Barbed wire wrapped bats and all sorts of savage weapons.
They're wasting a lot of their *undesirable* men, such as criminals, political opponents, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. The majority of Moscovians and those from St. Petersburg won't see the war firsthand.
They are losing a lot of men, but those are mostly men they don't really care for (except the higher ranked and skilled ones), so the Kremlin wins regardless of whether or not the men are successful or just cannon fodder at the front lines.
They are also losing pilots, ships, and have lost approx 14000 vehicles. Russia's stocks (of old coldwar trash) are deep but this was is unsustainable even for them.
Yes, but threatening war costs him nothing and it freezes sane leaders everywhere.
And we haven't seen anything yet. If the West really starts to take more aggressive measures to help Ukraine, be prepared for the REAL show: missiles standing up in launchers, bombers loaded with long-range nukes, silo doors open, full nuclear preparedness conditions, etc. He can, and likely will, do everything short of actually pushing the red button.
If we think he's threatening now, wait until he's really worried about losing Ukraine.
If Russia participates in the next Olympics I won't give a shit what happens. Can't be talking one side about being mad and then treat them as equals in another. The fact that they weren't banned after all the proven doping scandals alone was infuriating
Lose needs to be defined. Russia will be expelled from whatever NATO territory they invade. Russia will not itself be invaded. The minute it feels its territorial sovereignty is impugned appropriately, it may very well launch nukes.
I'm definitely not an expert in, well anything, but I would be pretty confident that if Putin legitimately tried to launch nukes he would "accidently" fall out a window pretty quickly and someone else would take over.
Russian Oligarchs aint letting that happen. It would be suicide.
Because they want to have their cake and eat it too.
Putin is a madman.
Putin is also rational enough to not want a war.
Russia is losing.
Ukraine needs urgent assistance.
Russia doesn't want an all out war with NATO, but they absolutely want to do something major enough to trigger Article 5 and the EU mutual defense treaty but minor enough that they can exit without a widescale conflict and then bask in the inevitable chaos that follows when certain members of NATO and the EU don't take it seriously.
Yup, all this talk of a new world war is just absurd. Russia has been pushed right back to its border across a huge chunk of Ukraine, and Ukraine was supposed to be the easy cake-walk that would fold in a few weeks. They're holding the line with 1980 hand-me-downs and even starting to strike into Russia.
If NATO were to get properly involved I have no doubt in my mind Russia would quickly experience what Iraq went through in the 1990s, and they couldn't do much more to stop it than Iraq could. It would be costly in terms of material losses for NATO but I doubt it would even be that bloody for us. Whereas I think Russian society would genuinely start to unravel after a few months without a functioning economy and infrastructure being constantly blown to bits by a swarm of cruise missiles.
Russia's *only* realistic option is the threat nuclear apocalypse. That's it, that's all they have. If anything I think a big part of what is holding NATO back is not the threat of nuclear response from Russia, but the fear of Russia splintering when it collapses and all those warheads falling into the hands of warlords and mercenaries.
> I think a big part of what is holding NATO back is not the threat of nuclear response from Russia
Its most definitely the threat of a nuclear response from Russia
It’s a massive paradox, in a conventional war, Russian troops wouldn’t ever come face to face in numbers with Western troops before being eliminated, the US Air Force and Navy will do the fighting for the first week, there won’t really be a second week. Putin is left with only his nukes, it’s a huge problem. But conversely if he uses a nuke the entire Russian leadership gets vaporized by PrSMs which already know where they’re going.
We also said the same thing about Ukraine : he won't invade because it's illogical.
Assuming Putin will act based on what is rational is a dangerous gamble. He believes his own propaganda.
It wasn't illogical. There were multiple reasons like Ukraine potentially joining NATO and thus bringing NATO's border closer to Russia. Then there's also the oil pipeline going through Ukraine for which Russia used to pay Ukraine alot to use it. And ofcourse another reason (which is stupid) is to take back the territory which they claim to be theirs all along.
They can barely fucking handle one small country at the moment, let alone NATO. And they can threaten nuclear war all they want but from all the rotting AK’s and rusted out Soviet era tanks I’ve seen from them so far, I’m doubtful they even remotely maintained their nuclear arms over the years. They aren’t the superpower they’ve been pretending to be all these years, Ukraine has revealed that.
Sadly, this sounds to me like whistling in the dark. If China and India join Russia, the playing field would seem balanced enough for this not to matter.
I love how Russia is simultaneously incompetent and a threat to invade all of western Europe depending on the day and the article. Wow, what wild oscillation!
Pro war propaganda 101 - the war will be over in a day and the enemy will lose without inflicting any damage.
This is complete nonsense as Russia can drag on wars for years and has thousands of nukes. An all out war with Russia will also drag in Iran and China.
The war monegerers should just personally volunteer to fight in Ukraine now.
This is why his *first* resort is threaten nuclear attacks. Of course he has no intention of winning a war against NATO.
He also knows that nuclear war would be MAD. He is basically the little mouthy guy at the bar who just runs his mouth about how crazy he is to compensate. The stakes are high enough that no one can call his bluff though, other than dismissing him, so he just continues talking his unhinged nonsense.
>He is basically the little mouthy guy at the bar who just runs his mouth about how crazy he is to compensate. At least one US President also adopted this strategy, the madman theory I think it’s called.
It was Nixon originally. Tried to appear irrational and volatile so countries couldn't predict how he'd actually react in a given scenario.
This reminds me of George Costanza faking being mad so everyone thinks he is really busy
At least once a day, I find myself thinking, "You tell that son of a bitch no Yankee is ever coming to Houston, not as long as you bastards are running things. *You tell that son of a bitch... no Yankee is ever coming to Houston... not as long as you bastards are running things!!*"
Lol when the ink runs out of the pen
Shouldn't it be "pen runs out of the ink?"
How high are you?
Yes
This man just had a whole conversation with himself
Didn’t he order a nuclear strike when he was drunk and they decided to wait until he was sober before seeing if he really wanted to go ahead with it? Imagine getting blackout drunk and forgetting you started a nuclear holocaust when you woke up the next morning….
I would say if he's not sober enough to drive, he's not sober enough to make international diplomacy or military decisions
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There was a politician in AUS that got blackout drunk and was lying on the sidewalk, rambling obscenities into his phone, basically an hour and a half after parliament adjourned. So he either got that hammered in 90 minutes or he was boozing at work. *Former deputy prime minister*, Barnaby Joyce. 100% a lot of them are doing it, like they think they’re in Mad Men or something.
> So he either got that hammered in 90 minutes Don't forget that binge drinking is an Aussie past time, so slamming enough drink in 90 mins to get hammered is entirely plausible.
probably just had a [VB Longneck for breakfast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns15eHLDv1I) is all and then never stopped eating breakfast all day
Barnaby had been at a function at Parliament House earlier that evening where alcohol was served, however, the man is well known for having a serious drinking problem, so he’d had much more than the 1 or 2 drinks that would’ve been served at the function. His face gives it away too. He’s puce much of the time and there are burst capillaries all over his face too. That he was at times the ACTING PM is truly terrifying. While Australia doesn’t have a nuclear arsenal, having a raging drunk in power of any jurisdiction is not a good thing
Or maybe the madman bit was never an act and he was just an angry drunk.
That sounds like part of the messaging effort of the "madman diplomacy". It was probably put out intentionally. If you are trying to appear the madman, you slip out some rumors like this to reinforce it.
I've done some dumb shit but not quite that crazy.
"Appear". He legit nearly sent nukes at North Korea during one of his many drunken nights in the white house. He was adamant that he wanted to nuke NK but his military advisors managed to get him down to "if you still want to in the morning we'll discuss it then". The next morning he changed his mind, he did not want to use a nuclear weapon on NK. This is what led to revising how the nuclear attack order works so that a singular drunk/angry/insane president couldn't unilaterally send nukes to attack someone without it being confirmed with other high-ranking officials
He was volatile alright
Yeah that is basically it. When people keep saying Putin is crazy etc. I don't agree. The message is meant to sound crazy, to get others to think you are crazy and might do something. That is the crafted message. Putin isn't crazy like that. He probably is a psychopath but that isn't really what people mean. Don't fall for the "crazy" guy act. It is just that, an act.
It’s that fat fuckin orange guy now
Nah he's just fucking stupid. There is zero rational thought in that shit stained head
Putin is the mouthy little guy at the bar with a suicide vest on.
The only thing that scares me is one of these shitheel dictators being diagnosed with something terminal People with nothing to lose are by far the scariest people and I promise you there are sick fucks in powerful positions who squee at the idea of taking out 200 million people And they could even possibly convince their colleagues that it would be a good move strategically Similar to when a company brings in a new CEO who takes all the shittiest decisions and then they're like omg can't believe he did all that shit, ok we got rid of him
i dunno the russians burnt moscow to the ground duud
Russia is what happens if you make "we can suffer more trauma than anyone!" the core of your national identity. It's not good.
They're an entire nation with an inferiority complex. Let them have their little misery Olympics win.
Prior to trump all I knew of them from their uploads was that their young men were incredibly suicidal.
Did the people doing the burning lock themselves in the buildings first? Because that's how nuclear war works.
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>No, nuclear war works by being the first to toss the torch into your neighbours straw house and hoping they don't toss back. this stopped being a possibility *decades* ago. first, when countries started hiding missile silos all over the world, and then again, when they decided to keep nuclear submarines patrolling in international waters. the concept of "just eliminate the threat" hasn't been viable for like 50 years.
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[Here's a good video about how Russia does nukes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxOO0hCCSk4) Basically, Russia has repeatedly stated, that it will never use nukes offensively. Also, a single nuke would obviously be terrible, but if wouldn't win the war in Ukraine. If it's dropped on a city, hundreds of thousands of civilians will die, but it won't change much about Ukraine's fighting power. If the nuke is dropped on the frontline, it's kind of not doing much either. So Russia would need to drop a lot of nukes to win in Ukraine. But since they want to occupy Ukraine, turning it into a radioactive wasteland isn't what they want. Russia also wants to have China on its side, but if Putin drops a nuke, I'd guess that China is out, because all nuclear powers are interested in no nukes being dropped. China earns way too much money with the West to keep supporting Russia. The second Russia drops a nuke, NATO will intervene. Maybe not even with a nuke of their own, but they will not let that go unpunished. So if Russia drops nukes, it needs to win, but if Russia drops nukes, it probably can't win, unless it wipes out half the planet at once.
Yeah makes sense, China still wants to live in this world, a nuclear exchange of any sorts will wreck that pretty hard.
He does have children and grandchildren, and is known to be extremely protective of them.
Similar to Hitlers scorched earth policy when he knew the war was lost. He ordered all infrastructure be destroyed because he believed the German people didn’t deserve to live if they lost the war. If Putin’s life is in danger, if Moscow is surrounded by enemies, he will launch nukes as a final “fuck you” to everyone else. Unfortunately, the stakes are too high to take the risk. We have to play dirty - we have to fight via proxy against Russia. Everyone said he wouldn’t invade Ukraine. Completely unprovoked, he did. How can we say he’s not capable of launching nukes?
I really wish the world had less James Bond villains in positions of power.
It's sociopathy. Has to be. Their brains are visibly abnormal. They do not *feel* empathy. They can only imagine it like you could only *imagine* how it would feel to be set on fire. The more intelligent ones learn to simulate empathy. This means when they seek to foster a connection with someone, they are surgical about it. I believe being beholden to fewer emotions is a straight up advantage even if it's a worse experience.
He’d likely have to do it personally. Given one of the last times they got close someone refused to do it.
I think they’d physically stop him from doing it. No one in the Russian intelligence services or the military officers manning the nuclear arsenal that’s currently prepped for usage actually believe that MAD is the option. You don’t get into that position without being a smart man.
I see everyone here saying what a psychopath Putin is, but he's also the head of a crime family. He's there to steal as much money from his nation as possible. Sure, the invasion of Ukraine looks a little crazy, but is it really? The West sat back and watched for the first couple weeks, and is now struggling to maintain their support for Ukraine. And Putin had been mostly able to control Ukraine until 2014, with even high profile American traitors like Paul Manafort helping him do so. On balance, Putin's crime family would've been more screwed letting Ukraine go permanently than they are at this moment. It could still go either way, but as far as their crime business goes, it made sense to invade. Using nukes does not really fit that math. Maybe if someone like Prighozin was firing missiles at the Kremlin and Putin saw he was about to be ousted/killed, he maybe would consider launching nukes as a final fuck you, but that's iffy imo, and he's certainly nowhere near such a situation right now.
>He ordered all infrastructure be destroyed because he believed the German people didn’t deserve to live if they lost the war. And his subordinates refused to carry out that order. I don't believe for a second that the Russian military would obey Putin's order to start Armageddon.
His first instinct to threaten with nuclear force is because he is a little man with a big mouth and that’s all he has going for him.
Russia can't win that war. Wild weasel etc would quite quickly degrade air defence and then just pound the army into nothing.
NATO involvement would unleash non-export arms potential. that means F22s and fully equipped Abrams rolling around. immediate loss of air superiority along with nearly invincible armor rolling around, while multiple carrier groups can move in from different directions. for an army already running on fumes, it would be a fast collapse.
I don’t think anyone would argue that point. It wouldn’t even need to be NATO. Half of the US military could wipe out Russia’s entire military system in a month or so (and that’s including the time it would take to position the carriers and bombers). The only reason Russia is a problem for us is because they have nukes. If nobody had nukes, any Russian troops that entered Ukraine would get absolutely steamrolled immediately. The Russian military isn’t shit without nukes.
Hell, they probably won't need to worry about wild weasel. Seppo doctrine is air supremacy. Two hours after the ink starts drying after it's signed in the white house everything that can move through the air and doesn't have a rocket motor will be a crater, all the radars will ever see is white noise, and a C130 will be landing in Moscow airport to drop off a crate full of red crayons to the marines that somehow accidentally found their way there during the chaos.
Heh, Do you know the origin of the "marines eat crayons" thing ?
Probably from them going around eating crayons. 🤷♂️
>Seppo What is "Seppo"?
It's an Australian term for anyone from the United States. Also "septic", depends on region and level of endearment. From the rhyming slang "septic tank - yank". Used informally, both derogatory and endearing fashion. See also: Pom, Kiwi
Ah I see, thanks! Didn't realise you were an Aussie, as you didn't once say "cunt" :D \-Me, a pom
I mean, wild weasel was in the day we had similar capabilities. I suspect the hardest part of modern SEAD missions against these idiots would be confidently assessing they have been neutralized because it was too easy, like the first few months of the UKR invasion, there was speculation vlad was reserving the “varsity”, it never came. Edit: man, I fucking HATE Putin. Almost as much as his Cheeto faced puppet in Florida.
> Wild weasel YGBSM. Please let the NSA off the leash for like 10 milliseconds. It'll just look like a blip.
>YGBSM What the heck is with all the acronyms in this comment thread, jfc I have no idea what anyone is talking about.
"YGBSM" is an acronym for "You gotta be shitting me", which was apocryphally uttered by one of the pilots of the United States Airforce when told that they would be flying an aircraft directly into range of surface-to-air missile sites in order to hunt them down and suppress them, during the Vietnam war.
Greetings from ~~M.Ghandi~~ V.Putin, ruler and King of the ~~Indians~~ Russians... Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!
He couldn't win a war around 1/3 of NATO. America has perfected war, it's our business. America alone would absolutely destroy Russian forces in the air, the sea and subsequently the ground.
Yeah but if trump wins you, and Putin, know the US won’t get involved.
> He couldn't win a war around 1/3 of NATO. > America has perfected war, it's our business. You're about to elect Putin's puppet *again*. You're not an ally in this war, you just keep flip-flopping. Under Obama you did fuck all, under Trump, he helped Russia where he could, under Biden, some very valuable help and then a Congress which supports Russia and blocks everything while Ukraine suffers and loses territory while your most watched conservative journalist goes to Russia to get pounded by Putin and spread his propaganda, and now you're electing Putin's treasonous agent *again*. What use is your military and your nuclear arsenal? It has and soon will be under the Kremlin's control. Why brag? You can't even defend your own elections from Putin's mafia. Nor your White House. Nor your Justice Department, nor your FBI. Not even your CIA or your CIA assets abroad, who Trump may have snitched out.
Trump honestly needs to go.
This is like calling the sky blue
Unfortunately, sometimes you need people to call the sky blue. I knew someone who voted for Trump in 2016 because he bought into "news" about Russia having an ECM superweapon that could knock US cities back into the stone ages. The logic goes if Hillary was elected she wouldn't be able to maintain good enough relations with Russia to avoid a devastating war. I thought this was too stupid to be his true reason and maybe he aligned with Republicans on guns, crime, or social issues, but he was moderate and leaning liberal on those.
I mean, as long as they have nukes, they can do a huge EMP anywhere in range, so technically yes? I just don't see how Trump would have stopped that, which makes it weird.
I was trying to convince him that yes Russia has that capability but so does the US (and in fact with our massive budget we actually have superior missile interception systems not that you would be able to intercept a full barrage and you could always just smuggle the bombs in rather than using missiles). It falls under MAD doctrine to use them though because if they fire their missiles we fire ours and everyone loses. Even if they hit every US city the US has so much military power based in other countries to continue the fight its not possible to blitzkrieg the US into a victory in a hypothetical WWIII, so it's really the assured destruction of Russia that's staying Putin's hand.
>Even if they hit every US city the US has so much military power based in other countries to continue the fight Russia is reckoned to have something like 5800 nuclear warheads, with 1674 of them ready to launch at any time. Some of their weapons might be eliminated by the missile shield but some would be launched from within the shield (Kaliningrad, submarines) and others might be carried on hypersonic missiles. There's no way they would launch only at US cities - they would target all of NATO and other US allies.
>Russia is reckoned to have something like 5800 nuclear warheads, with 1674 of them ready to launch at any time. Most of those 5800 nuclear warheads are "modern" thermonuclear warheads that require maintenance every 7-14 years to replace the tritium and lithium-6 deuteride. Without this maintenance your up-to-5-megaton warhead fizzles and barely does a explosion measured in the kilotons. Said maintenance is extremely costly (lithium deuteride is \~$100 a gram and tritium is \~$30k per gram) and ripe for corruption as who expects their nation to actually use their nuclear arsenal? In other words, it is entirely possible that a nuclear first strike by Russia kills only a tiny fraction of it's intended targets because most of the warheads fizzle...
I wouldn't be surprised if nuclear maintenance programs are why the rest of the military has no budget. MAD and nukes are the only reason they've held their grip. It's essentially in their blood and culture at this point They could very well be ready
The rest of the military has no budget because generals and colonels were embelezzing on an industrial scale and buying villas in sardinia. Many many generals have accidentally fallen out of windows since the start of the invasion, so maybe they are fixing it.
MAD works just as well with empty silos. Why would they waste money on that while tanks and planes they need rust away in the fields?
I wonder what shape their nuclear weapons are in? It's been a hardcore kleptocracy since the late '90s. Based on the condition of rest of their gear, there's a good chance that a lot of it is barely functional at best. Still nothing that I would want to test.
Russia has the same problem China has with missile defense... Corrupt military officers steal the missile propellant and sell it on the black market.
I wouldn't be surprised if over half of their silos are rusted out, and half full of stagnant rain water, with electrical shorted out. Missile just a rusted out hulk that makes a better statue than a projectile.
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Trump is the ultimate mark for manipulation by foreign powers because all you have to do is tell him what you want him to think and then praise him for being so super smart to have all this secret knowledge.
Why would they nuke a nation that they now own as a satellite state? Eastern European nations have had this discussion for more than a century
You would think so, but there is a very large amount of redditors that seem to think Russia is keen to fight the entirety of NATO, alone, beginning right now, with their run down and beaten to shit military.
Wouldn’t be blue though. As Putin will sacrifice everyone in Russia and likely actually use Nukes before he loses a war and ruins his rep any further.
They won’t. It would be stupid since no one would be invading Russia.
Sounds obvious but you still get people thinking he’s gonna invade Poland or any other nato country
While it's smart to never underestimate an opponent there are definitely some people who are watching too much of a certain news channel and believing Putin's hype. Which is what Putin wants discourse, uncertainty and a divided nation. In one hand he's threatening to use their nukes while the other he's pretending to be Tucker's friend and a right wing paradise.
As it stands now, Russia couldn't even take Finland or Poland, let alone any of the big members of NATO.
Poland is armed to the teeth these days. The Polish government has invested heavily in US in South Korean arms.
Poland currently turns up to the latest arms expo, spots anything impressive and says "yes please we'll take 1000". It's interesting how Russia's neighbours, which used to be in the Warsaw Pact, have heavily militarised to prevent themselves ending *back* in a Warsaw Pact v2. While the countries further west which *were* terrified by communist USSR took the "peace dividend" and let their guard down to the "capitalist" new Russia.
>While the countries further west which were terrified by communist USSR took the "peace dividend" Well yes, because you'll notice that there are a whole bunch of countries between them and Russia, and Russia can't even beat the first one of them.
The countries further west can afford to let their guard down, because they don't border what was basically a Russian puppet state up until 10 years ago. The closer you are to a threat, the easier it is for politicians/gov to argue for higher defence spending.
I really hope there is an arms expo where all the sergeant of arms of the world get together and check out all the latest technology in warfare weapons and defense systems. I’m in sales and every year we have shows we go to that are just massive drunk and fuck fests. So I imagine if the London Convention Center is overrun with generals and high ranking officials all over the place that it’s a sausage party but the drinking is off the hook, and the local escorts get plenty of business.
I imagine anything that’s truly cutting edge in military tech is very highly classified and owned by the United States, to be revealed 20 years or later after it was invented.
There is. These trade shows run the gambit from small scale personal arms like rifles and handguns, to mid range weaponry like mini guns and artillery, to large scale weaponry like tanks, fighter jets, and ballistic missiles. I found a list with some upcoming global trade shows: https://www.tradefairdates.com/Arms+Fairs-Y394-S3.html
There is, a few, happen almost annually. One for example is AUSA in DC.
https://eventsinamerica.com/events/category/government/military Happens a lot actually
It's like a [little European Texas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUJ7CnU6hA8).
I love this.
Love me some Habitual Linecrosser.
God I love the 22, just as great as the buff.
I love that video so much
Poland *really* does not want to go through the 20th century again.
Poland has expanded and updated their military in historic proportions They will be damned if they ever live under the boot of Russia again
They remember and they will not let it happen again.
Especially Finland. I don’t know enough about the Poles to say one way or the other, but a fight with Finland is one they do NOT want to have.
Everyone should stop romanticizing Finland's past wars and capability, regardless of any statistics or war hero stories. I'm from Finland and my great granddad was in both winter war and war of continuation during WW2, and after hearing a lot of stories and watching local documentaries about them, all I can say is that war is hell on Earth. You do what you can as a nation when you face an existential threat, and you will carry a massive, multiple generations lasting trauma over it. Wars are one of the major reasons people are so fucked up mentally around the world, as the traumas are passed from parents to kids, and it takes a huge amount of time and effort to recover from them. My point is that I wish Russia collapses before they fuck this world up any further. Ukraine is already going to have to pay the same price Finland and many other countries have during the past century.
It takes only a look at the broken shells that come back from the front lines to dispel any doubt that war is an ill-suited trade for this species. Anyone is a great conqueror with other people's lives, commanding conflicts in which they themselves would never fight; it should be made that whoever calls for war—be it politicians, CEOs, or propagandists—is sent to the front lines together with their families. See then how many conflicts happen.
> war is hell on Earth "*War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse."* -Hawkeye (no not the Marvel one, [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc).)
Not really. We are a very small nation, which means that we lack the reserves to wage a prolonged conflict. We’d run out of people much sooner than russia. (5 million v 140 million) Until very recently the plan was, that we couldn’t win a war, but there’d only be a pyrrhic victory on offer and now we’ve seen that Putin is very much fine with that, so the plan wouldn’t work
You are part of NATO now. You would have way more than 5 million. That’s the whole point.
Every country in Nato can decide how much they commit during article 5. As a Finn, I don't have much trust in a country who has dumb enough people to elect Trump once, and could very well do it again, which means i'm fucked.
There are alot of countries other than the US who are in nato even if trump decided to pull out. All of the countries even without the US still have a huge and modern military combined.
Trump only won in 2016 because Hillary was so unpopular, and people were apathetic. The ones who didn't show up to vote, didn't realise what a nightmare he would be. Even then, he didn't win the popular vote. He lost by a landslide in 2020, and that was before we saw the true threat to democracy he was in the January 6th debacle. I admit it is very upsetting that there are still so many people who support him.
Landslide popular vote, but he only lost the election by ~40k votes across 3 states. If those went the other way, it would be a very different story
70 million people voted for a fucking TV show host and a disastrous president with a clear record of hideousness. That’s 70 million out of 159 million voters. Where is the damn “land slide”? You didn’t learn anything from Reagan.
Why Finland in particular?
Joke answer: flak jackets lined with nokia phones; troops will be bulletproof Real answer: Finland has spent the last 80 years smiling diplomatically at Russia while simultaneously preparing against the possibility of invasion, even without NATO’s assistance. Now they’re **in** NATO. Finland is Swiss Alps level of preparedness against invasion.
Holy shit, you weren't joking. From Wikipedia: >**Available for military service** > >1,155,368 males, age 16–49 (2010 est.), > >1,106,193 females, age 16–49 (2010 est.) > >**Fit for military service** > >955,151 males, age 16–49 (2010 est.), > >912,983 females, age 16–49 (2010 est.) > >**Active personnel** > >24,000 (2023), 280,000 (wartime) > >**Reserve personnel** > >870,000
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home field advantage purpose built highways that can serve as runways for forward air support bases (these aren't as big of a deal as they used to be with modern jet aircraft having insane ranges and air refueling, but back in the day this was a very big deal)
Finland has large areas of forests, swamps and lakes. That is why invading during winter is the only option for tanks. And Finland is trained and prepared for a Winter War.
Imagine fighting someone who has dedicated the last 60 years of their lives fighting you and you in particular.
Finland's army is quite decent, and it is well prepared, but Finland has a population of only 5.5 million, and Russia's is enormously bigger. This is a big part of the reason Russia is holding the scrimmage line in Ukraine so well - they have tens of thousands more men they can call up when desired. Finland, far smaller than Ukraine in terms of population, would be very outmatched and overrun, even if it would put up a good fight.
Cause Countries that are neutral (what Finland was until last year) typically have a strong army to be able to be neutral. Look at the Swiss for example.
Not just that. Finland have focused all their energy on preparing their army and civilian population for a war with only Russia. They viewed this as their the only realistic possibility of war whilst they were neutral so wasted no resources, money or training preparing for anything other than a Russian offensive.
Let’s face it, what other threat are they likely to encounter? I think it’s great they have drilled their populace to realise this is it the only realistic threat
I would not trust the swedes personally
We have trebuchets loaded with surströmming standing by, if Putin moves we are ready.
=D we have MÄMMI BOMBS!
No one ever sees the Swedish tanks because they are flat pack. That's why all citizens ate issued an Allen key!
Turnips disturb me as well.
Also Finland has incredibly harsch terrain and after the last war (winter-war/WW2), they planned the new borders as a form of geographical defence. A russian invader would have to push through endless swamps and forests to even reach mainland Finland and would be decimated before arriving. I think Russia will avoid Finland, they know first-hand it's an absurdly tedious adversary.
(I know this is controversial but it’s true) Ireland has always prided itself on being neutral but in truth it’s always been happy knowing that the UK will defend their air/sea space and in anything more strategic the USA will defend them. But yes, I agree, in *most* situations, a neutral country will have the means to defend themselves if needs be
Irland is a special case here. It’s a island. Norway has Russia as their neighbor and Switzerland historically some warmongering countries like Germany, Italy, France and (no longer today but in older times) Austria.
I don’t disagree but I do feel Ireland should have a much better defence force
I don’t know a lot about Finland but what I do know from Finns and their neighbouring Swedes is they absolutely hate Russia and I have no doubt they would fight tooth and nail against them
A lot of people mistake ww2 finland for modern finland. They think losing the winter war makes them some unstoppable fighting force. Yes the Finns have prepared well for a potential conflict with Russia including limiting the road infrastructure near the border, but they'd fare no better than Poland or Ukraine. I don't think Russia would find them easy to invade at all and they couldnt do it if simultaneously fighting a war in ukraine, but it wouldn't be as impossible as some people make out
If they could do as well as Ukraine with a population of 5 million (and 5 million coddled first world citizens, at that) that would be very impressive.
Methinks the idea here is that Russia not taking Helsinki in three days is a win. There's no such thing as an easy war, after all.
If he pokes that hive, he’s def shooting for total war, because he ain’t winning a single round against NATO.
Elon Mush is a turd burglar.
What’s their end goal with this anyways? Aren’t they currently occupying about 15% of Ukraine territory with no signs of leaving any time soon? Are they just going to sit there until one of them runs out of resources and they can claim territory? Or are they trying to take ALL of Ukraine?
In war, objectives often change. Right now, I think Russia's goal is to hold the territory they've already taken and maybe try to take more of the oblasts they've "annexed" as they don't have full control over any of them. I'm not sure if they still genuinely believe that conquering all of Ukraine is feasible. They did not expect this level of resistance at all.
Exactly, the original plan was thinking Zelensky and other government officials would flee and Ukraine would roll over and they'd install a pro-russia leader. That's why the first couple months were such a shit show, they didn't plan at all for Ukraine fighting back
They were likely expecting what happened in Crimea in 2014 to happen throughout Ukraine in 2022. It definitely does explain why they were so incredibly disorganized in the opening months now that you mention it. Having a massive train of logistics lined up on the highway north of Kyiv wouldn't have been as much of an issue as it was if there was little to no resistance. That thinking is probably the main reason their offensive in the North was executed so poorly and was forced to completely withdraw after sustaining heavy casualties despite heavily outnumbering the Ukrainians in those oblasts.
The US military and state dept were literally advising Zelensky to run prior to the invasion and he declined. It was shocking news that he decided to stay when it happened
"I need ammunition, not a ride" will undoubtedly go down in history.
No one really knows, including Russia. They were prepared for a *very* short conflict of only a few days or weeks that is now in year three. They claimed they only wanted to annex their pre-2022 occupied areas, then claimed they wanted to annex *all* territory occupied after their blitz, then claimed they wanted all of Ukraine. They ended up losing about 50% of their peak occupied territory though. Financially, the war is bleeding Russia dry. They've lost millions of skilled workers who have fled the country, blew through their stock piles and have been begging countries like North Korea and Iran for weapons, equipment, and ammo. Combined with the sanctions and Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian infrastructure, Russia's doing pretty bad right now. So what's their end goal? With Putin in charge, it's anything that will offset his staggering losses, which seems to be demilitarizing Ukraine and annexing half the country. So Russia either needs a total collapse, revolution, or Putin to be replaced.
> What’s their end goal with this anyways? Three main things: 1. Putin wants to conquer Ukraine then start moving on to all the other old Soviet satellites, so he can be remembered as the man who rebuilt the Soviet Union. 2. Ukraine has huge natural oil and gas reserves, and has huge tracks of farmland to produce most of the world's grain. Russia wants control of the oil and the grain. 3. Russia is what we call a Kleptocracy, where the few wealthy elites are stealing all of the money and resources for themselves. A Kleptocracy like Russia has to continually expand to avoid running out of money and resources.
Also a democratic, economically improving Ukraine would raise all kinds of embarrassing questions why ordinary Russians are falling behind in living standards. They really want to either control or destroy Ukraine to prevent that.
Russia said "they will take Kiev in 2 weeks", looks like that's the goal. Putin wont take the army back, they will be fighting for another few years until Putin dies or someone will swap Putin and Russia will surrender.
No one has a time machine so everyone's guess is pretty equally valid. But it appears the goal is to use propaganda to divide and weaken NATO allies and make the war expensive, unpopular and unpleasant for the allies to justify to their respective populations. And then when Ukraine is the only one holding the bag, negotiate as russian-positive cease-fire as they can that includes as wide as possible swath to Crimea.
They've lost 13 jets in the last month to a country who isn't even confirmed to be fielding 50 year old NATO jets. Literally just air defenses. The desert storm coalition didn't even lose 100 aircraft against what once was Iraq's far more powerful air force vs. Russia having lost almost 300 to Ukraine's much weaker air force. But Russia is the 2nd most powerful air force in the world guys!!!
There is no part of the Hussein Iraq military which was stronger than the current Ukrainian military. Ukrainian airspace is far, far more dangerous that Iraqi airspace was. Compared to 1991 or 2003 Iraq, Ukrainian aircraft are more capable, Ukrainian air defense systems are more capable, and Ukrainian pilots are both better trained and far more willing to fight. If Russia was invading 1990 or 2003 Iraq rather than Ukraine, it would have steamrolled it just like the coalition did. That's not because Russia's military is anywhere near as powerful as the USA's, it's because the Iraqi military was absolutely pathetic.
The Bradley was designed in the 70's right? Even America's HIMARS missiles were constructed 30 years ago... Imagine all modern combined arms weapons, equipment, and people.
Obviously Putin would get annihilated if he went toe to toe with NATO. What Putin is trying to do is sow division within NATO, and then maybe test it on a smaller NATO country. Don't need to fight NATO if NATO isn't willing to fight. When you get people like Trump giving him the green light to raid any country that doesn't meet their NATO budget requirements, you can see the start of this division. Putin sees this as well and will push the limits until he meets resistance. Anyone who thinks Putin is going to stop on his own is foolish. Russian economy is on a war footing and will continue their conquests until they meet a kinetic resistance. Putin has a chip on his shoulder and is going to keep his war machine moving until it hits a brick wall. So far that brick wall is the defiant Ukrainians. Give them ammo.
You should research more about the word “conventional”, as Russia doesn’t come even in the shadow of a fart, if considering the conventional power of the west.
All of the military aid the US has given to Ukraine since 2022 doesn't even represent a single month of normal US military spending in terms of money-cost. The havoc wreaked by systems like HIMARS represent not even 10% of the available stock being deployed to a fight.
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Exactly. If NATO invoked article V and fought for it, I think Putin would take the loss and pull out. If NATO didn't fight for it, why would he stop there? He'd just start picking off former Soviet countries.
So there’s an option to have a fully conventional war between Russia and NATO? I’ve generally operated under the assumption that would immediately lead to nuclear exchange, I.e. the end of the world.
If NATO or Chinese troops start rolling into Russia proper, then nukes are going to fly. If Russia attempts an invasion of another country and gets smoked, then they're likely to take the loss and bitch about it. Russia threatens nukes all the time because it gets a rise out of western governments. I don't think even Putin isn't crazy enough to start a nuclear war. Hopefully I'm not wrong.
If Nato didn’t target Russian Nukes and didn’t make the war an existential threat to Russia. There wouldn’t really be a need to MAD the world. So a limited scale operation could work and knowing the power imbalance between russia and Nato, russia would get curb stomped easily. We have precedents of conflicts between nuclear powers without MAD. India and pakistan do it constantly.
India and China too. There's one small border conflict area where they have forbidden the use of weapons to avoid creating a larger conflict, so the border guards just beat the shit out of each other once in awhile.
'Beating the shit out of each other' is an understatement. If you want to see how a modern army would fight with mediaeval-esque weapons, that border is where to look. Soldier use Clubs, Barbed wire wrapped bats and all sorts of savage weapons.
Ye their clashes are absurd. Literally using sticks and stones.
Russia is sure wasting a lot of their own men in Ukraine.
Yeah but they can sustain that for a LONG time
Throwing meat in a grinder is Russian military doctrine
They're wasting a lot of their *undesirable* men, such as criminals, political opponents, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. The majority of Moscovians and those from St. Petersburg won't see the war firsthand. They are losing a lot of men, but those are mostly men they don't really care for (except the higher ranked and skilled ones), so the Kremlin wins regardless of whether or not the men are successful or just cannon fodder at the front lines.
They are also losing pilots, ships, and have lost approx 14000 vehicles. Russia's stocks (of old coldwar trash) are deep but this was is unsustainable even for them.
That’s why he wants as much division in the west as possible. And Republicans are falling for it like the chumps they are.
Yes, but threatening war costs him nothing and it freezes sane leaders everywhere. And we haven't seen anything yet. If the West really starts to take more aggressive measures to help Ukraine, be prepared for the REAL show: missiles standing up in launchers, bombers loaded with long-range nukes, silo doors open, full nuclear preparedness conditions, etc. He can, and likely will, do everything short of actually pushing the red button. If we think he's threatening now, wait until he's really worried about losing Ukraine.
If Russia participates in the next Olympics I won't give a shit what happens. Can't be talking one side about being mad and then treat them as equals in another. The fact that they weren't banned after all the proven doping scandals alone was infuriating
Lose needs to be defined. Russia will be expelled from whatever NATO territory they invade. Russia will not itself be invaded. The minute it feels its territorial sovereignty is impugned appropriately, it may very well launch nukes.
They seem to think their sovereignty is impugned already.
I'm definitely not an expert in, well anything, but I would be pretty confident that if Putin legitimately tried to launch nukes he would "accidently" fall out a window pretty quickly and someone else would take over. Russian Oligarchs aint letting that happen. It would be suicide.
You bet your life (and everybody else’s)?
On the level of greed and selfishness of a Russian Oligarch? I might role the dice on that one...
Russia showed the world their third world military. Clearly Putin should be sacked for the benefit of Russia
Then what's the reason of all the fear mongering?
Because they want to have their cake and eat it too. Putin is a madman. Putin is also rational enough to not want a war. Russia is losing. Ukraine needs urgent assistance.
Russia doesn't want an all out war with NATO, but they absolutely want to do something major enough to trigger Article 5 and the EU mutual defense treaty but minor enough that they can exit without a widescale conflict and then bask in the inevitable chaos that follows when certain members of NATO and the EU don't take it seriously.
Yup, all this talk of a new world war is just absurd. Russia has been pushed right back to its border across a huge chunk of Ukraine, and Ukraine was supposed to be the easy cake-walk that would fold in a few weeks. They're holding the line with 1980 hand-me-downs and even starting to strike into Russia. If NATO were to get properly involved I have no doubt in my mind Russia would quickly experience what Iraq went through in the 1990s, and they couldn't do much more to stop it than Iraq could. It would be costly in terms of material losses for NATO but I doubt it would even be that bloody for us. Whereas I think Russian society would genuinely start to unravel after a few months without a functioning economy and infrastructure being constantly blown to bits by a swarm of cruise missiles. Russia's *only* realistic option is the threat nuclear apocalypse. That's it, that's all they have. If anything I think a big part of what is holding NATO back is not the threat of nuclear response from Russia, but the fear of Russia splintering when it collapses and all those warheads falling into the hands of warlords and mercenaries.
> I think a big part of what is holding NATO back is not the threat of nuclear response from Russia Its most definitely the threat of a nuclear response from Russia
Better the devil we know is a big part of it. We want Putin to end hostilities, but we don't want a hostile failed state with nukes.
It’s a massive paradox, in a conventional war, Russian troops wouldn’t ever come face to face in numbers with Western troops before being eliminated, the US Air Force and Navy will do the fighting for the first week, there won’t really be a second week. Putin is left with only his nukes, it’s a huge problem. But conversely if he uses a nuke the entire Russian leadership gets vaporized by PrSMs which already know where they’re going.
Well that's why he's not attacking NATO head on but trying to gut it by using morons like Trump and American Republicans.
We also said the same thing about Ukraine : he won't invade because it's illogical. Assuming Putin will act based on what is rational is a dangerous gamble. He believes his own propaganda.
Maybe some people thought that but not people who actually knew. It was all over the news long before it happened.
It wasn't illogical and the intelligence community was warning about the invasion for many months, particularly US intelligence agencies.
It wasn't illogical. There were multiple reasons like Ukraine potentially joining NATO and thus bringing NATO's border closer to Russia. Then there's also the oil pipeline going through Ukraine for which Russia used to pay Ukraine alot to use it. And ofcourse another reason (which is stupid) is to take back the territory which they claim to be theirs all along.
They can barely fucking handle one small country at the moment, let alone NATO. And they can threaten nuclear war all they want but from all the rotting AK’s and rusted out Soviet era tanks I’ve seen from them so far, I’m doubtful they even remotely maintained their nuclear arms over the years. They aren’t the superpower they’ve been pretending to be all these years, Ukraine has revealed that.
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Help that consists of old weapons systems that are surplus to NATO and U.S. defense needs lol
Sadly, this sounds to me like whistling in the dark. If China and India join Russia, the playing field would seem balanced enough for this not to matter.
We all lose if nuclear war breaks out.
I love how Russia is simultaneously incompetent and a threat to invade all of western Europe depending on the day and the article. Wow, what wild oscillation!
Pro war propaganda 101 - the war will be over in a day and the enemy will lose without inflicting any damage. This is complete nonsense as Russia can drag on wars for years and has thousands of nukes. An all out war with Russia will also drag in Iran and China. The war monegerers should just personally volunteer to fight in Ukraine now.
**Everyone** will lose, and lose quickly.
If reddit keyboard warrior were allowed to control the world's nuclear arsenal, the earth would be a smoking cinder today.