4 ms·

If this is Russia, what are we going to do? It sounds like we (European governments, NATO etc). Need a much larger naval presence in the Baltic. But do we even

If this is Russia, what are we going to do? It sounds like we (European governments, NATO etc). Need a much larger naval presence in the Baltic. But do we even posess the navy to do that between us? Edit: I'm afraid it is time for much greater military expansion in Europe

the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
> If this is Russia, what are we going to do? We have pretty much 10 years of experience to go by here: nothing. At least Europe won't. If anything the most likely outcome is for everybody to hope that Trump somehow ends this conflict and within 10 years everything goes back to where it was, and we're buddy-buddy with our dictatorship neighbors again.
- trhway 2y ago
  It wouldn't go back to where it was. Russia is like a very large iceberg detaching itself from the civilization. The only issue is where the break-line is going to be. >At least Europe won't There are different parts of Europe. While for example Germany is relatively safe and relaxed, Poland is buying, on its own money, 1000 tanks form South Korea (among the best ones), jets, including F-35, etc. as it wants to stay on the civilization side of the break-line.
  - the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
    Don't forget that plenty European countries made business with the USSR too. Also quite a number of EU members are quickly detaching themselves from democracy and a functional state. You don't have to look much farther than Hungary, Slovakia and even Austria to see that the trajectory this whole thing is on, is not a great one. Many European countries will be happy even with a much degraded Russia for as long as it supplies Gas and other natural resources for cheap.
    - trhway 2y ago
      The USSR had clear separation border between the West and the Eastern Block. >Many European countries will be happy even with a much degraded Russia They would be. Only it isn't just good old much degraded Russia like it was even in 2020 (as the Russian opposition calls it "vegetarian times"). It is now a fascist state with a nationalism as its political ideology. By its nature such regime is an aggressively expansive.
      - the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
        > The USSR had clear separation border between the West and the Eastern Block. And yet, the USSR was a massive energy supplier to Europe. The gas pipelines supplied the west long before the fall of it.
        trhway 2y ago
        yes, that is the point of good firewall - to allow safe, for whatever each side understand as safe, well defined and controlled flow/exchange. As i said the current issue being decided is where that firewall will be.
    - lostmsu 2y ago
      Can you elaborate on Austria?
- m0llusk 2y ago
  Continuing to starve them as a nation using sanctions is not nothing.
  - XajniN 2y ago
    It’s as good as nothing. It’s a place where suffering is constant, and losing is not acceptable.
  - xenospn 2y ago
    Russian supermarkets seem full and the trains run on time. I doubt anyone east of Moscow even thinks about the war in Ukraine very often. This won’t change until actual sanctions are in place. What we have now is just child’s play.
csomar 2y ago
One possibility is that the West is already doing something (Russia pipeline, Russians boats recently "sinking", etc...) and the warfare is already in motion.
- nuccy 2y ago
  The two recently sunken tankers sunk because of bad weather and russian negligence and lack of any common sense on safety - they were super old (built in 60s) river tankers, which are narrow but long. So to make them "sea worthy" they need to be shortened so a section in the middle is cut away and two halves are rewelded back [1]. These tankers were never designed for the high seas at all especially during stormy conditions. They had brocken on exactly that weld spilling thousands of tonnes of oil and mazout. Handling of this ecological trajedy by russian government is nonexistent - while having resources to handle it, there is no will at all in doing that, no care neither about sea life nor about their own people. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/15/two-russian-tankers-sink-in-black-sea-spilling-oil https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/15/two-russian-ta...
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    They're up to five ships sunk now, and the last one was a relatively new ship that was actually built for the ocean instead of inland waterways. Probably still all accidents. Probably.
    - tim333 2y ago
      Mail headline: >Sunk Putin cargo ship was victim of sabotage that sparked three explosions onboard, Russians believe as Ukraine vows more attacks Sorry about it being the Daily Mail but I think the info is quite likely correct. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14227007/Sunk-Putin-cargo-ship-victim-sabotage-sparked-three-explosions-onboard-Russians-believe-Ukraine-vows-attacks.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14227007/Sunk-Putin... Though as it says probably Ukraine's doing rather than the EUs.
nuccy 2y ago
The answer is: nothing. Russian drones and cruise missiles fall on Nato soil already and enter its airspace on a regular basis, though so far unintentionally. E.g.: 1. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/romania-detects-another-drone-breaching-its-territory-ministry-says-2024-10-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/romania-detects-another... 2. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-army-says-object-entered-poland-during-russian-attack-ukraine-2024-08-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-army-says-object... 3. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/russian-drone-debris-found-in-romania,-nato-says-no-sign-of-intentional-attack/84918631 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/russian-drone-debris-found-in-r...
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Ignoring plausibly accidental transgressions is preferable to war. Article 5 only gets triggered if NATO members want it to be, and even then the nature of their response is left to the member nations to decide for themselves. NATO isn't some sort of automatic deadhand system meant to start WW3 over an accident like in Doctor Strangelove. Incidentally, Russia is behaving in roughly the same way; they talk a lot of shit about, for instance, western weapons being used against targets in Russian territory, but then when that happens anyway they issue more threats instead of starting WW3 in earnest like they threatened before. They don't really want that war either; if they did they're able to start it anytime they want, but they've got kids too.
  - lazide 2y ago
    That’s called appeasement, btw.
    - m0llusk 2y ago
      More like conflict management. That Chinese boat, for example, was apprehended. Responses are being ramped up in a controlled manner.
      - lazide 2y ago
        What do you think appeasement was? It was trying to be reasonable and avoid/manage conflict with a fundamentally unreasonable ‘partner’.
xenospn 2y ago
Maybe they can propose a subcommittee to discuss the possibility of negotiating a treaty between member states that will enable a proposition to vote on a measure to discuss possible actions. But I’m not hopeful.
- fsloth 2y ago
  Finnish special forces boarded the ship. The ”hold my beer” moment in dealing with Russia using a language they understand and listen to.
lnsru 2y ago
Europe will be worried like always is. And nothing will happen. My last job was at large German military contractor. My personal opinion is that this whole industry is made to consume government’s money in most inefficient way instead of building something for government.
- bmicraft 2y ago
  This doesn't read like the English I would expect from someone with German as their mother tongue.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - XajniN 2y ago
    The lack of articles hints that their mother tongue is Slavic. There are a lot of Slavs with German citizenship, if that is even required for the job.
  - pete762 2y ago
    Reads like someone with a slavic native language
- fsloth 2y ago
  ” And nothing will happen” I myself would not call special forces boarding the ship ’nothing’. Let’s see what happens next.
libertine 2y ago
The main issue is that Europeans are starting to become worried and confused about that stance, which we know will translate into anger - understandably so because Russia is threatening those countries' ways of living, completely unprovoked. The whole detachment from Russians who resigned themselves from any responsibility for their government action doesn't help either, because the narrative that "Russians are just victims of the regime and can't do anything about it" is already fading away. It might snap if Europeans don't start to see decisive actions to protect their sovereignty and ways of living. Perhaps there needs to be a blockade in the Baltic.
- benterix 2y ago
  > the narrative that "Russians are just victims of the regime and can't do anything about it" is already fading away. It's not a narrative, something you want to present to others in order to convince them or something, it's a sad reality for many Russians.[0] It's difficult to understand for someone who hasn't lived in a totalitarian state which can do whatever they want with your life and the lives of your family without absolutely any onsequences, whether you're rich and powerful like Navalny or just a simple pianist like Pavel Kushnir. It's easy to say "do something" if it's not you that risk quite literally everything. [0] Yes, not all, I know. The percentage debate, or the lack of verifiable numbers, is another issue.
  - libertine 2y ago
    I think I didn't make myself clear enough, I meant narrative in the sense of what Europeans tell themselves, it just happens to be aligned with a portion of reality. As you mentioned, it's hard to say to what extent. But from the polling results[0], it seems like many Russians want Ukrainians to become subservient to Russia and don't want them to be a successful independent nation in any way, shape, or form. This war is being driven mainly by "entrepreneurs" who want to enrich themselves by going into go into Ukraine to kill as many Ukrainians as possible, and according to Russian state media, the average is around 30.000 contracts per month, with a total of 750.000 Russian casualties. These are big numbers, unlike we've seen since WW2. > It's easy to say "do something" if it's not you that risk quite literally everything. So in a way, you're agreeing with me that the support for a "Russian victory" is increasing because the illusion that "things will be better" for Russians is tied to the concept of "victory", and "things will be bad" if Russia faces a "defeat". Because this geopolitical blunder of the Russian regime was a loss already, and there's no way back. They don't even know what "victory" is other than capitulation and genocide of Ukraine, and somehow that will magically improve the destruction of Russia's state, culture, technology development, partnerships, diplomacy, trade... They don't even know what the upside is, other than Putin gets to stay in power until he dies and they won't see "little Russians" become more prosperous than Russians. Russia reached a point where War became a means in itself. [0]https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/russia-tomorrow/reluctant-consensus-war-and-russias-public-opinion/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/russia-tomorr...
af78 2y ago
As if threats from Russia and its partners (China, Iran and North Korea) weren't bad enough, Team Trump threaten Greenland and Canada these days. Divisions within NATO is the last thing its members need at the moment. There is more truth than I previously thought in the phrase “Europeans are vegetarians in a world of carnivores.”
- sabbaticaldev 2y ago
  [dead]
vkou 2y ago
> If this is Russia, what are we going to do? The best option would probably be to travel back in time and not help blow up a Russian natural gas pipeline. [1] It was a great way to set the precedent that wrecking other countries' undersea infrastructure is a free-for-all. It's a bit weird how economic terrorism is fine, but only when we are the ones doing it. ---- [1] We could also skip out on peddling the rather embarrassing[2] conspiracy that somehow Russia decided to blow up its own pipeline. [2] Embarrassing in the sense that so many otherwise intelligent people legitimately believed (and many of them still believe) that farce.
- Eumenes 2y ago
  > The best option would probably be to travel back in time And finish them off in 1945
  - pinewurst 2y ago
    Or October 1962
    - vkou 2y ago
      Yes, global thermonuclear war in '62 would have certainly made concerns over boat anchors cutting fiber cables academic.
tim333 2y ago
You've got to look at it in the context of the war in Ukraine where the West has supplied something like $200bn in aid, about half of it military leading to approx 600k dead/wounded Russians. I guess that will go on.
belorn 2y ago
This is simply sabotage using disposable ships and sacrificeable seamen. The defense against that is not naval presence. In large we already have all the military equipment needed in forms of radar, underwater surveillance, satellites, and detection system in cables. Combined they will say exactly when the sabotage occurred, where and by which ship. The problem is that of diplomacy. A major cause of the sabotage is to generate political support within Russia. When a ship is being arrested they will generate support around how evil west countries are boarding and stealing Russian ship and arresting innocent Russian citizens. In term of countering this, the west has a problem of presenting evidence to the public since most of the surveillance is of military nature and thus secret. The historical/current method is to do it discreetly and simply send military ship to the offender and give a stern look that says that we know what you did. Then you send in the diplomats. We might see an escalation now since two ships has gotten boarded in very recent time.
- fsloth 2y ago
  The important evidence is fully public. It’s the funky see-saw the ship did over the cable. Plus missing an anchor afaik. Russian public is not party to this discussion. They have no influence. All messaging - things said and unsaid - is towards Kremlin. Boarding ships part of the Russian shadow fleet is a very direct message. The crew is ”disposable”. But this particular ship carries 60M worth of fuel.
fsloth 2y ago
”what are we going to do?” The response to this event would probably be a good template for a standard policy each time infrastructure is damaged. Special forces boarded the suspect ship and now it’s held. What happens next is interesting.

the_mitsuhiko 2y ago

> If this is Russia, what are we going to do? We have pretty much 10 years of experience to go by here: nothing. At least Europe won't. If anything the most likely outcome is for everybody to hope that Trump somehow ends this conflict and within 10 years everything goes back to where it was, and we're buddy-buddy with our dictatorship neighbors again.

trhway 2y ago
It wouldn't go back to where it was. Russia is like a very large iceberg detaching itself from the civilization. The only issue is where the break-line is going to be. >At least Europe won't There are different parts of Europe. While for example Germany is relatively safe and relaxed, Poland is buying, on its own money, 1000 tanks form South Korea (among the best ones), jets, including F-35, etc. as it wants to stay on the civilization side of the break-line.
- the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
  Don't forget that plenty European countries made business with the USSR too. Also quite a number of EU members are quickly detaching themselves from democracy and a functional state. You don't have to look much farther than Hungary, Slovakia and even Austria to see that the trajectory this whole thing is on, is not a great one. Many European countries will be happy even with a much degraded Russia for as long as it supplies Gas and other natural resources for cheap.
  - trhway 2y ago
    The USSR had clear separation border between the West and the Eastern Block. >Many European countries will be happy even with a much degraded Russia They would be. Only it isn't just good old much degraded Russia like it was even in 2020 (as the Russian opposition calls it "vegetarian times"). It is now a fascist state with a nationalism as its political ideology. By its nature such regime is an aggressively expansive.
    - the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
      > The USSR had clear separation border between the West and the Eastern Block. And yet, the USSR was a massive energy supplier to Europe. The gas pipelines supplied the west long before the fall of it.
      - trhway 2y ago
        yes, that is the point of good firewall - to allow safe, for whatever each side understand as safe, well defined and controlled flow/exchange. As i said the current issue being decided is where that firewall will be.
  - lostmsu 2y ago
    Can you elaborate on Austria?
m0llusk 2y ago
Continuing to starve them as a nation using sanctions is not nothing.
- XajniN 2y ago
  It’s as good as nothing. It’s a place where suffering is constant, and losing is not acceptable.
- xenospn 2y ago
  Russian supermarkets seem full and the trains run on time. I doubt anyone east of Moscow even thinks about the war in Ukraine very often. This won’t change until actual sanctions are in place. What we have now is just child’s play.

csomar 2y ago

One possibility is that the West is already doing something (Russia pipeline, Russians boats recently "sinking", etc...) and the warfare is already in motion.

nuccy 2y ago
The two recently sunken tankers sunk because of bad weather and russian negligence and lack of any common sense on safety - they were super old (built in 60s) river tankers, which are narrow but long. So to make them "sea worthy" they need to be shortened so a section in the middle is cut away and two halves are rewelded back [1]. These tankers were never designed for the high seas at all especially during stormy conditions. They had brocken on exactly that weld spilling thousands of tonnes of oil and mazout. Handling of this ecological trajedy by russian government is nonexistent - while having resources to handle it, there is no will at all in doing that, no care neither about sea life nor about their own people. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/15/two-russian-tankers-sink-in-black-sea-spilling-oil https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/15/two-russian-ta...
- lupusreal 2y ago
  They're up to five ships sunk now, and the last one was a relatively new ship that was actually built for the ocean instead of inland waterways. Probably still all accidents. Probably.
  - tim333 2y ago
    Mail headline: >Sunk Putin cargo ship was victim of sabotage that sparked three explosions onboard, Russians believe as Ukraine vows more attacks Sorry about it being the Daily Mail but I think the info is quite likely correct. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14227007/Sunk-Putin-cargo-ship-victim-sabotage-sparked-three-explosions-onboard-Russians-believe-Ukraine-vows-attacks.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14227007/Sunk-Putin... Though as it says probably Ukraine's doing rather than the EUs.

nuccy 2y ago

The answer is: nothing. Russian drones and cruise missiles fall on Nato soil already and enter its airspace on a regular basis, though so far unintentionally. E.g.: 1. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/romania-detects-another-drone-breaching-its-territory-ministry-says-2024-10-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/romania-detects-another... 2. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-army-says-object-entered-poland-during-russian-attack-ukraine-2024-08-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-army-says-object... 3. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/russian-drone-debris-found-in-romania,-nato-says-no-sign-of-intentional-attack/84918631 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/russian-drone-debris-found-in-r...

lupusreal 2y ago
Ignoring plausibly accidental transgressions is preferable to war. Article 5 only gets triggered if NATO members want it to be, and even then the nature of their response is left to the member nations to decide for themselves. NATO isn't some sort of automatic deadhand system meant to start WW3 over an accident like in Doctor Strangelove. Incidentally, Russia is behaving in roughly the same way; they talk a lot of shit about, for instance, western weapons being used against targets in Russian territory, but then when that happens anyway they issue more threats instead of starting WW3 in earnest like they threatened before. They don't really want that war either; if they did they're able to start it anytime they want, but they've got kids too.
- lazide 2y ago
  That’s called appeasement, btw.
  - m0llusk 2y ago
    More like conflict management. That Chinese boat, for example, was apprehended. Responses are being ramped up in a controlled manner.
    - lazide 2y ago
      What do you think appeasement was? It was trying to be reasonable and avoid/manage conflict with a fundamentally unreasonable ‘partner’.

xenospn 2y ago

Maybe they can propose a subcommittee to discuss the possibility of negotiating a treaty between member states that will enable a proposition to vote on a measure to discuss possible actions. But I’m not hopeful.

fsloth 2y ago
Finnish special forces boarded the ship. The ”hold my beer” moment in dealing with Russia using a language they understand and listen to.

lnsru 2y ago

Europe will be worried like always is. And nothing will happen. My last job was at large German military contractor. My personal opinion is that this whole industry is made to consume government’s money in most inefficient way instead of building something for government.

bmicraft 2y ago
This doesn't read like the English I would expect from someone with German as their mother tongue.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- XajniN 2y ago
  The lack of articles hints that their mother tongue is Slavic. There are a lot of Slavs with German citizenship, if that is even required for the job.
- pete762 2y ago
  Reads like someone with a slavic native language
fsloth 2y ago
” And nothing will happen” I myself would not call special forces boarding the ship ’nothing’. Let’s see what happens next.

libertine 2y ago

The main issue is that Europeans are starting to become worried and confused about that stance, which we know will translate into anger - understandably so because Russia is threatening those countries' ways of living, completely unprovoked. The whole detachment from Russians who resigned themselves from any responsibility for their government action doesn't help either, because the narrative that "Russians are just victims of the regime and can't do anything about it" is already fading away. It might snap if Europeans don't start to see decisive actions to protect their sovereignty and ways of living. Perhaps there needs to be a blockade in the Baltic.

benterix 2y ago
> the narrative that "Russians are just victims of the regime and can't do anything about it" is already fading away. It's not a narrative, something you want to present to others in order to convince them or something, it's a sad reality for many Russians.[0] It's difficult to understand for someone who hasn't lived in a totalitarian state which can do whatever they want with your life and the lives of your family without absolutely any onsequences, whether you're rich and powerful like Navalny or just a simple pianist like Pavel Kushnir. It's easy to say "do something" if it's not you that risk quite literally everything. [0] Yes, not all, I know. The percentage debate, or the lack of verifiable numbers, is another issue.
- libertine 2y ago
  I think I didn't make myself clear enough, I meant narrative in the sense of what Europeans tell themselves, it just happens to be aligned with a portion of reality. As you mentioned, it's hard to say to what extent. But from the polling results[0], it seems like many Russians want Ukrainians to become subservient to Russia and don't want them to be a successful independent nation in any way, shape, or form. This war is being driven mainly by "entrepreneurs" who want to enrich themselves by going into go into Ukraine to kill as many Ukrainians as possible, and according to Russian state media, the average is around 30.000 contracts per month, with a total of 750.000 Russian casualties. These are big numbers, unlike we've seen since WW2. > It's easy to say "do something" if it's not you that risk quite literally everything. So in a way, you're agreeing with me that the support for a "Russian victory" is increasing because the illusion that "things will be better" for Russians is tied to the concept of "victory", and "things will be bad" if Russia faces a "defeat". Because this geopolitical blunder of the Russian regime was a loss already, and there's no way back. They don't even know what "victory" is other than capitulation and genocide of Ukraine, and somehow that will magically improve the destruction of Russia's state, culture, technology development, partnerships, diplomacy, trade... They don't even know what the upside is, other than Putin gets to stay in power until he dies and they won't see "little Russians" become more prosperous than Russians. Russia reached a point where War became a means in itself. [0]https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/russia-tomorrow/reluctant-consensus-war-and-russias-public-opinion/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/russia-tomorr...

af78 2y ago

As if threats from Russia and its partners (China, Iran and North Korea) weren't bad enough, Team Trump threaten Greenland and Canada these days. Divisions within NATO is the last thing its members need at the moment. There is more truth than I previously thought in the phrase “Europeans are vegetarians in a world of carnivores.”

sabbaticaldev 2y ago
[dead]

vkou 2y ago

> If this is Russia, what are we going to do? The best option would probably be to travel back in time and not help blow up a Russian natural gas pipeline. [1] It was a great way to set the precedent that wrecking other countries' undersea infrastructure is a free-for-all. It's a bit weird how economic terrorism is fine, but only when we are the ones doing it. ---- [1] We could also skip out on peddling the rather embarrassing[2] conspiracy that somehow Russia decided to blow up its own pipeline. [2] Embarrassing in the sense that so many otherwise intelligent people legitimately believed (and many of them still believe) that farce.

Eumenes 2y ago
> The best option would probably be to travel back in time And finish them off in 1945
- pinewurst 2y ago
  Or October 1962
  - vkou 2y ago
    Yes, global thermonuclear war in '62 would have certainly made concerns over boat anchors cutting fiber cables academic.

tim333 2y ago

You've got to look at it in the context of the war in Ukraine where the West has supplied something like $200bn in aid, about half of it military leading to approx 600k dead/wounded Russians. I guess that will go on.

belorn 2y ago

This is simply sabotage using disposable ships and sacrificeable seamen. The defense against that is not naval presence. In large we already have all the military equipment needed in forms of radar, underwater surveillance, satellites, and detection system in cables. Combined they will say exactly when the sabotage occurred, where and by which ship. The problem is that of diplomacy. A major cause of the sabotage is to generate political support within Russia. When a ship is being arrested they will generate support around how evil west countries are boarding and stealing Russian ship and arresting innocent Russian citizens. In term of countering this, the west has a problem of presenting evidence to the public since most of the surveillance is of military nature and thus secret. The historical/current method is to do it discreetly and simply send military ship to the offender and give a stern look that says that we know what you did. Then you send in the diplomats. We might see an escalation now since two ships has gotten boarded in very recent time.

fsloth 2y ago
The important evidence is fully public. It’s the funky see-saw the ship did over the cable. Plus missing an anchor afaik. Russian public is not party to this discussion. They have no influence. All messaging - things said and unsaid - is towards Kremlin. Boarding ships part of the Russian shadow fleet is a very direct message. The crew is ”disposable”. But this particular ship carries 60M worth of fuel.

fsloth 2y ago

”what are we going to do?” The response to this event would probably be a good template for a standard policy each time infrastructure is damaged. Special forces boarded the suspect ship and now it’s held. What happens next is interesting.