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- Hacker News
- Because Russian's war with Ukraine is unsustainable, something has to change for Putin for him to remain in power, and one option is an escalation with NATO.
Some other scenarios also explained in this good video
by miohtama - Does not pass the smell test. The Youtuber has an axe to grind. Also, tracking in the URL.
Why make it more difficult if the current situation is unsustainable? Does not make sense.
by cingraa - Do not bother with the youtube video.The essential ideas is that Putin could scare European Countries into surrendering Ukraine. This video legitimizes that scare tactic. Nor does it deal with the underlying issue, which is that like Hitler and Nixon, Putin believes he is infallible. As a result the world as he sees it and the world as it is will continue to diverge.by talkingtab
- > one option is an escalation with NATO.
Wouldn't this make the situation much worse for Russia, and therefore for him as well? The oligarchs will know who is to blame if Putin starts a war with NATO.
by GTP - What? In other words, you're saying: "Russia is losing war with Ukraine, so it wants to start a second front with bigger enemy".
Also, how's Ukraine war is sustainable for Ukraine? It's economy is non-existent (almost 100% dependent on western donations), it has less than 50% of population of 2022 (they don't publish any population stats directly, but if you combine available statistics, there are about 10-15 millions left most of them old retired people or young people that are too young to send them to the front lines), they are losing territory every day.
This is some weird "Ukraine is winning but front is moving in the wrong direction" logic.
by anticodon - Luckily being 73 and in what appears to be poor health can’t last forever. I can’t imagine spending my twilight years being one of the most hated people on the planet, but the head of the USA and Russia seem to have no issues with that.
“Father Time is undefeated.” - LeBron James
by Mistletoe - >"something has to change for Putin for him to remain in power, and one option is an escalation with NATO"
I think us couch experts including author of that particular video have no fucking clue what he will do and what the true state of affairs is. Had all those expert prediction materialized Russia would've already disintegrated 10 times and Putin would've lost power in a first months.
by FpUser - Time to expell some more Russian embassy staff.by petre
- AIUI Russia has been regularly intruding into Finnish airspace and has often penetrated the land border with Georgia.
It’s one of those “let’s see how much we can get away with” probes to try to establish a new status quo. I wonder how Russia would respond to NATO drones doing the same.
by sneak - Turkiye demonstrated how to stop this a decade ago - shooting down the trespassing bogey. It worked.by squidbeak
- Drones shot down in Romania, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, etc.
These are probes. Judging responses and response times.
Rumor is Polish GROM have been inside Russia for months.
Edit: See sources in my comment below. I bring receipts.
by esseph - Occam's razor. Decoy drones with a bit more fuel or favorable wind.by cingraa
- Can you elaborate on the last sentence? It sounds crazy.
- > These are probes. Judging responses and response times.
Some, yes. Many are merely defective units. These weapons are being manufactured in enormous quantity and deployed rapidly with minimal quality control: based on the reported numbers over Ukraine, the net manufacturing rate is about 10 per hour. Inevitably, some are defective and fail to follow waypoints. Romania is on a line through numerous targets in Ukraine from the Kursk region where many Russian drone flights begin, so Romania ends up being the unintended destination.
The good news is that the defects likely represent resource problems for the manufacturers. The same phenomena has been noted with increasing failed missile launches from Russia.
by topspin - The big part that I didn’t see was whether this was a Russian drone or Ukrainian droneby dvduval
- Shahed drones are used only by russia and iranby olexsmir
- > I didn’t see was whether this was a Russian drone or Ukrainian drone
From the france24 article:
> A government investigation reportedly identified the first of the three drones as a Shahed model used by Russia in its war with Ukraine.
by ur-whale - They're Shahed drones, used by Russia.by rwmj
- We seems scarily only one rogue actor or screw up from WW III in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.by cmiles8
- Hawe you been in coma? There has been a ww2 sized war in eastern europe for 4 yearsby TiredOfLife
- That is the point of these "one offs".
My read on the situation is that Putin knows that he's stuck, and baiting nato into some (likely tepid) response gives him an excuse to expand the next call up / draft.
by zer00eyz - People keep bringing WW3 up but I disagree. There's such a huge aversion in EU countries against any kind of war against Russia and the governments know it. They will let a LOT slide on Russia's side before any kind of retaliation (and I mean by force) is coming. Russia could probably kill several service members with a drone, claim it was an accident and the only thing coming from Europe would be a stern letter, some more sanctions and telling off the ambassador (and the Kremlin knows this too).by jcfrei
- Don't we already have that? It's just a smoulder instead of a conflagration.by fc417fc802
- Why are these drones so easy to shoot down, but the ones invading airspaces over nuclear bases and other sensitive installations hundreds of times for months all over Europe and the east coast of the US were never shot down or tracked even once?by an0malous
- Because they were being flown by their respective governments.by ozarkerD
- Because those weren’t drones, they were people noticing for the first time that there are airplanes in the sky.by wat10000
- There are many more that are missed in Romania :)by rolisz
- They are all just as easy to shoot down, if you're willing to spend half a million dollars doing it. When you're Romania that hasn't been fighting a war for years and you get one a day, it's trivial to shoot them down. When you get tens to hundreds a day and you're Ukraine, it's harder since you cannot afford to use F16s and sidewinders to shoot them down. And even if you do, you cannot shoot down all of them, but when you just get one a day, it'll be a while until the 95% interception rate gives you a miss.
Oh, wait, Romania actually got hit by one. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93x4nxlkjeo
It's just a matter of numbers, both percentages and money.
by gcbirzan - I guess because the have an explosive payload and it's better to take them down before they reach a populated area.
The other drones are probably not going to cause an explosion (unles they colide with a plane) and are already in a populated area, so it's risky to destroy them.
by gus_massa - Different types of drones.
These are Shaheds - big, slow, dumb, you can see the coming.
The one's over Europe were sneaky little FPV drones, like consumer grade ones, launched by FSB people nearby.
by bluegatty