Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/18/telecoms-cable...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...

Any build up on those borders is now going to be interpreted in that way and you'll have a likely reaction from NATO all across the eastern front.

I doubt they would get very far.

...and that assumes Russia still has enough tanks to even mount an offensive, in sufficient numbers to capture several capital cities, belonging to nations with a fearsome grudge against them.

(Three years ago, I would have fully agreed with your assessment!)

And how long does it take for the F35 to fly across all Baltic States? 30 minutes at max speed. Without air supremacy, Russia would be dead in the water.

> That is the time Russia wants to buy. Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.

If you think Poland and Finland would sit on their hands and do nothing, you're being naive.

And I guess there is still some paranoia in Russia. The NATO Neocons are busy feeding it.

Russia was concentrating troops alongside the border for months. It started on October 2021, invasion began on February 2022.

Not really. The USSR was scared about what they perceived as Anglo-led forces and so united with Germany against them and attacked them first. The invasion of 1941 came from Germany who was still an ally even just the night before the invasion - Hitler even fed Stalin (and Stalin went for it!) the fake that the German forces got accumulated on the USSR border to mislead Britain into thinking that Germany plans to attack USSR while instead Germany was supposedly preparing to invade Britain.

>And I guess there is still some paranoia in Russia. The NATO Neocons are busy feeding it.

The Russian paranoia hasn't changed much since Ivan The Terrible, long before neocons.

Munich was an "alliance" of Great Britain und Germany (and sort of Poland).

Then Germany and the Soviet Union allied against Poland.

Then Great Britain and The Soviet Union allied.

>The Russian paranoia hasn't changed much since Ivan The Terrible, long before neocons.

Prisoners of Geography is pop science but I like the chapter about Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Geography

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/106335/blood-and-ruins-by-ov...

And everyone next to the Soviet Union was right to be scared since Soviet Union invaded Finland and Poland in 1939.

Are you suggesting Russia has a full invasion force they’re not using in Ukraine? Or to liberate their own occupied territory?

The invasion from Nazi Germany, the USSR's ally in the invasion of Poland, and the one it signed extensive trade agreements with and helped to avoid sanctions.

https://x.com/Jonpy99/status/1856776568057565284/photo/1

There's no secret real russian army just waiting to invade some another country, or just chilling in Urals. If russia did not have nuclear weapons, road to moscow would be open.

And what happens if they actually go for that distance?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Voznesensk

In Kursk Russian forces can't maneuver much, they have to directly push on Ukrainians. The density of Russian and Ukrainian forces in this war - like ~500K each on the 1000km of the battle lines - is order of magnitude higher than that of the Baltic states militaries. Potential invasion in the low density situation of the Baltic states would make sense by cutting through un/low-defended areas with encircling/etc. of the more fortified areas without direct assault of them, at least initially.

Another example of BTG driving deep and getting decimated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g68MmLrGvM

I made such comment here in the first hours of the invasion :)

>If they weren't stopped at Voznesensk, they would be stopped somewhere else

if they were able to take the bridge at Voznesensk, that BTG would keep it, and more forces would come that way.

However, at this point it's only speculation, probably not worth getting deeper into it.

I'm not being snarky, but from what I gather, Isreal could have prevented that.

Invading the Baltics or Poland or Sweden... not on the table.

"Hybrid" warfare, yes. But that's been going on for two decades.

Thing is: cutting people's fiber optic lines isn't going to get them out of this sanction regime.

Like there's real physical stuff destroyed (or in most circumstances digital stuff). How hard is it to impound ships that break stuff and etc so that the ones responsible are actually punished?

While theoretically it's possible that Russia would simultaneously dismantle or jam the internet, mobile phones, radio, sattelite, and runners in fast cars, if that does happen it's already red alert everywhere.

There are no scenarios in which Russia can have any significant victories. The only thing they maybe have is nukes, but nobody wins if those are deployed.

Any how many of those tanks go straight to Ukraine? Do you think Russia can afford to stockpile tanks (and everything else necessary) for several years for an invasion of Europe while simultaneously engaged in the their current war in Ukraine?

I actually do think that the US and Europe should be moving faster to increase their military manufacturing capacity, especially Europe given the situation they are now facing. But to say that NATO countries have been throwing everything they have to Ukraine is wildly off the mark.

Not hard. Not done. Because we're cowards.

And that is not a fight I think Russia can win and they know that.

NATO has forward deployed forces to assure that to take Riga, Tallin, and Vilnius, Russia will have to attack and defeat armed forces of the UK, Canada, and Germany respectively. More than that, really, those are just the lead nations in the NATO forward-deployed battlegroups in those countries. There are also five other forward-deployed battlegroups, four of which — as well as reinforcement of the original four in the Baltics + Poland – were deployed in response to the 2022 Russian escalation in Ukraine.

Cutting undersea cables is not going to prevent (or even meaningfully slow) a response given that.

I mean, they are doing pretty good for a total NATO deployment of 0 combat forces. Funny to describe the only country with troops involved as “helping” and treating the nonexistent NATO presence as the primary force.

> NATO have no enough tanks, shells, soldiers to stop 2 million army in few first weeks, even if Russians will just march with their AK-s in hands.

In the event of a Russian invasion of Eastern flank NATO members and the NATO forward-deployed battlegroups in those countries, NATO policy, unlike in Ukraine, would not restrict the use of long range weapons against command and control, logistics, and combat aviation facilities in Russia, nor would NATO forces be short on their own combat aviation to use against the invasion itself.

Ukraine isn’t NATO, and while impressive for their conditions, what Ukraine can do is not a model for what NATO can do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations

Trump also got out of the Intermediate Missile treaty - which was beneficial for Russia (and Western Europe) and a non-issue for Americans.

Trump is not the Putin-puppet Hillary made him to be.

Apparently you haven't seen the map going around with Trump's proposed solution. Ukraine gives up all of what Russia is occupying right now, and doesn't keep Kursk. Ukraine can't join NATO for "20 years" (aka never). "European" troops are supposed to sit on a "DMZ" (which they will never agreed to).

Aka Ukraine surrenders, and Russia will just organize a hybrid-warfare coup to get a Lukashenko-style puppet gov't back in in Ukraine. Or come back in with troops in a few years.

Basically it's crappy bargaining, from a weak president. If you were Putin, and you saw that map... why stop now? You'd be laughing. No consequences.

Trump is a puppet not so much of Putin, but of the oil and gas sector. And Russia is an energy superpower. They both speak on behalf of the same global financial interests. They are very tired of this conflict and care little about Ukraine.

I cannot see Trump playing along with an Article 5 reaction to Russian aggression. And Putin is not stupid enough to use direct conventional warfare against a NATO state anyways. It's just more and more hybrid provocations, to wear down western solidarity, to topple gov'ts or undermine response, and all excused by useful idiots in the west.

Long range weapons will hit hard for sure, but millions of soldiers still must be defeated in close combat to take ground. Ukraine has western tech, it good, but it not good enough when Ukrainians are outnumbered. To win the war, Ukraine must dominate in the war, but western allies fail to deliver anything that will dominate over Russia.

The Trump - Zelensky call was about discrediting Biden not about appeasing Putin. OK, moving on...

Trump is not longer Putin's puppet but the puppet "of the oil and gas sector". OK, moving on...

This thread is about about Russian military invasion in the Baltics and you reply with "And Putin is not stupid enough to use conventional warfare against NATO".OK, moving on....

"topple govt's" - Putin cannot even topple Ukraine...

Meanwhile US AirForce has about 900 F-16s... and a whole bunch of F35s. This it not a serious comparison....

Because apparently there isn't one. It seems some Republican "strategist" put out a map, but it has since been disavowed by the incoming administration.

  "Bryan Lanza was a contractor for the campaign," said the spokesperson, who declined to be named. "He does not work for President Trump and does not speak for him."

And you're both changing the goalposts, and setting a ridiculous standard (WWI/WWII) for the minimum standard of what constitutes a "serious" war.

RU spent months gathering forces on the UA in Jan, Feb 2022. All the while, the US was publicly telling UA the odds of invasion were high.

Moving atoms at that scale doesn’t happen without lots of visible signs. The border nations already know what to look for.

And some border states have already built barriers at the border with RU, notably Poland.

Besides NATO already has a large land based army as well. US, Turkey, Poland , Finland all have large ground forces

No, its not. Russia is at war with Ukraine. No NATO countries are fighting Russia, Russia is fighting no NATO countries.

> Ukraine is invaded because Ukraine wants to join NATO

Even if that was true, invading Ukraine is war with Ukraine, not NATO.

But it is not true, you have cause and effect reversed. Ukraine had a legal dedication to neutrality when Russia invaded in 2014, that provision was eliminated and its pursuit of NATO membership, which had been abandoned years before in favor of neutrality, resumed after the invasion. Ukraine wants to join NATO because Russia invaded it, not vice versa.

Similar tactics was used by communists in Vietnam and Korea.

Multiple NATO countries should invoke Article 4 of NATO already, but they don't.

20": English notation for twenty seconds

https://labs.ripe.net/author/emileaben/does-the-internet-rou...