As part of the SAFE EU financial instrument Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament[1]. Currently still relying heavily on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard for anti-air as well as fighter jets with air-to-air missiles, as these recent drones were all brought down by F-16s.
Aside from strategic targets, a lot of the civilian infrastructure is quite vulnerable to drone attacks as there's a huge border to cover and definitely not enough anti-drone tech deployed. An apartment building was hit months ago with no casualties: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/apartment-building-hit-...
> Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament
Some of this is going to be stalled - Romania was planning on deploying the Iron Dome [0] and Spyder [1] for AD which was going to be co-produced by Volkswagen in their German factories that were on the chopping block, but Qatar (Volkswagen's largest minority shareholder with 17% voting share) blocked that deal [2].
Iron Dome is designed for protecting from home made rockets made with dung from the Gaza Strip. And according to research the main reason for the low casualty rate is actually the early warning. How exactly is it supposed to help with real missiles and drones?
How do these scams keep happening? Why doesn't anyone care how their taxpayer money is spent?
> home made rockets made with dung from the Gaza Strip
Homemade bottle rockets are a 2000s era Israel thing. Now it's Ababeel, Mohajer, Shahed, Arash and other Iranian drones deployed in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. The same kinds of drones being used in Ukraine and operated by Iranian personnel [0][1][2] that are also the same make as the drones shot down in Romania as well as Poland.
Ukraine also gave us intel linking Iranian strike capacity with Russia [3] and Russia has previously offered to stop giving Iran geoint and strike intel in return for the US stopping geoint and strike intel sharing with Ukraine, which the US rejected [4].
For me, I just hope the country collapses and we spend the next ten years prosecuting everyone who caused this outcome and overthrowing the existing system. It’s inevitable with how brain dead leadership is throughout government and corporations. The relentless greedy morons have taken the yoke.
If the country has to survive and recover rather quickly, not collapse, for your prosecution scenario to be likely and effective against any significant share of the people who caused this.
Kinda reminds one of the evolution of the air war during WWI. Planes were used as observation platforms to gather intelligence about enemy fortifications and activities. They were more mobile than balloons and could gather more timely information. Both sides flew past each other just doing their jobs until someone thought they could drop a grenade or small bomb as they surveilled the other guy. Then aerial bombing started to become popular. Around the same time pilots armed themselves and would take pot-shots at enemy pilots, usually with sidearms. Before long machine guns were fitted to planes and synchronized with propellers and pilots were able to dogfight.
I think the next natural step in Russia's defense against Ukrainian drones countermeasures like this, shooting them down with shotguns, will be to arm the drones. Then it will be up to Ukraine to counter that threat and the cycle continues as always.
The advantage of using a drone is that it is cheap to produce, but it needs to be really simple to stay cheap. Arming it with a machine gun that can target an airplane trying to shoot it down would be very expensive.
Yeah, something is preventing them from just putting a small autocannon onto a turret and firing it from a Python script on a laptop. Russian drones and missiles seem to be just straight flying kinds, and while there are reports of Stinger type missiles seen installed on them, there haven't been reports of them growing anti-mortar radars. Most of them shouldn't need guided munitions at all to deal with.
Yeah, obviously F-16's & humans scale very poorly for this. However:
- At one-a-day scale, political and risk considerations probably favor the expensive solution.
- Using F-16's reveals nothing about your current anti-drone defenses. (Yeah, it's also a real-world basic competence test for your air force - for better and for worse.)
- If your intel people want more data on the drones, an F-16 can haul a whole lotta intel-gathering equipment to the show.
- If you're dealing internally with some head-in-the-sand traditionalists dragging their heels on updating your doctrine/equipment/training to deal with drones, then "real world, right now" examples are probably useful.
(BTW - do the articles say "a2a missile" anywhere? F-16's typically mount a 20mm cannon, a cheap drone is not a hard target, and cannon rounds are dirt cheap by compare.)
Ukrainian F-16s have used cannons to shoot down some Russian drones. Cheaper than a missile, but a somewhat risky maneuver as it requires getting close at low altitude and possibly flying through the exploding debris.
Thanks. With the relative speeds, I'd guess the Falcons would use an attack profile similar to ground strafing - letting them pass well above the cloud of debris. Any thoughts?
Also, Wikipedia gives a 3km effective firing range for the M61 - but it'd be no surprise if the F-16's standard targeting optics can't achieve that against small airborne targets.
France24 does a lot of very solid work related to one of my particular areas of interest in the Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan region. It's also a great alternative to any US news sources even for news about what's going on domestically in North America (though the CBC has more breadth of coverage, for sure).
>Since 2008 the channel has been wholly owned by the French government
Explain to me why reading news from the state is a good thing? Kinda shocked that people here applaud state-owned media (there is no difference between "government-owned" or "state-owned").
To me there is, government as "ops", where the media could be more biased, while the state is the more wholistic entity, owned by the tax payer.
Your comment makes only sense if you follow the narrative that state is bad, private companies good. In most European countries, we are rather happy with having a part of the media market owned by the state.
You have to read the news from someone, and each one has its own bias. State news has a well known failure mode as propaganda. But commercial news turns out to have its own failure mode, where emotion inducing content has bigger gains for lower cost.
The best advice I can give here is to mix different sources. As a Belgian, I have a few local newspapers and the VRT news for Belgium, NOS, BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera, which are all checked at least weekly. Each one has its own blatant biases and blind spots. There are still big missing gaps, e.g. a Chinese and an African perspective. There is clearly Gell Mann Amnesia going on. Even so, I started to look very different to the world.
Not in every case. I would call (in the US) National Public Radio "public media", but Voice of America "government-run".
I personally don't know enough about BBC or France 24 to go beyond "government-funded", so I would want more details about their governance before using the terms mentioned before to describe them.
Public means accessible to everyone. State-owned means owned by the state. These are orthogonal axes. X is a public square that is not owned by the state. The CIA situation room is owned by the state but is not public.
I think if certain books happened to not appear in that library, it being state-run might be something to consider.
What ever it truly is, America is called a 'democracy', and it had Project Mockingbird, which some, myself included, say never ended. And even being maximally fair, I must question whether democracy has any meaning in the context of media after Ellison buys half of it. Does he not own CNN? No point in mentioning who, or what owns Fox. And Bezos?
I know it comes off offensive, despite being unintended, but 'democracy' means nothing to me. We have some useful principles of it, which I value, but as a thing, I don't see it.
> Explain to me why reading news from the state is a good thing?
When you get your news from RT, BBC, France24, DW, PressTV, NPR, Gulf News, DD, Al-Jazeera etc. you get "official" political propaganda from the respective governments that run these outlets. Political propaganda can be based on falsehood or factual truth(s) with a "biased" analysis on it. Government news outlets have to show some journalistic integrity to earn trust. Thus, most of their propaganda tends to be based on facts than on falsehood. So reading them all or reading about the same subjects from these different outlets really gives you a larger political perspective with some great political insights.
As far as I know, it’s in the mission of most of these to give an unbiased report on what is happening in the world and inside the country. In practice, there may be influence by powerful politicians, but for these news outlets to spread government propaganda would constitute corruption.
I know that the BBC in the UK, SVT in Sweden, the ABC in Australia go to great lengths to listen to both sides, whatever they may be, to a fault. They are often criticized for giving minority views too much coverage for this reason, and rarely for saying what the government would want them to say uncritically.
Commercial interests tend to progresively degrade the quality of the news if there are no state-funded news channels. They publish more and more unverified "facts", conspiracy theories, tabloid news, AI slop, AI images instead of real news photograpy, intrusive ads, etc.
When there's a news channel funded by the state (instead of ads), most other private news are forced to keep up the quality and they also have the opportunity to call out any bad news and biases published by the state channel. This way no news outlets stray too far from the truth or become unreadable slop. It's better overall.
Advertising-funded media is inherently plutocratic, in which those with the most money influence direction. Sometimes more overtly than others.
There've been many treatments of this: Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (1988), Neil Postman's Amusing OUrselves to Death (1985), Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism (1909) <https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft/page/...>.
That last is particularly good for a number of reasons, including that it's short and information dense, and lays out the clear conflicts inherent to advertising-driven media just at the time it was first gaining influence, and at a fraction of its present size and influence.
If you prefer video, media critic Isadore F. "I.F." Stone gave an excellent 1973 interview on the PBS series Day at Night on the state of newspaper journalism in the United States, contrasting the relative independence of big-city dailies vs. rural papers. The former were large enough that no single advertiser could threaten editorial independence.
> What is the distinction between government and state?
In a parliamentary democracy the "government" is the prime minister, president (whatever the titles are), cabinet ministers and the party that happens to be in power at any given time. The "Government" might be a coalition of 2, 3, or 4 medium sized political parties that have come to some sort of arrangement to have enough votes to pass a budget and laws. The "state" are the persons who perform the longer term functions of the state not directly controlled by the whims of any political thing that might happen in a specific year.
For instance when France made a decision to build its previous series of nuclear powered, missile carrying submarines, and the decision to build a new series that will enter service some time in the 2030s, that's implemented by the civil servants who run the state. Various political parties have waxed and waned and leadership has come and gone since the French nuclear program began, but various successor governments have continued it.
Less specific than that program, the state implements other basic services for the people of the country, all the things that have their day to day work done by people who aren't elected members of parliament. The parliamentarians who happen to be occupying various seats at any given time are the government.
You'll see terms used like "the government has collapsed as the result of a non confidence vote" or "there's been a leadership challenge inside the government (eg: how Trudeau lost power recently)", it doesn't mean the functions of the state have collapsed.
The State would be the organization that uses governments as the branch of executive power (and also organizes a legislative activity, and a judiciary activity...). The kind and amount of power held by the Head of the State and the Head of the Government can vary.
Not the only one though: I remember what happened when we 'invaded' Lybia: not one criticism in the French news anywhere, total censorship, even though our media had widely and correctly criticised the US for the Irak war..
So I think the best thing is to get news from everywhere Russia, China, the US, Europe, but that's a lot of work..
Usually the argument is that because a reputable news agency with a history of high quality journalism made once a mistake, it's better to listen to some angry podcaster with a history inviting cooky nutcase, or sketchy Twitter account with history of boosting fake news as jokes.
The home page shows 3 consecutive press releases for the past 3 days each detailing a similar incident.
The first drone on 24.07 took ~80min to intercept and shoot down, well into the country. The other 2 were shot down within kilometers of the border so they’re paying closer attention.
Yes, but it also trains the pilots and everything around them for real action in a non war environment (you cannot just shoot anywhere in civilian airspace).
And they would need to train anyway.
But for a real conflict, sure, more economical solutions are on the way.
I think the idea is that you don't keep sending just one F16, but the problem is long before an age of drones we built up some catch me if you can bullshit where we expect smaller countries to ignore airspace violations.
Like bro... you got a GPS. Get the fuck out of here.
I don't know if this is their case, but some politicians don't care much about their arguments making sense. In this specific case, a politician could either claim the drones come from some other country, and Russia is going to protect them, or that they need to join Russia for them to stop.
In 2014-15 they started shelling civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, then used that as a pretext to increase their military presence by pretending it's all local militias fighting back the shelling the ruskies themselves started.
The pretext was fully fabricated, the militias theatre was fully fabricated. Nothing made sense. To anyone with a pinch if intellect the truth was obvious...
Yet, the legend of Ukrainians murdering other Ukrainians for using russian language has rooted so much, even now some ppl believe that bs.
In case of Bulgaria, ruskies could attack, then attack again pretending russian-speaking population needs protection in the light of the first attack.
And right-wing nutheads in EU gonna believe that, and blame NATO for offensive expansion
Ukraine did ban Russian language schools. That's technically a human rights violation. Native language education has been considered a human right since the late 1800s.
It's a common violation. Belarus did the same thing for Polish, Poland for German. Etc. Lots of Muricans want Murica to be an English-language Christian nation too, and laws sometimes reflect that. Certainly Murican education standards favor English speakers.
Euromaidan was a bit anti-rule-of-law.
Many Russian minority groups were mistreated in Ukraine.
All of that is true.
None of it merits an invasion.
Best propaganda is usually all true but selective of facts. In any group of more than a million people, some will do something bad. There are instances of Poles assaulting Ukrainian refugees, and vice-versa. It sounds bad, but with over a million refugees, it's statistically impossible for it to not happen. It makes for good propaganda for Russia too; both sides are starting to be riled up.
Good propaganda has elements of truth. Even if you read Hitler, you'll see a mixture of truth and fiction. The verifiable facts lend credence to the fabricated ones.
The dumb thing is Ukraine has doubled down on all of that since the invasion. The right thing to do would be to:
1) Open up a Russian-language elementary school
2) Don't mention Bandera, or better yet, apologize to Poland and open a park recognizing Polish victims or something similarly symbolic.
That's the right thing to do, and with that, the credibility of the propaganda simply disintegrates. If you're ever falsely accused, the trick is to do the exact opposite.
You are right that the Russians have been frequently somewhat mistreated in the former Soviet Republics where they have become minorities.
However, this is an extraordinarily hypocritical claim, because this has followed a time when for various durations, between a half of century and two centuries the Russians have mistreated the minorities of those places in a much more ferocious way, inclusively by robbing them, murdering them or sending them to forced labor in Siberia.
In Ukraine, there are many places with Russian colonists who have been installed after WWII in the houses that before the war belonged to various other nationalities, which were then killed or dispersed to Siberia by the Russians.
Yes, Russians have been mistreated after the separation of the Soviet Republics, but this is much, much less than what their fathers have done around WWII and before it, and many of them have still inherited what their fathers have stolen from the other nationalities.
Had the Russians treated better the others when they had the power, they would have not been so hated, so they would have been much more likely to be treated correctly.
As with many conflicts this one goes back a long way. Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia in exchange for a non aggression pact that the invasion broke.
Also bad for the world. The lesson, as with Iran and Iraq, is: you’d better have nukes and never give them up. This is the opposite of the lesson we want if we want to contain proliferation.
The global taboo on use remains. If someone breaks that and gets away with it we are into civilization ending danger territory.
Ukraine never had its own independently controlled/operated nukes. The USSR deployed nukes on various territories but all command and control was completely centralized within Russia. Ukraine/Belarus/Kazakhstan returned the Soviet nukes to Russia under the same agreement and received some nonbinding assurances and cash in exchange - it was nothing like a formal pact. Had any of these countries tried to reverse engineer the nukes, they'd likely have been invaded by the US, Russia, and most other major world powers, so it was largely an offer they couldn't refuse.
Russia claims those assurances ended with the US actively advocating on the ground in Ukraine for the overthrow of their government in 2014, as the assurances included not interfering in domestic politics or using economic coercion. But the US also sanctioned and was working to overthrow Belarus as far back as 2006, so those assurances had been pretty much dead for a long time.
Outside of that I completely agree with everything else you said, especially with people not appreciating how far back these conflicts go. The whole Bandera stuff has no real parallel in the West, so I think most people wouldn't really be able to 'get it' even if they had the facts, which they overwhelmingly do not.
> As with many conflicts this one goes back a long way. Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia in exchange for a non aggression pact that the invasion broke.
From the Guardian (12 days ago): "Kyiv’s decision to honour second world war fighters who killed about 100,000 Poles has revived simmering tensions". Bandera was a Nazi collaborator and today's Ukraine politics worships Bandera. Lots of streets are renamed to honor him. Eastern Ukrainians are considered second class - or as some politicians said: "There are 2 million people too many".
The US (look up Nuland and her quote about 'fuck the EU') fueled with $5B the nationalism in Ukraine. Now imagine, the US would fuel with $50B the nationalism in Belgium and the the flemish would attack wallonie. You know what would happen? France would support the wallonie. Nothing to see here.
It's not World War 3. It's just two increasingly overlapping unsolvable wars involving two increasingly coherent geopolitical blocs consisting of dozens of countries spanning three continents, most major nuclear powers holding 95% of global nuclear stockpiles and the vast majority of global military spending and resources, with nuclear-capable cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles flying back and forth, attacks on strategic nuclear early warning systems, threats of nuclear first-use and global nuclear holocaust, etc. Fighting over issues the leaders of the involved superpowers and great powers have described as existential and beyond compromise.
While they are clearly leading this war for their own purposes, both require the support of a governing apparatus (the Republican and Likud party bureaucrats) who have their own motivations. Those motivations are not necessarily positive, but can at least be understood in terms of a national policy rather than individual temper tantrums.
The only nations against Russia are in Europe, or run by absurdly corrupt right-wing dictators. The problem with supporting Russia is that the US is psychotic, aggressive, and takes pride in causing civilian casualties. It will starve your children to death as a openly proclaimed tactic; it loves to double-tap. Russia isn't going to hurt you for being neutral, but the US will, joyously.
Europe doesn't even really support Ukraine, it just hates Russia for defeating it in WWII. Thank God France has nukes, or Germany would be invading it again for not showing enough support for Ukraine and Israel.
edit: Poland is starting to remember what the Ukrainians did back then, too. And to notice that the psychotic Ukrainian nationalist minority (that we funded and armed) are proud of having done it, and would do it again.
It's not Ukraine that regularly threatens Poland. Russian propaganda is truly only for absolute brain dead - how can you at same time fantasize about bombing Warsaw, jam GPS over Baltic, do hybrid war across Polish-Belarusian border and say that actually Ukraine is the real danger. Unfortunately there are lots of people that are stupid enough to actually believe this.
russia's invasion of Ukraine is absolutely solvable. It's just a disgrace that Ukraine is left to do it alone, with huge casualties (civilian as well as military), and inconceivable destruction.
The logic I’ve heard is that one of the more palatable defeat conditions for Russia is that they’d rather lose to NATO than Ukraine. So they’re fine to push limits because even the worst case scenario gives them better options.
This. Losing to Ukraine is a massive humiliation. Losing to NATO is “fair” in their eyes. Even now, pro-Russian sources refuse to believe the current drone swarms and highly advanced deep strike drones wrecking havoc on Russian oil infrastructure (see the official state of emergency declared in Crimea and fuel shortages in other regions) are caused by Ukrainian drones. They keep making up some sore loser nonsense about these being NATO drones or some clever trick like drones released from trucks inside Russia. Meanwhile even the Pentagon is buying Ukrainian made drones: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-a...
Having seen posts in social media by the usual suspects from previous such incidents, it's a way to convince the audience at home that the enemy (NATO) is actually weak and that there's no need to be alarmed.
> The amount of fuel decides how far they fly. Favorable wind? They fly further.
Is this true for non-decoy non-foam drones and basically everything else that flies, even things with solid boosters? Seems like a strange part to add here as it basically applies to aviation in general, replace "fuel" with "stored energy" and literally all type of "vehicle" fits basically.
A non-decoy drone would presumably go no further than its target, at which point any leftover fuel just adds to the fireball. Whereas making a decoy drone go down before the fuel is exhausted is pointless waste, when instead it could be decoying a little bit longer.
They are cheap but the rockets to shoot them down cost (I've heard but don't count on it) around $480,000 per missile. That is not a minor consideration for a country like Romania.
Absolutely not the ideal weapon to fight them, and better(cheaper) options are coming to shoot down the drones, but until then the price is irrelevant as long as you're preventing loss of human life.
Saving any nonzero amount of lives for any unbounded cost is not necessarily a good trade, if there are ways to save more lives for the same cost, or the same number of lives for a lesser cost.
We're not at the point of making those kind of decisions in Romania, fortunately. Politically right now it would be very dangerous to say that "some of you may die".
Putin's only option is to escalate at this point, otherwise he's seen as weak with the war going so well. The Romanians should also be really getting their act together and start shooting the bogeys down.
Turkey didn't think twice before shooting down a Russian Su-24 in 2015 for violating Turkish airspace for about 17 seconds. This is how you "negotiate" with the Russians: first you break their nose when cross some red line, then appologize.
The Turks never apologized to the Russians. They said the incident was regrettable. Which is consistent with the overall "don't fuck with us" message that was being sent.
You’re missing the fact that Ukraine desperately needs missile defense, and these incidents incentivize its neighbors to keep all their defenses to themselves.
No one wants to be blamed when they can’t defend themselves when Russia attacks.
If NATO as a whole responds, yes it's in Ukraine's interest.
If the NATO response is weak and non-cohesive, it is a victory for Russia, demonstrating article 5 isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Let's see how things play out. So far we're in "small, plausibly deniable provocation" territory, but if this follows the "salami slice" M.O. we would expect Russia to keep slicing if they feel there's not enough push-back
NATO not going total war over a few airspace incursions does not prove a lack of resolve to defend its territories. Russia is also not salami slicing its way to anything if it's not causing meaningful damage or territorial exchange.
Conversely, Russia(n leadership) would probably love an overreaction by NATO to unlock the use of its conscripted army for "defense," which is not feasible in the current war of aggression.
The only loaded rhetoric is coming from you, I merely stated what the incentives are. Note that the situation is somewhat symmetric in that Russia also has an incentive to misdirect Ukrainian drones toward NATO airspace (which has happened).
> misdirect Ukrainian drones toward NATO airspace (which has happened).
Claims to such effect has been made in public by reputable persons but they are not very credible nor has any supporting evidence been shown in public.
Drones getting lost due to GNSS jamming is happening.
But intentional misdirection towards a target would require GNSS spoofing capabilities over an impractically large area and that the drones would be susceptible to simple spoofing. They have satellite navigation, inertial navigation, terrain following cameras and listen to ground based radio sources like cell towers and are designed to operate in hostile RF environment. Just sending a fake GPS signal (several of them) won't make the drone divert to a specific target or direction.
I'm not buying the misdirection story until more compelling evidence is made public.
I made no claims as to whether misdirection is happening or feasible, only that there are incentives for both sides to do so if it is, while there are no incentives for Russia to take on a much larger enemy while it can barely handle Ukraine, which OP was implying was the obvious explanation.
To counter this conspiracy of yours: Ukraine was in a much poorer position in the past and didn't resort to this type of jamming with the hopes of dragging NATO into the conflict. Today, they are in a much stronger position, striking deep into Russia and even the Caspian sea https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/iran-says-ukrainian-att...
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?
One other reason, Shahed drones are preprogrammed with their target, they're not being flown by an operator who can quickly change their course. They're basically a cruise missile with propellers.
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.
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.
Dozens of sensitive military bases, nuclear facilities, and airports reported incursions and some shut down their air spaces in response, are you saying the Air Force, NORTHCOM, and airport air traffic control don’t know what airplanes are? The Coast Guard and NJ state police also reported sightings and even pursued some of the drones.
Yep. Officials aren't immune to mass hysteria, and there's immense pressure to assume the worst "out of an abundance of caution."
"Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we [DHS, FBI, FAA, and DoD] assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones. We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast."
Either they were wrong about the nature of the sightings when they happened or they were wrong afterwards, there's no world in which they got it right the whole way through. So the only question is which way they got it wrong. I see no reason to believe that they were correct in the moment and wrong afterwards.
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).
Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East? I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits. That's very different than say, WWII.
But they don't have to succeed, invasion of Baltic countries could potentially be enough to start WW3, even if russia does not have capacity to win it.
> Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East?
Iran has a strong stance to significantly increase influence in the Middle East if not restrained: they have many way (not just Hormuz) to project power on oil countries, and essentially force them to switch sides.
The main threat to Europe is if Trump ever makes good on his threats to take Canada and Greenland. If the US turns truly hostile, then Europe has a serious problem. Especially if Putin and Trump decide they want to split Europe between the two of them.
It's a very extreme case, but it would get extremely messy. Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side. Trump's erratic disruptive attacks will hopefully end at some point. I'm not worried about Iran at all, except internally.
Fortunatly Trump won’t be a major problem for long. I’m more worried about the techbro community who want to usher in a neo-feudal empire based around resource control.
>"Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side."
500+ million people and corresponding economy needs Ukraine to protect themselves? this is just plain pathetic or what's worse proof that the EU would fight Russia to the last Ukrainian
This situation does not resemble the beginning of WW1. wW1 was caused more or less by an inept leader (the Herman Kaiser Wilhelm) with way too much power.
Putin cannot play the part Wilhelm played in 1914 because Russia has very little power.
Xi Ping cannot play the part Wilhelm played because he is too smart (he is one of the shrewdest and smartest leaders rn). If Xi Ping starts to lose it, then yeah, we may have WW1. Until then this is a very different situation.
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.
A "World War" probably isn't characterized by its "size" (whatever that means) but rather by the fact that the combat theatre extends over much of "the world", or that much of "the world" are active belligerents. Ukraine is right now a localized conflict; I don't think it counts.
FWIW, as one potential size metric: casualties in Ukraine (so far) are comparable to the Korean or Vietnam War, and an order of magnitude less than the World Wars (even though the world has roughly 4x the population now than in 1939). It's much more comparable to those conflicts than either of the World Wars.
British, American, and French deaths made up only a small fraction of the 60M-75M killed in WWII, which speaks to the global ("World") nature of a World War.
I believe it's also the case that more Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War than the UK/US/France combined during WWII as well.
No, there has not. One state is using a substantial amount of resources, US and others are donating EOL equipment and pocket change and Ukraine is managing to hold back the country expending a lot of resources. WWII had multiple global powers shift their entire economic output to war machines.
In September the Russians accused the Ukrainians of having repairing downed Geran drone airframes at the Lviv LORTA plant, transferring them to Yavoriv, and launching them unarmed into Poland. They presented various evidence like serial numbers, photographs of silver-tape repairs, claims that a Ukrainian SIM-card was used, lack of impact destruction, etc.
What's true though? I don't believe that I have a way to find out.
“Dear Mr Putin, Please don’t use our airspace to attack Ukraine else we will be forced to write you another slightly more strongly worded letter next time. Thanks, NATO”
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
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.
The oligarchs aren't the ones controlling Putin, it's the other way around. But yes, escalation with NATO is a very poor idea, given Russia's struggles with a single non-NATO country.
>"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.
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.
A war doesn’t need to be sustainable for Ukraine, it’s existential. For the aggressor that backstop doesn’t exist. They could literally stop the war anytime they wanted so they need to continue to prove it’s sustainable to keep doing it.
Ukraine is gaining some ground, but very slowly. It's basically a stalemate. Except that Ukraine is making the war extremely costly for Russia with the recent attacks on refineries and other targets deep into Russia.
As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia. But Ukraine is nearly as exhausted as Russia, and I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot. I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.
The reason that's not happening is either that NATO thinks this would give Putin the excuse he needs for large scale mobilisation, or simply because Europe is afraid to get its hands dirty. I don't think the former is nearly as big an issue as some believe; Putin has never needed any action from NATO or EU members to justify escalation, and has never responded to imagined red lines getting crossed.
The latter is more likely. I think Europe needs to remember the sacrifice that Canada and the US brought to liberate Europe in WW2, and recognise the moral obligation that creates to liberate others in a similar position. Like Ukraine today.
> Ukraine is gaining some ground, but very slowly. It's basically a stalemate.
Ukraine has been gaining some open fields, while losing major urban areas. Kostyantynivka just fell and Russian troops are securing the high ground overlooking the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk urban conglomerate. Pokrovsk also fell faster than expected, suggesting that Ukraine increasingly lacks the infantry manpower density to defend urban terrain.
> As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia.
European support doesn't rectify Ukraine's critical vulnerability: manpower...or a lack thereof. Although Euro governments seem like they might start deporting military-age Ukrainian males back to Ukraine so they can be forcibly conscripted....because sending men to their deaths against their will screams "Western liberal values", or something.
> I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot
Russian analysts have been coming on Western alt-media outlets warning that Russian hardliners are increasingly advocating for striking logistics and military production sites in Europe. HistoryLegends has a good video about how France, one of the more experienced and expeditionary European countries, absolutely struggled to even get a brigade into Romania for an exercise. Europe could definitely send air support.....but do you think European citizens are ready for their cities to eat Oreshniks (at a minimum) as a response?
> I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.
There isn't enough combat engineering vehicles in all of Europe to clear lanes through the Surovikin Line. The Ukrainians already learned this the hard way in summer 2023.
It has turned out to be luck in disguise when Trump stopped weapon deliveries to Ukraine. Because Biden, Trump, and the Germans set all kinds of limitations so as not to strike Russia. For the first three years, Ukrainians were defending with one arm tied behind their back.
Now, when they finally can damage the Russian economy enough to make the war unsustainable for them, there is a chance we can get an end to this confict.
I think you’re misreading the comment and conflating Putin’s survival with the current war. I believe the OP is saying the administration can’t keep selling the war with Ukraine as a good idea indefinitely and will need to pivot to something more marketable. In our Internet-shaped world, everything is entertainment. This particular show has run its course and needs a pivot, add new actors, make a Very Special Episode or kill off one of the main characters.
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.
Hoping for Putin to get sick is unhelpful. Trump is still in power well past 80, after all. We would do better to plan for a future where Putin rules Russia for another 10-15 years.
Why would Putin want people to think that Putin is sick or infirm, and his ability to lead might be compromised? His entire schtick is that he's a strongman leader and the only reliable option in Russia.
It's basically targeted maketing. They pretty much wanted the West lethargic and unreactive at some point early in the war. Like "don't bother sending aid to Ukraine because Putin is kicking the bucket soon" kind of a narrative.
In Russia yes, they project the strongman narrative.
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.
On the contrary, the video gives an excellent analysis of Putin's options, and it's definitely worth watching.
You're right that Putin believes he's infallible, and the Nielsen makes the point that Putin often picks the most stupid option. But it also emphasizes that Europe needs to be ready to act if Putin decides to escalate, and if the US chooses to abandon NATO.
It is Anders Puck Nielsen who is a serious military researcher and commentator. He is a go-to by any television channel in Denmark and has been from the start of the war.
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.
> 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.
There are rumours that Polish GROM has been taking “vacations” in Ukraine.
As in “we cannot officially approve your presence there but we won’t stop you either”, from the government.
> Poland's elite GROM commandos have become legendary (...) in this episode, we explore (...) the covert war between Poland and Russia, and why Polish-speaking commandos are appearing inside Russian territory.
Regarding efforts to provide deniability for their operations, a Polish officer informed him: “we worked out a formula for our presence in Ukraine … we were simply sent on paid leave. Politicians pretended not to see this.” The Polish Volunteer Corps has appeared to use the same model to provide cover for the mass deployment of Polish Armed Forces personnel, who are technically former personnel when entering the theatre, with their presence having for years been widely reported on multiple frontlines. In February 2026, the lower house of the Polish parliament adopted legislation to provide legal cover to Polish citizens who fought in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War.
It's always amusing when one side claims what the presence of NATO personnel in UA is "just Russian lies" only to post the confirmation of it themselves.
You are mixing legitimate sources reporting the intelligence suggesting Russia is seeking a provocation in Poland with a Kremlin propganda channel lying about Polish commandos operating in Ukraine.
It's all a sham so that we, Romania, would be dragged into this war. That will only mean the end of the comprador regime currently ruling over us, but until then most probably many of us, Romanian men, will get killed "defending" the Western regime. Such is life, i.e. requiring sacrifices.
Romanian here, living close to the border (~30km). There are no big forests nearby - we're safe. Some wheat fields might catch fire, but sometimes we do that intentionally anyway.
Hasn't it occurred to you that typically when an explosive drone reaches the end of its flight, it, er.. explodes? Or that if it isn't shot down, that the last moment of its flight might kill people?
Some things are relitive. It's never a good time to have 10 people get killed by an explosive drone, but that may be better than a million hecter fire that kills 10,000.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
The "interesting new phenomenon", obviously, is the potential of the generalization of what expressed in the title. It has very evidently both relevance to intellectual curiosity and a potential of impact on our activities.
> The "interesting new phenomenon", obviously, is the potential of the generalization of what expressed in the title.
Why is this thing so difficult to name and you need to describe it in such a roundabout way? "Drones might be shot down a lot"? It's neither new nor an intellectual curiosity. "Drones are used for war" also not. It's been happening for years now. What is so interesting? Can you name it without references to generalizations of expressions of other references?
As part of the SAFE EU financial instrument Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament[1]. Currently still relying heavily on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard for anti-air as well as fighter jets with air-to-air missiles, as these recent drones were all brought down by F-16s.
Aside from strategic targets, a lot of the civilian infrastructure is quite vulnerable to drone attacks as there's a huge border to cover and definitely not enough anti-drone tech deployed. An apartment building was hit months ago with no casualties: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/apartment-building-hit-...
[1] https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/media/news-watch/news/2026/06...
> Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament
Some of this is going to be stalled - Romania was planning on deploying the Iron Dome [0] and Spyder [1] for AD which was going to be co-produced by Volkswagen in their German factories that were on the chopping block, but Qatar (Volkswagen's largest minority shareholder with 17% voting share) blocked that deal [2].
[0] - https://www.jpost.com/international/article-861770
[1] - https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sy1n3pcfzx
[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-10/qatar-blo...
Iron Dome is designed for protecting from home made rockets made with dung from the Gaza Strip. And according to research the main reason for the low casualty rate is actually the early warning. How exactly is it supposed to help with real missiles and drones?
How do these scams keep happening? Why doesn't anyone care how their taxpayer money is spent?
> home made rockets made with dung from the Gaza Strip
Homemade bottle rockets are a 2000s era Israel thing. Now it's Ababeel, Mohajer, Shahed, Arash and other Iranian drones deployed in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. The same kinds of drones being used in Ukraine and operated by Iranian personnel [0][1][2] that are also the same make as the drones shot down in Romania as well as Poland.
Ukraine also gave us intel linking Iranian strike capacity with Russia [3] and Russia has previously offered to stop giving Iran geoint and strike intel in return for the US stopping geoint and strike intel sharing with Ukraine, which the US rejected [4].
[0] - https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/03/10/8024839/
[1] - https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/11/07/7375314/
[2] - https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/10/23/7373119/
[3] - https://xcancel.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2081074329115078813#m
[4] - https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-offers-stop-intel-iran...
For me, I just hope the country collapses and we spend the next ten years prosecuting everyone who caused this outcome and overthrowing the existing system. It’s inevitable with how brain dead leadership is throughout government and corporations. The relentless greedy morons have taken the yoke.
If the country has to survive and recover rather quickly, not collapse, for your prosecution scenario to be likely and effective against any significant share of the people who caused this.
F-16s with human pilots and a2a missiles vs cheap drones? That’s one hell of an asymmetry and doesn’t seem robust enough to handle 100x the scale.
Ukraine is using old training aircraft with a guy with a shotgun in the back shooting the drones down.
Just think the small Cessnas and pipers littered around that could be used for a similar task.
https://youtu.be/GrzzYTXgnMQ?is=zChAgYfc5ZEi25gt
Edited out bad grammer
Kinda reminds one of the evolution of the air war during WWI. Planes were used as observation platforms to gather intelligence about enemy fortifications and activities. They were more mobile than balloons and could gather more timely information. Both sides flew past each other just doing their jobs until someone thought they could drop a grenade or small bomb as they surveilled the other guy. Then aerial bombing started to become popular. Around the same time pilots armed themselves and would take pot-shots at enemy pilots, usually with sidearms. Before long machine guns were fitted to planes and synchronized with propellers and pilots were able to dogfight.
I think the next natural step in Russia's defense against Ukrainian drones countermeasures like this, shooting them down with shotguns, will be to arm the drones. Then it will be up to Ukraine to counter that threat and the cycle continues as always.
The advantage of using a drone is that it is cheap to produce, but it needs to be really simple to stay cheap. Arming it with a machine gun that can target an airplane trying to shoot it down would be very expensive.
Not really. They are already in service.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=As_cifXH1Fs
Yea the Gepard seems like a much better fit for those cheap drones.
Unfortunately it's been long discontinued and it's successor Skyranger is still facing some technical difficulties as of recent reports.
Yeah, something is preventing them from just putting a small autocannon onto a turret and firing it from a Python script on a laptop. Russian drones and missiles seem to be just straight flying kinds, and while there are reports of Stinger type missiles seen installed on them, there haven't been reports of them growing anti-mortar radars. Most of them shouldn't need guided munitions at all to deal with.
Time to revive the Sopwith Camel
It's not meant to. That's why Ukraine receives the support it does, because they take the brunt of it.
Yeah, obviously F-16's & humans scale very poorly for this. However:
- At one-a-day scale, political and risk considerations probably favor the expensive solution.
- Using F-16's reveals nothing about your current anti-drone defenses. (Yeah, it's also a real-world basic competence test for your air force - for better and for worse.)
- If your intel people want more data on the drones, an F-16 can haul a whole lotta intel-gathering equipment to the show.
- If you're dealing internally with some head-in-the-sand traditionalists dragging their heels on updating your doctrine/equipment/training to deal with drones, then "real world, right now" examples are probably useful.
(BTW - do the articles say "a2a missile" anywhere? F-16's typically mount a 20mm cannon, a cheap drone is not a hard target, and cannon rounds are dirt cheap by compare.)
Ukrainian F-16s have used cannons to shoot down some Russian drones. Cheaper than a missile, but a somewhat risky maneuver as it requires getting close at low altitude and possibly flying through the exploding debris.
https://www.zona-militar.com/en/2026/02/09/ukrainian-f-16am-...
Thanks. With the relative speeds, I'd guess the Falcons would use an attack profile similar to ground strafing - letting them pass well above the cloud of debris. Any thoughts?
Also, Wikipedia gives a 3km effective firing range for the M61 - but it'd be no surprise if the F-16's standard targeting optics can't achieve that against small airborne targets.
URL appears to go to home page of RO military, another URL is: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260726-romanian-jet-sho...
Nice to see a France24 link in the wild, it is a very underrated news outlet
France24 does a lot of very solid work related to one of my particular areas of interest in the Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan region. It's also a great alternative to any US news sources even for news about what's going on domestically in North America (though the CBC has more breadth of coverage, for sure).
Just keep in mind that's literally owned by the French government.
That’s probably a factor in why it’s able to maintain such high quality.
Though most French commercial media are not bad, either.
I think it is not owned by the government, rather by the state.
In a democracy, how is this a bad thing?
>Since 2008 the channel has been wholly owned by the French government
Explain to me why reading news from the state is a good thing? Kinda shocked that people here applaud state-owned media (there is no difference between "government-owned" or "state-owned").
To me there is, government as "ops", where the media could be more biased, while the state is the more wholistic entity, owned by the tax payer.
Your comment makes only sense if you follow the narrative that state is bad, private companies good. In most European countries, we are rather happy with having a part of the media market owned by the state.
You have to read the news from someone, and each one has its own bias. State news has a well known failure mode as propaganda. But commercial news turns out to have its own failure mode, where emotion inducing content has bigger gains for lower cost.
The best advice I can give here is to mix different sources. As a Belgian, I have a few local newspapers and the VRT news for Belgium, NOS, BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera, which are all checked at least weekly. Each one has its own blatant biases and blind spots. There are still big missing gaps, e.g. a Chinese and an African perspective. There is clearly Gell Mann Amnesia going on. Even so, I started to look very different to the world.
I tend to prefer public media over corporate media. It’s not like the Murdochs are more trustworthy than Macron.
Interesting how people like it use sympathetic terms (“public media”) while those who don’t use pejorative terms (“state-owned”, “government-run”).
I’m not saying it’s good or bad, just observing the language.
The former is euphemistic. The latter two are objective.
Not in every case. I would call (in the US) National Public Radio "public media", but Voice of America "government-run".
I personally don't know enough about BBC or France 24 to go beyond "government-funded", so I would want more details about their governance before using the terms mentioned before to describe them.
Sarcasm?
In a democracy, how would state owned be different from public?
Do you also call libraries state-run?
IMHO both terms are heavy with bias depending on context.
Public means accessible to everyone. State-owned means owned by the state. These are orthogonal axes. X is a public square that is not owned by the state. The CIA situation room is owned by the state but is not public.
I think if certain books happened to not appear in that library, it being state-run might be something to consider.
What ever it truly is, America is called a 'democracy', and it had Project Mockingbird, which some, myself included, say never ended. And even being maximally fair, I must question whether democracy has any meaning in the context of media after Ellison buys half of it. Does he not own CNN? No point in mentioning who, or what owns Fox. And Bezos?
I know it comes off offensive, despite being unintended, but 'democracy' means nothing to me. We have some useful principles of it, which I value, but as a thing, I don't see it.
Alternative conclusion: democracy means something, but America doesn't have it
Yeah. And we seem to be missing a Republic too. Thank G0d for Chinese LLMs.
> Explain to me why reading news from the state is a good thing?
When you get your news from RT, BBC, France24, DW, PressTV, NPR, Gulf News, DD, Al-Jazeera etc. you get "official" political propaganda from the respective governments that run these outlets. Political propaganda can be based on falsehood or factual truth(s) with a "biased" analysis on it. Government news outlets have to show some journalistic integrity to earn trust. Thus, most of their propaganda tends to be based on facts than on falsehood. So reading them all or reading about the same subjects from these different outlets really gives you a larger political perspective with some great political insights.
As far as I know, it’s in the mission of most of these to give an unbiased report on what is happening in the world and inside the country. In practice, there may be influence by powerful politicians, but for these news outlets to spread government propaganda would constitute corruption.
I know that the BBC in the UK, SVT in Sweden, the ABC in Australia go to great lengths to listen to both sides, whatever they may be, to a fault. They are often criticized for giving minority views too much coverage for this reason, and rarely for saying what the government would want them to say uncritically.
Who are you getting your news from? “Fox quote on quote News”?
A diversity of media is a good thing. Most of the bad things you could say about state media also apply to sufficiently concentrated private media.
Commercial interests tend to progresively degrade the quality of the news if there are no state-funded news channels. They publish more and more unverified "facts", conspiracy theories, tabloid news, AI slop, AI images instead of real news photograpy, intrusive ads, etc.
When there's a news channel funded by the state (instead of ads), most other private news are forced to keep up the quality and they also have the opportunity to call out any bad news and biases published by the state channel. This way no news outlets stray too far from the truth or become unreadable slop. It's better overall.
The government it can use its media to influence its citizen and try it to change election results or create propangada.
France is executive heavy democracy similar to US and Latin American States. This is a very big flaw and state owned media might be contribute to.
> In a democracy, how is this a bad thing?
Because democracy is effectively mob rule, which means minority voices may get shut out.
Advertising-funded media is inherently plutocratic, in which those with the most money influence direction. Sometimes more overtly than others.
There've been many treatments of this: Jerry Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (1988), Neil Postman's Amusing OUrselves to Death (1985), Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism (1909) <https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft/page/...>.
That last is particularly good for a number of reasons, including that it's short and information dense, and lays out the clear conflicts inherent to advertising-driven media just at the time it was first gaining influence, and at a fraction of its present size and influence.
If you prefer video, media critic Isadore F. "I.F." Stone gave an excellent 1973 interview on the PBS series Day at Night on the state of newspaper journalism in the United States, contrasting the relative independence of big-city dailies vs. rural papers. The former were large enough that no single advertiser could threaten editorial independence.
Link will offer a choice of instances to redirect to: <https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g> (video).
Ah, but they were aware of that, and built in protections for minorities.
Which means that everything leads to the status quo, and the majority voices get shut out in favor of the most entrenched minority.
Those clever founders.
How is this any different to any private news outlet which might hold a bias?
What is the distinction between government and state?
As for your question, Russia is nominally a democracy but I wouldn't trust the veracity of their state media reports.
> What is the distinction between government and state?
In a parliamentary democracy the "government" is the prime minister, president (whatever the titles are), cabinet ministers and the party that happens to be in power at any given time. The "Government" might be a coalition of 2, 3, or 4 medium sized political parties that have come to some sort of arrangement to have enough votes to pass a budget and laws. The "state" are the persons who perform the longer term functions of the state not directly controlled by the whims of any political thing that might happen in a specific year.
For instance when France made a decision to build its previous series of nuclear powered, missile carrying submarines, and the decision to build a new series that will enter service some time in the 2030s, that's implemented by the civil servants who run the state. Various political parties have waxed and waned and leadership has come and gone since the French nuclear program began, but various successor governments have continued it.
Less specific than that program, the state implements other basic services for the people of the country, all the things that have their day to day work done by people who aren't elected members of parliament. The parliamentarians who happen to be occupying various seats at any given time are the government.
In a more specific Canadian example: The government funding that comes to the CBC each year is actually from what would we would call the state. https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/impact-and-accountability/fin...
You'll see terms used like "the government has collapsed as the result of a non confidence vote" or "there's been a leadership challenge inside the government (eg: how Trudeau lost power recently)", it doesn't mean the functions of the state have collapsed.
> the distinction between government and state
The State would be the organization that uses governments as the branch of executive power (and also organizes a legislative activity, and a judiciary activity...). The kind and amount of power held by the Head of the State and the Head of the Government can vary.
Yeah, just like the BBC is owned by the British government. Less clickbait and scaremongering, I guess.
Including on the dimensions of (1) having a very fast website and (2) not having any paywalls. Feels very good to read.
Yeah a solid propaganda arm of the French government
Not the only one though: I remember what happened when we 'invaded' Lybia: not one criticism in the French news anywhere, total censorship, even though our media had widely and correctly criticised the US for the Irak war..
So I think the best thing is to get news from everywhere Russia, China, the US, Europe, but that's a lot of work..
It is also not possible as there is censorship in some cases. The European Union has blocked rt.com.
That is blocked because far too many EU residents were taking it as 100% fact and acting upon it.
The block is only DNS level, IIRC, and doesn't affect VPNs.
As compared to what more trustworthy, honest news sources? Please name a few, I'm curious.
Usually the argument is that because a reputable news agency with a history of high quality journalism made once a mistake, it's better to listen to some angry podcaster with a history inviting cooky nutcase, or sketchy Twitter account with history of boosting fake news as jokes.
Two things can be true at the same time. The lack of good sources and the fact that france24 is pure propaganda.
The home page shows 3 consecutive press releases for the past 3 days each detailing a similar incident.
The first drone on 24.07 took ~80min to intercept and shoot down, well into the country. The other 2 were shot down within kilometers of the border so they’re paying closer attention.
The asymmetry between the drones and the F16 neutralising them quickly makes this financially unsustainable.
Yes, but it also trains the pilots and everything around them for real action in a non war environment (you cannot just shoot anywhere in civilian airspace).
And they would need to train anyway.
But for a real conflict, sure, more economical solutions are on the way.
I believe that Sun Tsu said something about using your enemy's military to train your military.
I think the idea is that you don't keep sending just one F16, but the problem is long before an age of drones we built up some catch me if you can bullshit where we expect smaller countries to ignore airspace violations.
Like bro... you got a GPS. Get the fuck out of here.
I love how people are pointing this out thinking NATO countries aren’t currently doing a Manhattan-light on drone defense.
I hope they don’t send any to Bulgaria. Our PM is waiting exactly this to declare we’re joining the Russian federation.
How are Russian drones entering Bulgarian territory going to give the PM the chance/excuse to join Russia?
I don't know if this is their case, but some politicians don't care much about their arguments making sense. In this specific case, a politician could either claim the drones come from some other country, and Russia is going to protect them, or that they need to join Russia for them to stop.
There's no logic behind russia's pretexts.
In 2014-15 they started shelling civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, then used that as a pretext to increase their military presence by pretending it's all local militias fighting back the shelling the ruskies themselves started.
The pretext was fully fabricated, the militias theatre was fully fabricated. Nothing made sense. To anyone with a pinch if intellect the truth was obvious...
Yet, the legend of Ukrainians murdering other Ukrainians for using russian language has rooted so much, even now some ppl believe that bs.
In case of Bulgaria, ruskies could attack, then attack again pretending russian-speaking population needs protection in the light of the first attack.
And right-wing nutheads in EU gonna believe that, and blame NATO for offensive expansion
No
Logic
Whatsoever
That's not really accurate.
Russia's pretexts were largely true.
Ukraine did ban Russian language schools. That's technically a human rights violation. Native language education has been considered a human right since the late 1800s.
It's a common violation. Belarus did the same thing for Polish, Poland for German. Etc. Lots of Muricans want Murica to be an English-language Christian nation too, and laws sometimes reflect that. Certainly Murican education standards favor English speakers.
Euromaidan was a bit anti-rule-of-law.
Many Russian minority groups were mistreated in Ukraine.
All of that is true.
None of it merits an invasion.
Best propaganda is usually all true but selective of facts. In any group of more than a million people, some will do something bad. There are instances of Poles assaulting Ukrainian refugees, and vice-versa. It sounds bad, but with over a million refugees, it's statistically impossible for it to not happen. It makes for good propaganda for Russia too; both sides are starting to be riled up.
Good propaganda has elements of truth. Even if you read Hitler, you'll see a mixture of truth and fiction. The verifiable facts lend credence to the fabricated ones.
The dumb thing is Ukraine has doubled down on all of that since the invasion. The right thing to do would be to:
1) Open up a Russian-language elementary school
2) Don't mention Bandera, or better yet, apologize to Poland and open a park recognizing Polish victims or something similarly symbolic.
That's the right thing to do, and with that, the credibility of the propaganda simply disintegrates. If you're ever falsely accused, the trick is to do the exact opposite.
You are right that the Russians have been frequently somewhat mistreated in the former Soviet Republics where they have become minorities.
However, this is an extraordinarily hypocritical claim, because this has followed a time when for various durations, between a half of century and two centuries the Russians have mistreated the minorities of those places in a much more ferocious way, inclusively by robbing them, murdering them or sending them to forced labor in Siberia.
In Ukraine, there are many places with Russian colonists who have been installed after WWII in the houses that before the war belonged to various other nationalities, which were then killed or dispersed to Siberia by the Russians.
Yes, Russians have been mistreated after the separation of the Soviet Republics, but this is much, much less than what their fathers have done around WWII and before it, and many of them have still inherited what their fathers have stolen from the other nationalities.
Had the Russians treated better the others when they had the power, they would have not been so hated, so they would have been much more likely to be treated correctly.
What you've listed here is not what russia lists as a reason for attacking Ukraine. And even if it was, it's still really shitty pretext.
Yes, these are very much among Russia's pretexts.
There were others as well. Most have at least some basis as well. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/422nd_Unmanned_Systems_Regimen...
And yes, it is still a really shitty set of pretexts.
As with many conflicts this one goes back a long way. Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia in exchange for a non aggression pact that the invasion broke.
Also bad for the world. The lesson, as with Iran and Iraq, is: you’d better have nukes and never give them up. This is the opposite of the lesson we want if we want to contain proliferation.
The global taboo on use remains. If someone breaks that and gets away with it we are into civilization ending danger territory.
Ukraine never had its own independently controlled/operated nukes. The USSR deployed nukes on various territories but all command and control was completely centralized within Russia. Ukraine/Belarus/Kazakhstan returned the Soviet nukes to Russia under the same agreement and received some nonbinding assurances and cash in exchange - it was nothing like a formal pact. Had any of these countries tried to reverse engineer the nukes, they'd likely have been invaded by the US, Russia, and most other major world powers, so it was largely an offer they couldn't refuse.
Russia claims those assurances ended with the US actively advocating on the ground in Ukraine for the overthrow of their government in 2014, as the assurances included not interfering in domestic politics or using economic coercion. But the US also sanctioned and was working to overthrow Belarus as far back as 2006, so those assurances had been pretty much dead for a long time.
Outside of that I completely agree with everything else you said, especially with people not appreciating how far back these conflicts go. The whole Bandera stuff has no real parallel in the West, so I think most people wouldn't really be able to 'get it' even if they had the facts, which they overwhelmingly do not.
Ukraine had the nukes in physical possession and they had enough expertise to eventually disassemble them and replace the electronics.
Choosing to not do this to avoid a hypothetical external aggression was a bad choice, because they were invaded anyway.
> As with many conflicts this one goes back a long way. Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia in exchange for a non aggression pact that the invasion broke.
From the Guardian (12 days ago): "Kyiv’s decision to honour second world war fighters who killed about 100,000 Poles has revived simmering tensions". Bandera was a Nazi collaborator and today's Ukraine politics worships Bandera. Lots of streets are renamed to honor him. Eastern Ukrainians are considered second class - or as some politicians said: "There are 2 million people too many".
The US (look up Nuland and her quote about 'fuck the EU') fueled with $5B the nationalism in Ukraine. Now imagine, the US would fuel with $50B the nationalism in Belgium and the the flemish would attack wallonie. You know what would happen? France would support the wallonie. Nothing to see here.
1) there are plenty of russian schools in russia
2) Poland is not your concern, Vasily
That's the point he's making though - this kind of response just validates Russian propaganda, makes Russia look good and makes Ukraine look bad.
If you want Ukraine to win the information war then this isn't that helpful?
Unless of course you are actually pro-Russian and you're just playing this game at a higher level in which case... congrats because that is effective
> we’re joining the Russian federation.
Based PM, from one of your neighbors just North of the Danube.
Why would you want to join third world shithole?
It's not World War 3. It's just two increasingly overlapping unsolvable wars involving two increasingly coherent geopolitical blocs consisting of dozens of countries spanning three continents, most major nuclear powers holding 95% of global nuclear stockpiles and the vast majority of global military spending and resources, with nuclear-capable cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles flying back and forth, attacks on strategic nuclear early warning systems, threats of nuclear first-use and global nuclear holocaust, etc. Fighting over issues the leaders of the involved superpowers and great powers have described as existential and beyond compromise.
Not World War 3 though, currently.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/26/ukraine-war-br...
Are there enough nations on Russia's side to call them a bloc? It seems like almost everyone is supporting Ukraine.
India and China are both supporting Russia in various overt and covert ways. That's a huge fraction of the world.
Iran is even more closely linked. Arguably the real reason for the American attack on Iran is to reduce their contribution to the Ukraine conflict.
Plus Russia's various Toadies (which included Hungary, an EU nation, until recently)... It's a pretty sizeable bloc.
It's not yet an all out Axis and Allies situation, but it's definitely not just Russia against the world.
> Arguably the real reason for the American attack on Iran is to reduce their contribution to the Ukraine conflict.
How nice of Trump and Netanyahu, thinking about the world peace and Europe's well-being.
While they are clearly leading this war for their own purposes, both require the support of a governing apparatus (the Republican and Likud party bureaucrats) who have their own motivations. Those motivations are not necessarily positive, but can at least be understood in terms of a national policy rather than individual temper tantrums.
> individual temper tantrums.
whatever the rationale for starting hostilities against Iran, the situation we are currently in is best described as an individual temper tantrum.
India and China are the only reasons Russia hasn’t collapsed on itself yet. Much to the detriment of a country that had no interest in being invaded.
North Korea is definitely part of the Russian bloc now.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clypr5985ejo
China is a bloc unto itself
The only nations against Russia are in Europe, or run by absurdly corrupt right-wing dictators. The problem with supporting Russia is that the US is psychotic, aggressive, and takes pride in causing civilian casualties. It will starve your children to death as a openly proclaimed tactic; it loves to double-tap. Russia isn't going to hurt you for being neutral, but the US will, joyously.
Europe doesn't even really support Ukraine, it just hates Russia for defeating it in WWII. Thank God France has nukes, or Germany would be invading it again for not showing enough support for Ukraine and Israel.
edit: Poland is starting to remember what the Ukrainians did back then, too. And to notice that the psychotic Ukrainian nationalist minority (that we funded and armed) are proud of having done it, and would do it again.
It's not Ukraine that regularly threatens Poland. Russian propaganda is truly only for absolute brain dead - how can you at same time fantasize about bombing Warsaw, jam GPS over Baltic, do hybrid war across Polish-Belarusian border and say that actually Ukraine is the real danger. Unfortunately there are lots of people that are stupid enough to actually believe this.
russia's invasion of Ukraine is absolutely solvable. It's just a disgrace that Ukraine is left to do it alone, with huge casualties (civilian as well as military), and inconceivable destruction.
Given how poor their Ukrainian war is going, this is a strange move. I guess it’s mostly just posturing?
The logic I’ve heard is that one of the more palatable defeat conditions for Russia is that they’d rather lose to NATO than Ukraine. So they’re fine to push limits because even the worst case scenario gives them better options.
This. Losing to Ukraine is a massive humiliation. Losing to NATO is “fair” in their eyes. Even now, pro-Russian sources refuse to believe the current drone swarms and highly advanced deep strike drones wrecking havoc on Russian oil infrastructure (see the official state of emergency declared in Crimea and fuel shortages in other regions) are caused by Ukrainian drones. They keep making up some sore loser nonsense about these being NATO drones or some clever trick like drones released from trucks inside Russia. Meanwhile even the Pentagon is buying Ukrainian made drones: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-a...
Having seen posts in social media by the usual suspects from previous such incidents, it's a way to convince the audience at home that the enemy (NATO) is actually weak and that there's no need to be alarmed.
It offers valuable information on response time.
These are cheap decoy foam drones with less electronics. The amount of fuel decides how far they fly. Favorable wind? They fly further.
> The amount of fuel decides how far they fly. Favorable wind? They fly further.
Is this true for non-decoy non-foam drones and basically everything else that flies, even things with solid boosters? Seems like a strange part to add here as it basically applies to aviation in general, replace "fuel" with "stored energy" and literally all type of "vehicle" fits basically.
A non-decoy drone would presumably go no further than its target, at which point any leftover fuel just adds to the fireball. Whereas making a decoy drone go down before the fuel is exhausted is pointless waste, when instead it could be decoying a little bit longer.
They are cheap but the rockets to shoot them down cost (I've heard but don't count on it) around $480,000 per missile. That is not a minor consideration for a country like Romania.
Absolutely not the ideal weapon to fight them, and better(cheaper) options are coming to shoot down the drones, but until then the price is irrelevant as long as you're preventing loss of human life.
Saving any nonzero amount of lives for any unbounded cost is not necessarily a good trade, if there are ways to save more lives for the same cost, or the same number of lives for a lesser cost.
The actual volume here is tiny, so the costs pale in comparison to political and economic consequences
We're not at the point of making those kind of decisions in Romania, fortunately. Politically right now it would be very dangerous to say that "some of you may die".
It is ye olde reconnaisance by the tip of the bayonet. How long can you prod before someone says "ouch!"
For the case of a hot war, knowing the detection and destruction capabilities of your future enemy is valuable.
Deescalation by escalation is a standard russian tactic.
They've been doing this for years.
I don't know if it's to try and circumvent Ukrainian defenses or to provoke a reaction to sell to domestic audiences though.
Putin's only option is to escalate at this point, otherwise he's seen as weak with the war going so well. The Romanians should also be really getting their act together and start shooting the bogeys down.
Turkey didn't think twice before shooting down a Russian Su-24 in 2015 for violating Turkish airspace for about 17 seconds. This is how you "negotiate" with the Russians: first you break their nose when cross some red line, then appologize.
The Turks never apologized to the Russians. They said the incident was regrettable. Which is consistent with the overall "don't fuck with us" message that was being sent.
“This is how you "negotiate" with Turks: you kill dozens of them, then don’t apologize.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Balyun_airstrikes
Move by whom? Drones straying from the intended route is usually caused by jamming from the other side.
Escalating tensions between Russia and NATO is in Ukraine's, not Russia's, interest.
You’re missing the fact that Ukraine desperately needs missile defense, and these incidents incentivize its neighbors to keep all their defenses to themselves.
No one wants to be blamed when they can’t defend themselves when Russia attacks.
If NATO as a whole responds, yes it's in Ukraine's interest. If the NATO response is weak and non-cohesive, it is a victory for Russia, demonstrating article 5 isn't worth the paper it's written on. Let's see how things play out. So far we're in "small, plausibly deniable provocation" territory, but if this follows the "salami slice" M.O. we would expect Russia to keep slicing if they feel there's not enough push-back
NATO not going total war over a few airspace incursions does not prove a lack of resolve to defend its territories. Russia is also not salami slicing its way to anything if it's not causing meaningful damage or territorial exchange.
Conversely, Russia(n leadership) would probably love an overreaction by NATO to unlock the use of its conscripted army for "defense," which is not feasible in the current war of aggression.
To strip away your rhetoric, you are saying it is Ukraine's fault for Russian drones flying into Romania.
The only loaded rhetoric is coming from you, I merely stated what the incentives are. Note that the situation is somewhat symmetric in that Russia also has an incentive to misdirect Ukrainian drones toward NATO airspace (which has happened).
> misdirect Ukrainian drones toward NATO airspace (which has happened).
Claims to such effect has been made in public by reputable persons but they are not very credible nor has any supporting evidence been shown in public.
Drones getting lost due to GNSS jamming is happening.
But intentional misdirection towards a target would require GNSS spoofing capabilities over an impractically large area and that the drones would be susceptible to simple spoofing. They have satellite navigation, inertial navigation, terrain following cameras and listen to ground based radio sources like cell towers and are designed to operate in hostile RF environment. Just sending a fake GPS signal (several of them) won't make the drone divert to a specific target or direction.
I'm not buying the misdirection story until more compelling evidence is made public.
I made no claims as to whether misdirection is happening or feasible, only that there are incentives for both sides to do so if it is, while there are no incentives for Russia to take on a much larger enemy while it can barely handle Ukraine, which OP was implying was the obvious explanation.
His name indicates a troll.
To counter this conspiracy of yours: Ukraine was in a much poorer position in the past and didn't resort to this type of jamming with the hopes of dragging NATO into the conflict. Today, they are in a much stronger position, striking deep into Russia and even the Caspian sea https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/iran-says-ukrainian-att...
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?
Because Shahed 131/136 are large, way larger than surveillance drone/quadcopter. We are talking 2-3m wingspans and 130-200kg launch mass.
One other reason, Shahed drones are preprogrammed with their target, they're not being flown by an operator who can quickly change their course. They're basically a cruise missile with propellers.
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.
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.
There are many more that are missed in Romania :)
Because those weren’t drones, they were people noticing for the first time that there are airplanes in the sky.
Dozens of sensitive military bases, nuclear facilities, and airports reported incursions and some shut down their air spaces in response, are you saying the Air Force, NORTHCOM, and airport air traffic control don’t know what airplanes are? The Coast Guard and NJ state police also reported sightings and even pursued some of the drones.
Yep. Officials aren't immune to mass hysteria, and there's immense pressure to assume the worst "out of an abundance of caution."
"Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we [DHS, FBI, FAA, and DoD] assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones. We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast."
Either they were wrong about the nature of the sightings when they happened or they were wrong afterwards, there's no world in which they got it right the whole way through. So the only question is which way they got it wrong. I see no reason to believe that they were correct in the moment and wrong afterwards.
Because they were being flown by their respective governments.
They shut down their own airports and military bases because their own craft were flying over them?
We seems scarily only one rogue actor or screw up from WW III in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
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).
Don't we already have that? It's just a smoulder instead of a conflagration.
Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East? I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits. That's very different than say, WWII.
But they don't have to succeed, invasion of Baltic countries could potentially be enough to start WW3, even if russia does not have capacity to win it.
> Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East?
Iran has a strong stance to significantly increase influence in the Middle East if not restrained: they have many way (not just Hormuz) to project power on oil countries, and essentially force them to switch sides.
> I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits.
Those zany kids!
The main threat to Europe is if Trump ever makes good on his threats to take Canada and Greenland. If the US turns truly hostile, then Europe has a serious problem. Especially if Putin and Trump decide they want to split Europe between the two of them.
It's a very extreme case, but it would get extremely messy. Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side. Trump's erratic disruptive attacks will hopefully end at some point. I'm not worried about Iran at all, except internally.
Fortunatly Trump won’t be a major problem for long. I’m more worried about the techbro community who want to usher in a neo-feudal empire based around resource control.
> problem for long
Seen the news of the past hours about the 2028 intention?
Trump is 80 years old. He won't be long for this mortal coil, or at least his brain won't (arguably it already isn't).
When has lack of brain activity or even being dead ever stopped them? See also the weird situation with Mitch McConnell.
>"Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side."
500+ million people and corresponding economy needs Ukraine to protect themselves? this is just plain pathetic or what's worse proof that the EU would fight Russia to the last Ukrainian
How about WWI? This feels more like the start of that - blundering toward catastrophe.
This situation does not resemble the beginning of WW1. wW1 was caused more or less by an inept leader (the Herman Kaiser Wilhelm) with way too much power.
Putin cannot play the part Wilhelm played in 1914 because Russia has very little power.
Xi Ping cannot play the part Wilhelm played because he is too smart (he is one of the shrewdest and smartest leaders rn). If Xi Ping starts to lose it, then yeah, we may have WW1. Until then this is a very different situation.
And President Trump?
Well, not even the Nazis managed to permanently conquer Europe, but the destruction they still wrought on the continent was enormous.
Even a victorious war is destructive. I'd like to do without, but I am just a random hobbit in this regard.
Where the misbehaving misfits are the aggressors, i.e Russia, the USA, and Israel?
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.
Hawe you been in coma? There has been a ww2 sized war in eastern europe for 4 years
A "World War" probably isn't characterized by its "size" (whatever that means) but rather by the fact that the combat theatre extends over much of "the world", or that much of "the world" are active belligerents. Ukraine is right now a localized conflict; I don't think it counts.
FWIW, as one potential size metric: casualties in Ukraine (so far) are comparable to the Korean or Vietnam War, and an order of magnitude less than the World Wars (even though the world has roughly 4x the population now than in 1939). It's much more comparable to those conflicts than either of the World Wars.
Russia has had more casualties than the UK/US/France combined in WW2
British, American, and French deaths made up only a small fraction of the 60M-75M killed in WWII, which speaks to the global ("World") nature of a World War.
I believe it's also the case that more Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War than the UK/US/France combined during WWII as well.
No, there has not. One state is using a substantial amount of resources, US and others are donating EOL equipment and pocket change and Ukraine is managing to hold back the country expending a lot of resources. WWII had multiple global powers shift their entire economic output to war machines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war
The big part that I didn’t see was whether this was a Russian drone or Ukrainian drone
They're Shahed drones, used by Russia.
In September the Russians accused the Ukrainians of having repairing downed Geran drone airframes at the Lviv LORTA plant, transferring them to Yavoriv, and launching them unarmed into Poland. They presented various evidence like serial numbers, photographs of silver-tape repairs, claims that a Ukrainian SIM-card was used, lack of impact destruction, etc.
What's true though? I don't believe that I have a way to find out.
Russian credibility is at ~zero IMO. They've put forth so many insane theories related to this war that they started.
And just on first principles, how stupid would the Ukrainian have to be to do such a thing to their biggest ally? It almost beggars belief.
The Nord Stream destruction was made to Europe by their big friend Ukraine.
With EU blessing.
Yes?
They would love to have a cause to involve anything NATO.
And for the first principles you are surely didn't miss: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7xzg3dmj8o
A safe option is to avoid trusting an aggressor, which has no business being in Ukraine and that can pack up their bags and leave at any time.
Shahed drones are used only by russia and iran
> 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.
“Dear Mr Putin, Please don’t use our airspace to attack Ukraine else we will be forced to write you another slightly more strongly worded letter next time. Thanks, NATO”
Time to expell some more Russian embassy staff.
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
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jDhYFSGkaAc
> 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.
war with nato means he can more easily convince the russian public to go along with mobilization
russians arent excited to go die in ukraine, but defending the homeland from NATO is a different story
The oligarchs aren't the ones controlling Putin, it's the other way around. But yes, escalation with NATO is a very poor idea, given Russia's struggles with a single non-NATO country.
I belive it's the other way around only up to a point. If the situation gets too bad, I believe they have the resources to overthrow him.
Regime security for Putin in an escalation/mass mobilisation situation is high. The chances of the Russian economy surviving are poor.
Often economic crisis leads to less regime security, not more. Why would it be different in Russia?
Watch the video in the link and it is quite well explained there.
>"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.
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.
A war doesn’t need to be sustainable for Ukraine, it’s existential. For the aggressor that backstop doesn’t exist. They could literally stop the war anytime they wanted so they need to continue to prove it’s sustainable to keep doing it.
Not all wars have a simple way to say who is winning, who is loosing. See the Vietnam war, different Afgan wars.
Ukraine is gaining some ground, but very slowly. It's basically a stalemate. Except that Ukraine is making the war extremely costly for Russia with the recent attacks on refineries and other targets deep into Russia.
As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia. But Ukraine is nearly as exhausted as Russia, and I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot. I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.
The reason that's not happening is either that NATO thinks this would give Putin the excuse he needs for large scale mobilisation, or simply because Europe is afraid to get its hands dirty. I don't think the former is nearly as big an issue as some believe; Putin has never needed any action from NATO or EU members to justify escalation, and has never responded to imagined red lines getting crossed.
The latter is more likely. I think Europe needs to remember the sacrifice that Canada and the US brought to liberate Europe in WW2, and recognise the moral obligation that creates to liberate others in a similar position. Like Ukraine today.
> Ukraine is gaining some ground, but very slowly. It's basically a stalemate.
Ukraine has been gaining some open fields, while losing major urban areas. Kostyantynivka just fell and Russian troops are securing the high ground overlooking the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk urban conglomerate. Pokrovsk also fell faster than expected, suggesting that Ukraine increasingly lacks the infantry manpower density to defend urban terrain.
> As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia.
European support doesn't rectify Ukraine's critical vulnerability: manpower...or a lack thereof. Although Euro governments seem like they might start deporting military-age Ukrainian males back to Ukraine so they can be forcibly conscripted....because sending men to their deaths against their will screams "Western liberal values", or something.
> I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot
Russian analysts have been coming on Western alt-media outlets warning that Russian hardliners are increasingly advocating for striking logistics and military production sites in Europe. HistoryLegends has a good video about how France, one of the more experienced and expeditionary European countries, absolutely struggled to even get a brigade into Romania for an exercise. Europe could definitely send air support.....but do you think European citizens are ready for their cities to eat Oreshniks (at a minimum) as a response?
> I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.
There isn't enough combat engineering vehicles in all of Europe to clear lanes through the Surovikin Line. The Ukrainians already learned this the hard way in summer 2023.
It has turned out to be luck in disguise when Trump stopped weapon deliveries to Ukraine. Because Biden, Trump, and the Germans set all kinds of limitations so as not to strike Russia. For the first three years, Ukrainians were defending with one arm tied behind their back.
Now, when they finally can damage the Russian economy enough to make the war unsustainable for them, there is a chance we can get an end to this confict.
Ukr is attacking Retailers (Wildberries) in Russia because Russia helps Iran attack Amazon (US retailer) Data centers in the Gulf.
Nothing to do with Amazon. They sell military and dual use goods, that's why.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/26/8045972/
I think you’re misreading the comment and conflating Putin’s survival with the current war. I believe the OP is saying the administration can’t keep selling the war with Ukraine as a good idea indefinitely and will need to pivot to something more marketable. In our Internet-shaped world, everything is entertainment. This particular show has run its course and needs a pivot, add new actors, make a Very Special Episode or kill off one of the main characters.
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
Hoping for Putin to get sick is unhelpful. Trump is still in power well past 80, after all. We would do better to plan for a future where Putin rules Russia for another 10-15 years.
Trump is 80. Putin is 73.
The poor health thing "Putin is sick" was a FSB psy-op. Maybe he's sick in the head but otherwise in good health.
He does look a lot better than his American counterpart
Putin is a lot more careful about the image he projects and his public appearances than trump.
Why would Putin want people to think that Putin is sick or infirm, and his ability to lead might be compromised? His entire schtick is that he's a strongman leader and the only reliable option in Russia.
It's basically targeted maketing. They pretty much wanted the West lethargic and unreactive at some point early in the war. Like "don't bother sending aid to Ukraine because Putin is kicking the bucket soon" kind of a narrative.
In Russia yes, they project the strongman narrative.
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.
On the contrary, the video gives an excellent analysis of Putin's options, and it's definitely worth watching.
You're right that Putin believes he's infallible, and the Nielsen makes the point that Putin often picks the most stupid option. But it also emphasizes that Europe needs to be ready to act if Putin decides to escalate, and if the US chooses to abandon NATO.
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.
> The Youtuber has an axe to grind
It is Anders Puck Nielsen who is a serious military researcher and commentator. He is a go-to by any television channel in Denmark and has been from the start of the war.
He very much passes the smell test :)
Removed the copy-paste tracker.
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.
Turkiye demonstrated how to stop this a decade ago - shooting down the trespassing bogey. It worked.
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.
> 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.
Can you elaborate on the last sentence? It sounds crazy.
There are rumours that Polish GROM has been taking “vacations” in Ukraine. As in “we cannot officially approve your presence there but we won’t stop you either”, from the government.
I watched a related Chris Cappy video the other day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RBY1cY-GF8
> Poland's elite GROM commandos have become legendary (...) in this episode, we explore (...) the covert war between Poland and Russia, and why Polish-speaking commandos are appearing inside Russian territory.
yes, it is a big [citation needed] for me
See gattr's comment above
Basically GROM getting "leave" and then ending up with their whole team inside Ukraine as "contractors", just with deniability.
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/polish-mercenaries...
Regarding efforts to provide deniability for their operations, a Polish officer informed him: “we worked out a formula for our presence in Ukraine … we were simply sent on paid leave. Politicians pretended not to see this.” The Polish Volunteer Corps has appeared to use the same model to provide cover for the mass deployment of Polish Armed Forces personnel, who are technically former personnel when entering the theatre, with their presence having for years been widely reported on multiple frontlines. In February 2026, the lower house of the Polish parliament adopted legislation to provide legal cover to Polish citizens who fought in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/07/03/russia-pla...
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/12/8043770/
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/baltics-poland-w...
Edit:
Added: https://youtu.be/5RBY1cY-GF8?is=rVFFKVnBxkmsF9aM
Pic: https://x.com/intermarium24/status/1659954927299440641
It's always amusing when one side claims what the presence of NATO personnel in UA is "just Russian lies" only to post the confirmation of it themselves.
It's even more amusing when you see pictures like this https://i.redd.it/ex4jgoqir4qg1.png
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/celebration_parallax
Nice one, thanks.
You are mixing legitimate sources reporting the intelligence suggesting Russia is seeking a provocation in Poland with a Kremlin propganda channel lying about Polish commandos operating in Ukraine.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/military-watch-magazine-bias/
Occam's razor. Decoy drones with a bit more fuel or favorable wind.
It's all a sham so that we, Romania, would be dragged into this war. That will only mean the end of the comprador regime currently ruling over us, but until then most probably many of us, Romanian men, will get killed "defending" the Western regime. Such is life, i.e. requiring sacrifices.
With the heatwaves and drought in Europe it's probably not the best time to have flaming wreckage falling from the sky.
Romanian here, living close to the border (~30km). There are no big forests nearby - we're safe. Some wheat fields might catch fire, but sometimes we do that intentionally anyway.
Hasn't it occurred to you that typically when an explosive drone reaches the end of its flight, it, er.. explodes? Or that if it isn't shot down, that the last moment of its flight might kill people?
It's never a good time to have flaming wreckage fall from the sky.
Some things are relitive. It's never a good time to have 10 people get killed by an explosive drone, but that may be better than a million hecter fire that kills 10,000.
The comparison is not really relevant in this case, as the area over which the drone is destroyed was taken into account on all three drone events.
The France24 article says the drone was shot down over the Black Sea.
...as opposed to it hitting the fucking target ? what are you smoking?
What does this have to do with startups?
>What does this have to do with startups?
You know, I used to have this style view when reading and commenting Slashdot, pre-9/11 about anything other than "the tech".
Afterward, in high school, I began to feel that understanding the foundations of geopolitics can help you maintain an advantage in the business world.
Not much, but it's interesting and I think a large population of users here are curious about drone tech
Check out the first paragraph: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Seems ths qualifies in spades.
The "interesting new phenomenon", obviously, is the potential of the generalization of what expressed in the title. It has very evidently both relevance to intellectual curiosity and a potential of impact on our activities.
> The "interesting new phenomenon", obviously, is the potential of the generalization of what expressed in the title.
Why is this thing so difficult to name and you need to describe it in such a roundabout way? "Drones might be shot down a lot"? It's neither new nor an intellectual curiosity. "Drones are used for war" also not. It's been happening for years now. What is so interesting? Can you name it without references to generalizations of expressions of other references?