Where does this end up?
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15 comments to Russian drones over PolandLeave a Reply |
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Seems early. Lots of false flag accusations out there. I can’t see what Putin would hope to achieve doing this – beyond a public FY to the West, which seems unlikely – but I can see a fake being useful to someone.
I don’t know about “false flag” operations. From the admittedly incomplete information I have encountered; 17 or so attack [not recon] Russian drones swung into Polish airspace so that they could come at the Ukraine from an unexpected direction. 7 of them were shot down and the wrecks landed on Polish territory and have been recovered. It is theoretically possible that more were hit but did not crash in Poland. Since they have the wreckage, they have positive ID on the mark, model, and maker of the drones. And they are Russian. I tend to rule out a mistake, but your mileage may vary.
The possibility of the FY you mentioned is definitely there, but so is it being a Russian test of the effectiveness of Polish defenses.
Subotai Bahadur
Lots of people want the public conclusion to be “Russia is attacking Poland!” It’s going to be read that way all over the US.
The false-flag op idea attenuates that accusation.
The “they tried to hit Ukraine through misdirection over Polish airspace” possibility likewise fails to support the “attack on Poland” idea. If true, a remarkably stupid idea, but still not a casus belli against Poland. (OK, maybe technically it is, but it’s still not a direct attack on Poland.)
So many people want to declare WW3 in order to prod an anti-Putin response. I have no love for the guy, I just think we should figure this out first.
We have been tricked into too many fights.
Many of the drone seem to have intruded via Belarus, so hard to see how this could be a “false flag”
If Russia didn’t have nukes they’d be just a bust flush.
The big question, the only question, is if Putin is going to go down in a nuclear firestorm or quit?
The problem is he can’t quit can he? He’s not going to be able to retire to his dacha and write his memoirs is he? That is not how Russia usually “works”.
When Khrushchev was removed from power he remarked that his greatest achievement was leaving power alive. He made a good point because that is very unusual in Russia.
I dunno what we (NATO) must do. If we have the capacity we must do everything to fuck the Russian administration over with plausible deniability. We cannot move militarily because they have nukes and Putin has no “pension fund”. It is death or glory for him.
If this was a Sid Meier game… Which it isn’t… I’d take Kaliningrad hostage and do everything in my power to screw the Russian economy to the “eating babies” level. Hey, they’ve got history on that!
My brother-in-law is a Pole and he has re-enlisted in the Polish Army. He is also a huge fan of JRRT. Almost more than me and that is saying something.
Yeah, I know this is not JRRT but rather Jackson, Boyens and Walsh but it is still brilliant…
Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Any “civilization” worth that word is almost by definition one worth fighting for. It is worth killing for (I’m thinking General Patton here) and maybe even dying for. Though obviously that is to be avoided if possible.
I thought this all ended when the Berlin Wall was broached. It never ends does it?
Maybe i should be more worried about this than i am; but right now i am more worried about India’s reaction to the Trump tariffs.
There is some speculation that the Russian military was trying to hit Ukrainian targets from a different direction – a direction that the armed forces of Ukraine would not be expecting an attack from.
However, with about Russian 800 drones and missiles being in the air at any one time, it would be easy to lose control of some of them – and, although much better than it was in 2023, the Russian military is still not very competent.
The war will be decided on the ground – by whether the Russian military can become competent in infantry tactics and in coordinating infantry and artillery (including battlefield, battlefield – not very long range, drones).
There was a move under President Yeltsin to move away from a conscript force to a professional all volunteer military – but (ironically) one of the first things that Mr Putin did when he became Prime Minister (even before he became President of the Russian Federation) was to put a stop to that move.
Mr Putin hated the idea of a professional all volunteer military – just as he hated the idea of trial by jury, and for the same reason. The same reason that Mr Putin has closed down opposition news outlets.
Mr Putin does not want the people of Russia to think for themselves.
Does any government leader want that? Certainly Starmer doesn’t!
I should think that a human operator only needs to control one drone: the other 799 can be programmed to maintain their position relatively to the one human-controlled drone, like a school of fish.
Granted, i could not do the programming 🙂 but i can see how it can be done.
@Snorri Godhi
Maybe i should be more worried about this than i am; but right now i am more worried about India’s reaction to the Trump tariffs.
I think you’ll find India comes to heel pretty quickly, and you should be worried about this drone incursion. I really don’t understand what is going on with Putin subsequent to his Alaska visit, I presume there is a lot of stuff going on that we don’t know about, but this seems a very, very odd thing for him to do, even if you do think his goal is the restoration of the Soviet Empire.
But if you want to know the thing to worry about it is the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I have listened to the media coverage and I don’t think there is a general understanding of how significant this is. It is of course a personal tragedy for his family, and an outrage against decency. But politically it is very, very significant. I don’t think there is much doubt that Trump would not have been re-elected without Kirk and his organization, and without him it is hard to see how that organization won’t be rudderless. If Trump’s attempt to restore sanity to American politics fails — and this is a severe blow to it — everyone the world over is going to feel the pain. Kirk’s assassination is very similar to the assassination of Martin Luther King, both in its nature and significance.
I find it personally deeply upsetting. Kirk was a very religious-y person and I’m an implacable atheist, so there were lots of things I disagreed with him on. But what he encapsulated to me is “free speech”. He debated with everyone, openly, without hostility, honestly, directly. He was without guile, laid it out on the table, kind to a fault, and, most dangerously of all to the left, extremely convincing. To me that makes him one of the greatest men of the 21st century. Free speech is, to me, probably the greatest virtue and basic foundation of all of society, and yesterday the men who couldn’t win the argument took out its greatest, happiest warrior.
This Paul Warburg YouTube piece makes most sense to me.
https://youtu.be/kAqHnMXLUno?si=nHtHtGxd7uIGBxzT
If you do not wish to view the whole 15 minute argument of the YouTube piece. His main conclusion is that Russia is desperately attempting to frighten European countries, so that they retain their air defence assets for themselves, rather than supplying them to Ukraine.
“If Russia didn’t have nukes they’d be just a bust flush.” – NickM, 10th, 11.25pm.
But does it?
Undoubtedly it has a vast number of nuclear warheads – on paper.
But how many of them are properly maintained in working order? Nuclear warheads and missiles are complicated bits of kit. They need to be maintained, and in a deeply corrupt kleptocracy like Russia it’s hardly a stretch of the imagination to conceive that a good portion of any maintenance budget has been diverted instead into holiday dachas and luxury living by the typical official, or into nominee offshore accounts and foreign passports by the more wary and far-sighted ones.
After all, who’s ever going to find out? If the time comes to use them in earnest there is, by the nature of the situation, unlikely to be anyone particularly interested in tracing and punishing those responsible for looking after the ones that didn’t go off.
The perfect opportunity to line your own pockets, in fact.
The aforementioned wary and far-sighted officials may diligently maintain a few, in case the Glorious Leader wants the odd one to go ‘bang’ in a test for intimidation purposes, but otherwise it would seem quite possible that Russia’s supposed vast stockpile could in reality be a ‘Potemkin’ deterrent.
Snorri – the Russian military is not fully professional, it is less bad than it was a few years ago (when it was a total mess), but it is still not fully competent.
Zerren Yeoville – this Tobias Ellwood (ex 77th Brigade – the disinformation and psyops people who pushed the official lies, and tried to crush the truth, during Covid) style thinking is dangerous.
The idea that thermonuclear war with Russia might be O.K. because Russian nuclear weapons do not work.
I fully support your Freedom of Speech – but I would urge that the policy of war with Russia NOT be followed.
The task remains – how to remove the regime of Mr Putin and get Russia away from the fatal alliances with the historic enemies of the Russian people – China and (also) the forces of Islam, not just the Islamic Republic of Iran – other forces as well (Sunni as well as Shia).
Mr Putin has betrayed the Russian people – sold them (literally “sold” them) to their historic enemies – but the terrible fact remains that he is in power.
As a manufacturing power Russia is small (barely bigger than the United Kingdom), but the People’s Republic of China is a vast manufacturing power – the Communist Party regime that controls China is the true enemy of the United States (Mr Putin is a de facto servant of the PRC). China is not a friend of the Russian people – it never has been, and a long term goal of the Communist Party regime that controls China is to take over both Central Asia and much of Russia itself.
As for the forces of Islam – certain “laws” in Britain forbid me from being blunt, but I think everyone here understands the nature of these forces and of their founder Mohammed.
Mr Putin’s alliance with them (which is obvious – just watch his English language television station for a few minutes) is a sickening betrayal of the Russian people to forces who have been their enemies for many centuries.
Mr Putin is also a biological enemy of the Russian people – witness their low fertility rate (he has been in power for 25 years – if he was going to do anything to restore traditional society he would have done it by now) and the vast numbers of young men Mr Putin has sent to their deaths in a pointless (utterly pointless) war with Ukraine.
Zerren Yeoville,
Two points…
1. The USSR was a country that couldn’t make reliable TVs. Putin’s Russia is a reboot. So, yeah, their nukes are possibly in a deplorable state but… But whilst the USSR (and now Russia) was terrible at almost everything but they did get some things to work including nukes and rocketry.
2. You gonna take a bet on that? Seriously? If they even have a dozen working that is still a wrecking ball. Even if it’s just two 10-20 kiloton yield warheads? Japan folded when it saw that hand. And, yes, I know the history of this including “Meetinghouse”.
Point is (a) Nobody needs a whole lot of nukes to scare the pants off anyone. (b) Nukes since 1945 have been a threat. The mere possibility is enough to deter because no matter how slim the possibility is it is non-zero and the result would be horrendous. However slight that risk is it is not acceptable. Every country with nukes knows this. That is why they have them.