751–760 of 1001 posts
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How is it trying its hardest when it hasn’t declared a full scale mobilization, hasn’t closed its borders, or switched to war time economy?
40% of Russian budget is allocated to defense, that's roughly the same level as US during Vietnam war.
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Ukraine has been hitting targets "deep" inside Russia for a long time now - further than ATACMS or the export Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG can reach. Whether Ukraine use their own weapons or those purchased/gifted from others seems irrelevant. This is Russia saying "we can hit you with weapons provided by other nations, but you cannot be allowed to hit us likewise" - it's pathetic. As for what Russia may do, they've been to…
Earlier hits were using Ukrainian drones, while the Atacms are reported as needing to be programmed by US military to hit the targets. So while it is Ukraine that supposedly fires them, it is the americans who will reportedly get them to their intended targets. I don't think there is any moral debate in Ukraine hitting Russia with missiles. After all it is a war fought by Russia against an Ukraine which has Nato prox…
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This would be more concerning if Russia had any tanks left. Are you suggesting Russia has a full invasion force they’re not using in Ukraine? Or to liberate their own occupied territory?
Baltic states have 30K military total combined - Russia loses 20-30K/month in Ukraine. So, with all the respect to the Baltic states military - with them being responsible for the defense of about 700km long strip of land, it isn't about full invasion force, it is about having NATO not responding long enough.
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Baltic states have 30K military total combined - Russia loses 20-30K/month in Ukraine. So, with all the respect to the Baltic states military - with them being responsible for the defense of about 700km long strip of land, it isn't about full invasion force, it is about having NATO not responding long enough.
I can't imagine a scenario where the Baltics are invaded without Poland getting involved. And maybe even Germany, Sweden, Finland. And that is not a fight I think Russia can win and they know that.
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Oh no, if only radio/emergency broadcast television/satellite/alternative cable routes/contingency plans had been invented!
We can look at October 7th in Israel how long, with all the communications and infrastructure working, it took to organize defense in a very technologically developed country which basically had been living in the state of war readiness. Now add broken significant communications, chaos of non-working banks/ATMs, power shut-offs, clogged highways, etc. (don't get me wrong - i'm not saying that Russia can do all that,…
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But this person is just speaking the truth - I worked for an ISP with cable landing stations. These cables went down several times a year due to physical damage of non nefarious kinds. It's not obvious that this malicious. It certainly might be but it's not a slam dunk.
Yeah and if you shoot someone and they die it might be an unrelated heart attack.
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Delivery of Russian gas was stopped by Russia in violation of contract. European gas companies demands $20 billion in compensation. Nobody had incentive to blow up empty pipes except Russia. Of course, Russians used false flag as usual, to blame Ukraine, but Ukraine doesn't hide successful attacks on Russian infrastructure, because Ukraine has legal right to defend itself.
>Nobody had incentive to blow up empty pipes except Russia. Nonsense. Biden had a great deal of incentive to destroy that pipeline.
But far too many more obvious counterincentives.
Unlike the Ukrainians, NATO/US were smart enough to see that blowing up NS2 would be hugely stupid, providing precisely zero strategic advantage while simply provoking Russia to respond assymetrically (in exactly the same way as it is apparently doing right now). In addition to the huge methane release.
So if anything, the standpoint of "incentives" points squarely in the opposite direction (that is, against the idea that the US/NATO must have done it).
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They might occupy some area, sure, but if they invade a EU or NATO country they'll get that full force on top of them. And they have a lot of aircraft to deploy too; tanks have zero chance against an airstrike.
NATO cannot stop Russia in Ukraine, even with help of 1 million Ukrainian army. NATO have no enough tanks, shells, soldiers to stop 2 million army in few first weeks, even if Russians will just march with their AK-s in hands. The only thing that will stop Russia for sure is a nuclear strike. Planes are good for strikes, but ground must be captured and hold by soldiers.
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I can't imagine a scenario where the Baltics are invaded without Poland getting involved. And maybe even Germany, Sweden, Finland. And that is not a fight I think Russia can win and they know that.
I would imagine at least US Air Force getting involved. And that would mean Russia will be pushed out of Baltics fairly quickly (assuming the conflict remains a conventional conflict and does not escalate into nuclear conflict).
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That wasn't the case in the past. Events over the past 15 years have resulted in most companies encrypting all traffic between datacenters (due to the perceived risk). TLS between consumers and companies is probably at an all time high though due to a push for end-to-end encryption.
TLS doesn't help here, because state actors (including China, Russia) own trusted root certificates, which allow them to TLS-terminate for _any_ website they choose and silently decrypt/MITM the traffic.
Except it's not silent because you need to expose your misissued certificate every time. Sure, the average joe won't spot it, but all it takes is one security researcher to expose the whole thing. AFAIK there are also projects by google and the EFF to monitor certificates, so the chances of you getting caught are really high. Combined with the fact that no such attacks has been discovered, makes me think that it probably doesn't occur in practice, or at least is only used against high value targets rather than for dragnet surveillance.