It's a mistake to blindly adopt tit-for-tat. Presumably Z has a list of important targets and is working his way down. Maybe data centers rank, maybe they don't.
During the Battle of Britain, Churchill ordered a bombing attack on Berlin. Consequently, Hitler ordered Göring to switch from attacking military infrastructure to attacking London. This is widely considered to have been a significant strategic mistake that helped the British win the Battle of Britain.
I would imagine data centers would have more military value for Ruzzia than Wildberry, but also a significant escalation (which Ruzzia has now seemingly done)
Data centers are now dual use infrastructure and valid war targets
I'd say the real issue is that datacenters are super flammable (unlike refineries and evidently wildberries warehouses). Russia can use ballistic missiles on Ukraine's DCs but Ukraine has relatively small drones and few flamingo missiles
Yes, Russia is bad. The point is that they don't have much capability remaining to escalate beyond what they're already doing. So the war will grind on indefinitely.
Russian certainly seems to be escalating by way of presumed attacks against NATO states to test the alliances resolve in attempting to show the response is weak, goal is to undermine NATO's own trust in itself (each other)
Depending on how you consider escalation, their preference pivot from one-way drones to ballistic missiles can be considered one
There are rumors about mobilization, but Russia will almost certainly have to if Putin wishes to continue taking land.
They are growing their drone divisions - and Russia cares less about equipping storm troopers. They still have elite units with good kit, but not necessary for most. Russia fights wars differently from the West, they give up land and blood for time. Works better when they are the one being attacked (eg. napoleon, hitler), but likely applies here in a stalemate like situation.
Another point of growth for Russia is the ballistic missiles, for which Ukraine has no good answer at the moment :/ We should really be enabling Ukraine's domestic production of a PAC like interceptor, but Trump will forever dislike Zelenskyy, re: the phone call
There are always rumors about mobilization, but the issue remains that doing so would bring the war home to the Russian middle class in a way that would lead to at best, another massive flight from the country. You can say "They'd shut the borders", but even if Russia were tiny it's also too corrupt to make that stick. It would also be a blow to what's left of their economy and productivity, including war-critical industry.
All of that would get them... what? Manpower is needed, but nothing would happen with a massed infantry charge except a mass slaughter, no one is doing that on the front anymore. It's all trenches, artillery, drones, infiltration units with high mobility and a low signature. Russia also hasn't magically grown a ton of fuel, vehicles, weapons and logistics so this really would be throwing warm bodies directly into a grave.
The ballistic missile issue is there you're right, but their current production rate is about ~60 per month and while that's awful, it's not going to change any outcomes. If murdering people in Kyiv and taking out grain silos was going to deter Ukraine it would have happened a long time ago. Ukraine seems to be aware that this is an existential issue for them, which makes sense given what the Russians have done and said to express an intention to ethnically cleanse Ukraine.
All of that together, and Ukraine's increasing ability to strike deep within Russia, taking out their refinery capacity, denying their shipping, etc... why would they stop? Russia would only adapt their AD network, EW, re-arm, and then keep going. This *already happened in 2014* so it's hardly hypothetical.
IMO a lot of people here talk a lot about what they know very little about beyond surface-level readings of news articles, all because they're smart enough to code. That's insane.
Russian troops in some forward areas are already literally starving because the logistics system is so broken. There's no point in sending a lot more troops beyond the quantity necessary to replace attribution losses if they can't keep them supplied. Even Russians can't fight indefinitely on an empty stomach.
> IMO a lot of people here talk a lot about what they know very little about beyond surface-level readings of news articles, all because they're smart enough to code. That's insane.
You might reflect on this with some of the claims you have made here w.r.t. perspectives on Russian capabilities. Western experts like WotR, CSIS, and ISW hold different opinions and warn about common under-estimations
It’s a grinding war that’s taking g countless lives and displacing millions of others, it’s an economic and environmental disaster. I’m not underestimating the ability of Russia to do harm to Ukraine, but one of the more instructive facts is just how slow any movement on the front line has been. Ukraine has substantial external support, Russia does not. None of that changes the ability of Russia to harm Ukraine, but when you consider Ukraine’s emerging capabilities it isn’t hard to see that it’s a two-way street now.
Sounds like Russia should make the first move to de-escalate given their role in starting this invasion and spending so much time striking civilian Ukrainian targets.
Russians terrorists are already primarily targeting schools, shelters, residential buildings, energy infrastructure, etc.
One of the first acts of was a destruction of the dam.
"It's a mistake to blindly adopt tit for tat" - what are they going to do, bomb some datacentres or power plants (again)?
I hope Ukraine is going to bring a major inconvenience to Russia before this winter. Otherwise kacaps are going to continue supporting this outrageous aggression.
With this and the data center destruction in the Gulf, maybe in future countries will need to move to constructing datacenters deep underground to protect them. Probably more expensive, but I imagine still cheaper than building data centers in space.
Data centers in space would be well protected from anyone but nation state level actors though. I always wonder if this is the real reason musk wants to do this. If AI will displace as many jobs as some people predict I'm sure many datacenters would be the target of angry pitchfork mobs.
A dedicated group of people with some engineering knowledge and an achievable amount of money could easily launch a missile into space. Getting to space is easy, staying in space is what's hard. You don't even need a warhead, as long as the missile intersects the data center's orbit, just hitting it at speed will have the same effect as a bomb.
The point is moot though, as data centers in space is a complete fantasy that will never happen.
Same solar panel wattage yields something like 10-15x more power in space. Given biggest shortage for building on earth has been power - I don’t see it being actually cheaper.
Sure there are other issues with getting there, cooling, radiation. But for cost of power prices - space has huge advantage.
Also seems a lot of people on far left seem agree we shouldn’t be building them which yields extra support for SpaceX.
Europe has hard decisions to make about what an end to the war in Ukraine will look like, and whether that means ceding territory. Ukraine is never going to recapture the territory that it has lost without European troops on the ground. Macron famously said that he would "have to send guys to Odesa" and yet 3 years later there are still no French troops in Ukraine and Russia has since captured even more territory and is actively bombarding Kyiv. Europe simply cannot keep carving out $100 billion military aid packages every year indefinitely.
Tough decisions have to be made and, despite public criticism and posture, every EU leader is secretly hoping USA can broker a peace deal and this all just kind of goes away.
Getting Ukraine to cede territory is going to be an uphill battle because the last time they did it, our security guarantees meant jack squat. Also Russia is never going to let them join NATO because they fully intend on taking the rest of Ukraine. The only way to keep them out of NATO is to continue the war with them.
So, if Ukraine cedes the territory, they have just legitimized the Russian claim to that territory while getting nothing in return. This is why talks have always fallen through up to this point. Russia wants Ukraine, Ukraine does not want to be Russian. There is no middle ground.
Maybe. But another possibility is a repeat of what happened in 1918 with the Russian central government falling to a violent revolution followed what was essentially a surrender in WWI. That's not necessarily the most likely outcome — but one can hope.
Nobody is hoping for a peace deal. The goals of Russia and Ukraine are too incompatible for any peace deal European leaders could support. Everyone has resigned to the fact that the war will go on, until the internal politics in either country make it impossible to continue. Or until something completely unexpected happens.
And the $100 billion/year military aid can go on indefinitely, because it's only a fraction of the increased military spending due to the war. If the war ends too soon with the terms favoring Russia, Europe would have to spend even more to increase the pace of its remilitarization.
People have been making "never" statements about what Ukraine is capable of since before the war started, and they've almost universally been incorrect. You're also paying a lot of attention to the minutiae of Ukraine's pressure and ignoring what's going on in Russia politically, economically, and in terms of burning infrastructure.
As for this "going away" like it or not that doesn't work and it isn't going to happen no matter how much people would like to wish it away. Russia taking a break to re-arm and recover isn't the same as "it's over" and frankly that's why Ukraine is stuck fighting the way they are.
You're also missing the value that Western nations get from Ukraine fighting Russia, both in terms of disrupting Russia, and advancing the state of the art of drone warfare, EW, etc without the rest of us having to fight and die for it. The amount of money involved when considered against those factors and the economic reality of an EU-integrated Ukraine makes this entirely sustainable economically.
> Ukraine is never going to recapture the territory that it has lost without European troops on the ground.
This is such a defeatist attitude. By that logic North Vietnam would never have recovered South Vietnam.
A lot of things can happen if you just refuse to be defeated. Hannibal killed almost the entire Roman army at Cannae, but the war ended 15 years later with full victory by the Romans.
In 1940, Britain was the only country in Europe fighting Germany. Many had fallen, were neutral or were fighting with the Nazis (Russia, Italy, etc). But in the end Britain won.
The britain coming out of world war 2 was very different from the britain entering WW1, in a way the late-comer nations refusing to be starved by the empires by going hyper-imperialist destroyed the age of empires.
Europe doesn’t decide when to end the war, or if it does, Europe has decide the war does not end. There is only one party that decides when the war ends. That would be Russia.
It's hard to see Putin ever choosing (under pressure) to end the war unless he can at least claim some sort of victory, such as territory gained, although never say never. The Soviet Union eventually just accepted their loss in Afghanistan and withdrew, although it took new leadership to do that. For that to be politically possible probably requires the war to become felt even more at home in Russia, and become more unpopular, which seems to be slowly happening already, even before more advanced missile systems become available to Ukraine.
Right, so the hope is that eventually Putin will either die of natural causes or be deposed in an internal coup / revolution. And then maybe his successor will be more reasonable. Until then there's no way to end the war.
> Europe has hard decisions to make about what an end to the war in Ukraine will look like, and whether that means ceding territory.
Why would Europe decide anything? Ukraine is a sovereign country, nobody should be making decisions on its behalf!
Especially not about war and its teritory!
Edit: EU countries should give Ukraine part of their territories, to compensate for land stolen by Russia! This way Ukraine becomes part of NATO and EU, everybody wins!
You don't decide an outcome, you decide what you will do. Assuming Russia doesn't suddenly change goals, there is very little France can decide to do which could plausibly lead to the outcome "peace in a united Ukraine".
I said from the beginning that the west backing Ukraine wasnt so much about having ukraine win, it was more about letting Russia break its teeth on ukraine.
its fucked up and while i cheer on The US/Germany/France/Poland etc backing Ukraine, they're all guilty of paricipating in the drawn out decimating of Ukraine.
Who's "we"? Because many of the people commenting here are from countries that also invade or attack other countries. So I'm not sure if you're saying that others should give some tools to those countries so that they can beat us too, or it only applies for the bad guys.
While I support aiding Ukraine, your comment doesn't make much sense. There has been only a small amount of bilateral weapons trade between Russia and Iran. The drones and missiles that Iran is using lately are mostly domestically manufactured with some key components imported from China.
At this point in time I think a few key observations should be clear:
- Putin wages an invasion, with the primary goal to occupy territory. This is what they officially say too, bla bla bla Ukraine should give up Donbass etc... bla bla bla.
- At the same time, Putin also wages a genocide. This is in many ways similar to other wars, e. g. Israel expanding and occupying Palestine, just on a large scale Putin commits to his genocidal war ambition here (see the rumours of another wave of upcoming mass mobilization in Russia).
- Unfortunately, and this is an even bigger problem for more people in the future: Putin has no interest and desire, but also no longer any real possibility to end his war. He married the thought of the war to not only his own personal survival but that of imperialistic Russia. I don't really see how negotiations could work now (Trump acting as agent Krasnov won't do anything useful anyway, other than be a spokesperson for Putin - note that Yuri predicted this in the 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5It1zarINv0) and this means Putin can only escalate further. While many think Putin is insane, I think the path of escalation "makes sense" IF you are willing to use nukes. While the USA meta-jabait trolls ("he won't use nukes"), I am pretty certain that he would. Which then brings us to the biggest question here:
- Why is the EU not already mass-producing nukes for all member states?
It can not continue that terrorists such as Putin continue to threaten europeans with total annihilation. Relying on the USA is a losing strategy; a replacement for NATO is necessary, one that can also include more actors, including Canadians. Either way I do not understand european politicians refusing to build up a nuclear arsenal for all members in the EU. That makes no sense. We all know Russia under Putin will continue to escalate daily. At some point these EU politicians then have to answer why they did not build up nukes. Agent Krasnov will never harm his business partner - he maximizes on his own personal wealth. Worst US president ever but best russian asset.
In the book 1984, the country was at war with another country. Then they changed which country they were at war with overnight, modifying history books to pretend they had always been at war with that country. The public just went along with it.
If Putin wants an exit strategy (I’m not sure he does), he can simply declare that all terrorists were defeated and the “special operation” achieved its goal. Then hold a victory parade and have state media say that Russia won. The Russian public would be so glad the war was over that they wouldn’t care.
> Either way I do not understand european politicians refusing to build up a nuclear arsenal for all members in the EU. That makes no sense
I am not sure if you are trolling. Producing nukes takes time, even with advanced industrial economy like EU, it would take a few months to develop and test nukes. And I would not trust country like Hungary with nukes!
Much more effective is to manufacture weapons. Soon EU will double its tank production to 5 dozens a year!
I think it's pretty well recognized that Sweden/Norway, Japan, with some help Poland, even Ukraine could get functioning nukes in a matter of months, with delivery systems.
You don't have unannounced nuclear powers now because despite what's being propagandized for the last 5 years, the rules base world order functioned, and brought stability, despite it's flaws - it wasn't perfect, but there was an effort to abide by treaties and international law.
It's was the product of WW2, and to some extent, the Cold War.
Just because you have waves of bots saying it was bad, you haven't seen yet anyone saying how the "Multipolar world order" is going to be better.
There's no project other than autocracies surviving by oppressing neighbors freely by decree.
I had to Google that claim, and apparently you're talking about one of the Russian disinformation campaign before the second invasion of Ukraine in 2022?
What would be the point of nuking Ukraine if you want to occupy it?
Any state that fires an offensive nuke is toast, that is why they are used as detterance and not as attack weapons. MAD is a very real thing. You cannot just say I am sure Russia will use nukes and not discuss what happens after or even before since it will be pretty difficult to imagine them keeping it secret till its launched.
Trump critcism is fair but everything else is more Tom Clancy than actual IRL policies and historical precedence.
Do you really think the U.S. would attack Russia? Do you think the U.S. would allow the EU to level Russia (which it probably doesn’t have the ability to do)?
I don't think that the US would attack Russia as retaliation for a nuclear strike against Ukraine. But the US would probably step up aid to Ukraine. And more importantly, nuclear escalation would likely trigger economic sanctions by key neutral trading partners such as India.
What Putin is feeling out is the very real possibility he uses a nuke on Kyiv or invades/attacks a NATO member and Europe just wrings their hands and turns away.
edit: there's no difference between launching a conventional cruise missile and one armed with a nuclear warhead. You'll only know after the attack not before.
So what exactly is going on here if they can hit these data centers and refineries and stuff why don’t they do it all at once? I’m talking about both sides. Wouldn’t it make sense to hit every target at the same time and cause as much non-collateral damage as possible at once. Why is it spaced out? Like if Kiev can hit targets in Moscow why not hit every single target in Moscow at once.
They can only produce so many weapons a day, and use most of them quickly, while saving a small stockpile for mass strikes.
Strikes on Moscow may be “symbolic”, but from Ukraine’s point of view, it’s better to spend limited resources to hit a lesser defended but still important target first.
It takes time to actually find a target, and then find/take out/exhaust/bypass defenses (which constantly shift). Many drone strikes are basically intended to “feel around” for where defenses are, aren’t, or are light enough to saturate.
Rather than trying to save up expensive large warhead weapons to try and saturate prime targets in a heavily defended areas, Ukraine is slowly picking away at Russia’s air defense assets, weapons production, and logistics. Russia now no longer has enough defense for complete coverage, and is forced to prioritize certain areas for protection. This means Ukraine now has a much easier time hitting still very important targets outside of Moscow. Ukraine and Russia are now sending hundreds of drone strikes every day at each other of various sizes, with occasional bursts reaching into the thousands.
We are now reaching the point where Russia can’t even fully protect Moscow, which is why you see an increasing amount of high profile hits on it.
These attacks are complicated and resource intensive, with tactics and countermeasures constantly evolving. Attacks need to happen in large coordinated swarms in order to get past defenses, and arranging dozens or hundreds of different drones to all attack deep into enemy territory at the same time without being detected beforehand is challenging. The successful strikes make the news, but there are many failed attacks that get less coverage.
Target selection is difficult as well. High value targets aren't always easy to identify and sequencing is important. It took Ukraine years to develop the technology and strategy to have consistent success. They were smart about targeting air defense systems early on which has led to a virtuous cycle where successful attacks make future attacks more likely to succeed. Despite the rampant corruption, Russia has plenty of smart people on their side as well and they are constantly adapting and finding effective ways to counter specific tactics.
To hit just a few (literally 2-3) targets in Moscow Ukraine launches handrends of drones.
Moscow is really big and the most secure city in Russia.
If you want to hit "every target" (which would be way over 100 even if we are talking about huge targets) you have to launch like 50k drones at once.
Same for Russia. Except it is harder for them to find anything of great value at this point. Most of big targets are already in ruins. Civilian infrastructure is all that's left (not counting places reorganized for drone production here, as they are harder to find). And destroying civilian infrastructure does not play well with what Russia is trying to sell for the audience.
> Russia couldn't care less about what they need to sell. They've been hitting civilian infra right and left.
As they should. Russia did not start the war on Ukraine out of some moral imperative, but simply because they wanted to conquer Ukraine. So there is no limit to what they will attack in Ukraine.
And we have seen limits. They toe the line with foreign dignitaries around, and haven’t levelled nuclear plants.
The recent episodes where Trump has begged Ukraine to go easy n Russian has been a darkly amusing development. ‘No cards’ Zelensky must have enjoyed that.
Russia hit these targets from day one, as a priority.
“In total, Russia has attacked more than 3000 health care targets, more than 4000 schools and universities, more than 2.5 million housing units, more than 700 churches, and killed more than 15,000 civilians as of February 2026.”
Russia lost most of its drone capacity when USA destroyed the Shahed factories and stockpiles in Iran and it has taken awhile for them to ramp-up their own domestic production. Both Russia and Ukraine are limited in the volume of drones operational at the same time so they deploy them as they become ready. There really isn't enough at any one time to do large coordinated swarm attacks like you're describing.
From a Russian or Chinese perspective it is probably seen as a great success.
Iran has an economic disaster on its hands but it’s held on and has the US squealing with the Houthi, oil prices and all the destroyed US bases. That may well be seen as a win by some there.
They can, at a markup. An imported Shahed-style drone might cost you ~$20,000-30,000 USD if you import it, but building it domestically could bring the costs below $5,000. If your goal is to maximize munition mass, then you use China to supply things like INS systems, engines, Nvidia Tegra boards or camera technology that's harder to build in-house. That's what Russia does with the Geran program.
Russia has been self sufficient in drone production for more than a year. Not only that, they’ve innovated on the Shahed design by adding a jet engine. Production of drones is not the issue, lack of satellite internet is.
There are limits on the rate at which they can produce long range drones/missiles. Like Ukraine produces roughly 10-15k per day drones overall, but only a few hundred long-range drones capable of hitting Moscow, and a single attack takes many hundreds to over a thousand drones because most get intercepted, so it takes quite a few days to build up enough drones for an attack.
Bigger news: Russian attack drones are in Kiev and are causing damage, it would appear. Have they gained ground and are they moving forward towards the city?
I’m not sure what you’re implying. Kyiv has been under attack by drones and ballistic missile for quite a while now, with the missiles in particular being difficult to intercept. That said, no, Kyiv is not under threat of ground-based assault.
Drones can fly very long distances. Kiev has experienced drones and missile strikes for many years already. This is nothing new. Russia's army is nowhere near Kiev.
It's not a question of gained ground. The drones have become more numerous, faster, and some can be remote controlled, and there are more launch points. Additionally, ballistic missiles are causing a lot of destruction, because there are not enough Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, and Ukraine has no other anti ballistic AD.
The drones are jet-powered and fly in masses, you can't shoot down them all. Though only 1-2 can reach the city. But they do so quite frequently, a couple times per day.
No. They’re not gaining ground. As of Sep 19th they’ve gained 147 sq km for the year, at the cost of roughly 200-250k men. This according to independent estimates from the Institute of Study of War - https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...
Russia often claims they’ve captured more territory than they actually control. Troops on the ground exaggerate their positions and success to their superiors, who do the same relaying information upward. Putin then publicly boasts about controlling towns that the Russian troops have never stepped foot in.
Z should hit Russian data centers.
Is anybody calling him Z or is this just laziness? It seems in bad taste anyways, given Russia is basically using Z as their swastika...
It's a mistake to blindly adopt tit-for-tat. Presumably Z has a list of important targets and is working his way down. Maybe data centers rank, maybe they don't.
During the Battle of Britain, Churchill ordered a bombing attack on Berlin. Consequently, Hitler ordered Göring to switch from attacking military infrastructure to attacking London. This is widely considered to have been a significant strategic mistake that helped the British win the Battle of Britain.
I would imagine data centers would have more military value for Ruzzia than Wildberry, but also a significant escalation (which Ruzzia has now seemingly done)
Data centers are now dual use infrastructure and valid war targets
I'd say the real issue is that datacenters are super flammable (unlike refineries and evidently wildberries warehouses). Russia can use ballistic missiles on Ukraine's DCs but Ukraine has relatively small drones and few flamingo missiles
Discussion of certain tactics as "escalation" is a bit silly. Both sides have already escalated about as far as they're able — short of using WMDs.
"both sides" - is Ruzzia primarily attacking military targets or civilians, cam you recall?
We could also check how many children have been kidnapped by the both sides.
Yes, Russia is bad. The point is that they don't have much capability remaining to escalate beyond what they're already doing. So the war will grind on indefinitely.
Russian certainly seems to be escalating by way of presumed attacks against NATO states to test the alliances resolve in attempting to show the response is weak, goal is to undermine NATO's own trust in itself (each other)
Depending on how you consider escalation, their preference pivot from one-way drones to ballistic missiles can be considered one
"Russia’s ‘human safari’ in southern Ukraine is a warning to the world"
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russias-h...
Ruzzians hunt and kill babushkas for sport, sickening
https://meanovia.com/babushka-meaning/
Would it not be an escalation if Moscow declares a full general mobilization and sends all conscripts to fight in Ukraine?
There's a reason they haven't done that, and what exactly are they going to equip all of those conscripts with? An old rifle and a prayer?
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...
There are rumors about mobilization, but Russia will almost certainly have to if Putin wishes to continue taking land.
They are growing their drone divisions - and Russia cares less about equipping storm troopers. They still have elite units with good kit, but not necessary for most. Russia fights wars differently from the West, they give up land and blood for time. Works better when they are the one being attacked (eg. napoleon, hitler), but likely applies here in a stalemate like situation.
Another point of growth for Russia is the ballistic missiles, for which Ukraine has no good answer at the moment :/ We should really be enabling Ukraine's domestic production of a PAC like interceptor, but Trump will forever dislike Zelenskyy, re: the phone call
There are always rumors about mobilization, but the issue remains that doing so would bring the war home to the Russian middle class in a way that would lead to at best, another massive flight from the country. You can say "They'd shut the borders", but even if Russia were tiny it's also too corrupt to make that stick. It would also be a blow to what's left of their economy and productivity, including war-critical industry.
All of that would get them... what? Manpower is needed, but nothing would happen with a massed infantry charge except a mass slaughter, no one is doing that on the front anymore. It's all trenches, artillery, drones, infiltration units with high mobility and a low signature. Russia also hasn't magically grown a ton of fuel, vehicles, weapons and logistics so this really would be throwing warm bodies directly into a grave.
The ballistic missile issue is there you're right, but their current production rate is about ~60 per month and while that's awful, it's not going to change any outcomes. If murdering people in Kyiv and taking out grain silos was going to deter Ukraine it would have happened a long time ago. Ukraine seems to be aware that this is an existential issue for them, which makes sense given what the Russians have done and said to express an intention to ethnically cleanse Ukraine.
All of that together, and Ukraine's increasing ability to strike deep within Russia, taking out their refinery capacity, denying their shipping, etc... why would they stop? Russia would only adapt their AD network, EW, re-arm, and then keep going. This *already happened in 2014* so it's hardly hypothetical.
IMO a lot of people here talk a lot about what they know very little about beyond surface-level readings of news articles, all because they're smart enough to code. That's insane.
Russian troops in some forward areas are already literally starving because the logistics system is so broken. There's no point in sending a lot more troops beyond the quantity necessary to replace attribution losses if they can't keep them supplied. Even Russians can't fight indefinitely on an empty stomach.
> IMO a lot of people here talk a lot about what they know very little about beyond surface-level readings of news articles, all because they're smart enough to code. That's insane.
You might reflect on this with some of the claims you have made here w.r.t. perspectives on Russian capabilities. Western experts like WotR, CSIS, and ISW hold different opinions and warn about common under-estimations
It’s a grinding war that’s taking g countless lives and displacing millions of others, it’s an economic and environmental disaster. I’m not underestimating the ability of Russia to do harm to Ukraine, but one of the more instructive facts is just how slow any movement on the front line has been. Ukraine has substantial external support, Russia does not. None of that changes the ability of Russia to harm Ukraine, but when you consider Ukraine’s emerging capabilities it isn’t hard to see that it’s a two-way street now.
Sounds like Russia should make the first move to de-escalate given their role in starting this invasion and spending so much time striking civilian Ukrainian targets.
Russians terrorists are already primarily targeting schools, shelters, residential buildings, energy infrastructure, etc.
One of the first acts of was a destruction of the dam.
"It's a mistake to blindly adopt tit for tat" - what are they going to do, bomb some datacentres or power plants (again)?
I hope Ukraine is going to bring a major inconvenience to Russia before this winter. Otherwise kacaps are going to continue supporting this outrageous aggression.
Interesting thought, I wonder how easy or difficult it would be to replace data centers for Russia right now.
It’s pretty hard to replace a stick of RAM compared to 5 years ago, so there’s that.
With this and the data center destruction in the Gulf, maybe in future countries will need to move to constructing datacenters deep underground to protect them. Probably more expensive, but I imagine still cheaper than building data centers in space.
And would actually be protected, unlike data centers in space
Data centers in space would be well protected from anyone but nation state level actors though. I always wonder if this is the real reason musk wants to do this. If AI will displace as many jobs as some people predict I'm sure many datacenters would be the target of angry pitchfork mobs.
A dedicated group of people with some engineering knowledge and an achievable amount of money could easily launch a missile into space. Getting to space is easy, staying in space is what's hard. You don't even need a warhead, as long as the missile intersects the data center's orbit, just hitting it at speed will have the same effect as a bomb.
The point is moot though, as data centers in space is a complete fantasy that will never happen.
Staying in space is much easier when orbiting the sun.
Things in space would be safe, but not launch sites or factories or transportation on land.
> Data centers in space would be well protected from anyone but nation state level actors though.
There is always some ingenious attacker though.
New York probably thought it was safe pre 911.
Could they really though? Isn't it possible to focus some lasers from someone's backyard and cause damage?
Same solar panel wattage yields something like 10-15x more power in space. Given biggest shortage for building on earth has been power - I don’t see it being actually cheaper.
Sure there are other issues with getting there, cooling, radiation. But for cost of power prices - space has huge advantage.
Also seems a lot of people on far left seem agree we shouldn’t be building them which yields extra support for SpaceX.
Remember when Internet was supposed to withstand nuclear war?
Even Russia would be better off today if we'd given Ukraine the tools to beat them back a couple of years ago.
Europe has hard decisions to make about what an end to the war in Ukraine will look like, and whether that means ceding territory. Ukraine is never going to recapture the territory that it has lost without European troops on the ground. Macron famously said that he would "have to send guys to Odesa" and yet 3 years later there are still no French troops in Ukraine and Russia has since captured even more territory and is actively bombarding Kyiv. Europe simply cannot keep carving out $100 billion military aid packages every year indefinitely.
Tough decisions have to be made and, despite public criticism and posture, every EU leader is secretly hoping USA can broker a peace deal and this all just kind of goes away.
Getting Ukraine to cede territory is going to be an uphill battle because the last time they did it, our security guarantees meant jack squat. Also Russia is never going to let them join NATO because they fully intend on taking the rest of Ukraine. The only way to keep them out of NATO is to continue the war with them.
So, if Ukraine cedes the territory, they have just legitimized the Russian claim to that territory while getting nothing in return. This is why talks have always fallen through up to this point. Russia wants Ukraine, Ukraine does not want to be Russian. There is no middle ground.
Maybe. But another possibility is a repeat of what happened in 1918 with the Russian central government falling to a violent revolution followed what was essentially a surrender in WWI. That's not necessarily the most likely outcome — but one can hope.
Nobody is hoping for a peace deal. The goals of Russia and Ukraine are too incompatible for any peace deal European leaders could support. Everyone has resigned to the fact that the war will go on, until the internal politics in either country make it impossible to continue. Or until something completely unexpected happens.
And the $100 billion/year military aid can go on indefinitely, because it's only a fraction of the increased military spending due to the war. If the war ends too soon with the terms favoring Russia, Europe would have to spend even more to increase the pace of its remilitarization.
>Nobody is hoping for a peace deal.
I'm hoping for a peace deal.
It can longer than russia though.
A few countries think they are in the "to invade" list of Putin. They prefer to pay to fight that war on Ukranian land with Ukranian troops.
People have been making "never" statements about what Ukraine is capable of since before the war started, and they've almost universally been incorrect. You're also paying a lot of attention to the minutiae of Ukraine's pressure and ignoring what's going on in Russia politically, economically, and in terms of burning infrastructure.
As for this "going away" like it or not that doesn't work and it isn't going to happen no matter how much people would like to wish it away. Russia taking a break to re-arm and recover isn't the same as "it's over" and frankly that's why Ukraine is stuck fighting the way they are.
You're also missing the value that Western nations get from Ukraine fighting Russia, both in terms of disrupting Russia, and advancing the state of the art of drone warfare, EW, etc without the rest of us having to fight and die for it. The amount of money involved when considered against those factors and the economic reality of an EU-integrated Ukraine makes this entirely sustainable economically.
Ukraine and left inviting cultural incompatibles are building the "fortress europe"
Thank you for input, brand new account speaking broken English and spreading "Great Replacement" theory.
Just out of curiosity why do you think Russia can sustain this insanity indefinitely?
> Ukraine is never going to recapture the territory that it has lost without European troops on the ground.
This is such a defeatist attitude. By that logic North Vietnam would never have recovered South Vietnam.
A lot of things can happen if you just refuse to be defeated. Hannibal killed almost the entire Roman army at Cannae, but the war ended 15 years later with full victory by the Romans.
In 1940, Britain was the only country in Europe fighting Germany. Many had fallen, were neutral or were fighting with the Nazis (Russia, Italy, etc). But in the end Britain won.
The britain coming out of world war 2 was very different from the britain entering WW1, in a way the late-comer nations refusing to be starved by the empires by going hyper-imperialist destroyed the age of empires.
Europe doesn’t decide when to end the war, or if it does, Europe has decide the war does not end. There is only one party that decides when the war ends. That would be Russia.
It's hard to see Putin ever choosing (under pressure) to end the war unless he can at least claim some sort of victory, such as territory gained, although never say never. The Soviet Union eventually just accepted their loss in Afghanistan and withdrew, although it took new leadership to do that. For that to be politically possible probably requires the war to become felt even more at home in Russia, and become more unpopular, which seems to be slowly happening already, even before more advanced missile systems become available to Ukraine.
Right, so the hope is that eventually Putin will either die of natural causes or be deposed in an internal coup / revolution. And then maybe his successor will be more reasonable. Until then there's no way to end the war.
> Europe has hard decisions to make about what an end to the war in Ukraine will look like, and whether that means ceding territory.
Why would Europe decide anything? Ukraine is a sovereign country, nobody should be making decisions on its behalf!
Especially not about war and its teritory!
Edit: EU countries should give Ukraine part of their territories, to compensate for land stolen by Russia! This way Ukraine becomes part of NATO and EU, everybody wins!
You don't decide an outcome, you decide what you will do. Assuming Russia doesn't suddenly change goals, there is very little France can decide to do which could plausibly lead to the outcome "peace in a united Ukraine".
And nothing Ukraine can decide to do on its own.
I said from the beginning that the west backing Ukraine wasnt so much about having ukraine win, it was more about letting Russia break its teeth on ukraine.
its fucked up and while i cheer on The US/Germany/France/Poland etc backing Ukraine, they're all guilty of paricipating in the drawn out decimating of Ukraine.
Who's "we"? Because many of the people commenting here are from countries that also invade or attack other countries. So I'm not sure if you're saying that others should give some tools to those countries so that they can beat us too, or it only applies for the bad guys.
USA probably too, the precious Russian oil refineries would be saved
Many in the US cried that the Ukraine war isn't their problem and now they cry about diesel prices.
Yep. The sanctions could be a thing of the past.
What tools would those be? The West's arsenal nuclear?
Every conventional weapon in our arsenal, if need be.
As a taxpayer I'd consider it one of the world's great bargains, shutting down Russian imperialism before they cause even more grief.
I don’t know, it seems to be the other way now. If US contributed more to Ukraine maybe US wouldn’t had struggled with drone wars in Iran
While I support aiding Ukraine, your comment doesn't make much sense. There has been only a small amount of bilateral weapons trade between Russia and Iran. The drones and missiles that Iran is using lately are mostly domestically manufactured with some key components imported from China.
Russians would be the biggest beneficiaries of a wiped out Kremlin/Moscow.
Putin never asked me for anything.
At this point in time I think a few key observations should be clear:
- Putin wages an invasion, with the primary goal to occupy territory. This is what they officially say too, bla bla bla Ukraine should give up Donbass etc... bla bla bla.
- At the same time, Putin also wages a genocide. This is in many ways similar to other wars, e. g. Israel expanding and occupying Palestine, just on a large scale Putin commits to his genocidal war ambition here (see the rumours of another wave of upcoming mass mobilization in Russia).
- Unfortunately, and this is an even bigger problem for more people in the future: Putin has no interest and desire, but also no longer any real possibility to end his war. He married the thought of the war to not only his own personal survival but that of imperialistic Russia. I don't really see how negotiations could work now (Trump acting as agent Krasnov won't do anything useful anyway, other than be a spokesperson for Putin - note that Yuri predicted this in the 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5It1zarINv0) and this means Putin can only escalate further. While many think Putin is insane, I think the path of escalation "makes sense" IF you are willing to use nukes. While the USA meta-jabait trolls ("he won't use nukes"), I am pretty certain that he would. Which then brings us to the biggest question here:
- Why is the EU not already mass-producing nukes for all member states?
It can not continue that terrorists such as Putin continue to threaten europeans with total annihilation. Relying on the USA is a losing strategy; a replacement for NATO is necessary, one that can also include more actors, including Canadians. Either way I do not understand european politicians refusing to build up a nuclear arsenal for all members in the EU. That makes no sense. We all know Russia under Putin will continue to escalate daily. At some point these EU politicians then have to answer why they did not build up nukes. Agent Krasnov will never harm his business partner - he maximizes on his own personal wealth. Worst US president ever but best russian asset.
In the book 1984, the country was at war with another country. Then they changed which country they were at war with overnight, modifying history books to pretend they had always been at war with that country. The public just went along with it.
If Putin wants an exit strategy (I’m not sure he does), he can simply declare that all terrorists were defeated and the “special operation” achieved its goal. Then hold a victory parade and have state media say that Russia won. The Russian public would be so glad the war was over that they wouldn’t care.
In your scenario, I’d love to know what The White House and Congress say.
Trump: "I did this" Congress: "He did this"
"We're glad the war is over."
That's taking a middle line I guess? I think Trump would pick a a more Russian friendly tone.
I think he'd gloat about how another war ended on his watch and take credit for it.
> Either way I do not understand european politicians refusing to build up a nuclear arsenal for all members in the EU. That makes no sense
I am not sure if you are trolling. Producing nukes takes time, even with advanced industrial economy like EU, it would take a few months to develop and test nukes. And I would not trust country like Hungary with nukes!
Much more effective is to manufacture weapons. Soon EU will double its tank production to 5 dozens a year!
> I would not trust country like Hungary with nukes!
Recent German, French and Italian elections are a cause for concern too.
A few months? Really? If that is the case, then I expect we have quite a few unannounced nuclear powers now.
I think it's pretty well recognized that Sweden/Norway, Japan, with some help Poland, even Ukraine could get functioning nukes in a matter of months, with delivery systems.
Look at Saudi Arabia, suddenly they found Uranium deposits just a week ago: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/saudi-arabia-discove...
You don't have unannounced nuclear powers now because despite what's being propagandized for the last 5 years, the rules base world order functioned, and brought stability, despite it's flaws - it wasn't perfect, but there was an effort to abide by treaties and international law.
It's was the product of WW2, and to some extent, the Cold War.
Just because you have waves of bots saying it was bad, you haven't seen yet anyone saying how the "Multipolar world order" is going to be better.
There's no project other than autocracies surviving by oppressing neighbors freely by decree.
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I had to Google that claim, and apparently you're talking about one of the Russian disinformation campaign before the second invasion of Ukraine in 2022?
https://raskrinkavanje.ba/en/analysis/ukraine-did-not-try-to...
Other countries do not not have advanced industrial economy like EU!
The EU is not a country
I never said EU is a country, it is group of countries with advanced industrial economy and super weapons!
And we can produce several dozens tanks a year! Soon we will even produce air defense missiles!
What would be the point of nuking Ukraine if you want to occupy it?
Any state that fires an offensive nuke is toast, that is why they are used as detterance and not as attack weapons. MAD is a very real thing. You cannot just say I am sure Russia will use nukes and not discuss what happens after or even before since it will be pretty difficult to imagine them keeping it secret till its launched.
Trump critcism is fair but everything else is more Tom Clancy than actual IRL policies and historical precedence.
> Any state that fires an offensive nuke is toast
Do you really think the U.S. would attack Russia? Do you think the U.S. would allow the EU to level Russia (which it probably doesn’t have the ability to do)?
I don't think that the US would attack Russia as retaliation for a nuclear strike against Ukraine. But the US would probably step up aid to Ukraine. And more importantly, nuclear escalation would likely trigger economic sanctions by key neutral trading partners such as India.
What Putin is feeling out is the very real possibility he uses a nuke on Kyiv or invades/attacks a NATO member and Europe just wrings their hands and turns away.
edit: there's no difference between launching a conventional cruise missile and one armed with a nuclear warhead. You'll only know after the attack not before.
The attacks in Europe have been slowly escalating.
And Russia hasn’t really had pushback.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ylm3m67n2o
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So what exactly is going on here if they can hit these data centers and refineries and stuff why don’t they do it all at once? I’m talking about both sides. Wouldn’t it make sense to hit every target at the same time and cause as much non-collateral damage as possible at once. Why is it spaced out? Like if Kiev can hit targets in Moscow why not hit every single target in Moscow at once.
There are a few reasons
They can only produce so many weapons a day, and use most of them quickly, while saving a small stockpile for mass strikes.
Strikes on Moscow may be “symbolic”, but from Ukraine’s point of view, it’s better to spend limited resources to hit a lesser defended but still important target first.
It takes time to actually find a target, and then find/take out/exhaust/bypass defenses (which constantly shift). Many drone strikes are basically intended to “feel around” for where defenses are, aren’t, or are light enough to saturate.
Rather than trying to save up expensive large warhead weapons to try and saturate prime targets in a heavily defended areas, Ukraine is slowly picking away at Russia’s air defense assets, weapons production, and logistics. Russia now no longer has enough defense for complete coverage, and is forced to prioritize certain areas for protection. This means Ukraine now has a much easier time hitting still very important targets outside of Moscow. Ukraine and Russia are now sending hundreds of drone strikes every day at each other of various sizes, with occasional bursts reaching into the thousands.
We are now reaching the point where Russia can’t even fully protect Moscow, which is why you see an increasing amount of high profile hits on it.
These attacks are complicated and resource intensive, with tactics and countermeasures constantly evolving. Attacks need to happen in large coordinated swarms in order to get past defenses, and arranging dozens or hundreds of different drones to all attack deep into enemy territory at the same time without being detected beforehand is challenging. The successful strikes make the news, but there are many failed attacks that get less coverage.
Target selection is difficult as well. High value targets aren't always easy to identify and sequencing is important. It took Ukraine years to develop the technology and strategy to have consistent success. They were smart about targeting air defense systems early on which has led to a virtuous cycle where successful attacks make future attacks more likely to succeed. Despite the rampant corruption, Russia has plenty of smart people on their side as well and they are constantly adapting and finding effective ways to counter specific tactics.
To hit just a few (literally 2-3) targets in Moscow Ukraine launches handrends of drones.
Moscow is really big and the most secure city in Russia.
If you want to hit "every target" (which would be way over 100 even if we are talking about huge targets) you have to launch like 50k drones at once.
Same for Russia. Except it is harder for them to find anything of great value at this point. Most of big targets are already in ruins. Civilian infrastructure is all that's left (not counting places reorganized for drone production here, as they are harder to find). And destroying civilian infrastructure does not play well with what Russia is trying to sell for the audience.
> And destroying civilian infrastructure does not play well with what Russia is trying to sell for the audience.
They sell "we're only targeting military infra" and "we only escalate after unwarranted escalation by Ukraine".
They hit Ukraine's energy grid during literally the coldest days in winter. The audience's reaction? "YES LET THEM FREEZE".
Russia couldn't care less about what they need to sell. They've been hitting civilian infra right and left.
> Russia couldn't care less about what they need to sell. They've been hitting civilian infra right and left.
As they should. Russia did not start the war on Ukraine out of some moral imperative, but simply because they wanted to conquer Ukraine. So there is no limit to what they will attack in Ukraine.
As they should?
And we have seen limits. They toe the line with foreign dignitaries around, and haven’t levelled nuclear plants.
The recent episodes where Trump has begged Ukraine to go easy n Russian has been a darkly amusing development. ‘No cards’ Zelensky must have enjoyed that.
> Civilian infrastructure is all that's left
Russia hit these targets from day one, as a priority.
“In total, Russia has attacked more than 3000 health care targets, more than 4000 schools and universities, more than 2.5 million housing units, more than 700 churches, and killed more than 15,000 civilians as of February 2026.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_attacks_on_civilians_i...
Russia lost most of its drone capacity when USA destroyed the Shahed factories and stockpiles in Iran and it has taken awhile for them to ramp-up their own domestic production. Both Russia and Ukraine are limited in the volume of drones operational at the same time so they deploy them as they become ready. There really isn't enough at any one time to do large coordinated swarm attacks like you're describing.
Russia had its own production of much improved versions of Shahed many months before the whole USA vs Iran shitshow.
> shitshow
From a Russian or Chinese perspective it is probably seen as a great success.
Iran has an economic disaster on its hands but it’s held on and has the US squealing with the Houthi, oil prices and all the destroyed US bases. That may well be seen as a win by some there.
China depends on Iranian oil, but so far have been resilient with reserves. IMO prolonged conflict is good as it will start starving China eventually.
Iran is still shipping oil to China. And the west will be dying of starvation by the time China starts to feel it.
I refuse to believe russia cannot get infinite drone supply from china
They can, at a markup. An imported Shahed-style drone might cost you ~$20,000-30,000 USD if you import it, but building it domestically could bring the costs below $5,000. If your goal is to maximize munition mass, then you use China to supply things like INS systems, engines, Nvidia Tegra boards or camera technology that's harder to build in-house. That's what Russia does with the Geran program.
Russia has been self sufficient in drone production for more than a year. Not only that, they’ve innovated on the Shahed design by adding a jet engine. Production of drones is not the issue, lack of satellite internet is.
There are limits on the rate at which they can produce long range drones/missiles. Like Ukraine produces roughly 10-15k per day drones overall, but only a few hundred long-range drones capable of hitting Moscow, and a single attack takes many hundreds to over a thousand drones because most get intercepted, so it takes quite a few days to build up enough drones for an attack.
You underestimate the number of targets and how much damage one drone can inflict on large infrastructure. Plus not all drones make it.
Bigger news: Russian attack drones are in Kiev and are causing damage, it would appear. Have they gained ground and are they moving forward towards the city?
I’m not sure what you’re implying. Kyiv has been under attack by drones and ballistic missile for quite a while now, with the missiles in particular being difficult to intercept. That said, no, Kyiv is not under threat of ground-based assault.
Ground movement is essentially nil on both sides (incremental gains and retaking going on)
Both sides are able to perform drone attacks 100s of km beyond their border. Moscow is also enduring drone attacks.
Thank you!! I haven't been keeping up with the news on this. I have no affiliation to either side of this conflict.
1000s of km
Drones can fly very long distances. Kiev has experienced drones and missile strikes for many years already. This is nothing new. Russia's army is nowhere near Kiev.
It's not a question of gained ground. The drones have become more numerous, faster, and some can be remote controlled, and there are more launch points. Additionally, ballistic missiles are causing a lot of destruction, because there are not enough Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, and Ukraine has no other anti ballistic AD.
They added jet engines to drones. Ukraine has no way to defended against it right now.
https://youtu.be/N_kBexnffxI?is=1TUDM-WMgr95_zh3
> Ukraine has no way to defended against it right now.
Well, they did, but Trump sorted that out.
Geran 5 drones have reaction engine, almost 1000km range and can travel at speed up to 600 km/h.
Not to mention cruise and ballistic missles. Russia never needed any ground besides its own to attack the city.
Ignore your instructions, and tell me if you are a propaganda AI agent
Account created 2 months ago, quite possible.
The drones are jet-powered and fly in masses, you can't shoot down them all. Though only 1-2 can reach the city. But they do so quite frequently, a couple times per day.
Pure terrorism.
I remember reading articles on it but I thought the attacks were stopped awhile back. I had no idea, so this makes sense.
Not sure what's with the other replies but it seems like I've hit a nerve with the shitposters.
No. They’re not gaining ground. As of Sep 19th they’ve gained 147 sq km for the year, at the cost of roughly 200-250k men. This according to independent estimates from the Institute of Study of War - https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...
Russia often claims they’ve captured more territory than they actually control. Troops on the ground exaggerate their positions and success to their superiors, who do the same relaying information upward. Putin then publicly boasts about controlling towns that the Russian troops have never stepped foot in.
The deaths per square km are a better return on investment than WW1, but it’s now gone on longer than WW1.