• IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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    4 months ago

    I wouldn’t say easily. If the russians were crazy enough to try that they’d find out that EU itself has pretty decent armed forces combined and should they attack on any EU country, let’s say Estonia, they’d find out pretty fast on what it means when there’s no political bullshit limiting on attacks to the russian soil. One of Putins villas is 30 minutes (give or take) away for handful of countries to pay a visit with a very modern fighter jet. To Moscow that’s a bit less.

    They just don’t have the hardware to protect their troops, command sites, service locations and everything else needed to even attempt anything.

    • JayTreeman@fedia.io
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      4 months ago

      Russia’s great strength is also a big weakness. It’s size gives population, and resources, but also makes it very hard to defend.

      • realitista@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        True, but given how timid NATO has been about attacking Russia so far, I doubt they’d have to defend their own territory much.

        • JayTreeman@fedia.io
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          4 months ago

          Nukes… It’s a big deterrent… they’re such a big deal that either every country should have them. Or no country should be allowed to have them… Everyone should be timid about attacking anyone that has nukes

    • realitista@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      NATO without the US is barely bigger than Russia’s military. And if some portion of the countries held back forces for their own defense, it’s very possible that Russia could pick countries off one at a time as it has a vastly bigger military than any single NATO country outside of the US, especially the ones it would likely want to start with in the Baltics.

      So it all comes down to how unified NATO is and how strong the response is from all together. It’s not a foregone conclusion with many of the right wing pro-putin governments coming into power around Europe and potentially soon in the US.

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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        4 months ago

        Bullshit. My country has fewer people in total than many of the metropols in western europe and still we have the most powerful artillery in the western europe. Finland traditional artillery, on own our land, is almost close enough to hit Moscow and we have enough barrels and trained personnel to use them to cover pretty much for the whole 1300km of our border. Estonia isn’t far behind of us.

        That combined with the very capable air force form Finland, Sweden and Estonia covers the northmost corner of the map, marines included. Below that is Poland who aren’t fucking around either and next to them is Ukraine. We’ve already had this fight in the 1940s, other countries a bit later, and there’s absolutely no question if there’s enough manpower to keep the border where it is right now.

        There’s no way Russia could gain any land north of Poland borders even without any EU-wide co-operation and should Germany, France and UK join the fight the chances are pretty much nonexistent. They might take a village or two close to the border after turning it into rubble, but full scale war in EU wouldn’t last too long.

        Current situation in Ukraine is a complex matter on many fronts, politics very much included, but it’s vastly different from a direct attack on any of EU members. The hardware alone is vastly superior on whatever Soviet remains we’ve seen on Ukraine for the last couple of years.

        Just based on the numbers on the play it’s just stupid to spread the propaganda. Maybe you get paid for it, maybe you’re just playing as a devil’s advocate, but the reality just doesn’t align with russia attacking on the parts of global west europe.

        • realitista@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          I’m not going to argue with you, Finland is pretty badass, and hence probably not one of Putin’s first targets. But I can promise you that Putin has more artillery units than you. I know this because they have more than all of NATO excluding the USA. They have more aircraft, more tanks, more everything than you. Now the last time you guys went head to head, you inflicted 10:1 losses on them… Which means you have a good chance if it happens again… But like I said, I think Russia learned it’s lesson and will stick to the Baltics, Georgia, Moldova, until it gets strong enough to do Poland.

          • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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            4 months ago

            Soviet Union had a pretty significant army on their disposal and they were a force to really pay attention to. Russia in it’s current state is a poor imitation of that. Current Russian military had 14 000 tanks (rough estimates) and 2/3 of them is currently rusting away on some field in Ukraine, most of that was ww2 era stuff, which is a sitting duck on a literal pair of fighters on a ATV with a javelin or similar as we’ve seen.

            On artillery russia has been shipping their own ammunition and barrels from the 40’s back to the front lines from North Korea. Depending on which source you’ll like to cite they’ve lost either almost all of what they got or everything they’ve had few times over. The picture is pretty similar across the board.

            Air force hasn’t really done anything on the front beyond bombing civil intrastructure and getting destroyed by a cardboard drones from the Ukraine. Of course any kind of mig or shukoi is a sever threat to anything operating on their reach, but their performance hasn’t really shined on the current front where the opponent has been either lacking resources or have had hands tied to polictics across the continent.

            Ukraine stopped the original attack with a handful of troops and they’ve been more and more successfull as the training with experience is getting more and more effective. If Russia can be stopped with pretty much with their own equipment from the soviet era what do you think will happen if they try to attack someone who’s been preparing on that since 1945?

            Current state in Europe is a very bad excuse on what we should have, but even that, with 60 years of preparation, is well enough to counter anything what former ghost of the Soviet Union has to throw against EU. China, India and the rest of global south are the real threat and if things escalate to global war then it’s a whole different scenario, but Russia taking over europe is not a part of that.

            • realitista@lemm.ee
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              4 months ago

              All of this is true. But Russia is still outproducing the rest of Europe by a large margin. They are failing in Ukraine only because of extensive support from NATO (more than 70% of which is provided by the USA), starting long before the war began. Ukraine would not have been able to repel the invasion without it.

              I don’t deny that a united NATO can stop Russia. But Russia can beat a divided one country by country if it’s allowed to happen. And there are many in Europe and the USA working towards that.

                • realitista@lemm.ee
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                  4 months ago

                  Unfortunately I don’t think I have a single source for this. You would need to read many articles, watch YouTube videos of people who have researched it. But it’s true. And not by a small margin either. For example, for artillery production, or for example tanks, Russia annually produces more tanks than the entire inventory of any country in Europe. It is claimed 2100 tanks total, of which 200 are new ones whereas for example the largest fleets in European countries, built up over decades are only a few hundreds

                  • Burstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    4 months ago

                    Fair enough. I’m not particularly satisfied with the youtube military size comparison video you previously cited. Much of its data is incomplete, misleading, and unsourced. 2 glaring examples are that Russia’s aircraft carrier is listed as in service when it hasn’t been for 90% of it’s existence and is in dry dock right now possibly getting repaired for the 12th time, and that it only lists 2 variants light attack aircraft (F16/F35) when there are absolutely more variants in both Russia/Europes arsenal. It screams ‘unfounded propaganda’ to me.

                    Additionally, what is being manufactured by Russia is clearly insufficient to keep up with their losses. New vehicle manufactures annually account for 1-2 months of losses at their current rate. That is 1/6th of what they NEED it to be just to continue this war let alone another one and their stores of usable ancient vehicles are almost completely gone. Comparisons of this already insufficient manufacturing rate to those of Europe not geared to a wartime economy are unreasonable.

                    Finally, your whole premise of ‘a divided Europe would struggle against Russia’ is kinda significantly undermined by how well a woefully under-equipped and sized military fared against Russia’s assault in the beginning let alone nowadays with support. Also consider the change in fighting strategy Europe has. They do not care about Russia having 5x the artillery guns with a max 80km range when they have 5x the aircraft to precision strike from positions hundreds of kms away.

                    Regardless the whole concept of ’ divided Europe’ is a Russian fantasy. Every member nation of NATO signed on specifically due to the threat of Russia. To think any nation wouldn’t contribute everything it absolutely could to put down an Orc uprising is to be delusional. Political stupidity of a couple member nations of late be damned. They would still join in lest the obvious consequence of nobody coming to help them when it is their turn become realized.

                    ;tldr unless you can make a concretely sourced, supported argument for your claim in spite of all the evidence to the contrary this is fear-mongering propaganda and must cease.

          • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Whatever Russia does won’t happen in a vacuum. Of they would attack the Baltics everyone knows what’s up and it immediately becomes existential for all countries in Europe. Especially former warshaw pact countries.