this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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Ukraine’s president says Kremlin checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies following new drone sightings

Vladimir Putin will expand his war in Ukraine by attacking another European country, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has predicted, and accused Russia of recent drone incursions that he said were an attempt to test Nato’s defences.

Speaking in Kyiv after his meeting with Donald Trump at the UN in New York, the Ukrainian president said Russia was preparing for a bigger conflict. “Putin will not wait to finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction. Nobody knows where. He wants that,” he said.

Ukraine’s president said the Kremlin was deliberately checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies, after drone sightings in Denmark, Poland and Romania and the violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets. More drones were spotted on Friday night above a Danish military base, and over a Norwegian base on Saturday.

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[–] PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 55 points 4 days ago (2 children)

That may sound cheer worthy, but considering they very obviously can't handle even 1 front, attacking another country would have to be for a different reason, a more problematic reason.

[–] Forester@pawb.social 37 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Can you expound on the later part of your thought? I'm struggling to picture a scenario in which the Kremlin purposefully opens a second front. The purpose of these airspace raids is to saber rattle and make it so Europe beefs up its defenses and is less likely to give equipment to Ukraine and instead use it domestically.

[–] mgnome@piefed.social 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Russia doesn't act logically and there's a positive feedback loop in the command - where each commander reports situation to his commander as better than it actually is, so what Putin hears from his yesmen, may as well be something like:

  • Yeah, we decided not to capture entire Ukraine immediately, but to delay things a bit, so that NATO will send more stuff to Ukraine and have less for itself before we attack them too.

So yeah, it may be that they're just all bark no bite now, but after enough time doing that there'll be real question "are we actually gonna do it or chicken out?" and that will be solely a question of leaders fragile ego.

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Im curious if this is true in any way, or is just armchair chatter. Are there actual reports of this?

[–] mgnome@piefed.social 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Kinda yes to both variants.

Russia inflates battlefield gains after a costly summer offensive

It's kinda been the thing at least since Soviet times where the tendency to report higher efficiency overcame any logic, and it wasn't just production plans in with those famous "5 year plans", it also creeped in into military, where there'd be, for example, tank hangar overseer reporting 50% of machines being battle ready to his commander, his commander would report 60, then up next it becomes 70, and like that until defence minister gets "we've got entire 100% machines ready".

What We Can Learn from the Soviet Collapse in: Finance & Development Volume 31 Issue 004 (1994)

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

You also have to remember the phenomenon isn't new, and the Russian elites expect and adjust for it. There's internal spying going on, and I'm pretty sure Putin would have an idea how the war effort is going, even if there's pretty serious information gaps on which exact parts will fail when.

This is also why they structure their troops the meat-grindery way they do. Sure, counting more bodies as more success is dumb and counterintuitive, but no bodies could either be great success or your unit selling their equipment to go on a bender, so it's better to choose the way that guarantees some kind of combat. My source on that practice is Kamil Galeev.

[–] PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I can speculate it could be to frame this war as a war against nato, or to get a reason for full scale mobilization, or to get a reason to use nuclear weapons.

[–] Skiluros@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"Nuclear weapons use" is an element of their doctrine for foreign policy influence.

They are not fucking idiots. But they do recognize that "nuclear blah blah" works well with cowardly westerners.

[–] PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They are not fucking idiots? They absolutely are fucking idiots. And they are being backed into a corner. A lot of stuff can happen.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

What are you thinking exactly?

My main idea on why they'd escalate is because they're sure the EU and NATO will fold this time, definitely, for certain.

[–] PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Escalate just so much that NATO won't act and cracks might form in nato. That was the strategy all along. Maybe this is a part of that.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I guess, but even a small fragment of NATO is more than a match for Russia, so that wouldn't be a winning strategy exactly.

[–] PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It would be, that's why I think Russians won't be looking for a direct confrontation. They need something that's big enough to cause some panic, but not not enough for the big countries to start anything. Something they can blame someone else for. Or go for a non NATO country like Moldova.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, I can see Moldova being a better route for that.