Russia on Monday threatened to strike British military facilities and said it would hold drills simulating the use of battlefield nuclear weapons amid sharply rising tensions over comments by senior Western officials about possibly deeper involvement in the war in Ukraine.
After summoning the British ambassador to the Foreign Ministry, Moscow warned that Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory with U.K.-supplied weapons could bring retaliatory strikes against British military facilities and equipment on Ukrainian soil or elsewhere.
The remarks came on the eve of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration to a fifth term in office and in a week when Moscow on Thursday will celebrate Victory Day, its most important secular holiday, marking its defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
“China’s final warning”
I’d take it more seriously if the West actually became involved, but regardless of Frenchmen “shooting their mouth off” nobody’s sending troops to fight a nuclear power.
Maybe double check to see if they actually still are one. All these decades of sabre rattling and corruption in the defense industry, wouldn’t it just take the cake if hardly any of their nuclear capabilities still worked?
Yeah but how do you check?
Same way they’re planning to test article 5 ig 🤷
Prod them with a stick?
A 99% failure rate would still leave them capable of MAD. That they don’t have that capability is a dangerous pipe dream, which I see nowhere except Lemmy and Reddit comment sections.
I would say no-one is sending troops yet. I really dislike any country ruling it out entirely, better to just say nothing. If the conditions change, we (NATO/Europe) will need to act. Otherwise, our leaders may well be judged by the same yardstick as the leaders keen to appease a certain country in the late 30s.
Russia has already been “appeased” multiple times.
I would tend to agree. But I think we definitely need to define a line in the sand now, not declare there is no line. Which seems to me to be what such statements say about us.
The point is “the line in the sand” has been crossed multiple times without any reaction.
My point is, someone has to say where the line is (or indeed was). I don’t think any western government wants to be on record saying where it is (or should have been). Some are saying there isn’t a line regardless of what happens, and that’s the problem I’m talking about. It’s worse than not defining the line.
The LINE is attacking a NATO country, then Article 5 get enacted and we are all screwed
What good is it to define “a line” with no consequences or a symbolic gesture for crossing it?
Allow me to rephrase: We’re not going to involve our troops first. NATO territory is a total red line that would lead to direct conflict, and there’s been specific, limited consequences set for their use of various non-conventional weapons. All conventional weapons are now being given to Ukraine, to match the ones Russia is bringing to bear.
Because of that, I don’t worry too much about appeasement of Russia specifically at this point. I do worry about appeasement policies in general, though. Specifically towards various factions within the West.
Salami tactics https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yg-UqIIvang
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=yg-UqIIvang
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
If that’s an argument against what I just said, it doesn’t really apply here. There’s a consequence for every Russian action (now, anyway) that exceeds any benefit it could get them.
A few years ago, taking salami slices is exactly what they were doing, but they got greedy and now the West is somewhat awake.
British special forces are suspected to have been in Ukraine from day one.
They probably haven’t shot anyone but they are far more useful doing other things.
I was wondering if that would get brought up. It’s sure ballsy on the UK’s part. The deniability is the thing that makes it different, though. Russia doesn’t have to respond to a few spies the same way as they would to an open confrontation. The reports also suggest it’s very small numbers of people.