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  • Vidar Hokstad / Galaxy Boundvidar@galaxybound.com
    Aug 6, 2026, 11:41 AM

    @kithrup @cstross If Germany wanted to respond militarily, it could be.

    Given they probably don't want to, it will be handled as "just" a criminal case plus some angry posturing.

    What is an act of war tends to be a question of what is politically expedient...

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  • davecb 🇨🇦davecb@hachyderm.io
    Aug 6, 2026, 12:06 PM

    @vidar @kithrup @cstross I'd suggest it is something serious enough that the victim has the right (but not the duty) to make a military response or declare war.

    Blockades are a famous example, but the blockade of Cuba by the US was not acted upon, as the real target was the Soviet Union, and a war with the US was not something the CCCP wanted.

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  • netravenNetraven@hear-me.social
    Aug 6, 2026, 2:09 PM

    @vidar @kithrup @cstross
    it would have been worse if they had killed a random tour bus driver at the airport than if they had killed some executive, from a popular opinion viewpoint. Probably why that drone "stood down."

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  • MidgePhotoPhoto55@mastodon.social
    Aug 6, 2026, 12:25 PM

    @kithrup @cstross that restarted ages ago.

    An act of war can be a justification for war, but does not compel it.
    It might also be followed by shipments of arms, adverse releases of sequestered funds, security activity around sympathetic parties and groups, an ambassador being invited to meet for a chat at the airport, bring his toothbrush.

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  • Toni Aittoniemigimulnautti@mastodon.green
    Aug 6, 2026, 6:46 PM

    @Photo55 @kithrup @cstross Yeah. Make no mistake, Russia considers they are at war with us. The form of war they are conducting right now is what they believe brings them the most advantage. I believe that they believe they can boil the frog best by slowly increasing the heat.

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  • MidgePhotoPhoto55@mastodon.social
    Aug 6, 2026, 6:52 PM

    @gimulnautti @kithrup @cstross
    For a range of meanings of "us" which starts as every other nation, and tends towards "every other person".

    I suspect the core is unsalvageable, and likely to take the penumbra with it.

    Which is a large and perhaps intractable problem.

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  • Toni Aittoniemigimulnautti@mastodon.green
    Aug 6, 2026, 6:58 PM

    @Photo55 @kithrup @cstross They are saying it. They want the war to expand, so nobody could send weapons to Ukraine any more.

    Russia will very probably mobilise about half a million soldiers after Duma elections in September.

    And I'm confident they wouldn't shy off letting even these half-a-million just die attacking the Baltics, thus hoping to deprive Ukraine of support as NATO is kept busy on the eastern flank.

    Miroshnik on Ukraine: There is no other way to look at this. The war must continue and additionally the war must expand because Ukraine must be deprived of every possibility to receive military aid.
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  • Toni Aittoniemigimulnautti@mastodon.green
    Aug 6, 2026, 9:26 PM

    @kithrup @Photo55 @cstross It is. But the Putin regime's confidence in European NATO being a coward is unyielding. If my knowledge of Russia serves me right, they'll continue on this path until someone properly slaps them in the face. (And then there's the other factor of a Russian life being worth almost nothing.)

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  • Toni Aittoniemigimulnautti@mastodon.green
    Aug 7, 2026, 8:30 AM

    @Photo55 @kithrup Never underestimate the amount of people a Russian Czar will send to die on the front or in the gulag, and never overestimate the will of rich Muscovites to do anything about it.

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  • Toni Aittoniemigimulnautti@mastodon.green
    Aug 6, 2026, 7:16 PM

    @peterbrown @Photo55 @kithrup @cstross They can always mobilise Moscow and St Petersburg. Plenty of rich Russians left to throw into the meat grinder.

    And nukes...

    The administration has no plans of ending it, and the people don't have plans of ending the administration.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 12:05 PM

    @cstross These are not "defense companies". They are arms manufacturers.

    Please don't use propaganda terms..

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  • Charlie Strosscstross@wandering.shop
    Aug 6, 2026, 12:06 PM

    @2legged We are at war with Russia. Have been since 2014 (if not earlier). It's not us, it's them: Putin has been trying to implement the Dugin Doctrine for 20-odd years and rebuild the Russian Empire in Europe. Ukraine is where the tank shed its tracks, and now there's increasingly desperate flailing for a plausible second front.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 12:13 PM

    @cstross My point is not complicated, but you miss it entirely.

    My point is not about the merits of the war or its parties. It is about terminology.

    Those companies make weapons which may be used for defence or for attack. Describing them as "defence companies" falsely describes a purely defensive role.

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  • Charlie Strosscstross@wandering.shop
    Aug 6, 2026, 12:21 PM

    @2legged Nope, it's riffing off the UN Treaty, back in 1945, which outlawed "war". So everything since is euphemistically described as "defense". (Or a "3 day special military operation".)

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  • MarjorieRmarjolica@social.linux.pizza
    Aug 6, 2026, 12:34 PM

    @cstross @2legged of course to prove their complete incoherence the Orange Tyrant's USA goverment has renamed its Defence department as a War Department and then started a large military action, starting with the assassination of Iran's leadership in the Persian Gulf, that clearly doesn't require Congressional approval.
    At least Imperial Japan tried, if failed, to declare war before attacking Pearl Harbour.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 12:44 PM

    @marjolica Trump's renaming of the US DoD as the "Department of War" was one of the few honest things he has ever done.

    The USA has been at war throughout most of its 250 years, but it has never fought a defensive war in its life. The "Defense" label was a big lie.

    (And no, the US role in WWII was not defence. It was started by a Japanese attack on an iileggaly colonised remote island, thousands of miles from North America )

    @cstross

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  • micmic@ruhr.social
    Aug 6, 2026, 12:17 PM

    @cstross
    We (Germany, EU, UK) are obviously not at war with Russia. We are in a hostile situation, with low-level aggressive acts, sanctions etc., but we are not openly shooting at each other. That's a good thing IMHO, so we should preserve this distinction. War is not just a figure of speech, please don't blur the lines.
    @2legged

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 3:20 PM

    @mic The EU and NATO are in a #proxyWar with Russia.

    This is a conflict which many wanted for decades, and some actively worked to provoke.

    Poor Ukraine is the pawn in a bigger game.

    @cstross

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  • micmic@ruhr.social
    Aug 6, 2026, 3:50 PM

    @2legged
    That's not accurate. Russia started the war for its own reasons, as mentioned by @cstross . EU and NATO didn't pay Putin or Dugin. And the theory that the west encroached on Russia's legitimate sphere of interest and understandably "forced" Russia to act ignores the self-determination of the people in that sphere, who did want out. You are right that support for Ukraine is often quite cynical, but that doesn't absolve Russia of the blame for its actions.

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  • Charlie Strosscstross@wandering.shop
    Aug 6, 2026, 4:17 PM

    @mic @2legged If anyone is responsible for the war Russia is waging on the west, then first on the list is Putin, and second on the list is the USA, specifically the George H. W. Bush and Clinton presidencies that tried to apply the Shock Doctrine (aggressive neoliberal reforms) to Russia after 1991—causing immense pain and resentment—rather than a new Marshall Plan.

    The EU was focussed on the former Warsaw Pact members, especially Germany (preoccupied with reunification after 1989).

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  • MidgePhotoPhoto55@mastodon.social
    Aug 6, 2026, 6:12 PM

    @cstross @mic @2legged@mastodon.ie

    I thought for a while that it was a pity we had crapped on the rump of the USSR - the association of republics or whatever Russia called itself briefly - quite so hard, and perhaps we could have been more helpful.

    Currently my view has shifted toward ploughing and salting and Russia delenda est!
    They have a long history and some of them like it.

    StPetroLeningrad was an interesting place to visit though.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 4:40 PM

    @mic I am not absolving anyone. Russia is a shitty imperialist country with shitty regime. The USA is a shitty imperialist country with shitty regime, and the other NATO states are its poodles.

    But Russia has been traumatically invaded from the west 3 times in 2 centuries, the last with millions dead within living memory.

    First it had NATO pushing right up to its border,.Then even Ukraine, its closest historical ally, being dragged onto enemy orbit. No surprise it snapped.

    @cstross

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  • Charlie Strosscstross@wandering.shop
    Aug 6, 2026, 4:46 PM

    @2legged @mic When Russia (the USSR) invaded Poland in 1939, it was as Hitler's loyal ally. When Russia invaded Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in 1940, guess what? Russia also invaded Afghanistan, Hungary, Czecheslovakia, and a bunch more. They have history: before the USSR, Imperial Russia in the 20th century attacked Japan and China. "Traumatic invasion" cuts both ways.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 5:14 PM

    @cstross That's a wildly slanted history, omitting the long history of Prussian / German aggression.

    There have been 4 British invasions of Afghanistan. 4. All hostile.

    The Soviet Union was invited into Afghanistan by the Afghan govt to help defend against Pakistan-supported islamists,.indirectly American-funded and armed.

    I don't support any of the foreign forces in Afghanistan, but it's blatantly dishonest to try to condemn the USSR without that context.

    @mic

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 5:20 PM

    @cstross @mic also, the USSR waa never "Hitler's loyal ally". That's a blatant lie of which you should be thoroughly ashamed.

    The Nazi-Soviet pact was on both sides a cynical act of realpolitik berween enemies who despised each other. They carved up Poland in brutal invasions, but there was no loyalty between them.

    Whatever case you are trying to make, it is deeply discredited by such a mendacious inversion of historical reality.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 5:51 PM

    @NormanDunbar @cstross @mic They did. But what's your point?

    If you think you are making some great stand against a tankie or a Russophile, you are mistaken. I am neither.

    The USSR had a legitimate fear of the Weat. It committed some terrible crimes.

    Both things are true. There is no conflict between them.

    My point is solely that the EU/NATO's stance against Russia is rightly seen as aggressive, and has unsurprisingly generated a hostile response. Russia repeatediy warned NATO to back off.

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  • daskeitdaskeit@mastodon.social
    Aug 7, 2026, 6:36 AM

    @2legged @NormanDunbar @cstross @mic it’s not very anti-imperialist to prioritise the hurt feelings and trauma of empires and not the trauma and insecurity of the small states who are afraid of their big and historically imperialist neighbour.

    Ask the Finns and the Poles how they feel about Russia and NATO.

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  • SpeakerToManagersSpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop
    Aug 6, 2026, 5:25 PM

    @2legged @mic @cstross

    “Then even Ukraine, its closest historical ally,”

    A lot of Ukrainians don’t see it that way. Too many remember the Holodomor in which systematic starvation by Russian control killed somewhere beteeen 4 and 7 million people. And those who are Jewish remember the pogroms. No, it wasn’t Putin who ordered them, but the history makes it very hard to consider Ukraine and Russia to ever have been “allies”.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 5:37 PM

    @SpeakerToManagers There were of course huge crimes in the Soviet era. But Ukraine's history is as closely linked with Russia.

    Whatever label you put on a thousand years of Russia-Ukraine relationship, it remains deeply aggressive to Russia for NATO & EU to try to pull Ukraine into a hostile military bloc.

    @mic @cstross

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  • SpeakerToManagersSpeakerToManagers@wandering.shop
    Aug 6, 2026, 5:43 PM

    @2legged @mic @cstross
    And it’s not deeply aggressive for Russia to want to get back by force of arms the territory it took by force of arms and nuclear threat? This is geopolitical imperial maneuvering, in which Russia was the first one to escalate to shooting war. They invaded Crimes and then tried to invade western Ukraine and got stuck but were more interested in blowing up apartment buildings than backing out.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 6, 2026, 7:25 PM

    Liar, @older. I am not a tankie. I deplore all these big military powers. I am just noting that piling up a military alliance on Russia's borders was threatening and provocative, and destabilising.

    As to "denying Ukraine's agency", that's another of your lies. At no point have I denied Ukraine's share of responsibility for the idiotic goading the Russian bear.

    Yall goaded the big monster, and you got mauled. Now pls stop whining.

    @SpeakerToManagers @mic @cstross

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  • txtx 🇪🇺txtx@mastodon.social
    Aug 7, 2026, 5:25 AM

    @2legged Russia started WW2 alongside Adolf Hitler. "Invaded from the West" is sugarcoating Russia's complicity and Stalin's inability to keep his good friend Hitler on his team.

    @mic @cstross

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 7, 2026, 6:04 AM

    @txtx Stalin a "good friend" of Hitler? Fantasy history. No serious historian takes that view if the nazi-Soviet pact.

    There are plenty of real reasons to criticise the USSR. No need to incent them.

    @mic @cstross

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  • txtx 🇪🇺txtx@mastodon.social
    Aug 7, 2026, 7:52 AM

    @2legged Every historian knows that Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany began WW2 in collaboration, unless they're a crank/faker.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 7, 2026, 8:29 AM

    @txtx And you know "every Ukrainian", do you? 😅🙄

    Yiur claim thaa Stalin was a "good friend" of Hitler is pure fantasy.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 7, 2026, 8:47 AM

    @txtx No.
    I have found thst am talking to a fantasist or a liar, so their disconnect with reality is the only issue.

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  • txtx 🇪🇺txtx@mastodon.social
    Aug 7, 2026, 8:32 AM

    @2legged I'd say Russia (and their colonies in the USSR) were poodles to Hitler. Moscow really tried hard to keep that friendship going, in the end without success. But they still succeeded at carving out Europe, so it wasn't for nothing.

    Russia still worships WW2-era Nazi Germany, to this day. They built their main military cathedral out of melted down German tanks. That's no accident. It's a bizarre and sick obsession that comes from decades of mental corruption via false history.

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  • Claire McNab2legged@mastodon.ie
    Aug 7, 2026, 8:36 AM

    @txtx I'll ask again. How you know what "evey Ukrainians" thinks?

    Have you asked them?

    Are you absolutely sure that not one person thinks differently?

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  • micmic@ruhr.social
    Aug 7, 2026, 12:39 PM

    @txtx
    Russia before Putin didn't worship Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union was - rightly - very proud of their hard fought victory over Germany and made it a central element of their ideology. The Russian state kept that up for a long time. I am not sure how they came up with Wagner & Co in the last few years, but that's new.
    @2legged

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