The Russian Attack on Europe

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Russian aggression threatens all of Europe.
The U.S. could very well be drawn into this conflict, even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO.

For example, if/when Russia annex Ukraine, they will be sharing a lot more of borders to between Russia and the EU and NATO countries. They would be able to attack Austria, Hungary, Poland, Germany and finally capture France and Italy. And then all of Europe will be under Russian control, and the Russians will gain direct access to the Atlantic and threaten you Americans.

Putin won't stop until he has divided the entire globe into a northern (Russian) and southern (Chinese) sphere of influence.

Russia will use Europeans as slaves for their military industries and as conscripts as cannon fodder in their wars.

I don't think Putin has anything so grandiose in mind for the short term.

Right now his main concern is bullying Ukraine to discourage his neighbors from getting too buddy-buddy with the EU and/or NATO and (ideally) set up a Moscow-friendly regime in Kyiv who will recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea. It's all about incremental victories.

Russia and China will not divide the world between them because they are opposed to each other. Putin knows Russia is behind both the US and China. He will not go head-to-head with either if he can avoid it.

If he does outright invade Ukraine and NATO or the EU declare war a la the UK and Belgium in WWI, then yeah lol God help us all.

Yes. He is not trying to enslave all of Europe. Or not immediately. Extort concessions from the EU by threatenig to turn off their natural gas...yes. But not conquer them.

He wants SOME of the Ukraine back, and maybe all of the Ukraine. And he obviously dreams of reuniting all of the break away former republics of the old Soviet Union back into a Russian dominated empire. But that would be bad enough. It would be like Britain setting out to reverse the American Revolution and reconquer the US, retake Ireland, retake Kenya, and reverse what Gandhi did and reconquer the entire Indian subcontinent, and recreate the old British Empire of Queen Victoria's day.

Russia does not have the capability to invade Western Europe. Even if the US stayed out of it, Russia wouldn’t make it to Germany before European armies pushed them back to where they came from.

The threat, after Ukraine, is to the Baltic states. For their size, these countries have good militaries, but they would not be able to hold off a Russian offensive alone. Fortunately there are already NATO troops in the region, but it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Russia could capture Vilnius, Tallinn and Riga before sufficient forces arrived to defeat them. If NATO didn’t defend those countries then it would be the end of NATO, but the Ukraine crisis seems to have sharpened minds to the possibility.

So we're all going to die then. Nice to know.

I'm thinking Putin expects NATO to blink when it comes to the Ukraine standoff.

Putin is not President Eggplant, he can think at least one step forward.
I think he has military power to invade Ukraina.
And then.. what...
have another Chechnya?
He is not that stupid.
Russia has serious problem with population growth, so how many young soldiers can Mother Russia sacrifice...
In the long term, Siberia is much more important than Ukraina.

Isn't this technically an attack on Ukraine? parts of Ukraine are claimed by Russia

Strangely nobody has even made the slightest noise of China's recent expansion into India or Bhutan.

But I guess nobody cares about the third world.

Dude, prejudice against the third world doesnt enter into the issues.

If the US offered to send troops to India India would just get angry at us, call us "neocolonialists", and then tell us that "we are now best buddies with Putin" just to spit us.



The situations are different. And nots "either-or" anyway.

The main thing: there is such a thing as "the North Atlantic Treaty Organization" aka "NATO". And NATO is regional.
The US is a member of NATO and so are many European countries close to the Ukraine crises scene.

India is not in NATO. So we dont have legal ties to India requiring mutual defense. Thats the main difference.

In fact during the cold war days India was a nonaligned nation and was never even a member of SEATO (the now defunct Asian equivalent of NATO), even though its hated neighbor, Pakistan, was a SEATO member.

But there are other differences between the situations.

If Putin attacks he would be Goliath to Ukraine's David. But both India and China are Asian Goliaths in the same weight class as each other. So its not as urgent. India is not gonna get instantly swallowed up. And doesnt need our help right away. In fact we need India more than they need us.

We already have other issues with China (Taiwan, South China Sea, North Korea, Uighers).

And I think that you're missing your own point. The Ukraine situation is potentially more dangerous than the India China border. But all of these flashpoints: South China Sea, Bhutan, and Ukraine, are part of the same worrisome package. Its not either-or. They are all part of this same sudden trend by both China and Russia in aggression and territorial expansionism- and mutual support of each other in making those advances. Your point should be that we need to worry about the big picture. Not that one crises is more important than the other.

The international world has condemned China for the skirmishes on the India-China border.

There is a huge difference between China constructing buildings on disputed territory with Bhutan, and Russia preparing to invade Ukraine. One is unlikely to lead to any deaths. The other is likely to lead to thousands of deaths.