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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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[–] ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com 107 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'll just be over here quietly cheering "two fronts" because I'm sure it'll go well for them

[–] PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day 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 36 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day 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)

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[–] PixelatedSaturn@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day 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 1 day 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 6 points 1 day ago (4 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.

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[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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 1 day ago (2 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.

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[–] i_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca 37 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They should try their luck in Afghanistan again.

[–] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That would put them in direct competition with us now that Trump wants the air base back and says he is willing to go to war with Afghanistan to do it.

[–] greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'm not a history guy, when was the last time invading Afghanistan went well?

[–] Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 day ago

They call that place the graveyard of empires for a reason, I don't think it's ever gone well.

[–] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

I think it was back in 1219. It lasted until just 1227. Does 8 years count as went well? Or is that too short?

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[–] lietuva@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

lots of these events that have occurred might have happened out of inertia. It might be that russians miscalculated and the war in Ukraine should have ended by now, and all these actions are part of a bigger plan

[–] mgnome@piefed.social 56 points 1 day ago

Russia isn't planning to invade Ukraine

  • Zakharova on Feb 8 2022.
[–] TrojanRoomCoffeePot@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago (2 children)

One guess is all that it should take, given the existing historical precedent.

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[–] chiocciola@lemmy.cafe 11 points 1 day ago

Haha. Which is also why Poland is trying to be able to shoot down objects in Ukraine airspace.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The US maintains a defensive contingent in Poland. Even with how much Trump loves the taste of Putins cock, I don't see how he could justify doing nothing about dead American soldiers. And even if the US, stays out of the fight, Poland itself is armed to the fucking teeth and has the rest of NATO backing them. Does Putin want unsupervised Canadians in Moscow? Because this is how you get unsupervised Canadians in Moscow.

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Is it Cambodia?

That would suck cause they just endend that war with Armenia.

[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 25 points 1 day ago

Is this you, Ken M?

[–] sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Moldova is for sure not safe right now.

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 16 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I was reading earlier about Russian misinformation networks relating to Moldovan elections. Scary stuff.

[–] jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There might be some merits to this. Trump did recently, without a reason, changed his tune to protecting Ukraine again.

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[–] BetaBlake@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago (10 children)

But why? They can't even do one front well, Russia sucks at war

[–] orgrinrt@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I have a pet theory that Putin is attempting to get a big reaction from NATO, so that he can then internally use that as an excuse why the war in Ukraine did not end well, and why they had to ultimately concede points they earlier held they wouldn’t in the eventual peace negotiations.

Not winning against Ukraine would be shameful for him, especially after all the messaging done about Ukraine not even being a real country.

Not winning against the entirety of NATO, on the other hand, sounds reasonable and understandable. But just saying that isn’t very persuasive. He needs imagery of destroyed Russian equipment in another NATO country or something concrete like that, to show that NATO truly is involved and waging war against Russia. That’s would also justify the initial reasoning for this misguided excursion — NATO is indeed warring against us, it was all justified! See these images of dead Russians in the Baltic Sea! The flaming Russian jets! See the havoc the big bad NATO wreaks on us poor Russians! We stand no chance, we have to settle for peace, those bullies are too strong now, and they are evil in their ways! In order to survive, we must concede a bit, lest NATO comes and bombs you and your family in the night like the thugs they are! gesturing at the constant dramatized imagery of destroyed Russian equipment in some NATO region

I’m convinced the economy, despite currently running on the war, is finally slowly collapsing to the point of it being visible to the peasants, perhaps showing inconvenient signs of that with the gas shortages across Russia, whatever else they are trying to keep under wraps. I think it’s starting to get embarrassing unless something changes and they can play victim to some bigger baddie yet again terrorizing good pious Russians. Maybe they have determined they can’t keep the effects contained no longer, and the seams will start to burst soon, so they need something that justifies the peace negotiations and conceding some of their strict conditions for the peace. Otherwise the people might just start seeing how fucked they are and rise up.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 6 points 21 hours ago

Nice take, I also subscribe to the theory that the Russian narrative is a lot more important than land gains. To be able to sell an "Underdog but growing empire despite evil holding us back" narrative would definitely be useful and a good exit strategy.

[–] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not saying this is why... but in theory if he can go through another country to do an end around on Ukraine, he can trade that other country to keep Ukraine. Or even if nato needs to defend itself, it might not spend as much on defending Ukraine. Just guesses though. And they still seem like bad reasons.

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

He's grabbing as much as he can for leverage, so he can trade back part of it for peace, but not all of it. Thus he still grows his empire despite having an army at its breaking point.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

This doesn't make much sense to me.

He's really demonstrated Russia's lack of capability to the world.

If a bull steals three kid's lunches, you dont force him to give back 2 but keep the third.

[–] easybre_bb@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

Because they’re hoping to pull other “axis” countries into the fold. There’s a wider conflict on the horizon, and Russia has its side it is looking to pull in to assist them. Large scale maybe even world war looms around the corner.

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[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Apparently, Putin never learned to swallow your food in manageable chunks before moving on. I think he will end up choking to death.

[–] slevinkelevra@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It'll work as long as Russia is still useful for China.

[–] mercano@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Russia’s joint military drills with Belarus has caused Poland to shut down Poland / Belarus border crossings. A lot of Chinese goods are shipped to Europe via rail that goes through one of these crossings, so China is taking notice.

[–] falseWhite@programming.dev 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

He's not stupid to attack a NATO member. So maybe Moldova? But then why is he testing the skies in the other end of Europe and not near Moldova? Nah, he's not going to attack anyone else.

[–] meco03211@lemmy.world 8 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Bait and switch? "Hey everyone look over here!"

[–] KingArnulf@lemmy.world 4 points 21 hours ago

Yep, but not just "look over here." He wants them to move their resources and position their defenses to respond from an attack in those areas. That will potentially leave them out of position to respond quickly to whatever he actually does.

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[–] _edge@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 1 day ago

Sounds plausible. We should listen to this guy.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 12 points 22 hours ago (1 children)
[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 14 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

Poland is ready for it, so probably not. Putin isn't one to start something with someone he knows can fight back. He wants a punching bag.

[–] jabjoe@feddit.uk 10 points 18 hours ago

Then again, people around him tell him what he wants to hear. Like Ukrainians will welcome his troops in....

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[–] SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 6 points 21 hours ago

Fresh looting for the war chest, old Vlad the Defenestrator thinks

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