I don't know to what degree this is known to people outside Europe, but has been on the news over here for the last few months:
> drones aren’t just buzzing airports. They’re systematically surveilling military installations—often during sensitive operations
Now, if you live in the US or anywhere else outside Europe - please pause for a moment and see how it makes you feel to imagine having Russian drones hover over your military installations regularly, or other important places of your public infrastructure.
The political question here isn't why intelligence agencies aren't all over this but why politicians are deciding to not do anything about it.
A bunch of kids were able to figure out which ships were the source of these drones. Good work. I assume/hope this information wasn't new to intelligence agencies.
Relevant questions to ask here:
- were these ships not tracked and monitored 24/7 since they left Russian ports?
- in fact aren't all ships that leave those ports not tracked?
- isn't the journey of ships in the so-called shadow fleet documented in detail so that it is exactly known what's on board and who is buying it?
The answer to this is: of course that is all happening and known.
And the obvious one: why weren't these ships dragged to a port and completely dismantled to the last bolt?
Answer to that: that would be an escalation as these ships are in international waters and protected by maritime law. The obvious counter to that is that military aerial activity launched from foreign ships technically is an escalation in itself that could be considered a direct act of war.
I'm not going to speculate further on this. But it's obviously a highly political topic and not some kind of intelligence failure.
As someone who currently lives in Poland, I hope this will be a wakeup call for Western Europe, which has so far been living a medieval dream of "the aggressor is far away and there are countries between us and the aggressor, so we can carry on as usual". That used to be a valid assumption several hundred years ago, but now no longer holds.
I hope the lukewarm support for Ukraine will become at least a bit stronger. And I really hope the EU will stop funding the Russian military machine. Not everyone realizes this, but just in October 2025, the five largest EU importers of Russian fossil fuels paid Russia nearly 1 billion €. ONE BILLION EUR per month. Compare that to the military aid we are sending to Ukraine. (source: https://energyandcleanair.org/october-2025-monthly-analysis-...)
As I understand, if Europe stopped buying Russian natural gas, it would have to buy it at much higher prices elsewhere, which would raise things like electricity cost, logistics cost, which in turn might make voters unhappy and vote out the current government. That's the weakness of EU, it's made of many countries which put their interests first and have a democratic system.
Furthermore, there are suspicious things happening, like appointing former German chancellor for a Gazprom directors board [1]. Was he appointed for his exceptional skills and expertise, or for some other reason?
For comparison, Russia has no such problems; due to centralization and localization of economy, the prices and rouble value are kept under control; due to more authoritarian style of governing, nobody complains when utility bill raises every year, and sometimes twice a year. Russia also had tax increases for couple years straight, and again, nobody complained, unlike Europeans which tend to change the government every time they become unhappy with something. And obviously, West has no means to bribe or corrupt Russian leadership or finance any political movements.
It disheartens me to see how Polish opinion on the EU has been systematically dismantled, not sure if it's mostly Russian propaganda but EU skepticism is growing a lot over there, given that Poland is right at the footsteps of Russia it does not bode well it's starting to turn on the EU...
Guess who else is very much interested in that happening.....
"Leaked files ‘show US wants to persuade four nations to leave EU’
The countries seen as targets to follow Brexit are Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland, according to leaked details of the US national security strategy"
https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/us-meg...
Well, this was the case decades ago, too, just few people paid attention. The US made sure their interests are always put before Polish interests, and these were regularly reported by the US embassy in Warsaw. See e.g.:[0]
"Rozanski went on
to explain that Polish food products are viewed in the EU as
healthy and natural, and are competitive in their current
state. Use of GM seeds could threaten this perception, and
thus Poland's place in the market. When Spirnak and Embassy
Agricultural Counselor noted that such an approach would be
of great concern to the U.S. and would be contrary to EU as
well as WTO commitments, Rozanski backed off and said that
Poland must comply with EU and international commitments
(Note: Rozanski softened this message further at a subsequent
meeting that Agricultural Counselor attended)."
The bright point is, since it's more or less clear that the US basically stopped caring much about Europe militarily, the "great concern to the U.S." cited above is not that relevant. Trump basically destroyed most of the soft power the USA had over Europe.
> so far been living a medieval dream of "the aggressor is far away
As a Western European, I want to give you a different perspective on this. For us, everything behind the iron curtain was Soviet. Then the curtain fell and we saw all these countries like yours, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Baltic states, etc, transition into democracies. While doing that, they lifted their welfare significantly. We had no reason to think Russia wouldn't do the same (why wouldn't they?).
Plus, our neighbor Germany was not the nicest kid on the block in the past, and we also saw them transition into a normal, peace loving nation. So in the end, we had no reason to believe why Russia would stick to something that actually hurts their own lives.
It was very naive, I agree. But only recently, we realized that Russia has no intention to follow the path that central and eastern Europe took.
And yes, I'm ashamed of how little support Europe is giving. I'm sending money out of my own pocket, because I hope every bit helps.
I definitely hope it will, but you know, the further remote from Russia the safer and less interested they can afford to be. Because the cyber war is here, there's lots of messages with "Russia is not my enemy" on the Romanian Facebook as well. This even when Putty's goon just said they're at war with Europe.
The Netherlands (population 18 million) has an annual budget of 350 billion.
Russia is in reality a poor country.
The strategy of the Netherlands is to just keep the war going by sending money. The reality is that we're actually WINNING but some people don't want that.
>>I hope the lukewarm support for Ukraine will become at least a bit stronger
As a Pole, I think the nation as a whole doesn't recognize that we are already at war. By any estimate, Russia already uses thousands of people online to post false information about both the war and Ukrainians in Poland, trying to incite hatred towards them so that Polish support for them goes down, and so far it has been working. Just go to a comment section on any news article or(if you're brave) Facebook, it's dare I say infested with brand new accounts whose entire posting history is just "get those ukrainian vermins out of this country" or the variations of. The governments office that was meant to investigate and combat this had....2 employees until very recently. Our response to this is not just inadequate, we are literally being "attacked"(not in a physical sense) by another nation and we do very little about it. And it appears to be working too - outright xenophobia and actual physical violence against Ukrainians is up on the raise in Poland, and political stance of "you know maybe Putin isn't such a bad guy" is coming out of the fringes and entering public conversation too. For a country such as Poland which has suffered first hand at the hands of Russians, this is an insane position to take.
Are any of those drones being shot down? Is anything being done about it besides (AI-assisted) fear-mongering? That is the real question. If the drones are a problem, shoot/neutralize them and thank Russia for the free target-practice exercise.
It seems like the danger even bigger than Russia is government incompetence and the system of broken incentives where everyone does everything to appear busy but actually solving the problem.
If there's a drone there, and you don't want it there, the solution is obvious. It's obvious enough to any nutcase in the US with access to a shotgun (with various degrees of success, but at least they're got the right spirit). If nobody's taking out the proverbial shotgun then I have to assume the drones are not an actual problem and merely yet another excuse for busywork.
Edit: I am not saying to literally use a shotgun against them. But offensive solutions need to be developed and put to use; otherwise if we sit helpless now, what will we do when those drones evolve and start carrying offensive payloads? Fear-mongering and finding endless excuses about not doing anything is not going to help.
The drones here aren't your neighbor's kids' quadrotors. Some sightings over airports have been large (>2m) fixed wing aircraft travelling at 200 km/h. Even the quads are pretty fast. And they can appear out of nowhere, taking off from the ground near the target.
Shooting them down from the ground is next to impossible. They don't hover around waiting for someone to come by with a shotgun in their hand, catching them by land (ie. chasing them in a car) is not feasible.
Just to give an idea how hard it is to hit airborne targets from the ground with traditional guns: I once spent an afternoon shooting at a slow moving fixed wing target drone with tracer rounds from a 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun. There were about 50 of us taking turns, each with a few hundred rounds to shoot at the damn thing and the target aircraft didn't get a single hit.
My guess is that the drones are conducting signals intelligence, listening to radar signals and radio comms around sensitive installations (airports, military bases) and surveying the response time to a sighting.
If you watch some videos from Ukraine, you will see, that shotguns can hit them with much increased chances. So if possible without endangering civilians around the place where drones are sighted, I say get finally started, take the shotguns out and take out Russian resources. Just for the time of war make private drone flying without special permission and preflight registration illegal, then take down any drone that moves and is not registered to have a flight at the time. This also won't be giving away very critical military knowledge either.
One thing I don't know about shotguns is, how dangerous falling projectiles are. How much velocity they accumulate. That could be a real problem with this approach.
I've seen my fair share of frontline combat videos from Ukraine.
The hard part isn't shooting a drone when it is in shotgun range. It's getting the shooter close enough to the drone to have a chance of taking the shot in the first place.
For example the drones mentioned in the article can fly at 2.5km altitude at 140km/h.
I guess the only solution then is to already have people in places where it counts. I would suspect military bases have more than enough people. But then again the drones can just fly too high, at which point it becomes a cost/benefit tradeoff, or futuristic laser weapons.
It's actually not easy to shoot down a drone with a gun if it takes any measure to evade interception. It's not like shooting ducks taking off from a lake.
That said, last week the French navy did shoot at drones around the Île Longue nuclear submarine base, but as far as I understand just one drone came within close enough range to be targeted by radio jammers (which means maybe a few hundred meters at sea) and either it went away on its own or sunk but it apparently wasn't retrieved. It's very unlikely they could shoot it down with conventional firearms.
Also it's not like the US did any better when their airports and military bases had those massive drone sightings a little while back, except in that case it wasn't the Russians but "aliens" (lol).
The solution is only obvious if you're naive and/or don't know what you're talking about. They can't reliably shut down drones in active war zones with complete disregard for any kind of safety and you think we could do this in populated areas ?
Do you realise some drones can fly hundreds of meter above the site, even a few kilometres ? Do you realise that what you send up must come down eventually ? Do you realise that you need to send massive amount of projectiles to take down an object that size ? Do you think you're smarter than everyone on the ground and in the command chain ? If shotguns were the solution you'd see much more videos of them being used on the front line, but they're only sporadically used, and from videos circulating online you can clearly see they're barely better than useless.
For short range, a shotgun with birdshot is pretty safe. The pellets aren't going to have much velocity on the way down to do any harm.
For longer range, there are a lot of options, but an interceptor drone is probably pretty good. You do have to worry about the drone pieces hitting something, most drones aren't that heavy but I would not want to be hit by one.
Still this is much safer than firing explosive shells.
The reality doesn't match all these armchair specialists takes on HN though. Neither Russia nor Ukraine can defend their critical infrastructure... and they're all in, at war, with 0 regards for safety and side effects.
What happens if you interceptors locks in on the plane behind the drone, of falls down on the school behind the naval base ? Planes are shot down all the time, even military planes by friendly fire. I even doubt European countries have legal ways to start shooting down aircrafts during peace time
I have seen videos of shotguns working on the frontline. Recently, there even circulated a video showing a super lucky one shot hit. However, what those videos have in common is, that they are targeting drones maybe 100m or at most 300m away. Obviously, the further away the drone, the more difficult it will be to align the barrel sufficiently precise to hit anything.
Shutting down a drone with a machine gun is difficult, there are lot of videos where you can see it. There is even video of a Russian-Iranian drone destroying a car with a machine gun which cannot even protect itself. What is efficient against drones, are Soviet ground-air missiles (which might be dangerous to use around airports), and interceptor drones (which Europe doesn't have). Jamming the radio/GPS probably won't help because drones have antennas on top which form a simple phased array, to ignore the signal from the ground. Drones might also use mobile networks, and there were reports that Russia used Starlink antennas on some drones.
Of course not. Because reasons. Because it's illegal to shot drones. Because let's not provoke putin. Because they pose no threat. Because the debris can hit civilians. russians will continue observing military installations with full impunity.
... and Russians will find new reasons not to shoot their drones, which they will happily share with EU residents via social networks. They are the masters of excuses.
The Dutch military fired on drones. However, they are all over Europe and generally not shot down for various reasons. First, shooting at them can be very dangerous. Debris and whatever is used to shoot at them (usually bullets) can hit civilians. Second, the laws tend to not allow military and police to shoot at drones that don't pose an immediate threat to life. A new police law has been passed in Germany to fix this issue, but it was only passed very recently. I suspect other countries have similar legal issues that first need to be fixed.
Exactly. Whether those drones are Russian or not the expected course of action is to intercept them, their operators, and launch vehicles. I would say even more so if they are Russian as weakness only encourage more hostile action. So if these vessels is indeed known or highly suspected to be hostile and linked to drones we would expect them to have been intercepted by special forces.
More broadly, the "Russian scare" in Europe is very murky. I have little doubt that it is vastly overblown for domestic purposes. I.e. it serves the EU's agenda of further political integration and involvement in military matters (in which it is normally not or barely).
Generally, whatever happens one way or another in those situations has been decided, and we should never take any public narratives at face value.
So you have an invader trying their best (which is luckily not much) to grab a neighbor's land, just at your border, and you call that "murky and overblown"? Sorry this is not the Facebook grandmas knitting group giving likes to a carrot horse, we refuse to accept such bs.
The "Russian scare" in Europe is not about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, that's just the premise, it is the narrative that the EU (and Western Europe at large) is next to be invaded and that we should be ready for WWIII against Russia.
Here in the First Island Chain we've had Chinese drones buzzing our military installations since before COVID.
In Afghanistan, Yemen, or Somalia, the sound of drones buzzing overhead usually means an entire family is about to get murdered because ONE guy's pattern of behaviors pegged him as a "terrorist" in some computer system.
Europeans are just finally being shaken out of their false sense of security and don't know how to handle it.
>Now, if you live in the US or anywhere else outside Europe - please pause for a moment and see how it makes you feel to imagine having Russian drones hover over your military installations regularly, or other important places of your public infrastructure.
Something like that has happened in the US recently but Americans believed they were alien spacecraft as they tend to do and the whole thing got swallowed up in memes and Reddit threads.
Also apparently the US is ride or die with Putin now so Russia can't have done anything of the sort. Must have been aliens.
Of course the Russians will do this we helped Ukrainians attack the Russian nuclear fleet with drones they are most definitely organising some payback actions.
Be glad stuff isn't exploding yet, we are at war with Russia. Did people expect no damage would happen inside Europe?
Unfortunately this is not going to make a dent in the current policies. First of all, russia surveying military bases with drones, really? What else is new? Second, currently there is no way to shoot drones in EU due to variety of bullshit legal reasons.
So this article will change nothing. russia will continue blocking airports and EU won't do anything about it.
There could be years between looking into it and passing a legislation. There could be years between passing a legislation and actually shooting drones. It's EU, we won't do shit until the comprehensive environmental impact study is finished.
You don't have to respond to provocations in a simplistic way that doesn't really effect the enemy
Shooting the drones would probably have Russia laugh and send twice as many next time. Financial actions can help. Blocading their oil might finish things.
And this is precisely what EU is known for. Deliberating for years and coming up with an empty inconsequential legislation instead of, you know, actions.
This legislation does not make any difference nor to putin nor to the russia in general.
Drones will continue flying over NATO bases with full impunity.
This just shows how amateurish the German state apparatus is when it comes to things like this. Maybe they're playing a game one level deeper and show them only what they want the Russians to see or see it as inevitable, I don't know. But I don't have high trust in our defense.
This is not just a German topic (several NATO countries had drone sightings) but a NATO topic. And probably also a US topic (some 'alien' activity recently).
And you are forgetting that there are still US troops in Germany. The US is not some passive bystander in this conflict but a very active part of the decision process here. And given that some of those military installations probably have US military in them, it's very much a topic that concerns them.
I don't think anyone believes an attack is imminent. But that kind of intelligence gathering is a pretty serious breach of security.
This weakness is a NATO wide problem and you can't ignore the role of the US in this apparent weakness. It's apparently pushing for de-escalation rather than further escalation. I think we'd know of Trump felt strongly about this. He'd be tweeting about this. His silence on this is suggestive.
European intelligence services assess the three documented ships as operating “with high confidence“ on behalf of Russian interests. Their movement profiles are “very conspicuous” and show “little evidence of commercial activity.”
---
...of course they know, but for whatever reason they didn't find a smoking gun so far (e.g. drones on the ships or drones taking off/landing) - or maybe they did but keep it to themselves.
> Official inspections were “symbolic”—not all containers opened
Of course European countries' intelligence and military know about this.
The question we should ask ourselves is why they let it happen... My take is that the "Russian scare" serves the EU's agenda. You'll notice how European leaders and the EU are stroking fear at every opportunity.
Eh, no matter what is done about the drones there would be people who complain about 'fear- and war-mongering', and most likely it would be the exact same people who now complain that the government is 'letting this happen' ;)
Imagine the German military would shoot those drones down over Germany, the self-proclaimed 'pacifists' would be all about 'escalation', 'war-mongering' and 'militarization'. There are clear and very restrictive rules what the military and police are allowed and not allowed to do in cilivized countries, and those restrictions are in general a good thing and shouldn't be changed on a whim.
> the self-proclaimed 'pacifists' would be all about 'escalation', 'war-mongering' and 'militarization'.
They have a right to protest and the government is free to ignore them and do its job. This is not a serious argument and the kip about "civilized countries" is ridiculous, frankly.
Drones don't fly from Russia. They are launched more locally. The vessels mentioned in this article could be taken over by special forces today if the neighbouring governments decided to. So again why don't they? I can't find any sensible answer to that apart from "because they are useful".
I don't know if they can seize those vessels - I'm no maritime law expert, but just to give you an idea how tricky the legal topic can become once a vessel is seized:
Of course they can. This is military in international waters, you can do what you want and worry about being sued by whomever later (good luck with that). The French special forces took over an oil tanker and brought it to France no later than October [1].
Again, trying to find too many excuses why it is not possible usually indicates that in reality they don't want to for whatever reasons (alreayd mentioned my theory). Or ask the French to do it as they seem to at least have a working defense chain of command...
Generally, whatever happens, or not happens, in those situations has been decided, and we should never take any public narratives at face value.
Amazes me that the Russians always seem to have the capacity for this sort of, I can't think of a clean word, let's inadequately say gamesmanship. When I'd have thought they have enough on their plate in Ukraine.
They have a strange attitude to the world and have had government funded people dedicated to attacking much of the world for decades. See this book review:
>“This must be the essence of our greatness. . . enemies everywhere” (p.20). The central thesis of Russia’s War on Everybody is that the Kremlin defines its enemies sweepingly, such that only a fraction of these “enemies” consider Russia to be their enemy. As Giles documents, “the Kremlin’s daily business” includes what some in the West would consider “acts of war” – poisoning dissidents, shooting down planes, election meddling, cyberattacks, and blatant political assassinations. Giles describes the Kremlin’s zero-sum worldview, in which anything benefitting others is a threat to Russia, and demonstrates that the Kremlin’s ambitions are far broader, and its methods more pervasive, than most realise. https://www.e-ir.info/2025/11/18/review-russias-war-on-every...
Anything necessary to keep up the sharades and appearance. He likes to play in the league of the big. Let's see for how long, until more cracks start showing up.
Good job! OSINT rules.
And regarding drones, surely any state actor may be doing this, however doing surveillance by drones over military bases is just so noob. That just points out they don't have a capacity to do reconnaissance with satellites, or they are doing something completely different. Probably making sure the target knows someone is watching, saying "We know where you have your sensitive spots".
They don't need satellites, they can surveil us close up with £200 drones and we don't do anything about it. It's like the story about the astronaut and the pencil.
Wilders received a Russia-Netherlands friendship pin, and posted the picture of him posing with it (in the Duma, IIRC) on this twitter account on Mar 1, 2018.
It is at least 50% NATOs fault. Mexico and Canada are democratic and sovereign nations, but if either would decide to allow chinese or russian military bases to be built in their country, you can safely asume the US would not hesitate to brake international laws and take military actions on those sovereign countries. NATO expanded closer and closer to russias border, and you can't just expect for Russia to be okay with that, just as the US wouldn't be okay with that.
My point is, Mexico and Canada could DECIDE to become allies of China and Russia. And then you would see the very same, how the US doesn't give a s** about their free decisions and invades.
Cuba once wanted to partner with USSR in hosting nuclear missiles (purely for defense purposes; you cannot invade with a missile) and US cared very much about it.
... cared only about the nukes. Conventional weapons remained in Cuba, and the USSR continued supplying them until the end in 1991. In 1978, for example, the USSR gave Cuba the newest MIG-27 fighter jets, and the United States did nothing about it, which proves the opposite of what Kremlin trolls are trying to argue.
The USSR's support for Cuba went far beyond anything any NATO member has seen since the end of the Cold War, yet there was no war against Cuba.
Yes, but nukes were removed from Cuba and that was the end of the military confrontation. Conventional weapons like fighter jets, air defense missiles, tanks, etc still remained and were upgraded over time.
Meanwhile, Central and Eastern Europe has seen no deployment of even conventional weapons beyond purely symbolic gestures like a few thousand lightly armed soldiers scattered across a region of more than 100 million people.
If Cuba is the blueprint, then NATO allies could arm Eastern Europe to the teeth.
I'd go 25% NATOs fault. You'll note Ukraine didn't apply to join NATO, was not invited to join NATO so Russia saw it as easy game and invaded.
A problem with the west is they persuaded Ukraine to give up its nukes in return for a bit of paper saying the west would help protect it and then when push came to shove they were wimpy about it.
For decades the West, and Germany in particular, tried to turn Russia from an enemy into a trading partner and eventually an ally. Naive, in hindsight? Sure thing. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s absolutely no reason for Russia to be enemies with the West other than Putin’s imperialist ambitions.
To be fair, in 90s-10s the West invaded multiple Soviet and Russian allies (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, as an example) using weakness of Russian economy an inability to help the allies at the time. That was not a friendly act. USSR withdrew from Eastern Germany in the end of 80s as a gesture of good will in hope to improve the relations, but it was never reciprocated.
> To be fair, in 90s-10s the West invaded multiple Soviet and Russian allies (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, as an example) using weakness of Russian economy an inability to help the allies at the time.
The NATO intervention in the Yugoslav wars lasted only a few months, killed fewer people than the Serbs executed on some of their most productive single weekends, and brought a definitive end to a decade of civil wars. Please explain how this is negative and what reason Russians have to bitch about it all the time.
If anything, the intervention should have taken place far sooner. Many, many civilian lives could have been saved while NATO allies spent years merely watching people in Europe being murdered for their ethnic background.
> USSR withdrew from Eastern Germany in the end of 80s as a gesture of good will in hope to improve the relations, but it was never reciprocated.
Gesture of goodwill, gimme a break. The USSR ran out of money and ceased to exist entirely (1991) before the last Soviet forces left Germany (1994).
The linked article is long on opinion, short on facts. The content does not support the headline. This is likely part of a Russian influence campaign (they did not start yesterday), aimed at de-legitimizing the protest movement and denying that Ukrainian citizens had any agency.
Are you suggesting that the Russians were using __ The Guardian __ as part of an influence campaign....in 2004? That's an extraordinary claim, for which you present no supporting evidence while blasting the article for being "short on facts". Pot, kettle, black. Here's Radio Free Europe on the subject:
https://www.rferl.org/a/1058543.html
it specifically calls out amounts paid to organizations in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine via the National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded via Congress and the State Department.
>Besides, did you know that the Kuchma government sent Ukrainian soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq
Yes, I know that. I bring it up anytime somebody says "Ukraine never invaded anybody!"
> Why would the US government want to overthrow a sympathetic regime?
To replace a sympathetic leader they DON'T control with an even more sympathetic leader they DO control. Wresting control of the political apparatus in a state often outlasts any singular "elected" Executive.
> Are you suggesting that the Russians were using __ The Guardian __ as part of an influence campaign....in 2004?
Definitely! Because they did the exact same thing in France, where I lived at that time, and probably other countries. I remember op-eds in French newspapers, Russia-friendly politicians on TV with the same talking points.
My wife and I go married on Oct 31st, 2004, the day of the first round of this election. These are things I can't forget, like her voting in Kyiv in her wedding dress.
Thinking the US ambassador could gather crowds of hundreds of thousands during long winter weeks all by himself, even with a few million USD is ridiculous, especially when you know the country. This is not at all how it works.
There was massive fraud during the second round, evidence of it was abundant, election monitors and independent organizations like OSCE witnessed it.
Yushchenko, controlled by the US government? There is no indication of that. And when his term ended, power was transferred peacefully to Yanukovych.
Ukrainians are educated people and just like anywhere else do not like to be told what to do from abroad, be it from Washington or Moscow. Now that the US government sides with that of Russia and Ukrainians continue to resist the pressure, it is even more obvious that these narratives were completely false.
So what? Everyone acts in to further their interests. NATO expands because it's in NATO's interest to do so. Russia says that this expansion is not in Russia's interest. Why only say the Russian part and leave out the NATO part?
Furthermore, if having an interest in something gives the right to use military power to achieve that interest then the argument applies to everyone.
The point about foreign bases in Canada or Mexico gets repeated a lot online, but what is the ultimate point? The USA would not like it, but it's also not a political reality. On the other hand a NATO build out IS a political reality.
So I think rather than focusing purely on what one country wishes it's better to analyze things in terms of what the political realities are and which is better.
In that sense NATO is meant to be a deterrence. Russia doesn't like that. If you ask yourself whose vision of the future is better then the answer is clear. A world of where rule of law is the norm and invasions are deterred is preferable. There has been tremendous peace and prosperity in the EU because of NATO and people have just gotten used to it. They have taken for granted the cost and sacrifice that this peace came from.
However, simply saying that Russia has an interest in not having NATO on their border is almost tautological. Of course they don't want that, but so what. Peace only works if it's enforceable.
> The point about foreign bases in Canada or Mexico gets repeated a lot online, but what is the ultimate point? The USA would not like it, but it's also not a political reality.
The point is, that the US would do actually the very same as russia, and break international law. And regarding political reality, this already happened in history with the Cuba crisis. The point is actually, that the west uses a moral highground to condemn russias aggression, while it would be doing the very same. It falls in the "rules for thee but not for me" category. And if you hold somebody accountable on standards that would you wouldn't be able to hold up for yourself, your are - by definition - a hipocrite.
Hypocrisy? I said each side acts in their interest: NATO and Russia. My point was only to ask whose interest would readers on HN prefer prevail?
It's a simple question. Do we want to live in a world where Russia achieves their strategic goals or do we prefer to live in a world where NATO achieves their strategic goals?
NATO expansion doesn't happen illegally. It's completely voluntary. It's a defensive alliance meant as a deterrence. And countries in NATO all enjoy much higher standards of living than non-NATO countries. NATO countries all have laws to protect their citizens and they enjoy peace from invasion.
I get that Russia doesn't want that. But my point was so what? I never really denied that issue. Everybody is acting in their best interest. It's just that NATOs interests and values are also the same as my own.
There's no hypocrisy here. There's just a good and bad guy in this case. I don't see the problem here.
>NATO expands because it's in NATO's interest to do so.
I highly recommend reading the 1997 US Senate debate about NATO expansion. There were a number of experienced statesmen who vehemently disagreed that NATO expansion was in NATO's interest.
> A world of where rule of law is the norm and invasions are deterred is preferable.
Except we don't have that world. From Iraq in 2003 to especially the NATO air campaign in Libya in 2011, we've long since demonstrated that there are no rules, and invasions have no consequences.
Russia's war and invasion of Ukraine have brought NATO along more Russian border with new voluntary NATO members. And Russia claims it doesn't care about that/it isn't an issue.
You're argument is just a way to work backwards from the outcome Russia wants, not a reality.
Russia has said it is about Russian speakers. Russia has said it is about nazis. Russia will say anything to try to validate their war.
And yet when Finland actually joined NATO, Russia said they had no problem with that. Something doesn't add up in your story - and it happens to be the same story told by Russian trolls and useful idiots.
There is a massive anti-western infiltration operation being driven by Russia and it's allies, like Iran, Qatar and China. The biggest tragedy of the Russia-Russia hoax of Trumps first term is that people have become numb to something which was not really happening, but now is happening at an unprecedented scale.
I can only really speak for the media in Norway, but they spend almost no time covering this anymore and instead just print partisan American political things as if we are the 51st state and also a deep blue state. The media in Western Europe needs to stop acting like this, and start focusing on Europe and our challenges.
Just another example of the total insanity of Western Europe is that there is some expectation that USA will defend Europe when the majority of people in almost every single western European country has no interest in defending themselves. People expect US to send troops when there is no political support in any western European country to send troops. I love Europe, it's my home, but that is also why I don't think it's helpful to ignore the truth. Europe is the sick and dying man of the world. We need to turn this around.
The "Russia-Russia hoax" wasn't that hoaxy. Form Wikipedia on the Muller report:
>The report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion", and was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts. It also identifies multiple links between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
I guess the US people just decided they were ok with a Russian backed president?
Europe is the sick and dying man is maybe overstating things. They've been understandably a bit anti-war following the centuries of war culminating in WW2.
I don't read every news source internationally however I always wonder just how often UK, German, US linked vessels, drones, etc are found within close proximity of Russia/China/Iran and how often they get reported.
If the same thing would happen to Russia you can be sure that Medvedev and Peskov would whine about it for months, including the occasional nuclear annihilation threat towards the 'collective West'.
Authoritarian regimes don’t act aggressively because they’re provoked; they act aggressively because projecting power and testing limits is part of how they survive internally. History is full of cases where no meaningful provocation existed at all.
Nazi Germany didn’t need Allied ships near its coast to invade Poland. Saddam Hussein didn’t need US aircraft nearby to invade Kuwait. Argentina didn’t need British naval pressure to seize the Falklands. Russia didn’t need NATO forces near Kyiv to annex Crimea in 2014 or launch a full invasion in 2022.
Tyrannies tend to frame any foreign presence as “provocation” after the fact, because it’s politically useful at home. Liberal democracies publish their movements precisely because they operate under scrutiny; authoritarian states act first and justify later.
Proximity makes for a convenient narrative, not a causal explanation.
When I think of liberal democracies, I am thinking of places like Estonia, I am not including the current US, UK, and Germany in liberal democracies, Considering the current state in every single one and the recent cases for spying on their own citizens illegally I sincerely doubt they are publishing openly.
A lot of these drone scares remind me of UFO flaps. There was one over London Gatwick not long ago and no one ever managed to photograph the thing as far as I can remember.
I'm sure NATO has drone swarms all over Russian bases right now, but that's the bit they miss. Part of a long tradition of trying out each other's defences.
NATO has been buzzing the borders of Russia all my lifetime with aircraft erc and beyond (Gary Powers anyone?) I doubt they ever stopped and have moved onto drones by now.
Even in Cold War Berlin each side tried to test out the limits of the other although the Red Army was allowed into a couple of places in West Berlin by agreement like a war memorial.
Both sides have been chancing their arm most of my lifetime. We get reports of Russian planes and ships round here all the time. The west does it to them as well... and it is no secret that British and American folk have been involved in the Ukrainian conflict. It allows both militaries to justify their spending so it is mutually beneficial as well as being brinkmanship.
Does NATO have satellites, or do the Americans? With the recent threats to the ICC and more and more American politicians turning against NATO, it's getting quite hard to take American NATO membership seriously.
However, I doubt the drones are part of any kind of spying operation. They're trivially detectable, have limited range, and I very much doubt these journalists found anything that European intelligence agencies haven't found already. If the Russians want to map out European bases, they can just look at the data leaked by Fitbit/Strava and "data broker" companies.
Instead, I firmly believe this is a power move intended to spread fear. They're saying "look at what we're capable of", and _maybe_ measuring anti-drone response strategies, but any competent military wouldn't let themselves get baited into showing their hand too much. The Dutch army has stated that there's no need to panic and that the anti drone measures we currently have is perfectly capable of taking action if necessary.
Russia showing off their capabilities is hardly news, either. Russia likes taunting its enemies by flying fighter jets and sending nuclear subs through shipping channels. The same way America likes to send war ships through shipping lanes in Asia, and during the cold war by flying spy planes awfully close to borders.
Drone swarms are seen as a more cost efficient way of gathering intel than one or two larger ones. Not all the drones reported are cheap according to some reports and may have been perceived as UFOs by civilians.
I take the point about satellites. That is completely valid. However, one thing military industrial complexes are good at is creating jobs and gobbling up money. Russia's is no different from the west's in that regard.
If you can take out the target using less resources, how is this bad? If a drone cost as much as 1/100 of an air defense missile, it means that you can have more drones than your enemy has missiles given the equal budget.
The f35, the growler, awacs, etc. Mean there will be nowhere close enough to launch low cost fpvs against the west in a war. Air dominance is what we do.
Look what happened to iran and all their air defences when f35s showed up lol.
So then youre left with shahed style drones that have range but are still fairly slow, loud, lack good guidance in jammed environments and will be shot down easily.
So you put better guidance on them so they dont need satellite connections and make them stealthy...oh wait now its just a regular ass cruise missile.
> drones aren’t just buzzing airports. They’re systematically surveilling military installations—often during sensitive operations
Now, if you live in the US or anywhere else outside Europe - please pause for a moment and see how it makes you feel to imagine having Russian drones hover over your military installations regularly, or other important places of your public infrastructure.
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