As part of the SAFE EU financial instrument Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament[1]. Currently still relying heavily on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard for anti-air as well as fighter jets with air-to-air missiles, as these recent drones were all brought down by F-16s.
Aside from strategic targets, a lot of the civilian infrastructure is quite vulnerable to drone attacks as there's a huge border to cover and definitely not enough anti-drone tech deployed. An apartment building was hit months ago with no casualties: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/apartment-building-hit-...
France24 does a lot of very solid work related to one of my particular areas of interest in the Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan region. It's also a great alternative to any US news sources even for news about what's going on domestically in North America (though the CBC has more breadth of coverage, for sure).
> What is the distinction between government and state?
In a parliamentary democracy the "government" is the prime minister, president (whatever the titles are), cabinet ministers and the party that happens to be in power at any given time. The "Government" might be a coalition of 2, 3, or 4 medium sized political parties that have come to some sort of arrangement to have enough votes to pass a budget and laws. The "state" are the persons who perform the longer term functions of the state not directly controlled by the whims of any political thing that might happen in a specific year.
For instance when France made a decision to build its previous series of nuclear powered, missile carrying submarines, and the decision to build a new series that will enter service some time in the 2030s, that's implemented by the civil servants who run the state. Various political parties have waxed and waned and leadership has come and gone since the French nuclear program began, but various successor governments have continued it.
Less specific than that program, the state implements other basic services for the people of the country, all the things that have their day to day work done by people who aren't elected members of parliament. The parliamentarians who happen to be occupying various seats at any given time are the government.
You'll see terms used like "the government has collapsed as the result of a non confidence vote" or "there's been a leadership challenge inside the government (eg: how Trudeau lost power recently)", it doesn't mean the functions of the state have collapsed.
The State would be the organization that uses governments as the branch of executive power (and also organizes a legislative activity, and a judiciary activity...). The kind and amount of power held by the Head of the State and the Head of the Government can vary.
The home page shows 3 consecutive press releases for the past 3 days each detailing a similar incident.
The first drone on 24.07 took ~80min to intercept and shoot down, well into the country. The other 2 were shot down within kilometers of the border so they’re paying closer attention.
Yes, but it also trains the pilots and everything around them for real action in a non war environment (you cannot just shoot anywhere in civilian airspace).
And they would need to train anyway.
But for a real conflict, sure, more economical solutions are on the way.
I think the idea is that you don't keep sending just one F16, but the problem is long before an age of drones we built up some catch me if you can bullshit where we expect smaller countries to ignore airspace violations.
Like bro... you got a GPS. Get the fuck out of here.
I don't know if this is their case, but some politicians don't care much about their arguments making sense. In this specific case, a politician could either claim the drones come from some other country, and Russia is going to protect them, or that they need to join Russia for them to stop.
In 2014-15 they started shelling civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, then used that as a pretext to increase their military presence by pretending it's all local militias fighting back the shelling the ruskies themselves started.
The pretext was fully fabricated, the militias theatre was fully fabricated. Nothing made sense. To anyone with a pinch if intellect the truth was obvious...
Yet, the legend of Ukrainians murdering other Ukrainians for using russian language has rooted so much, even now some ppl believe that bs.
In case of Bulgaria, ruskies could attack, then attack again pretending russian-speaking population needs protection in the light of the first attack.
And right-wing nutheads in EU gonna believe that, and blame NATO for offensive expansion
Ukraine did ban Russian language schools. That's technically a human rights violation. Native language education has been considered a human right since the late 1800s.
It's a common violation. Belarus did the same thing for Polish, Poland for German. Etc. Lots of Muricans want Murica to be an English-language Christian nation too, and laws sometimes reflect that. Certainly Murican education standards favor English speakers.
Euromaidan was a bit anti-rule-of-law.
Many Russian minority groups were mistreated in Ukraine.
All of that is true.
None of it merits an invasion.
Best propaganda is usually all true but selective of facts. In any group of more than a million people, some will do something bad. There are instances of Poles assaulting Ukrainian refugees, and vice-versa. It sounds bad, but with over a million refugees, it's statistically impossible for it to not happen. It makes for good propaganda for Russia too; both sides are starting to be riled up.
Good propaganda has elements of truth. Even if you read Hitler, you'll see a mixture of truth and fiction. The verifiable facts lend credence to the fabricated ones.
The dumb thing is Ukraine has doubled down on all of that since the invasion. The right thing to do would be to:
1) Open up a Russian-language elementary school
2) Don't mention Bandera, or better yet, apologize to Poland and open a park recognizing Polish victims or something similarly symbolic.
That's the right thing to do, and with that, the credibility of the propaganda simply disintegrates. If you're ever falsely accused, the trick is to do the exact opposite.
Why are these drones so easy to shoot down, but the ones invading airspaces over nuclear bases and other sensitive installations hundreds of times for months all over Europe and the east coast of the US were never shot down or tracked even once?
One other reason, Shahed drones are preprogrammed with their target, they're not being flown by an operator who can quickly change their course. They're basically a cruise missile with propellers.
I guess because the have an explosive payload and it's better to take them down before they reach a populated area.
The other drones are probably not going to cause an explosion (unles they colide with a plane) and are already in a populated area, so it's risky to destroy them.
> The amount of fuel decides how far they fly. Favorable wind? They fly further.
Is this true for non-decoy non-foam drones and basically everything else that flies, even things with solid boosters? Seems like a strange part to add here as it basically applies to aviation in general, replace "fuel" with "stored energy" and literally all type of "vehicle" fits basically.
A non-decoy drone would presumably go no further than its target, at which point any leftover fuel just adds to the fireball. Whereas making a decoy drone go down before the fuel is exhausted is pointless waste, when instead it could be decoying a little bit longer.
They are cheap but the rockets to shoot them down cost (I've heard but don't count on it) around $480,000 per missile. That is not a minor consideration for a country like Romania.
Absolutely not the ideal weapon to fight them, and better(cheaper) options are coming to shoot down the drones, but until then the price is irrelevant as long as you're preventing loss of human life.
Saving any nonzero amount of lives for any unbounded cost is not necessarily a good trade, if there are ways to save more lives for the same cost, or the same number of lives for a lesser cost.
We're not at the point of making those kind of decisions in Romania, fortunately. Politically right now it would be very dangerous to say that "some of you may die".
Putin's only option is to escalate at this point, otherwise he's seen as weak with the war going so well. The Romanians should also be really getting their act together and start shooting the bogeys down.
Turkey didn't think twice before shooting down a Russian Su-24 in 2015 for violating Turkish airspace for about 17 seconds. This is how you "negotiate" with the Russians: first you break their nose when cross some red line, then appologize.
The Turks never apologized to the Russians. They said the incident was regrettable. Which is consistent with the overall "don't fuck with us" message that was being sent.
If NATO as a whole responds, yes it's in Ukraine's interest.
If the NATO response is weak and non-cohesive, it is a victory for Russia, demonstrating article 5 isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Let's see how things play out. So far we're in "small, plausibly deniable provocation" territory, but if this follows the "salami slice" M.O. we would expect Russia to keep slicing if they feel there's not enough push-back
You’re missing the fact that Ukraine desperately needs missile defense, and these incidents incentivize its neighbors to keep all their defenses to themselves.
No one wants to be blamed when they can’t defend themselves when Russia attacks.
The only loaded rhetoric is coming from you, I merely stated what the incentives are. Note that the situation is somewhat symmetric in that Russia also has an incentive to misdirect Ukrainian drones toward NATO airspace (which has happened).
To counter this conspiracy of yours: Ukraine was in a much poorer position in the past and didn't resort to this type of jamming with the hopes of dragging NATO into the conflict. Today, they are in a much stronger position, striking deep into Russia and even the Caspian sea https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/iran-says-ukrainian-att...
It's not World War 3. It's just two increasingly overlapping unsolvable wars involving two increasingly coherent geopolitical blocs consisting of dozens of countries spanning three continents, most major nuclear powers holding 95% of global nuclear stockpiles and the vast majority of global military spending and resources, with nuclear-capable cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles flying back and forth, attacks on strategic nuclear early warning systems, threats of nuclear first-use and global nuclear holocaust, etc. Fighting over issues the leaders of the involved superpowers and great powers have described as existential and beyond compromise.
Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East? I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits. That's very different than say, WWII.
The main threat to Europe is if Trump ever makes good on his threats to take Canada and Greenland. If the US turns truly hostile, then Europe has a serious problem. Especially if Putin and Trump decide they want to split Europe between the two of them.
It's a very extreme case, but it would get extremely messy. Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side. Trump's erratic disruptive attacks will hopefully end at some point. I'm not worried about Iran at all, except internally.
Fortunatly Trump won’t be a major problem for long. I’m more worried about the techbro community who want to usher in a neo-feudal empire based around resource control.
A "World War" probably isn't characterized by its "size" (whatever that means) but rather by the fact that the combat theatre extends over much of "the world", or that much of "the world" are active belligerents. Ukraine is right now a localized conflict; I don't think it counts.
FWIW, as one potential size metric: casualties in Ukraine (so far) are comparable to the Korean or Vietnam War, and an order of magnitude less than the World Wars (even though the world has roughly 4x the population now than in 1939). It's much more comparable to those conflicts than either of the World Wars.
My read on the situation is that Putin knows that he's stuck, and baiting nato into some (likely tepid) response gives him an excuse to expand the next call up / draft.
Hasn't it occurred to you that typically when an explosive drone reaches the end of its flight, it, er.. explodes? Or that if it isn't shot down, that the last moment of its flight might kill people?
Some things are relitive. It's never a good time to have 10 people get killed by an explosive drone, but that may be better than a million hecter fire that kills 10,000.
Because Russian's war with Ukraine is unsustainable, something has to change for Putin for him to remain in power, and one option is an escalation with NATO.
Some other scenarios also explained in this good video
Do not bother with the youtube video.The essential ideas is that Putin could scare European Countries into surrendering Ukraine. This video legitimizes that scare tactic. Nor does it deal with the underlying issue, which is that like Hitler and Nixon, Putin believes he is infallible. As a result the world as he sees it and the world as it is will continue to diverge.
Wouldn't this make the situation much worse for Russia, and therefore for him as well? The oligarchs will know who is to blame if Putin starts a war with NATO.
The oligarchs aren't the ones controlling Putin, it's the other way around. But yes, escalation with NATO is a very poor idea, given Russia's struggles with a single non-NATO country.
Luckily being 73 and in what appears to be poor health can’t last forever. I can’t imagine spending my twilight years being one of the most hated people on the planet, but the head of the USA and Russia seem to have no issues with that.
Hoping for Putin to get sick is unhelpful. Trump is still in power well past 80, after all. We would do better to plan for a future where Putin rules Russia for another 10-15 years.
Why would Putin want people to think that Putin is sick or infirm, and his ability to lead might be compromised? His entire schtick is that he's a strongman leader and the only reliable option in Russia.
What? In other words, you're saying: "Russia is losing war with Ukraine, so it wants to start a second front with bigger enemy".
Also, how's Ukraine war is sustainable for Ukraine? It's economy is non-existent (almost 100% dependent on western donations), it has less than 50% of population of 2022 (they don't publish any population stats directly, but if you combine available statistics, there are about 10-15 millions left most of them old retired people or young people that are too young to send them to the front lines), they are losing territory every day.
This is some weird "Ukraine is winning but front is moving in the wrong direction" logic.
A war doesn’t need to be sustainable for Ukraine, it’s existential. For the aggressor that backstop doesn’t exist. They could literally stop the war anytime they wanted so they need to continue to prove it’s sustainable to keep doing it.
Ukraine is gaining some ground, but very slowly. It's basically a stalemate. Except that Ukraine is making the war extremely costly for Russia with the recent attacks on refineries and other targets deep into Russia.
As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia. But Ukraine is nearly as exhausted as Russia, and I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot. I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.
The reason that's not happening is either that NATO thinks this would give Putin the excuse he needs for large scale mobilisation, or simply because Europe is afraid to get its hands dirty. I don't think the former is nearly as big an issue as some believe; Putin has never needed any action from NATO or EU members to justify escalation, and has never responded to imagined red lines getting crossed.
The latter is more likely. I think Europe needs to remember the sacrifice that Canada and the US brought to liberate Europe in WW2, and recognise the moral obligation that creates to liberate others in a similar position. Like Ukraine today.
It has turned out to be luck in disguise when Trump stopped weapon deliveries to Ukraine. Because Biden, Trump, and the Germans set all kinds of limitations so as not to strike Russia. For the first three years, Ukrainians were defending with one arm tied behind their back.
Now, when they finally can damage the Russian economy enough to make the war unsustainable for them, there is a chance we can get an end to this confict.
I think you’re misreading the comment and conflating Putin’s survival with the current war. I believe the OP is saying the administration can’t keep selling the war with Ukraine as a good idea indefinitely and will need to pivot to something more marketable. In our Internet-shaped world, everything is entertainment. This particular show has run its course and needs a pivot, add new actors, make a Very Special Episode or kill off one of the main characters.
It is Anders Puck Nielsen who is a serious military researcher and commentator. He is a go-to by any television channel in Denmark and has been from the start of the war.
AIUI Russia has been regularly intruding into Finnish airspace and has often penetrated the land border with Georgia.
It’s one of those “let’s see how much we can get away with” probes to try to establish a new status quo. I wonder how Russia would respond to NATO drones doing the same.
> These are probes. Judging responses and response times.
Some, yes. Many are merely defective units. These weapons are being manufactured in enormous quantity and deployed rapidly with minimal quality control: based on the reported numbers over Ukraine, the net manufacturing rate is about 10 per hour. Inevitably, some are defective and fail to follow waypoints. Romania is on a line through numerous targets in Ukraine from the Kursk region where many Russian drone flights begin, so Romania ends up being the unintended destination.
The good news is that the defects likely represent resource problems for the manufacturers. The same phenomena has been noted with increasing failed missile launches from Russia.
There are rumours that Polish GROM has been taking “vacations” in Ukraine.
As in “we cannot officially approve your presence there but we won’t stop you either”, from the government.
> Poland's elite GROM commandos have become legendary (...) in this episode, we explore (...) the covert war between Poland and Russia, and why Polish-speaking commandos are appearing inside Russian territory.
Regarding efforts to provide deniability for their operations, a Polish officer informed him: “we worked out a formula for our presence in Ukraine … we were simply sent on paid leave. Politicians pretended not to see this.” The Polish Volunteer Corps has appeared to use the same model to provide cover for the mass deployment of Polish Armed Forces personnel, who are technically former personnel when entering the theatre, with their presence having for years been widely reported on multiple frontlines. In February 2026, the lower house of the Polish parliament adopted legislation to provide legal cover to Polish citizens who fought in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War.
You are mixing legitimate sources reporting the intelligence suggesting Russia is seeking a provocation in Poland with a Kremlin propganda channel lying about Polish commandos operating in Ukraine.
In September the Russians accused the Ukrainians of having repairing downed Geran drone airframes at the Lviv LORTA plant, transferring them to Yavoriv, and launching them unarmed into Poland. They presented various evidence like serial numbers, photographs of silver-tape repairs, claims that a Ukrainian SIM-card was used, lack of impact destruction, etc.
What's true though? I don't believe that I have a way to find out.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
The "interesting new phenomenon", obviously, is the potential of the generalization of what expressed in the title. It has very evidently both relevance to intellectual curiosity and a potential of impact on our activities.
As part of the SAFE EU financial instrument Romania is spending a lot of cash on defense measures for drones and other armament[1]. Currently still relying heavily on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard for anti-air as well as fighter jets with air-to-air missiles, as these recent drones were all brought down by F-16s.
Aside from strategic targets, a lot of the civilian infrastructure is quite vulnerable to drone attacks as there's a huge border to cover and definitely not enough anti-drone tech deployed. An apartment building was hit months ago with no casualties: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/apartment-building-hit-...
[1] https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/media/news-watch/news/2026/06...
URL appears to go to home page of RO military, another URL is: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260726-romanian-jet-sho...
Nice to see a France24 link in the wild, it is a very underrated news outlet
France24 does a lot of very solid work related to one of my particular areas of interest in the Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan region. It's also a great alternative to any US news sources even for news about what's going on domestically in North America (though the CBC has more breadth of coverage, for sure).
Just keep in mind that's literally owned by the French government.
That’s probably a factor in why it’s able to maintain such high quality.
Though most French commercial media are not bad, either.
Yeah, just like the BBC is owned by the British government. Less clickbait and scaremongering, I guess.
I think it is not owned by the government, rather by the state.
In a democracy, how is this a bad thing?
What is the distinction between government and state?
As for your question, Russia is nominally a democracy but I wouldn't trust the veracity of their state media reports.
> What is the distinction between government and state?
In a parliamentary democracy the "government" is the prime minister, president (whatever the titles are), cabinet ministers and the party that happens to be in power at any given time. The "Government" might be a coalition of 2, 3, or 4 medium sized political parties that have come to some sort of arrangement to have enough votes to pass a budget and laws. The "state" are the persons who perform the longer term functions of the state not directly controlled by the whims of any political thing that might happen in a specific year.
For instance when France made a decision to build its previous series of nuclear powered, missile carrying submarines, and the decision to build a new series that will enter service some time in the 2030s, that's implemented by the civil servants who run the state. Various political parties have waxed and waned and leadership has come and gone since the French nuclear program began, but various successor governments have continued it.
Less specific than that program, the state implements other basic services for the people of the country, all the things that have their day to day work done by people who aren't elected members of parliament. The parliamentarians who happen to be occupying various seats at any given time are the government.
In a more specific Canadian example: The government funding that comes to the CBC each year is actually from what would we would call the state. https://cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/impact-and-accountability/fin...
You'll see terms used like "the government has collapsed as the result of a non confidence vote" or "there's been a leadership challenge inside the government (eg: how Trudeau lost power recently)", it doesn't mean the functions of the state have collapsed.
> the distinction between government and state
The State would be the organization that uses governments as the branch of executive power (and also organizes a legislative activity, and a judiciary activity...). The kind and amount of power held by the Head of the State and the Head of the Government can vary.
The government it can use its media to influence its citizen and try it to change election results or create propangada.
France is executive heavy democracy similar to US and Latin American States. This is a very big flaw and state owned media might be contribute to.
> In a democracy, how is this a bad thing?
Because democracy is effectively mob rule, which means minority voices may get shut out.
Yeah a solid propaganda arm of the French government
As compared to what more trustworthy, honest news sources? Please name a few, I'm curious.
The home page shows 3 consecutive press releases for the past 3 days each detailing a similar incident.
The first drone on 24.07 took ~80min to intercept and shoot down, well into the country. The other 2 were shot down within kilometers of the border so they’re paying closer attention.
The asymmetry between the drones and the F16 neutralising them quickly makes this financially unsustainable.
Yes, but it also trains the pilots and everything around them for real action in a non war environment (you cannot just shoot anywhere in civilian airspace).
And they would need to train anyway.
But for a real conflict, sure, more economical solutions are on the way.
I believe that Sun Tsu said something about using your enemy's military to train your military.
I love how people are pointing this out thinking NATO countries aren’t currently doing a Manhattan-light on drone defense.
I think the idea is that you don't keep sending just one F16, but the problem is long before an age of drones we built up some catch me if you can bullshit where we expect smaller countries to ignore airspace violations.
Like bro... you got a GPS. Get the fuck out of here.
I hope they don’t send any to Bulgaria. Our PM is waiting exactly this to declare we’re joining the Russian federation.
How are Russian drones entering Bulgarian territory going to give the PM the chance/excuse to join Russia?
I don't know if this is their case, but some politicians don't care much about their arguments making sense. In this specific case, a politician could either claim the drones come from some other country, and Russia is going to protect them, or that they need to join Russia for them to stop.
There's no logic behind russia's pretexts.
In 2014-15 they started shelling civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, then used that as a pretext to increase their military presence by pretending it's all local militias fighting back the shelling the ruskies themselves started.
The pretext was fully fabricated, the militias theatre was fully fabricated. Nothing made sense. To anyone with a pinch if intellect the truth was obvious...
Yet, the legend of Ukrainians murdering other Ukrainians for using russian language has rooted so much, even now some ppl believe that bs.
In case of Bulgaria, ruskies could attack, then attack again pretending russian-speaking population needs protection in the light of the first attack.
And right-wing nutheads in EU gonna believe that, and blame NATO for offensive expansion
No
Logic
Whatsoever
That's not really accurate.
Russia's pretexts were largely true.
Ukraine did ban Russian language schools. That's technically a human rights violation. Native language education has been considered a human right since the late 1800s.
It's a common violation. Belarus did the same thing for Polish, Poland for German. Etc. Lots of Muricans want Murica to be an English-language Christian nation too, and laws sometimes reflect that. Certainly Murican education standards favor English speakers.
Euromaidan was a bit anti-rule-of-law.
Many Russian minority groups were mistreated in Ukraine.
All of that is true.
None of it merits an invasion.
Best propaganda is usually all true but selective of facts. In any group of more than a million people, some will do something bad. There are instances of Poles assaulting Ukrainian refugees, and vice-versa. It sounds bad, but with over a million refugees, it's statistically impossible for it to not happen. It makes for good propaganda for Russia too; both sides are starting to be riled up.
Good propaganda has elements of truth. Even if you read Hitler, you'll see a mixture of truth and fiction. The verifiable facts lend credence to the fabricated ones.
The dumb thing is Ukraine has doubled down on all of that since the invasion. The right thing to do would be to:
1) Open up a Russian-language elementary school
2) Don't mention Bandera, or better yet, apologize to Poland and open a park recognizing Polish victims or something similarly symbolic.
That's the right thing to do, and with that, the credibility of the propaganda simply disintegrates. If you're ever falsely accused, the trick is to do the exact opposite.
Why are these drones so easy to shoot down, but the ones invading airspaces over nuclear bases and other sensitive installations hundreds of times for months all over Europe and the east coast of the US were never shot down or tracked even once?
Because Shahed 131/136 are large, way larger than surveillance drone/quadcopter. We are talking 2-3m wingspans and 130-200kg launch mass.
One other reason, Shahed drones are preprogrammed with their target, they're not being flown by an operator who can quickly change their course. They're basically a cruise missile with propellers.
Because they were being flown by their respective governments.
There are many more that are missed in Romania :)
I guess because the have an explosive payload and it's better to take them down before they reach a populated area.
The other drones are probably not going to cause an explosion (unles they colide with a plane) and are already in a populated area, so it's risky to destroy them.
Given how poor their Ukrainian war is going, this is a strange move. I guess it’s mostly just posturing?
It offers valuable information on response time.
These are cheap decoy foam drones with less electronics. The amount of fuel decides how far they fly. Favorable wind? They fly further.
> The amount of fuel decides how far they fly. Favorable wind? They fly further.
Is this true for non-decoy non-foam drones and basically everything else that flies, even things with solid boosters? Seems like a strange part to add here as it basically applies to aviation in general, replace "fuel" with "stored energy" and literally all type of "vehicle" fits basically.
A non-decoy drone would presumably go no further than its target, at which point any leftover fuel just adds to the fireball. Whereas making a decoy drone go down before the fuel is exhausted is pointless waste, when instead it could be decoying a little bit longer.
They are cheap but the rockets to shoot them down cost (I've heard but don't count on it) around $480,000 per missile. That is not a minor consideration for a country like Romania.
Absolutely not the ideal weapon to fight them, and better(cheaper) options are coming to shoot down the drones, but until then the price is irrelevant as long as you're preventing loss of human life.
Saving any nonzero amount of lives for any unbounded cost is not necessarily a good trade, if there are ways to save more lives for the same cost, or the same number of lives for a lesser cost.
We're not at the point of making those kind of decisions in Romania, fortunately. Politically right now it would be very dangerous to say that "some of you may die".
The actual volume here is tiny, so the costs pale in comparison to political and economic consequences
It is ye olde reconnaisance by the tip of the bayonet. How long can you prod before someone says "ouch!"
For the case of a hot war, knowing the detection and destruction capabilities of your future enemy is valuable.
They've been doing this for years.
I don't know if it's to try and circumvent Ukrainian defenses or to provoke a reaction to sell to domestic audiences though.
Putin's only option is to escalate at this point, otherwise he's seen as weak with the war going so well. The Romanians should also be really getting their act together and start shooting the bogeys down.
Turkey didn't think twice before shooting down a Russian Su-24 in 2015 for violating Turkish airspace for about 17 seconds. This is how you "negotiate" with the Russians: first you break their nose when cross some red line, then appologize.
The Turks never apologized to the Russians. They said the incident was regrettable. Which is consistent with the overall "don't fuck with us" message that was being sent.
“This is how you "negotiate" with Turks: you kill dozens of them, then don’t apologize.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Balyun_airstrikes
Move by whom? Drones straying from the intended route is usually caused by jamming from the other side.
Escalating tensions between Russia and NATO is in Ukraine's, not Russia's, interest.
If NATO as a whole responds, yes it's in Ukraine's interest. If the NATO response is weak and non-cohesive, it is a victory for Russia, demonstrating article 5 isn't worth the paper it's written on. Let's see how things play out. So far we're in "small, plausibly deniable provocation" territory, but if this follows the "salami slice" M.O. we would expect Russia to keep slicing if they feel there's not enough push-back
You’re missing the fact that Ukraine desperately needs missile defense, and these incidents incentivize its neighbors to keep all their defenses to themselves.
No one wants to be blamed when they can’t defend themselves when Russia attacks.
To strip away your rhetoric, you are saying it is Ukraine's fault for Russian drones flying into Romania.
The only loaded rhetoric is coming from you, I merely stated what the incentives are. Note that the situation is somewhat symmetric in that Russia also has an incentive to misdirect Ukrainian drones toward NATO airspace (which has happened).
His name indicates a troll.
To counter this conspiracy of yours: Ukraine was in a much poorer position in the past and didn't resort to this type of jamming with the hopes of dragging NATO into the conflict. Today, they are in a much stronger position, striking deep into Russia and even the Caspian sea https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/iran-says-ukrainian-att...
It's not World War 3. It's just two increasingly overlapping unsolvable wars involving two increasingly coherent geopolitical blocs consisting of dozens of countries spanning three continents, most major nuclear powers holding 95% of global nuclear stockpiles and the vast majority of global military spending and resources, with nuclear-capable cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles flying back and forth, attacks on strategic nuclear early warning systems, threats of nuclear first-use and global nuclear holocaust, etc. Fighting over issues the leaders of the involved superpowers and great powers have described as existential and beyond compromise.
Not World War 3 though, currently.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/26/ukraine-war-br...
Are there enough nations on Russia's side to call them a bloc? It seems like almost everyone is supporting Ukraine.
China is a bloc unto itself
We seems scarily only one rogue actor or screw up from WW III in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Don't we already have that? It's just a smoulder instead of a conflagration.
Do you feel threatened that Russia and Iran will succeed in conquering all of Europe and the Middle East? I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits. That's very different than say, WWII.
> I see it more like a couple of misbehaving misfits.
Those zany kids!
How about WWI? This feels more like the start of that - blundering toward catastrophe.
The main threat to Europe is if Trump ever makes good on his threats to take Canada and Greenland. If the US turns truly hostile, then Europe has a serious problem. Especially if Putin and Trump decide they want to split Europe between the two of them.
It's a very extreme case, but it would get extremely messy. Putin on his own is something Europe should easily be able to handle as long as they've got Ukraine on their side. Trump's erratic disruptive attacks will hopefully end at some point. I'm not worried about Iran at all, except internally.
Fortunatly Trump won’t be a major problem for long. I’m more worried about the techbro community who want to usher in a neo-feudal empire based around resource control.
> problem for long
Seen the news of the past hours about the 2028 intention?
Don’t worry. Someone will start putting bullets in the heads of people in charge before we let things get that far out of hand.
If our leaders act like Nazis, we need to kill some Nazis. I would rather risk being called a terrorist than be part of that kind of bullshit.
Well, not even the Nazis managed to permanently conquer Europe, but the destruction they still wrought on the continent was enormous.
Even a victorious war is destructive. I'd like to do without, but I am just a random hobbit in this regard.
Where the misbehaving misfits are the aggressors, i.e Russia, the USA, and Israel?
Hawe you been in coma? There has been a ww2 sized war in eastern europe for 4 years
A "World War" probably isn't characterized by its "size" (whatever that means) but rather by the fact that the combat theatre extends over much of "the world", or that much of "the world" are active belligerents. Ukraine is right now a localized conflict; I don't think it counts.
FWIW, as one potential size metric: casualties in Ukraine (so far) are comparable to the Korean or Vietnam War, and an order of magnitude less than the World Wars (even though the world has roughly 4x the population now than in 1939). It's much more comparable to those conflicts than either of the World Wars.
That is the point of these "one offs".
My read on the situation is that Putin knows that he's stuck, and baiting nato into some (likely tepid) response gives him an excuse to expand the next call up / draft.
With the heatwaves and drought in Europe it's probably not the best time to have flaming wreckage falling from the sky.
Hasn't it occurred to you that typically when an explosive drone reaches the end of its flight, it, er.. explodes? Or that if it isn't shot down, that the last moment of its flight might kill people?
It's never a good time to have flaming wreckage fall from the sky.
Some things are relitive. It's never a good time to have 10 people get killed by an explosive drone, but that may be better than a million hecter fire that kills 10,000.
Time to expell some more Russian embassy staff.
Because Russian's war with Ukraine is unsustainable, something has to change for Putin for him to remain in power, and one option is an escalation with NATO.
Some other scenarios also explained in this good video
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jDhYFSGkaAc
Do not bother with the youtube video.The essential ideas is that Putin could scare European Countries into surrendering Ukraine. This video legitimizes that scare tactic. Nor does it deal with the underlying issue, which is that like Hitler and Nixon, Putin believes he is infallible. As a result the world as he sees it and the world as it is will continue to diverge.
> one option is an escalation with NATO.
Wouldn't this make the situation much worse for Russia, and therefore for him as well? The oligarchs will know who is to blame if Putin starts a war with NATO.
Regime security for Putin in an escalation/mass mobilisation situation is high. The chances of the Russian economy surviving are poor.
Often economic crisis leads to less regime security, not more. Why would it be different in Russia?
Watch the video in the link and it is quite well explained there.
The oligarchs aren't the ones controlling Putin, it's the other way around. But yes, escalation with NATO is a very poor idea, given Russia's struggles with a single non-NATO country.
I belive it's the other way around only up to a point. If the situation gets too bad, I believe they have the resources to overthrow him.
Luckily being 73 and in what appears to be poor health can’t last forever. I can’t imagine spending my twilight years being one of the most hated people on the planet, but the head of the USA and Russia seem to have no issues with that.
“Father Time is undefeated.” - LeBron James
Hoping for Putin to get sick is unhelpful. Trump is still in power well past 80, after all. We would do better to plan for a future where Putin rules Russia for another 10-15 years.
The poor health thing "Putin is sick" was a FSB psy-op. Maybe he's sick in the head but otherwise in good health.
Why would Putin want people to think that Putin is sick or infirm, and his ability to lead might be compromised? His entire schtick is that he's a strongman leader and the only reliable option in Russia.
He does look a lot better than his American counterpart
What? In other words, you're saying: "Russia is losing war with Ukraine, so it wants to start a second front with bigger enemy".
Also, how's Ukraine war is sustainable for Ukraine? It's economy is non-existent (almost 100% dependent on western donations), it has less than 50% of population of 2022 (they don't publish any population stats directly, but if you combine available statistics, there are about 10-15 millions left most of them old retired people or young people that are too young to send them to the front lines), they are losing territory every day.
This is some weird "Ukraine is winning but front is moving in the wrong direction" logic.
A war doesn’t need to be sustainable for Ukraine, it’s existential. For the aggressor that backstop doesn’t exist. They could literally stop the war anytime they wanted so they need to continue to prove it’s sustainable to keep doing it.
Not all wars have a simple way to say who is winning, who is loosing. See the Vietnam war, different Afgan wars.
Ukraine is gaining some ground, but very slowly. It's basically a stalemate. Except that Ukraine is making the war extremely costly for Russia with the recent attacks on refineries and other targets deep into Russia.
As long as the EU keeps supporting them, I think Ukraine will be better able to maintain the current situation than Russia. But Ukraine is nearly as exhausted as Russia, and I think a European coalition sending real practical ground and air support would help a lot. I suspect sufficient support could force a breakthrough in southern Ukraine an liberate a very large chunk of land very quickly.
The reason that's not happening is either that NATO thinks this would give Putin the excuse he needs for large scale mobilisation, or simply because Europe is afraid to get its hands dirty. I don't think the former is nearly as big an issue as some believe; Putin has never needed any action from NATO or EU members to justify escalation, and has never responded to imagined red lines getting crossed.
The latter is more likely. I think Europe needs to remember the sacrifice that Canada and the US brought to liberate Europe in WW2, and recognise the moral obligation that creates to liberate others in a similar position. Like Ukraine today.
It has turned out to be luck in disguise when Trump stopped weapon deliveries to Ukraine. Because Biden, Trump, and the Germans set all kinds of limitations so as not to strike Russia. For the first three years, Ukrainians were defending with one arm tied behind their back.
Now, when they finally can damage the Russian economy enough to make the war unsustainable for them, there is a chance we can get an end to this confict.
Ukr is attacking Retailers (Wildberries) in Russia because Russia helps Iran attack Amazon (US retailer) Data centers in the Gulf.
Nothing to do with Amazon. They sell military and dual use goods, that's why.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/26/8045972/
I think you’re misreading the comment and conflating Putin’s survival with the current war. I believe the OP is saying the administration can’t keep selling the war with Ukraine as a good idea indefinitely and will need to pivot to something more marketable. In our Internet-shaped world, everything is entertainment. This particular show has run its course and needs a pivot, add new actors, make a Very Special Episode or kill off one of the main characters.
Does not pass the smell test. The Youtuber has an axe to grind. Also, tracking in the URL.
Why make it more difficult if the current situation is unsustainable? Does not make sense.
> The Youtuber has an axe to grind
It is Anders Puck Nielsen who is a serious military researcher and commentator. He is a go-to by any television channel in Denmark and has been from the start of the war.
He very much passes the smell test :)
Removed the copy-paste tracker.
For opposite view,
The Ukraine War is a US war on Russia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhV87G9gXXU&t=18s
NATO Pushes Europe Toward Total Collapse - Countdown to ALL-OUT War Has Begun | Dr. Jan Oberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_OLhQDeaKA
Russia is the aggressor, and it could stop at any time. The US has not funded the war for the last two years, as Mr Trump has been in power.
There could be a total collapse in Eastern Europe, but the total collapse will be in Moscow due to an unsustainable war.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/us-ambass...
AIUI Russia has been regularly intruding into Finnish airspace and has often penetrated the land border with Georgia.
It’s one of those “let’s see how much we can get away with” probes to try to establish a new status quo. I wonder how Russia would respond to NATO drones doing the same.
Turkiye demonstrated how to stop this a decade ago - shooting down the trespassing bogey. It worked.
Drones shot down in Romania, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, etc.
These are probes. Judging responses and response times.
Rumor is Polish GROM have been inside Russia for months.
Edit: See sources in my comment below. I bring receipts.
> These are probes. Judging responses and response times.
Some, yes. Many are merely defective units. These weapons are being manufactured in enormous quantity and deployed rapidly with minimal quality control: based on the reported numbers over Ukraine, the net manufacturing rate is about 10 per hour. Inevitably, some are defective and fail to follow waypoints. Romania is on a line through numerous targets in Ukraine from the Kursk region where many Russian drone flights begin, so Romania ends up being the unintended destination.
The good news is that the defects likely represent resource problems for the manufacturers. The same phenomena has been noted with increasing failed missile launches from Russia.
Can you elaborate on the last sentence? It sounds crazy.
There are rumours that Polish GROM has been taking “vacations” in Ukraine. As in “we cannot officially approve your presence there but we won’t stop you either”, from the government.
I watched a related Chris Cappy video the other day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RBY1cY-GF8
> Poland's elite GROM commandos have become legendary (...) in this episode, we explore (...) the covert war between Poland and Russia, and why Polish-speaking commandos are appearing inside Russian territory.
yes, it is a big [citation needed] for me
See gattr's comment above
Basically GROM getting "leave" and then ending up with their whole team inside Ukraine as "contractors", just with deniability.
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/polish-mercenaries...
Regarding efforts to provide deniability for their operations, a Polish officer informed him: “we worked out a formula for our presence in Ukraine … we were simply sent on paid leave. Politicians pretended not to see this.” The Polish Volunteer Corps has appeared to use the same model to provide cover for the mass deployment of Polish Armed Forces personnel, who are technically former personnel when entering the theatre, with their presence having for years been widely reported on multiple frontlines. In February 2026, the lower house of the Polish parliament adopted legislation to provide legal cover to Polish citizens who fought in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian War.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/07/03/russia-pla...
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/12/8043770/
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/baltics-poland-w...
You are mixing legitimate sources reporting the intelligence suggesting Russia is seeking a provocation in Poland with a Kremlin propganda channel lying about Polish commandos operating in Ukraine.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/military-watch-magazine-bias/
Occam's razor. Decoy drones with a bit more fuel or favorable wind.
The big part that I didn’t see was whether this was a Russian drone or Ukrainian drone
Shahed drones are used only by russia and iran
They're Shahed drones, used by Russia.
In September the Russians accused the Ukrainians of having repairing downed Geran drone airframes at the Lviv LORTA plant, transferring them to Yavoriv, and launching them unarmed into Poland. They presented various evidence like serial numbers, photographs of silver-tape repairs, claims that a Ukrainian SIM-card was used, lack of impact destruction, etc.
What's true though? I don't believe that I have a way to find out.
Russian credibility is at ~zero IMO. They've put forth so many insane theories related to this war that they started.
And just on first principles, how stupid would the Ukrainian have to be to do such a thing to their biggest ally? It almost beggars belief.
The Nord Stream destruction was made to Europe by their big friend Ukraine.
A safe option is to avoid trusting an aggressor, which has no business being in Ukraine and that can pack up their bags and leave at any time.
портянка
foot-wrap? What are you saying here? Is this a colloquialism that I'm not familiar with?
Yes, he wanted to insult the person. The word портянка is sometimes used in the Internet by Ukrainian nationalists to offend pro-Russian users.
I think they meant "sockpuppet".
> I didn’t see was whether this was a Russian drone or Ukrainian drone
From the france24 article:
> A government investigation reportedly identified the first of the three drones as a Shahed model used by Russia in its war with Ukraine.
What does this have to do with startups?
>What does this have to do with startups?
You know, I used to have this style view when reading and commenting Slashdot, pre-9/11 about anything other than "the tech".
Afterward, in high school, I began to feel that understanding the foundations of geopolitics can help you maintain an advantage in the business world.
Check out the first paragraph: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Seems ths qualifies in spades.
The "interesting new phenomenon", obviously, is the potential of the generalization of what expressed in the title. It has very evidently both relevance to intellectual curiosity and a potential of impact on our activities.
Not much, but it's interesting and I think a large population of users here are curious about drone tech
Related: https://stackoverflow.com/q/79454372/63550