[pavlus]

That sounds a lot as gloating mid-febraury 2022. We all know how it turned out.

> Russia has integrated air defence, anв the shit is real, it is fight-proven, it works day and night for the last 3 years. Ask Ukrainians.

Yep. There are videos of oil infrastructure destroyed every single day. Russia is big, so it's hard to defend, and most of its air defense systems are either destroyed, or try to cope with 91 imaginary drones in Valday.

> The EU will lose about 100 planes and 50 pilots

Wishful thinking. You assume EU planes flying just above Moskow, or something like that. Won't happen and Russian planes won't be able to send air missiles to intercept them, as Russia runs out of A-50s.

> will retaliate with new conventional MRBM strikes

Oreshnik does not exist. It's an experiment, that failed to launch into [mass] production. Wishful thinking again.

> Russia will also strike one large natural gas storage, one LPG from the Gulf comes into. Russian diversants will deliver several hits to the EU energy system, probably to large distribution hubs.

This is realistic and very likely, those tactics were already tested in the past few years.

> The EU stocks will drop to 70%-50% of their current value. The euro will fall by 20%-30% against global currencies. Electricity, gas, and heat prices will rise 2-3 times; gasoline and diesel prices will increase 1.5-2 times.

Not realistic. There is oil in the world, there is a lot of oil processing in Europe. US would love to send LNG and earn a lot of money, but it won't be 2-3 times. Ukraine has shown, that Russia can't keep enough pressure to stop the economy completely, so 70-50% numbers are too high.

You are not playing a war game, you are mostly fantasizing about world dominance, as many Russians did mid-feb 2022. Yes, Russia can spoil your day. No, it can't fight and defend successfully on two fronts. Yes, it has more soldiers now and experience. No, it can't protect them on marches, it's forced to fight with FPVs and will be. Armored vehicles are lost. Air defenses are lost. Many strategic aviation, including bombers and A-50s are down. Bombers didn't even knew what hit them, no ballistic missiles needed. Few A-50s were hit by ground-based air defense systems, which is kinda ironic. EU has stockpiled air defenses which, as we know, work well against Kinzhals, Onyxes, etc. EU has Saab 340s to defend against low-flying Kalibres and drones. EU doesn't have enough interceptor drones yet, but it has enough AAGs. And you should expect the same drone swarming as done in Ukraine, to penetrate the air defense with ballistics.

So, I would expect 1) Diversions 2) PsyOps 3) Combined strikes (not as devastating as you paint them) 4) CyberOps (can count as diversions)

I would not expect 1) Air superiority 2) Destruction of Europe's industrial and military infrastructure by missiles (maybe some by GBUs, but seems risky) 3) big drop in EU stocks, or increase in pricing (unless CyberOps and PsyOps succeed)

[SergeAx]

My point is not that Russia can win the war with Europe, it definitely can not. My point is that Europe can't even start the war with Russia. It is economically and politically unsustainable for the EU locomotives: Germany, France, Netherland. It will be devastating for the entire EU political canvas when Russia's marionettes Hungary and Slovakia, backed by right-wing EU and US actors will start peddling pro-Russian (masked as anti-war) rhetoric at scale 10x from now.

My point is that the EU has a unique opportunity to outsource that war to Ukraine, but seems like blowing that opportunity.

Update: I hope you are right about RS-26/Oreshnik, but you can't spread hope on your sandwich, as an old Russian proverb goes.

[pavlus]

Russian tactics with EU is not to start a full-scale war, but to draw aggro there, so they won't be able to chill and outsource the war to Ukraine, but instead to prepare themselves, which would limit the amount of support given to Ukraine. Make EU anxious -> EU keeps more resources at home instead of directing them to Ukraine. Even if it gets hot, advances are unlikely from both sides. (Believe it or not, but I didn't use AI to write this, I hate that it overuses some figures, so I'm forced to apologize for them).

You can hear similar individualistic rhetoric from puppets (Hungary and Slovakia, some parties in other EU countries), which themselves only get richer from the ongoing war (they provide almost no support, but get high return from taxing Ukrainian refugees, while also being subsidized by leading EU members).

Also, there is another Russian PsyOp to paint Ukraine as ridiculously corrupt country in mass consciousness, designed, again, to prevent others from providing support ("it will be stolen anyway"), which, unfortunately, plays well with Ukrainian fight with corruption (corruption scheme gets exposed, actual corruption goes down, but it's then used as an example, how corrupt it is, while in many countries, including EU, corruption is not much better, but dynamic of change is smaller, so there is no much public attention to it, and it's not magnified by Russian PsyOps).

The real attacks from Russia on EU and others are designed to weaken support of Ukraine, by any means.

Ukraine has a chance to capitalize on that, by collective defense programs and exporting extra munitions, such as drones (many companies sprung up and current production capacity is much more, that the government can pay for, so exports could subsidize locally consumed weapons, and interceptor drones are much cheaper, than missiles to intercept Shaheds aka Geran, Molnias and other, launched by hundreds each strike, sometimes even up to thousand a day), and experience, but it's slow to get to speed.

> I hope you are right about RS-26/Oreshnik

Me too, but it's not that precise anyways. It can deliver nuclear warheads, maybe it could be bettered with individually targeting submunitions, but in current form it's only good to carpet-bomb large areas, providing it could actually launch successfully. Note, that there was only one strike with it in many years, without using it they can paint it as better, than it is. Meanwhile, there were many failed launches of other IRBM/ICBMs in the last 10+ years, after giving up Yuzhmash expertise in rocket engines, leaving it to Ukraine, which can't capitalize on it financially (and US has now it's own cheap means to deliver satellites to orbit, thanks to SpaceX, so Ukrainian rockets are out of favor there as well)

> but you can't spread hope on your sandwich, as an old Russian proverb goes.

I think you are thinking of another one.

1) You can't spread "thanks" on bread.

2) Hope dies last.