There are only three ways of fighting terrorism. Scorched earth ethnic cleansing, bribing them outright to join your cause instead or submitting to their demands.

Since Russians will not be allowed scorched earth ethnic cleansing and they will probably not submit to the demands of terrorists, their only way is to buy Azov Nazis (like they did with Chechens) and use them to turn the tide.

This post was edited by Malopox on Jun 3 2025 08:23am

You got smacked hard again kid but hey at least you learned something today --> Chechnya is a Russian republic not a sovereign country.

You think anyone cares about your shit memes? What matters is what happens on the front lines and you better not check the map updates or you'll suffer another mental breakdown

Russia can never match the deep bottomless pockets of the CIA. That's why maidan happened, the west will always have more dollars to throw at things like this. Right now there is a whole apparatus in Ukraine that's entirely dependent on western funds continually flowing in. They have no interest in the war ending because that's when the dollars stop. These are the type of people that sit far from the front, their kids are either in Spain or the US and they can continually accumulate wealth while pretending to do it out of nationalistic reasons. If it's not the US, they are fine with Germans sending the euros. Russia in my opinion has little to no ability to turn such people.

The best chance of this war ending was to cut this funding or at least make it dependent on real attempts at peace negotiations. But instead as the US pulled back, the Euros pledged to replace it indefinitely, so what's the incentive to actually end the war? You think they give a fuck if another 300k Ukrainian country bumkins die?

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Jun 3 2025 09:10am

I think historically there have been other options. We avoided most of the wave of ISIS terrorism by combining strict border security with a second front opened in the ISIS war with Assad, drawing all would-be islamic terrorists into a meat grinder so the US and EU saw relatively few attacks while the muslim world had almost daily terrorism. Other terrorist movements have just sort of fizzled out over time, or been crushed with conventional counterterrorism targeting their command structures in more focused and discriminate raids, I mean India has been taking out Marxist groups without making the same mistake they did at the Golden Temple. If you brainstormed examples you'd find more.

What is clear right now is:

• Ukraine has dramatically shifted their approach in this war from conventional war of attrition to asymmetric terrorism in just one week
  
• Russia has not yet responded, and we don't know if they'll shift their approach or not, or what turn it could take
  
• Russia still winning the conventional war on the ground, but only at the snails pace as it has been for years now
  
• The US has not really responded to the new Ukrainian methods
  
• Russia is clearly vulnerable to these kinds of attacks, at least in the short term
  
• Russia has many ways to escalate, be it a full blitz invasion, or conventional ballistic indiscriminate bombings, or targeting EU/US assets either acknowledged or sabotaged, or just dropping a fucking nuke

Almost zero good outcomes in the What Ifs column except the unlikely chance that Russia negotiates rather than starting a new campaign with a new strategy.

i however suspect putin will not enter any negotiating phase from a place of weakness, and losing a quarter of your bombers thousands of miles into your territory is about the weakest point they've been at for the entire war. perhaps the initial push to Kiev which was perhaps not even in earnest being stopped was it, but i think its now. even asking North Koreans to send troops wasnt the weakness the media perceived it as. North Korea got to rid some hungry mouths and regained the world stage, likely paid in oil or coal for soldiers.

i think its most likely they either take off the gloves in earnest, or send in a missile campaign that is truly terrifying, so they can at least start negotiations from a neutral position.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Jun 3 2025 09:15am

Honestly I'm still in the "nothing ever happens" camp, the null hypothesis is often the safest. The weight seems to be on the side of Russia not overreacting.
Ukraine would only take these actions if they wanted to bait a Russian reaction. Russia just committed to a 6000 body swap during the peace negotiation. They're winning the war on the ground and clearly planning a new summer offensive
These are reasons for Russia to either not react at all, or more likely, make token retribution that doesn't actually upset the status quo, like when Putin fired off an Oreshnik. He could fire off more Oreshniks, if they aren't nuclear tipped it won't change anything.

Does Russia have the ability to just launch enough conventional missiles and drones to raze the civilian infrastructure and housing of Kiev to rubble right now? They probably do. Is it likely? I still don't expect it

6000 dead Ukrainians from Kursk oblast offensive 15000000 hrivnya each in payouts to mourning relatives from Ukraine. Doubts that scumbags like Zelenskyy would pay anything

Strict border security is not really an option in continental
Europe as there are too many borders to secure, compared to US where basically you just need to secure your border with Mexico (or get Mexico to secure theirs).

Fighting bona-fide rogue terrorist cells requires cooperation between various states - which is not going to happen here.

We are facing a case of state sponsored terrorism where one side is unable to conduct surgical strikes on key infrastructure like starlink satellites and command centers (as they might be in Rzezow, Ramstein or other places covered by NATO umbrella).

What I feel Russia misses here is soft power approach which US/UK are so good at - flooding every possible social media with short effective un-nuanced messaging that overwhelmes NPC brains and makes them repeat slogans like “40 planes! Quarter of their bombers! Pearl Harbour!” while reality on the ground seems to be 3 planes destroyed, 10 damaged.

Hence fighting state-sponsored terrorism will only succeed by outright bribing the other side in this case. This has successfully been done before and this has to be done again.

i think they'll toss out a round of missiles at "military targets", aka not Kiev, and that will be the only response. largely agree. but then he's still down in the win/loss for any negotiation, imo. so hard to predict.

Meanwhile, the mass deportation of Ukrainians has already begun, even those who have been settled in Russia for three years now. Considering that most of them entered through Poland, Belarus, and Turkey, Poland and Turkey will have to take in several million more potential white terrorists (Belarus has refused).