Russia has a ton of resources in psyops and cyber espionage, this isn't a big operation. Why is keeping the Finns and Sweden out of NATO not "top of mind"?
Friends are seeing escalating probes here in Canada. It's incredibly naive to believe they don't have the resources to attack pretty much anything they want.
> I'm not sure this is "top of mind" for them to dedicate resources against
This entire war is about Ukraine joining NATO, and the expanding NATO influence in general. How would another bordering country having a NATO referendum not be top of mind for Russia?
Because the Finns and Russians have form. A second invasion against Finland would be a second go at the Winter War, and while they may not be a nato member, they are a full fledged EU member and Ukraine has shown that the EU will absolutely step up.
The EU may not include the US or UK, but it does include every other nuclear weapon on continental Europe.
Ukraine is a much larger fixation to Putin beyond NATO. There wasn't really any indication of Ukraine joining NATO before Russia started its attacks, and Finland and Sweden have been floating the idea of joining NATO if Russia started a full assault.
"There wasn't really any indication of Ukraine joining NATO"
Yes there was. Going back to Clinton, there were moved to expand NATO eastward (at least once Nuclear possession was sorted out under Bush I/Baker) and it's been a sore spot for Putin ever since, although only distractingly so since about 2014. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_37750.htm
I agree on that point, and it's history with Finland is quite...terse. It's been a duchy inside Czarist Russia, a buffer zone between it and Sweden (when both were kingdoms), it's had civil unrest fomented by the USSR, etc.
It's a relationship fraught with bad blood, but strategically it's second tier compared with CIS states, the Middle East, or the Baltic states.
At this stage I'm more curious as to whether (if Russia was actually DDoSing instead of just a poorly configured webhead with extra traffic due to 'timeliness' of the initiative) it makes sense to draw more negative attention to oneself, as Putin has, by doubling down on taking jabs at everyone he shares a border with...and if he's starting to see that himself, or if he's only observing through a very paranoid, myopic lens that he simply can't get out of his own policy rut long enough to not totally collapse the Russian state, and him with it.
It's top of mind enough for them to have just issued a threat of “military and political consequences” if Sweden or Finland were to join NATO.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/russia/595853-russi...