[suddenlybananas]

Russia is not a serious threat to Europe. France has nukes and a competent army, and Russia has been shown to be a relatively weak power in its difficulties invading Ukraine. Even if they win the war ultimately, it took so long that it is difficult to imagine them winning in a war with serious powers like France.

[OKRainbowKid]

Militarily, I agree. But Russia is actively (and successfully) eroding out democracy and societal coherence. They don't need to win militarily if they can instead promote infighting and help corrupt and russia-friendly parties rise to power.

[mvuijlst]

This is obviously more a risk in the US than in Europe.

[suddenlybananas]

Blaming the rise of the far-right on Russia is a bit absurd. Immigration isn't popular even if you think it should be.

[cycomanic]

There is plenty of evidence that Putin is propping up far right actors all over Europe, is running considerable Desinformation campaigns but yeah it's all those pesty immigrants fault /s

[holoduke]

Evidence by who? Der Spiegel, BBC, La Monde? All in the pockets of warmongering western institutions. Do not believe those networks.

[suddenlybananas]

I sincerely think you need to understand that people can have different beliefs and values than you without that being the result of misinformation.

[const_cast]

If those beliefs just so happen to perfectly mirror Russian propaganda then it's probably just Russian propaganda.

When it's getting to a point where far-right leaders appear to care more about the prosperity of Russia than their own nation or their allies... yeah it's probably misinformation. At best. At worst, it's targeted propaganda - lots of bots online!

[wkat4242]

France has a few nukes, less than 300. And mainly sub based (and only a handful subs). Nothing compared to Russia which has 5500. They could be taken out of play.

[ldng]

oh yeah, major nuclear winter, that's the solution ... /s

[wkat4242]

No, but it makes a first strike by Russia possible.

It's better to have a balanced number of warheads so that this isn't possible.

For this reason the US and Russia always negotiated before reducing warhead numbers bilaterally. But the EU on its own is not in the same league.

[flanked-evergl]

> Russia is not a serious threat to Europe.

Ukraine will all the backing of Europe is making no progress, if this was true, Russia would be expelled from Ukraine tomorrow, as it should be. Ukraine is an embarrassment for Europe, it strongly suggests that Europe is basically meaningless on the global stage.

And the most embarrassing of all is, Europe is still buying gas from Russia.

[switchbak]

"Ukraine will all the backing of Europe is making no progress" - Far from "making no progress", Ukraine is slowly getting eroded. Russia has serious problems in sustaining this conflict, but Ukraine's are far more serious and near-term.

"suggests that Europe is basically meaningless on the global stage" ... it will take many years of deep military investment to provide a proper counter to Russian aggression. As of right now, Europe has been shown to be in a very weak and exposed position. This was obvious years ago, and should not be a surprise today. This is true of most of the NATO member states.

That said, simply because Ukraine is unable to expel Russia does not mean that it is a grand threat to Europe proper. Perhaps some eastern countries face some limited conflict, but I'm not convinced by this "domino theory" that Russia would engage in a WWII style invasion of Poland, Finland, etc.

[flanked-evergl]

I'm entirely convinced that Putin and others in Russian leadership will stop at nothing to destroy western civilization, China is mostly indifferent to it, Russia is antagonistic to it. They know our weaknesses, they know how to get under our skin and we seem to have no defence to this. If Europe ever gets out of this slump it has to take out Russia, if not, Russia will eventually take out Europe.