[Animats]

Poland and the Baltics know they're next on Putin's list. So they're glad to help Ukraine. Better than fighting the Russians on home territory.

Taiwan and Japan, though, aren't in Russia's line of fire. The cooperation with Ukraine is because Ukraine figured out how to stop Russia. Taiwan has a real threat, and if they can build defenses that mean China faces a years-long war, there probably won't be one.

[caycep]

I think they already have that, they want to make sure it stays that way

alternatively, there's a Dennis Ross piece out pointing out that China's procurement patterns over the years suggests they are not seriously thinking of invading Taiwan, they just want everyone to think that way...

[wahern]

To the extent Xi Jinping isn't seriously interested in invading Taiwan (and that seems dubious), he still needs to keep the PLA and other factions thinking he does. Reclaiming Taiwan is a pillar of PLA ideology and strategic doctrine. PLA culture is why China has never forced its will in North Korea despite continued disobedience to Beijing--the old guard in the PLA feels honor bound to defend North Korea's independence, rather than making it a client state, which it easily could do. It's similar to defense policy hawks in the US regarding Middle East intervention, who have nominally always been a minority faction. Perennial Middle East intervention never made much sense, and yet it keeps happening over and over, even when the military is woefully unprepared (e.g. Iran), because that faction is adept at manipulating defense policy, and has been playing the same long game since the 1990s. Which is precisely why the Taiwan threat is real. China isn't a political monolith, and the forces pushing to invade Taiwan, even if presently held at bay, could succeed in a blink of an eye, even without China being properly prepared for a successful invasion.

[Lonestar1440]

No one has watched Ukraine unfold and said "Yes, it will indeed be easy for me to invade a smaller but technically sophisticated neighbor"

China will never invade Taiwan, but they will unite politically one day.

[mschuster91]

> they just want everyone to think that way

That's the thing with religious or ideologically driven dictators. They're nutjobs, not beholden to reality in their decisionmaking but to whatever their ideology prescribes - and thus are prone to making decisions that seem to (or end up being) utterly stupid / irrational.

With Yugoslavia, it was Tito's idea to force all the various countries into one common ethnicity. With Russia, it is Putin's dream of restoring "Greater Russia". With China, it's the dream of re-unification with Taiwan on one side, and reversing what is seen as a land grab by back-then Czarist Russia in Outer Manchuria. With Trump it is the desperate desire to be beloved (and the desire of his Project 2025 handlers to turn the US into an ethno-christo-nationalist state). With Ben Gvir and Smotrich in Israel, it is the desire to wipe out anything Palestinian.

And the result of these madmen was and is an untold amount of needless suffering. There is no reason at all to not believe what China is openly saying [1] and to prepare accordingly. Better be prepared than be sorry.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/31/xi-jinping-vow...

[idiotsecant]

It's wildly naive to think that dictators are 'nutjobs'. They are, without exception, shrewd political operators. You don't get to be dictator and stay dictator without a certain skill set, and part of that is having a good sense of which actions get you a bigger bank account and which ones end with your head on a stick.

They might be wrong like any human, but they aren't cartoon villains.

[caycep]

maybe not nut jobs, but I think the argument that the inherent structure that they put in place to maintain power is poor at optimizing human capital and expertise, such that they will aways make lousier decisions because they are surrounded by yes men

[caycep]

Granted, there is what is China is "openly saying" in terms of official warnings and such, and what they are "openly saying" in terms of what they are actually spending money on in terms of material, equipment and capability (of which there is at least some degree of logical, non-nut job type thinking behind):

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/mirage-chinas-military-...

[troupo]

Or you completely ignore what China is openly saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China's_final_warning

[ExoticPearTree]

> Taiwan has a real threat, and if they can build defenses that mean China faces a years-long war, there probably won't be one.

China could just bomb Taiwan into submission if it chooses to. I don't think it is a problem for China to build 20-30k ballistic missile and launch them at Taiwan. Or send a million drones over there just to be sure nothing survives them.

Taiwan is, unfortunately, in a very precarious situation should China decide enough is enough and reunification must happen no matter what.

[the_gastropod]

1. “Reunification” is straight Chinese propaganda. Taiwan has never been part of the PRC. Japan has a stronger claim for “reunification” than the PRC does (and that’d also be very dumb)

2. Taiwan and Taiwanese allies also have agency. China doesn’t just get to fire 20-30k ballistic missiles at Taiwan with no consequences. The consequences would maybe be asymmetrical, but they’d no doubt be very painful for China.

[telxosis]

The idea is completely absurd to me.

China is constrained on this by near certain mutually assured economic destruction.

Even the food supply in China would basically be destroyed unless you believe that the population is going to just go back to a diet of largely rice with meat being a luxury.

20-30k ballistic missiles at Taiwan would cause a global depression that dwarfs the great depression. There would be almost no way the CCP survive this. That is why this subject is mostly people talking nonsense.

Reunification has to happen politically, persuasively, over time and without firing a shot.

[ExoticPearTree]

1. That I see it as payback for the KMT losing the civil war.

2. Yeah, dunno about that, who will do what exactly to China? I also think that, since you mentioned it, Japan would intervene, China will pretty much use it as an excuse for retribution on what the Japanese did to the Chinese during WW2.

[0x457]

I'd assume China wants to keep as much manufacturing capabilities of Taiwan intact. If it was just about unification, then it would have happened long time ago.

[D_Alex]

>Poland and the Baltics know they're next on Putin's list.

"Putin's list" is a dishonest meme, just like the "rules-based international order" that the Western nations supposedly embrace.

There is no such list, and there are no such rules. There is only deceitful propaganda used to justify geopolitical ambitions. Don't spread it.

[brabel]

Even the most optimistic Russian does not think Russia will ever get beyond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya which is not much more than Russia currently occupies. You really think they will eventually march over Ukraine on to Warsaw?? That’s as likely as the exiled Chinese government in Taiwan taking over China.

[nostrademons]

When the war started, it certainly looked like it. Russian soldiers were in Kyiv at one point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kyiv_(2022)

It was the failure of Russian logistics and the triumph of Ukrainian logistics that beat them back.

[ericmay]

Credit certainly that Russian logistics failed, but was it Ukrainian logistics that beat them back or was it Ukrainian logistics and heroism alongside American and British support, intelligence, and 24/7 airlifts of critical weapons and equipment that beat them back?

[troupo]

> and 24/7 airlifts of critical weapons and equipment that beat them back?

There were no 24/7 airlifts of criticql weapons and equipment at any point in this war.

Ukraine was expected to fall quickly, and any help it needed started arriving very reluctantly, very slowly, in small batches stretched over months and years of deliveries much much later.

[ericmay]

That’s wrong. The US and UK airlifted anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles among other things to Ukraine while telling the world Russia was about to invade (which Europeans refused to believe).

You may be confusing European support and their lack of it (remember the famous time Germany just sent 45,000 old helmets?) with how the United States and United Kingdom helped.

For example this was published in April 2022. Some of this equipment had already been delivered to Ukraine via airlift before the war even started: https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2992414/fa...

[squidbeak]

There were no airlifts into Ukraine, arms had to cross the border as they have since. The supplies were in small quantities up to the invasion. They were an important help to Ukraine, but you are overstating how crucial they were - as if stingers and NLAWs did the fighting, or as if Ukraine didn't have its Soviet legacy or homegrown systems like Stugna-P which had a much more decisive impact those early months.

Western support at any scale didn't arrive until later in the year.

[troupo]

There's a difference between "airlifted 24/7 since the beginning of the invasion" and:

- the two packages promised in March were delivered by April, all pushed via conventional transport through Poland and Romania (IIRC deliveries didn't start until at least mid-March, and by that time Ukraine was already suffering heavy losses, logistics collapses etc. )

- there's a nebulous commitment to <list of weapons> which we know barely trickled in as US committed, then withdrew, then commited, then withdrew support, then claimed Ukraine was too stupid to use these weapons, or that it would lead to escalation, or...

[esseph]

> Ukraine was expected to fall quickly, and any help it needed started arriving very reluctantly, very slowly, in small batches stretched over months and years of deliveries much much later.

This is bullshit from anyone in the know.

There had been multiple YEARS of Western Special Operations inside Ukraine leading up to and during the opening phases of the war. Some were pulled back to defend Kyiv / Zelensky during the original search for him in the opening days of the war. Without UK SOF and their initial deployments of anti-armor weapons, there is a good chance Russia would have gotten much further.

Ukraine has had comprehensive intelligence, logistics, etc support for a long time, but it has been a fraction of what each country could contribute.

[troupo]

> There had been multiple YEARS of Western Special Operations inside Ukraine leading up to and during the opening phases of the war.

That is why Russia quickly reached Kiev, and Ukraine still can't win the war? Because there were inhales, screams MULTIPLE YEARS OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS?

> Without UK SOF and their initial deployments of anti-armor weapons, there is a good chance Russia would have gotten much further.

No one denies that there were Western Weapons in Ukraine. What is bullshit is that they were somehow airlifted 24/7 during initial phases of the war. They decidedly weren't. Neither before the invasion, nor during the first days. Nor, indeed during any phase of the war.

[yostrovs]

There were no critical weapons supplied to Ukraine until after the Russians retreated from Kiyv.

[esseph]

This is easily proven false. See my above comment about both the UK SOF operations and the US flights of weapons. The info is well documented and sourced.

[squidbeak]

Russian logistics failed because of Ukrainian resistance. The NLAWs and stingers were extremely useful to Ukraine, but the more important fact is that the Ukrainian army was prepared, disciplined, and didn't melt away as Russia expected.

[esseph]

There have been rumblings of a Russian attack on Poland for awhile.

https://youtu.be/NVnbtbtgu2Y?is=2lMFmF2kQ0SXqIw0

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/07/03/russia-pla...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/26/russia-provoca...

Polish news: https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/09/8043294/

---

The head of Poland's Foreign Ministry noted that he cannot comment on intelligence data but stressed that Russia has long been waging a hybrid war against Poland and France.

He said this involves cyberattacks on state systems, attempts to gather information on critical infrastructure using shadow fleet vessels, arson, sabotage on railways and drone attacks.

Sikorski also recalled that before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia allegedly prepared false flag provocations to create a pretext for starting the war. At the time, American intelligence warnings helped thwart those plans.

"Today you must believe us – not just me, but other countries too – that we have credible information that the Russians are planning something again. The purpose of these warnings is to discourage them from carrying out these provocations," he said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, for his part, confirmed that Paris is also recording increased Russian hybrid activity.

[brabel]

Poland is delivering 90% of NATO’s support to Ukraine. France is one of the staunchest enemies of Russia. In this situation I just don’t understand what people expect Russia to do?? Sit and accept while those countries work hard to kill its soldiers and destroy its economy? I am surprised Russia hasn’t bombed transport depots in Poland that are known to be used for weapons delivery to Ukraine yet, but that seems very likely to happen in the next few months. However that is not the same as Russia invading Poland! Those reports are talking about attacks, no one in their right mind is expecting an invasion, which is what my comment was referring to.

[wvh]

> In this situation I just don’t understand what people expect Russia to do??

To stay within its borders. And that counts for the others on this planet, too.

[troupo]

> situation I just don’t understand what people expect Russia to do?? Sit and accept while those countries work hard to kill its soldiers and destroy its economy

Oh no, the poor innocent Russia that is currently in year 5 of its totally innocent blameless war it's waging. "Hitler did nothing wrong" vibes.

All Russia has to do to stop its soldiers from dying and its economy from being destroyed is to get the fuck out of Ukraine.

[esseph]

> In this situation I just don’t understand what people expect Russia to do??

Go back to their fucking home and stop dying by the millions would be a good start.

[XorNot]

Ukraine is keeping Russia where it is at a tremendous expenditure of people and treasure.

Their success in the conflict is not guaranteed.

[brabel]

Their success is already impossible: you cannot lose half of your population and suffer millions of casualties and still consider that a success in the end, even if Ukraine was to retake most of the territory it has lost, which seems less and less likely as the years pass.

Wars of this kind never have winners. Russia also lost too many soldiers to celebrate anything.

[liamwire]

I couldn't disagree more. In a fight for existential survival, repelling an invader at any cost constitutes a win. It may almost be pyrrhic in the end, but deterrence is invaluable.

Not to lose sight of the very real cost, down to every man and family destroyed. Many may even argue that life under subjugation is still at least life. But many more have walked the walk into the fire, in defiance of that notion. I see no way of arguing the opinions of the living outweigh those of the dead when it comes to opinions on what's worth fighting for.

I would add that this isn't advocating for blindly and endlessly throwing meat into the meat grinder. But to the extent that a country tells you, not from the top down but from the men on the very frontlines of war, that they're willing to die, to win... I'd say believe them when they say they understand the costs, and yet consider it a win not in spite of those costs, but in the face of them, defiantly.

[brabel]

There is a lot of resistance from the Ukrainians to going to the frontlines as we can see in the endless videos of people fighting the government “recruiters” who come to forcibly take them and the large stream of people fleeing the country. It’s hard to tell if the will to continue fight comes from the people or the government, it’s not nearly as clear as you imply. In my view, it’s a huge crime against life for this war to continue. A compromise is the only solution. From both sides of course. But it seems both sides still consider the continuing fight and death toll is worthwhile and preferable to the compromises they would need to make to end the craziness. We will look back at this time as a huge failure of Europe and the US to manage to first prevent Russia aggression, and then even worse , prolonging the conflict for several years by simply failing to provide what was needed to defeat Russia while providing just enough for the Russians to advance only very slowly and at a high cost - the worst possible outcome since Ukraine still loses a huge amount of territory and more importantly, people, while Russia loses a much smaller proportion of its population while achieving many of its goals and proving to the West that it can challenge its political position near its borders even if war is the only way to do so.

[esseph]

> it’s a huge crime against life for this war to continue. A compromise is the only solution.

This is a known Russian talking point. Begone with thee.

You act like this war is just happening in Ukraine. Ask UK, France, Germany, US, Poland, etc how that is going inside those countries.

Ask North Korea about their troops.