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During the Battle of Britain, Churchill ordered a bombing attack on Berlin. Consequently, Hitler ordered Göring to switch from attacking military infrastructure to attacking London. This is widely considered to have been a significant strategic mistake that helped the British win the Battle of Britain.
One of the first acts of was a destruction of the dam.
"It's a mistake to blindly adopt tit for tat" - what are they going to do, bomb some datacentres or power plants (again)?
I hope Ukraine is going to bring a major inconvenience to Russia before this winter. Otherwise kacaps are going to continue supporting this outrageous aggression.
Data centers are now dual use infrastructure and valid war targets
The point is moot though, as data centers in space is a complete fantasy that will never happen.
There is always some ingenious attacker though.
New York probably thought it was safe pre 911.
Sure there are other issues with getting there, cooling, radiation. But for cost of power prices - space has huge advantage.
Also seems a lot of people on far left seem agree we shouldn’t be building them which yields extra support for SpaceX.
Tough decisions have to be made and, despite public criticism and posture, every EU leader is secretly hoping USA can broker a peace deal and this all just kind of goes away.
And the $100 billion/year military aid can go on indefinitely, because it's only a fraction of the increased military spending due to the war. If the war ends too soon with the terms favoring Russia, Europe would have to spend even more to increase the pace of its remilitarization.
I'm hoping for a peace deal.
So, if Ukraine cedes the territory, they have just legitimized the Russian claim to that territory while getting nothing in return. This is why talks have always fallen through up to this point. Russia wants Ukraine, Ukraine does not want to be Russian. There is no middle ground.
As for this "going away" like it or not that doesn't work and it isn't going to happen no matter how much people would like to wish it away. Russia taking a break to re-arm and recover isn't the same as "it's over" and frankly that's why Ukraine is stuck fighting the way they are.
You're also missing the value that Western nations get from Ukraine fighting Russia, both in terms of disrupting Russia, and advancing the state of the art of drone warfare, EW, etc without the rest of us having to fight and die for it. The amount of money involved when considered against those factors and the economic reality of an EU-integrated Ukraine makes this entirely sustainable economically.
This is such a defeatist attitude. By that logic North Vietnam would never have recovered South Vietnam.
A lot of things can happen if you just refuse to be defeated. Hannibal killed almost the entire Roman army at Cannae, but the war ended 15 years later with full victory by the Romans.
In 1940, Britain was the only country in Europe fighting Germany. Many had fallen, were neutral or were fighting with the Nazis (Russia, Italy, etc). But in the end Britain won.
Why would Europe decide anything? Ukraine is a sovereign country, nobody should be making decisions on its behalf!
Especially not about war and its teritory!
Edit: EU countries should give Ukraine part of their territories, to compensate for land stolen by Russia! This way Ukraine becomes part of NATO and EU, everybody wins!
And nothing Ukraine can decide to do on its own.
As a taxpayer I'd consider it one of the world's great bargains, shutting down Russian imperialism before they cause even more grief.
- Putin wages an invasion, with the primary goal to occupy territory. This is what they officially say too, bla bla bla Ukraine should give up Donbass etc... bla bla bla.
- At the same time, Putin also wages a genocide. This is in many ways similar to other wars, e. g. Israel expanding and occupying Palestine, just on a large scale Putin commits to his genocidal war ambition here (see the rumours of another wave of upcoming mass mobilization in Russia).
- Unfortunately, and this is an even bigger problem for more people in the future: Putin has no interest and desire, but also no longer any real possibility to end his war. He married the thought of the war to not only his own personal survival but that of imperialistic Russia. I don't really see how negotiations could work now (Trump acting as agent Krasnov won't do anything useful anyway, other than be a spokesperson for Putin - note that Yuri predicted this in the 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5It1zarINv0) and this means Putin can only escalate further. While many think Putin is insane, I think the path of escalation "makes sense" IF you are willing to use nukes. While the USA meta-jabait trolls ("he won't use nukes"), I am pretty certain that he would. Which then brings us to the biggest question here:
- Why is the EU not already mass-producing nukes for all member states?
It can not continue that terrorists such as Putin continue to threaten europeans with total annihilation. Relying on the USA is a losing strategy; a replacement for NATO is necessary, one that can also include more actors, including Canadians. Either way I do not understand european politicians refusing to build up a nuclear arsenal for all members in the EU. That makes no sense. We all know Russia under Putin will continue to escalate daily. At some point these EU politicians then have to answer why they did not build up nukes. Agent Krasnov will never harm his business partner - he maximizes on his own personal wealth. Worst US president ever but best russian asset.
If Putin wants an exit strategy (I’m not sure he does), he can simply declare that all terrorists were defeated and the “special operation” achieved its goal. Then hold a victory parade and have state media say that Russia won. The Russian public would be so glad the war was over that they wouldn’t care.
I am not sure if you are trolling. Producing nukes takes time, even with advanced industrial economy like EU, it would take a few months to develop and test nukes. And I would not trust country like Hungary with nukes!
Much more effective is to manufacture weapons. Soon EU will double its tank production to 5 dozens a year!
Recent German, French and Italian elections are a cause for concern too.
Look at Saudi Arabia, suddenly they found Uranium deposits just a week ago: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/saudi-arabia-discove...
You don't have unannounced nuclear powers now because despite what's being propagandized for the last 5 years, the rules base world order functioned, and brought stability, despite it's flaws - it wasn't perfect, but there was an effort to abide by treaties and international law.
It's was the product of WW2, and to some extent, the Cold War.
Just because you have waves of bots saying it was bad, you haven't seen yet anyone saying how the "Multipolar world order" is going to be better.
There's no project other than autocracies surviving by oppressing neighbors freely by decree.
Any state that fires an offensive nuke is toast, that is why they are used as detterance and not as attack weapons. MAD is a very real thing. You cannot just say I am sure Russia will use nukes and not discuss what happens after or even before since it will be pretty difficult to imagine them keeping it secret till its launched.
Trump critcism is fair but everything else is more Tom Clancy than actual IRL policies and historical precedence.
Do you really think the U.S. would attack Russia? Do you think the U.S. would allow the EU to level Russia (which it probably doesn’t have the ability to do)?
edit: there's no difference between launching a conventional cruise missile and one armed with a nuclear warhead. You'll only know after the attack not before.
And Russia hasn’t really had pushback.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ylm3m67n2o
They can only produce so many weapons a day, and use most of them quickly, while saving a small stockpile for mass strikes.
Strikes on Moscow may be “symbolic”, but from Ukraine’s point of view, it’s better to spend limited resources to hit a lesser defended but still important target first.
It takes time to actually find a target, and then find/take out/exhaust/bypass defenses (which constantly shift). Many drone strikes are basically intended to “feel around” for where defenses are, aren’t, or are light enough to saturate.
Rather than trying to save up expensive large warhead weapons to try and saturate prime targets in a heavily defended areas, Ukraine is slowly picking away at Russia’s air defense assets, weapons production, and logistics. Russia now no longer has enough defense for complete coverage, and is forced to prioritize certain areas for protection. This means Ukraine now has a much easier time hitting still very important targets outside of Moscow. Ukraine and Russia are now sending hundreds of drone strikes every day at each other of various sizes, with occasional bursts reaching into the thousands.
We are now reaching the point where Russia can’t even fully protect Moscow, which is why you see an increasing amount of high profile hits on it.
Target selection is difficult as well. High value targets aren't always easy to identify and sequencing is important. It took Ukraine years to develop the technology and strategy to have consistent success. They were smart about targeting air defense systems early on which has led to a virtuous cycle where successful attacks make future attacks more likely to succeed. Despite the rampant corruption, Russia has plenty of smart people on their side as well and they are constantly adapting and finding effective ways to counter specific tactics.
Moscow is really big and the most secure city in Russia.
If you want to hit "every target" (which would be way over 100 even if we are talking about huge targets) you have to launch like 50k drones at once.
Same for Russia. Except it is harder for them to find anything of great value at this point. Most of big targets are already in ruins. Civilian infrastructure is all that's left (not counting places reorganized for drone production here, as they are harder to find). And destroying civilian infrastructure does not play well with what Russia is trying to sell for the audience.
They sell "we're only targeting military infra" and "we only escalate after unwarranted escalation by Ukraine".
They hit Ukraine's energy grid during literally the coldest days in winter. The audience's reaction? "YES LET THEM FREEZE".
Russia couldn't care less about what they need to sell. They've been hitting civilian infra right and left.
As they should. Russia did not start the war on Ukraine out of some moral imperative, but simply because they wanted to conquer Ukraine. So there is no limit to what they will attack in Ukraine.
Russia hit these targets from day one, as a priority.
“In total, Russia has attacked more than 3000 health care targets, more than 4000 schools and universities, more than 2.5 million housing units, more than 700 churches, and killed more than 15,000 civilians as of February 2026.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_attacks_on_civilians_i...
From a Russian or Chinese perspective it is probably seen as a great success.
Iran has an economic disaster on its hands but it’s held on and has the US squealing with the Houthi, oil prices and all the destroyed US bases. That may well be seen as a win by some there.
Both sides are able to perform drone attacks 100s of km beyond their border. Moscow is also enduring drone attacks.
https://youtu.be/N_kBexnffxI?is=1TUDM-WMgr95_zh3
Well, they did, but Trump sorted that out.
Not to mention cruise and ballistic missles. Russia never needed any ground besides its own to attack the city.
Pure terrorism.
Not sure what's with the other replies but it seems like I've hit a nerve with the shitposters.
Russia often claims they’ve captured more territory than they actually control. Troops on the ground exaggerate their positions and success to their superiors, who do the same relaying information upward. Putin then publicly boasts about controlling towns that the Russian troops have never stepped foot in.