alt Hacker News> The ideal scenario is everyone suspects it's you but can't prove it.
Why? EU countries have shown time and time again they won't do anything. I mean for God's sake, Russia was caught sending THREE remote controlled flying bomb on a German airfield, with another one found by a passerby before it was launched.
They contained professionally made Russian explosives. There is no doubt who did it. This was not the first, or the 10th time they got caught. I mean Russia murdered someone in the UK with polonium, for God's sake.
The idea that the Kremlin is worried in the slightest that you can prove it's them is absurd. They leave their fingerprints knowing there will be no reaction.
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Because the Kremlin wants europe to take an overt action to justify mobilization. There are many better assymetric ways for europe to retaliate.
Because being too blatant will galvanize the public and create support for open war.
The goal is to ensure all reasonable people know, while keeping enough deniability that Russian-funded right-wing groups can sow doubt about attribution and response policy’s
They don’t care whether it can be proven in court or by people paying close attention. They care whether it can’t be denied even by their aligned agents in western countries.
> The idea that the Kremlin is worried in the slightest that you can prove it's them is absurd.
I mean they are. That is the reason they haven’t sent balistic missiles to the same airfield. They could have sent the same agents who placed those drones to the fence of the airport with a shoulder mounted missile and shot down the planes as they were departing. Or even shoot them down on the ground.
Or similarly they could send a submarine and disrupt the railway services of the Netherlands with missiles from that.
Those would be clearly attributable actions which trigger an immediate military response. That is the reason why they don’t do them.
You look at the actions they take and conclude that they don’t have any restraint or worries. But you should also be looking at the actions they could have but did not take to see that they are in fact restrained and probably quite a bit worried. If they werent they would play the game differently.