alt Hacker News> it has proved that Russia is weak.
How? Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO on a front that it is continually pushing further west, with about 20% of Ukraine now lost. If anything NATO and the promise of US security is what has been shown to be weak. And I don't think the idea of US/Western superiority is ever going to come back to what it was given what has happened in the Ukraine and Iran theaters in recent past.
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Russia is on equal footing with a country third of its size that is supported by a small fraction of NATO's GDP. You can barely tell the difference between a territorial control map from 2023 and 2026. Neither side is capable of achieving its goals through military action.
Ukraine us unlikely to get back most of the territory it lost in 2022, but Russia is also unlikely to even finish capturing the remaining parts of the Donetsk oblast, let alone the rest of Ukraine. It's taking Russia months/years to capture settlements with just thousands of prewar population. Donetsk oblast still has a heavily fortified urban area with a prewar population of 500k under Ukrainian control.
Russia is not fighting NATO, much less the entirety.
Russia is also not pushing, they actually lost occupied territory in 2026.
Russia is strong like an ant is strong: strong but insignificant. It only has any significance economically because it has oil and gas.
If Russia was fighting the entirety of NATO, they'd lose the war in a week. They're fighting the entirety of Ukraine, with NATO dribbling in supplies to help out. NATO help is absolutely tiny compared to what they could be doing.
I am curious how Russian people feel about this propaganda line that they're fighting NATO. It's obviously nonsense, along the lines of "war is peace." Russia borders NATO and there is no front there. Russia invaded a non-NATO country and immediately bogged down against an army that does not fight according to NATO doctrine. I have to believe this is something the average Russian realizes.
> Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO
Has anybody told NATO yet that they’re fighting the Russians?
If only we had known, right?
front that it is continually pushing further west
Ukraine is taking back terrain currently:
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-has-retaken-745-sq-km-...
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/85252
Russia is successfully fighting the entirety of NATO
It is not. The primary reason that Russia can even keep up is that it has many more citizens that can be thrown in the meat grinder and can work in arms factories and it has a larger industrial base than Ukraine. If you would tell most experts before the invasion, that it would've ended up as it did, they would have laughed their heads off. They would have told you that the Ukraine army would not be a match for the Russian army and they would have told you that the response of the West would have been divided.
Russia has ~146M citizens, Ukraine has ~29M citizens within land that it currently controls. Russia's estimated GDP is $2.66 trillion, Ukraine's GDP is $225 billion. That's 5x as many citizens and a 10x larger economy.
A real conventional war against NATO would be a completely different story. Sure, NATO countries would have to catch up with drone production and defense, but a lot of knowledge transfer and co-development is already happening. But NATO's economy and population is several times larger than Russia's. If NATO countries switched to a war economy, it would not be a fair game.
Of course, Putin knows this and he also knows the real weaknesses: there is a change that not all countries will uphold Article 5 and coordination might end up in a mess if the US would bow out, because command & control has always largely been handled by the US. This is why he is constantly testing how strong Article 4 and 5 are on an escalating ladder. The other weakness are disinformation campaigns through social media, which are working really wel for them, both in the US and in various European countries.
(I don't think it's useful to talk about nuclear war, it will end up badly for everyone in a population center. There will be no winners, only losers.)
Do you mean a metaphorical front? Because on the ground, it's been a stalemate for the past year or so. Ukraine is often taking back chunks of territory.
Russia is claiming to fight NATO, but NATO hasn't even shown up yet, but Russia is struggling. If NATO were to go to war with Russia, there would be very little that Russia could do. The one thing they might be able to do is the reason NATO has been holding back.