No, there won't be an open attack, at least not yet. There will be more of those "hybrid" incursions. Russians will be gradually increasing the intensity of those operations, so that it becomes the new normal. There will never be a clear "well now they are attacking" boundary to point to.

Meanwhile, the EU is still buying fossil fuels from Russia, thus paying for all this. It boggles the mind.

Russia needs a huge mobilization.

Mobilization turned out to be extremely unpopular, so they can't just do that without some exceptional cause.

That cause would be NATO attacking Russia. So they're engaging heavily in hybrid warfare, doing stuff like that in Europe. They're tying to provoke some small retaliation from NATO countries.

If that happens, they'll declare that the barbarians are at the gate, and they need a huge mobilization of troops.

But they have no interest in actually fighting against NATO. It would end disastrously for Russia, any way you slice it. Kaliningrad would be completely cut off and surrounded, their Arctic and Baltic sea routes would be hostile.

As a bonus, a potential real war with Russia would increase far-right isolationist popularity in Europe.

Personally I think this is all a play to mobilize a ton of soldiers, send them to Ukraine, and expand their occupied areas before a peace deal comes to the table.

Interestingly enough 4 ships in the past week were sunk in Bulgaria’s territorial waters by drones.

The Bulgarian PM has refused to name Russia responsible.

It does seem like they’re “testing the waters”, so to speak.

They're not planning an attack on Eastern Europe. They are desperate to wrap up their Ukraine fiasco.

At least one betting market has the odds at around 25% [1] of a direct military conflict with a NATO country by year's end. It will be interesting to see how things change after November's midterm elections. For what it's worth, Metaculus forecasters show a spike of likelihood at the end of September, 2027, with about 20% of forecasters saying that's when a military clash will happen. I'm not sure what's driving that spike in the forecast.

[1] https://polymarket.com/event/nato-x-russia-military-clash-in... [2] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/41238/when-will-russia-a...

> their refineries have been blown up and their diesel will only last 6 months.

They literally just struck a deal with the US to export diesel, and Trump has been pressuring Ukraine (most recently by disabling Starlink) into not attacking refineries in Russia. Like, situation is the opposite of what you're saying.

EDIT: To be clearer in case you need it.

As they agreed to export means they definitely have for more than 6 months (and I believe 6 months claim is naive at best.).

And as US is pressuring Ukraine to not attack refineries means they'll be safe.

Attacking a NATO country would mean total war for Russia. Currently there are no signs that Russia is ready for total war, or willing to have one. Russia has been fighting a war of attrition in Ukraine for 4 years, without a moving frontline, exactly because it wants to win by slow attrition.

Total war (all money going to the war, millions of mobilized workers, etc.) would result in an economic collapse, which Russia is trying to avoid. Aside from "inconveniences" like Yandex AI not working after a data center hit, Russia's everyday life is largely unaffected by the war (at least compared to Ukraine's) - exactly because it is avoiding total war.

If Russia were desperate enough to finally go all in and have full mobilization (millions of conscripts, all industry working around the clock building nothing but drones and missiles, etc.), why would it start by attacking random EU countries instead of Ukraine itself? So I think it's very unlikely that anything is going to happen to Europe other than sabotage here and there. Remember that Putin is a KGB agent, and they're more about targeted tactical operations than strategic chess play.

The whole "special military operation" thing was itself just a way to quickly coerce Zelensky into signing an agreement by threatening force, without total war, but it fell apart, so they had to go this war-of-attrition route