Finland has closed the last crossing on its long Russian border, prompting the Kremlin to condemn an “absolutely redundant measure”.
The northern crossing at Raja-Jooseppi closed for two weeks at 14:00 (12:00 GMT) on Wednesday, after Helsinki accused Russia of channelling asylum seekers towards Finland.
Finland says it has become the target of a Russian “hybrid operation”.
Some 900 asylum seekers have crossed the border this month.
The influx is dramatically higher than the previous number of barely one a day and Finland’s border guard says before August 2023 Russian authorities barred foreign citizens from travelling to the area without the necessary visas.
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IF one of their ICBMs still work. At this point I am convinced ever single one have been sold off on the black market and Russia only owns replicas filled with potatoes and wheat.
Unlikely. When the soviet union collapsed the man in charge of their nuclear program got a powerful role and put a lot of money into the nuclear program. While we cannot know how much went to corruption, odds are enough remained to keep many ICBMs working. Plus there are by treaty inspections of what they have - while the results of those are classified, people who have access to those reports are acting as if they think the ICBMs still work.
Until recently, there were inspections.
Here’s a statement from June 2023 when the inspections stopped.
https://www.state.gov/russian-noncompliance-with-and-invalid-suspension-of-the-new-start-treaty/
Likely if any prior inspection showed only corn and potato in warhead, that would of been the mother of all global clapbacks the first time he threatened nukes.
So it is safe to have belief that at least one of their ICBMs is in working order. Even if that singular device is loaded onto a sub in the Arctic Circle.
Not really relevant, but where do we draw the line of first time he threatened nukes? As a Finn, feels like Russia has been making threats about their nukes almost monthly for the last thirty years.
Not worth the risk though. Nukes being used in the modern world would be the end of the modern world, we absolutely cannot take the risk of Putin activating MAD
No fucking way an arms dealer wants anything to do with a nuke.
The thing about ICBMs is that you can’t actually use them. You can rattle your saber until your arm gets tired, but the minute the balloon goes up, your country itself will cease to exist.
So the Kremlin would have to make a decision between giving back Crimea and losing all of Russia. The war was sold as a quick stroll in the park - they didn’t even have their supply lines planned and they chose to just go ahead and wing it, which resulted in those hilarious pictures of 30 mile long column s of tanks and trucks running out of fuel.
Now what they’re dealing with is avoiding a loss of face that could lead to the same kind of government collapse that brought down the USSR. And the thing is that NATO doesn’t even need strategic weapons to make it happen. I strongly suspect NATO would go to war over Finland, and it would be a very one sided fight.
It shifted from a quick grab to try to steal territory based on the theory that they’d be able to just get away with it, to a war that will decide Putin’s fate. I strongly suspect that if he were to make a call that would end the existence of Russia as an entity, there would be someone who would do to Putin what Putin did to so many others.
I largely agree, but we would be betting a lot of lives on the assumption that our opponents will remain rational when the walls start closing in on them.
MAD only works if both parties care about anything but their ego.
that’s literally the only thing preventing a near-immediate end to the war, aside from putin surrendering tomorrow and sending everybody home.
Kleptocracy, as is in kleptomaniac. A government based on theft of resources.
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