> 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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mcv 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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Aozora7 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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pepperoni_pizza an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Russia is not fighting NATO, much less the entirety.

Russia is also not pushing, they actually lost occupied territory in 2026.

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intrasight an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Russia is strong like an ant is strong: strong but insignificant. It only has any significance economically because it has oil and gas.

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Bareja an hour ago | parent [-]

Russia employs modern ballistic and drone warfare to fight Ukraine. USA can't have its way with Strait of Hormuz and Iran because it can't fight against ballistic missiles and drones effectively. And Poland position is... USA will fight against Russia and their drones and their ballistic missiles while at the same time... USA hasn't been able to do it with much smaller and weaker Iran for 7 months now. Iran got control of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran still has the control of the Strait of Hormuz. For 7 months now USA can't do anything about it. How come you are so sure if they can't protect their allies in the Middle East to export oil through the Strait of Hormuz they will be so successful protecting say... Suwalki "Strait" from much stronger and nuclear strike ready opponent? Reality check? I think we will get one.

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inglor 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The US can absolutely conquer or decimate Iran and has explicitly avoided targeting energy infrastructure or doing so (understanding that doing so gets us another Iraq or Afgahnistan) but it's not as if the US can't "take on" Iran it's that the US expected regime change in Iran rather than a dragged out war.

Iran doesn't need to conquer or hold Hormuz they just need it in missile/drone range - it's not symmetric.

As for the impact on the global economy - the entire world is letting Iran hold its gas/oil hostage because of something the US did. I'm not sure why those countries don't pressure Iran more they're not at war with them they shouldn't be embargo'd.

	▲	macintux a minute ago \| parent [-]
		[delayed]

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close04 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In all fairness, the US by itself is fighting someone else's war on the other side of the world, in a region that's generally not super friendly to them.

Russia is fighting its own battle at its own border against an enemy which receives some support from NATO countries.

US leadership fights to not lose face, Russian leadership loses a lot more than face if they back off.

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mcv 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Different conflict, though. That's just the US, not NATO. Because the rest of NATO knows very well what an utterly stupid and pointless war that is.

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sobellian an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

	▲	specproc 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Not Russian, but spent a lot of time out east. Russia is reflexively anti-NATO as NATO is reflexively anti-Russia. NATO is an alliance that was created in opposition to the Soviet Union. NATO has absorbed parts of the former Soviet Union. Western companies pillaged Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Rightly or wrongly, Putin owes a lot of his original popularity to dealing with the aftermath. Russia, rightly or wrongly, sees colour revolutions as intelligence operations, and territorial conquest. Russia cannot accept NATO forces on its borders. NATO is providing decisive material, political, logistical, financial and intelligence support to Ukraine, precisely to bog it down and drain it. These are all pretty normal perspectives for most Russians. They're arguably pretty based, and not necessarily a product of internal propaganda campaigns. The thing that westerners don't get about Russia, and the reason we're stuck in this Godforsaken conflict, is that we personalise things around Putin. We think that if Putin dies, everything will magically improve. The decision to invade was Putin's, but the rationale goes much deeper and will outlast him.

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analognoise 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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?

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microtonal an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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.)