Ukraine’s president says Kremlin checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies following new drone sightings

Ukraine’s president says Kremlin checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies following new drone sightings

Vladimir Putin will expand his war in Ukraine by attacking another European country, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has predicted, and accused Russia of recent drone incursions that he said were an attempt to test Nato’s defences.

Speaking in Kyiv after his meeting with Donald Trump at the UN in New York, the Ukrainian president said Russia was preparing for a bigger conflict. “Putin will not wait to finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction. Nobody knows where. He wants that,” he said.

Ukraine’s president said the Kremlin was deliberately checking Europe’s capacity to protect its skies, after drone sightings in Denmark, Poland and Romania and the violation of Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets. More drones were spotted on Friday night above a Danish military base, and over a Norwegian base on Saturday.

  • megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    if I had to guess, he wants a domestically acceptable reason to use mobilized conscripts. The cost of relying on volunteer contract soldiers is breaking the bank. They keep having to raise the signing bonuses and pay to convince new people to come in on contract. Mobilizing conscripts would be much cheaper since they get payed a flat rate that the government decides.

    He’s fishing for incidents, attempting to ratchet up tension domestically, trying to create a situation where it becomes politically feasible to start using conscripts. Last time he tried the domestic response scared the shit out of him.

    I don’t think he can provoke the scale of incident he would need though. Like, regardless of how good his propagandists might be, if he couldn’t turn Ukraine blowing up a 1/4 of the strategic bombers, or creating a fuel shortage by blowing up refineries in to a rally around the flag moment, then how would Poland shooting down a fight jet do it, or Poland flattening a drone battery? It just seems like him grasping at straws as his capacity to maintain the fight diminishes.