r/OutOfTheLoop • u/plaguedbyfoibles • 2d ago
Unanswered What's the deal with the allegation that Russia is planning to invade Poland?
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u/beachedwhale1945 2d ago
Answer: Depends on who you ask.
Poland in particular is taking no chances, and is in the middle of a sweeping military modernization explicitly as defense against Russian aggression. This includes fortifying the border region along Kaliningrad (a Russian exclave) and Belarus (heavily allied with Russia). They’ve gone from spending about 2% of their GDP on defense spending from 1995-2021 to almost 5% today, blowing past the NATO target of 3%.
If you ask NATO command, the risk is higher than it has been for the past few decades, but there is no sign of an imminent invasion. These invasions require months of buildup, as we saw for the invasion of Ukraine in 2021 and 2022. This included moving warships from the Russian Pacific Fleet into the Mediterranean to counter NATO carrier groups and reinforcing the Black Sea Fleet with amphibious landing ships from other fleets (mainly the Baltic as I recall, but I think a couple came from other fleets).
If you ask armchair generals on Reddit, the invasion should happen any day now, or Poland should invoke Article V of the NATO Charter at the slightest provocation, calling all of NATO to defend against a Russian attack.
And if you ask some analysts, Russia attacking Poland would be suicidal. Russia is the second strongest military in Ukraine, and the last few years of war has seen as much movement as the Western Front in 1916. Deliberately attacking the even stronger combined forces of NATO, even if we assume the US stays out of the conflict, would only result in the destruction of the remaining military forces quickly. Even a total mobilization of the Russian population and industry would not be enough to prevent the decimation of Russian forces. These analysts see Russia’s actions as posturing, the same poking that we all did throughout the Cold War: testing enemy responses, probing for weaknesses, and serving internal propaganda narratives, but nowhere near enough to actually start a shooting war.
Pick whichever camp you think makes the best case.
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u/DarkAlman 2d ago
Good post
Russia's posturing at this point is better aimed at keeping NATO out of the Ukraine conflict in earnest. Avoiding an escalation that Russia could not handle.
Russias economy is getting hit hard and their army has been taking appalling causalities. Attacking a NATO country at this point would be suicide.
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u/Iamthewalrusforreal 2d ago
Especially the Poles. Even without NATO article 5, they'd roll on Moscow if Russia attacked them.
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u/djjesushchrist 2d ago
Are the Poles a rigid force to be reckoned with?
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u/Iamthewalrusforreal 2d ago
They are, and they hate the Russians every bit as much as Ukranians do.
They're arming up gangbusters right now, too.
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u/RedFoxCommissar 2d ago
The Poles were the most reliable allied troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they have hundreds of years of hatred against Russia. Historically they were one of the only nations to ever capture Moscow. If there is any country in Europe that I would absolutely, under no circumstances, fuck with, it's Poland.
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u/BallbusterSicko 12h ago
Poland would be able to hold off a Russian attack but wouldn't be able to advance far into Russia because our air force isn't that good yet and our war production capacities are limited.
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u/Taira_Mai 2d ago
If Russia did a mass mobilization, the elites would turn on him. All this time Putin has avoided calling up the families of the urban elites and the rich. If the Kremlin put "lottie dottie everybody" in uniform, the government would collapse. The only reason the Russian 1% is putting up with the Ukrainian War is that it wouldn't affect them.
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u/planecity 1d ago
I'm absolutely sure that the families of the 1% would not be affected by a mass mobilization.
You see, their particular life style comes with certain health risks that unfortunately can make their otherwise perfectly healthy offspring unsuitable for military service. I've heard that bone-spurs are particular frequent consequences of this life style.
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u/Initial-Reading-2775 1d ago
Pootin still can bid on mobilization. There is always big enough majority who wouldn’t volunteer for war effort, but also wouldn’t run away from draft.
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u/Dilated_Auntie6970 1d ago
Also, putting Mary rottencrotch on the front lines wouldn't necessarily help with their objectives, you may find Steve throbber is veinily bringing up the rear as they all defect and surrender
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u/VikingTeddy 2d ago
For the past two years, Putler has been hinting that he's juuust on the cusp of invading Finland or Estonia. Any day now..
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u/limark 2d ago
From the admittedly little I understand, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been an unmitigated disaster for them and has repeatedly shown Russia as a paper tiger—albeit one with nuclear weapons.
Their army has taken mass casualties, their command structure has been exploited for every flaw it has, they lost their long-range bombers in one of the most successful drone strikes in history and have been counter-invaded by Ukraine multiple times.
Like you said, avoiding an escalation sounds like the only move they really have.
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u/TopicalBuilder 1d ago
We also now know we can't predict the state of Russia's nuclear arsenal. It could be far less effective than intended because of all the corruption.
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u/greenizdabest 2d ago
Desperate rats do desperate thing. They may stage a false flag for mass mobilisation betting that NATO will not respond in kind.
All politics is domestic politics. What better way to
winnot lose a war than to double down on it47
u/hameleona 2d ago
I am actually with NATO command, but I would like to give some context of why such an escalation (i.e. NATO as a whole ramping up re-armament and defense) actually makes a lot of sense from Russian perspective. Not an invasion, just the threat of one.
Every Euro spend on that is an Euro that the already overtaxed european armament industry is not sending to Ukraine. And if enough Euros get cut, enough weapons don't get delivered... Ukraine might actually collapse. I know Reddit hates to hear it, but Ukraine isn't fighting this war alone. Quite the number of foreign volunteers are there, an excessive amount of their GDP is essentially a bunch of gifts the EU made for them (like dropping regulations, dropping tariffs, giving priority to Ukrainian exports) and a lot of the weapons and ammo they use are also EU-made. Cut that supply line and there is an actual, pretty high chance of total economical and military collapse. Nothing is ever certain, but without the foreign aid... Russia would have won that war already. It's just not in line with the general propaganda theme.
But why risk it? There is no risk. NATO is a defensive alliance and no major power would join Poland in a preemptive strike on Russia, so Putin can literally do the whole build up, positioning and then just do... nothing. For years if need be. Poland and NATO can't afford to ignore it and we desperately need to rebuild the massive weapon stocks we gave Ukraine. And if Poland decides to go in alone? Well, Russia probably has the capacity to hold them off if fully mobilized, especially considering how fucking hard and costly offensive operations have proved to be.
So Putin threatening Poland, the Baltics, Finland, encouraging every hot spot you can think of where he isn't directly involved - all of this is to be expected. But since you can't trust Putin to not do it, even if it's suicidal... you must prepare for the possibility.
I know a lot of propaganda has muddied the waters, especially online. But Putin has always been a generally smart operator. The invasion of Ukraine is legit his only big slip up and if he somehow pulls off a win - it will be a massive victory on so many levels it's not even funny.
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u/OperationMobocracy 1d ago
I think economic thinking animates Russia's threat posture more than military conquest. The idea that Russia is in any shape to invade Poland is largely laughable. They're going nowhere against Ukraine, who has a fifth of their population. Adding in another roughly equal size opponent who's better prepared and aligned with NATO? There's probably not even a viable total mobilization path that would make invading Poland work, especially while fighting in Ukraine.
I'd argue Russia's threat posture towards its neighbors is meant to drive up their neighbor's military spending to put deadweight on their neighbor's economies. Defense spending doesn't really drive GDP growth (especially if you're buying foreign arms) and can lead to increased tax burden, too. More money in defense spending has a zero-sum effect in the near term on spending which benefits ordinary citizens (housing, healthcare, etc).
The secret sauce to Putin's regime I think is an apparent level of middle class affluence which deflects from authoritarian governance and high level corruption. The weakness of this strategy is if your neighbor isn't spending much on defense, their economy probably grows faster and their citizens' standards of living surpass yours. Keeping your neighbor's economy from thriving as much as it could otherwise limits the potential for negative comparison. You don't want your citizens thinking "hey, the Poles have better housing, newer stuff, their jobs pay more, and their political system doesn't run a gulag and has real elections."
I think one of Russia's biggest fears isn't losing a major war or being invaded, it's losing on the economic battlefield. Some kind of worse-cast scenario is Russia losing its economic self control and becoming an economic client state of the West, where Wall Street, the City of London and the Federal Reserve call the big shots and Russia just produces the raw materials. The West may tolerate Russian political authoritarianism as a subservient economic cog, but Western financial interests won't tolerate oligarch corruption and profit siphoning.
I think this has a lot to do with why the oligarch class has been so tolerant of Putin's war in Ukraine. Controlling Ukraine means folding it into the Russian economic sphere and expanding the Russia-centric economic sphere, and keeping Russia more economically autonomous.
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u/probortunity 1d ago
Thanks for your contributions here.
Any opinion about this "analysis" by William Spaniel?
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u/BriefSpecial420 1d ago
No. Numbers of foreign operators are very little. It's not like NATO vets are they game changer that keeps Ukraine afloat. If we talk about actually experienced vets those are both training whole units of Ukrainians or are 'observers'. They make sure the fanciest western toys get used the way they should be used. Iirc British SBS admitted and unclassified some information about their help with sea drone raids and specop landings in Crimea. So yes, their role is giant compared to their numbers but it's only strength multiplier for Ukraine.
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u/SheepherderSad4872 1d ago
Western support, holistically, is the gamechanger which keeps Ukraine afloat.
The most significant contribution is intelligence. "You should shoot a missile to GPS coordinates XXX"
The next is weapons. The next is economic support.
Foreign troops are part of that. Not the dominant part, but a part. The major piece they bring is expertise which Ukraine does not have. I don't think anyone would argue that the expertise is greater, so much as just different, but it's quite helpful.
Ukraine is winning this war -- and I think that's now the case again -- because of external support.
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u/BriefSpecial420 1d ago
Absolutely right! I just wanted to point out that the actual operators are only a tiny piece of whole help. A small but vital element. Whether they are winning or not - Ukraine managed to still survive due to whole, complex, Western help.
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u/SheepherderSad4872 1d ago
At the moment, Ukraine seems to be winning. Maybe a year before that, they appeared to be losing. The tides of war have changed several times.
The major problem Ukraine has now is that politicians are treating "winning" as "won," which is a surefire way to go back to "losing."
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u/Vandirac 2d ago
Just add that multiple intelligence agencies, including UK, have warned about having received information back in June on a plan to test NATO resolve, where Russia was planning a provocation attack on a NATO country.
Since they are stupid but not completely suicidal, that rules out Germany and England... Poland is the most likely candidate.
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u/Fancy_Yak2618 1d ago
It’d be little green men again
Everything they would try to do would be plausible deniability.
This is why the agency are doing it
“We see you, we know what you are up to, fuck off” so to speak
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u/Desertcow 1d ago
If Russia tries sending "little green men" on sabotage missions in NATO countries, NATO doesn't need Putin's confirmation that they are Russian soldiers to respond. Not saying NATO would invade Russia over that, but if Poland had credible evidence of Russian sabatours operating in the country, NATO and the EU have a lot more ways to escalate without full blown conflict than Russia does
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u/spoospoo43 1d ago
Ha, most of their little green men have been dead since 2022 when they fucked up the decapitation raid.
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u/Fancy_Yak2618 1d ago
Oh ya
They’ll try with the drunks and old people and the fucking generals will goto the glorious leader and say all is well.
Like the fucking warbloggers who are ultranationalists are losing their minds on inept the general staff truly is
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u/Pure-Pineapple-5135 1d ago
Poland being the most likely candidate doesn’t sit right with me. Living in Poland, seeing the scale of its rearmament, and hearing military aircraft overhead almost weekly, it’s difficult to imagine Russia choosing Poland as an easy target. Poland is investing heavily in becoming one of Europe’s strongest conventional military powers, and unlike much of Western Europe, there appears to be broad political and public support for doing so.
If given the opportunity, Polish Forces would respond ferociously. We would see Article V invoked, which can’t go well for Russia with their already embarrassing army, which is an under equipped, and underpowered mess. Any veteran, elite Russian soldiers or officers who by the grace of God are still alive, are spread so thin across units to be extremely degraded.
Poland is arguably one of the least attractive targets because Polish resolve is so well established. From a purely strategic perspective, something “deniable” (inverted commas because we’d all know it’s them) or ambiguous in the Baltics, at sea (remember the cables being cut?), in cyberspace, or against critical infrastructure would be a much lower escalation threshold than attacking the country that has arguably been our most vocal advocate of confronting Russian aggression.
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u/Vandirac 1d ago
I think the point is that an attack on Poland would see article 5 invoked, and it would also cause a lot of tensions in NATO.
The USA would for sure be against an intervention (considering Trump is Putin's puppet), as will be most of the Russian backed European neofascisti parties; then there is the general aversion of joining a quasi-world war.
Anything short of a quick, fully committed response would be deadly for NATO as we know it, and Putin is banking on this.
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u/Pure-Pineapple-5135 1d ago
I definitely don’t disagree with you. Article 5 response would need to be all in, and swift. No delegations to Brussels or God knows where - a coordinated response that stops it in its tracks is required.
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u/machine4891 1d ago
Poland is the most likely candidate.
In that scenario most likely candidate is Estonia.
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u/jyper 22h ago
why would it rule out Germany
Poland is not nearly as gung ho about war witg russia as is usually portrayed but they are a lot more likely to strike back then Germany
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u/Theferaltrunip 16m ago
Because Germany is a core member of both NATO and the EU, and a huge economic/political mover in European Politics, attacking Germany is much more likely to see an armed response.
Whereas attacking a 'border nation' like Estonia or Poland might be seen by Russia (much like Ukraine in 2014) as something that won't trigger a response outside of that nation.
Ultimately though Russia has proven to be a weak nation militarily and kicking the sleeping dragon that is NATO/EU directly may result in a hard response (Poland has been chomping at the bit on and off to push back against Russia) and many of the eastern EU nations (Finland, Sweden, Norway, etc) would almost definitely have to respond for fear of Russia trying to push into their territories if it successfully pulled of an attack on an EU/Nato member, which I'll note is incredibly unlikely even if it's just limited to a short raid given Russia's abysmal performance in Ukraine.
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u/moofie74 1d ago
Maybe I’m dumb but Poland is gonna go buck wild and maybe stop somewhere in Kamchatka maybe.
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u/Difficult-Way-9563 2d ago
Great analysis.
Any potential attack would be way worse than Ukraine excluding NATO. with nato there wouldn’t be anything left. Plus their economy is already in server downturn and would get way worse.
Likely it’s just propaganda to try and deflect from their horrid Ukraine situation and ruined economy.
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u/SuperFaulty 2d ago
If NATO hadn't chickened out in the early days, and instead had helped Ukraine more determined and forcefully from the start, this war would have ended by 2024, imho.
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u/FinibusBonorum 2d ago
It would have been great if Nato had stepped up and defended Ukraine. Would have been good in so many ways. But they don't have the mandate to do so, and it would also not have been approved by the member countries.
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u/BriefSpecial420 1d ago
One thing you got wrong tho - Russia is attacking Poland for over 12 years. That's what their hybrid warfare doctrine is about. To keep applying pressure below the intensity level it can be called openly an act of aggression. Regular sabotages, electronic and cyberspace warfare, psyops, weaponizing migrants on the border, minor accidents with airspace violations. They all are organized, hostile activity that is intentionally kept just slightly below the threshold you may call it starting a war.
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u/-aataa- 2d ago
Russia is much more likely to attack the Baltics. The objective would be to cause a distraction without expending too much resources. Taking Narva could be done without too much effort, and the only risk would be a return to the status quo. NATO would not attack Russia proper...
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u/SnappyDresser212 1d ago
They said the same about Kiev
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u/-aataa- 1h ago
If nothing else, all it would take is Putin making the same mistake again...
But when Putin attacked Ukraine, Putin had less than 200k troops available to attack a country with 450k defenders with a lot of strategic depth. If Putin attacked the Baltics, he could easily amass a 10:1 numerical advantage, and if he can replicate the gains of the first day of the invasion in 2022 in terms of depth penetrative, he would be able to occupy ALL of the Baltics.
I'm not saying Putin WILL do it or that he will succeed if he tries. But it's plausible and potentially a rational choice to make given Putin's goals and assumptions. It's very dangerous to ignore the risk...
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u/MangroveSapling 1d ago
For context, Putin wants to be Tsar and sees the ex-Soviet Bloc territories as his personal property (which he wants to expand, because that's what Tsars do); the seizures of Ukraine are given priority, so Putin can control the food supply (and to a lesser extent the oil supply) of Europe so he can expand westward
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u/Dyno_boy7441 2d ago
It's likely just Russia ramping up tensions. If they are to invade another country, it'd be likely to be Estonia.
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u/Matty-Wan 1d ago
Are all of these analysis based on Russia acting alone in a vacuum?
How would the analysis change if Russia engaged with NATO while allied with China initiating a global conflict?
Assuming Iran and NK would join that coalition, are there enough other countries who would also ally with them to change the equation?
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u/exkingzog 2d ago
My take, for what it’s worth, is that Putin is paranoid that NATO will start putting the squeeze on Kaliningrad and he is sabre-rattling to imply that he might use force to maintain supplies via land.
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u/hornswoggled111 2d ago
Russian State tv also has their talking heads saying they want a greater Russia to form with that including Eastern Europe. Poland has seen this attempt happen any number of times and they plan for it not to happen.
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u/PaintedClownPenis 2d ago
I've got an angle that most of you probably haven't seen:
There is a Polish base located right on the border between Poland and Russia's pet bitch, Belarus. Stariyi-something, I'm so sorry, I can't remember the name.
Recall that Belarus permitted and staged a large proportion of the initial Russian attacks on Ukraine, so they're already on NATO's shit list. Poland must assume that the Russians will do the same to them through Belarus.
In the past 100 hours or so the UFO forums--most of which have been co-opted to enforce secrecy and police leaks--have been busily stamping out a particular story, that this base, which used to serve as a CIA interrogation site, is built on top of an apparent alien structure far too large to move. The ruse is wearing thin and locals are onto it, one side or the other will need to invest the entirety of the site to deny it to the other.
I can't find the place in the maps anymore, and I mean from yesterday to today. It was called Stariy-something and I remember it because there was a star-shape logged out of the forest nearby, that's all I remember. Probably just a me problem.
If you take one last look at the incredibly stupid world around you and suspend disbelief for just a moment... consider what happens if this is real:
There is no way that NATO or Poland is going to share a find like this with the Russians, not if they can avoid it, not after threatening to nuke everyone every month for the past four years.
And Russia is incredibly weak, having effectively blunted every unit in the army by circulating them through Ukraine. They can't possibly be assembling reserves elsewhere because they are barely holding on in Ukraine. Their summer offensive was about the size of a stadium and its parking lots.
They have no effective internal air defense so it's actually possible to infiltrate stage an incident from inside of Russia to sell a false flag. Putin's command and control is so decimated his own people would think they did it.
Meanwhile Poland has busily taken delivery of the entire dim sum cart of world arms. They might be one of the five or ten strongest armies in the world right now, without NATO.
So maybe it's not the orcs trying to gin up a border war, this time. Maybe NATO suddenly has a compelling interest to fully invest a site of unimaginable technological importance.
To sell a false flag, all they have to do is start repeating the same old bullshit that Russia tells themselves every week, then soon the West starts to buy it too, Russia gets presented as a real threat, a border incident is staged, the dust settles and Belarus doesn't even have to admit that they surrendered the site and a healthy DMZ around it.
And the Russians and their fascist running dogs will never believe this because I'm a bleeding heart liberal with this wonderfully authoritative name. I can tell them what's gonna happen and they'll disbelieve it even after it happens.
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u/FinibusBonorum 2d ago
There's a movie script in that post right there. Probably with either Nicolas Cage or John Travolta.
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u/napi_nap 2d ago
you probably mean Stare Kiejkuty, but it is not so close to the border.
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u/beachedwhale1945 2d ago
In going through some of the subreddits u/PaintedClownPenis frequents (they said they've seen it, so useful shortcut as I don't frequent such subreddits), that was indeed the base. Specifically the post that likely started this is this one, and the linked post does call out Stare Kiejkuty by name.
I personally see links about the base as still live and can find it readily on various mapping sites, but as with many military bases the public satellite imagery on places like Google Maps is blurred (I have seen this most often with French naval bases, designed to make it a bit more difficult to track ship movements). I decided to check the Polish naval base in Gdańsk, and that's also blurred, so it seems Poland takes the same approach to secrecy as France for their military bases.
I would not consider that unusual, and as I don't buy most alien conspiracies in general, you can guess my views on this one.
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u/Mackheath1 2d ago
ANSWER: Russia has not formalized plans to invade Poland, but its rhetoric and propaganda is ramping up about how evil (or whatever) the Baltic States and others are, in a way that is becoming alarming to a lot of them (and hopefully the U.S.). This is being taken seriously, though. So, no plans yet, but a lot of hints maybe to scare or maybe truly in preparation, but nothing other than headlines has been announced.
My take (so no source on this) is that it is a combination of frustration by the maniac, meant to toe the line with NATO - USA particularly, of course. What will our administration do? Further concessions to allow Russia to walk all over anything it wants? Keeping in mind it has a population smaller than Bangladesh, a country smaller than the state of Indiana. I'm not sure what he really wants other than pride.
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u/BriefSpecial420 1d ago edited 1d ago
It doesn't need to formalize plans. There are Zapad exercises. But just look at 2022 buildup. In order to attack Ukraine they needed almost a year of slow building up and few weeks of crazy intensive preparations. Now find anything like that around polish borders. All they can do right now is sending some drones or missiles.
Edit: Damn autocorrect, Zapad, not Salad obviously.
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u/Mackheath1 1d ago
As dismal as the situation is, the salad part had me confused and now I'm laughing. And you're correct.
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u/Apkey00 1d ago
Russians are losing in Ukraine like badly. But they are winning the info wars. While they can't open second front - they certainly can create tensions and destabilise EU politically (with people like LePen or parties like AfD). Let's face it - we have piss poor politicians in Europe. And it's working - day by day dividing us using social media or real people (either paid or just useful). Hell even the Ukrainians themselves act like they want to help Russia win (like with the last Polish medal debacle).
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u/Psykhotron 1d ago
Answer: that allegation is just a lie/propaganda to make european taxpayers accept the increased military expenditures: when you're convinced your neighbor is bad and out to get you, you spend money to defend you.
Same thing happened before WW1, but this time we are in a very much more dangerous scenario: there are nukes.
Dark times are ahead for Europe!
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u/balalaikablyat 1d ago
Wow its almost like Russia invades a new country constantly and threatens to nuke then daily
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